Suffering Within, Suffering Without: Paradoxes of Poverties in Welfare States

Abstract

One major rationale of welfare states is poverty alleviation. Poverty that is in fact (more or less effectively) encountered by social policy measures can be termed included poverty. Included poverty is heuristically captured by concepts of relative poverty and reflected in social statistics. Since poverty in affluent societies is highly stigmatized and poses an enormous threat to their social identity poor people in general try to hide their neediness at all costs. Consequently included poverty reflects a state of paradoxical visibility: welfare state poverty is visible to (or in) social statistics and policy but invisible socially. One could term this the paradox of relative poverty. Quite the opposite seems to be true for forms of poverty in European welfare states that are not yet (or still not) integrated into the welfare state poverty paradigm, forms like spreading homelessness, irregular migrants without papers, begging migrants or street children: such poverty is mostly invisible for social statistics and policy but immensely visible socially – the paradox of neglected or absolutely excluded poverty. Both paradoxes bring different hardships for the affected poor and both pose distinctive challenges to poverty research and poverty alleviation that must be thoroughly reflected upon and analyzed.