In recent times, there has been a renewed effort to improve the living conditions and alleviate poverty of informal settlements dwellers in Lagos through land regularisation, which is expected to grant formal title to every land owner within informal settlements. However, this study argues that the urban poor in Lagos are faced with various vulnerabilities and deprivations, which go beyond issues of legal title and security of tenure. Understanding these various dimensions of vulnerabilities and deprivations are important to developing a holistic and sustainable strategic framework for poverty reduction in Lagos. This argument is in line with the current global thinking that policy frameworks for poverty alleviation need to pursue an inclusive strategy, which simultaneously takes into consideration poverty in all its dimensions, as well as the aspirations and needs of the poor. Against this background, through the lens of the Sustainable Livelihood Approach (SLA), based on four informal settlements across Lagos, the study examines the issues of livelihoods in informal settlements. The study explores the interplay between location, tenure, policies and livelihoods. In particular, the study focuses on how these factors interplay with livelihood vulnerability and access to assets, and the implications for sustainable livelihoods and poverty alleviation strategies. The Sustainable Livelihoods Approach provides a framework which integrates various dimensions of poverty. This framework supports a broad range of quantitative and qualitative research design and data collection methods. For the purpose of this research, both quantitative and qualitative data collection methods have been used, which included household surveys, household indepth interviews, key informant interviews, direct observation and published documents. The use of multiple methods provided valuable information on livelihood assets and vulnerabilities of the urban poor in Lagos’ informal settlements. The study reveals that the urban poor have inadequate access to livelihoods assets. This inadequacy is manifested in both the quantity (generally limited) and quality (generally poor) of livelihood assets. The study further reveals that, apart from the generic vulnerabilities, urban poor in different locations across Lagos face context (location) specific vulnerabilities, which are, often, either not understood by policymakers or are deliberately over looked, as not important, when formulating and implementing urban development policies. There is a disconnection between urban development policies, and the realities, aspirations and needs of the poor. Institutions, including government, policy makers and urban planners, through various economic, ii environmental and urban development policies, work against the ingenuity of the urban poor, thereby undermining their efforts to building a sustainable livelihood and moving out of poverty. This study, therefore, suggests that poverty alleviation should be based on a policy framework that guarantees inclusive provision of livelihood assets, as well as reduces vulnerability and enables institutions to accommodate and support the complex realities of the urban poor. This will only be possible within the context of good governance.

Published work on homelessness focuses on the problems and deficits of homeless people. Homelessness is associated with higher prevalence of mental and physical health problems, substance use and suicide. A small number of studies have looked at homeless people's strengths and resilience, predominantly with young people. The aim of this study was to investigate how a sample of homeless adults in London conceptualise the challenges of their situation, and whether they have a sense of resilience. Eight men were interviewed about their experiences of being homeless in London. An Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) methodology was used to scrutinise the interview transcripts. Three themes were developed which focused on different aspects of their phenomenology of homelessness. 'Perceptions of purchase on the present situation' explores the interviewees' sense of grounding and agency in their homeless situation and conceptions of their future. 'Threat and care' highlights the common experience of being attacked, abused and persecuted by both the public and by some services. Some interviewees conceptualised homelessness as being uncared for, and therefore placed a high value on instances of support and care. The final theme explored how the interviewees were 'Negotiating group and individual identities': when society stigmatised and refused them membership, they explored investing in alternatives. Therefore, although homeless life involved severe challenges to their sense of agency; of fear, abuse, dehumanisation, segregation and stigmatisation, the men resiliently deployed coping strategies, engaged with sources of emotional support, and retained the power to define their own identities. Recommendations include practical suggestions for helping statutory services to engage with their clients in a way that upholds psychological wellbeing and safety; to assist homeless people in developing supportive social networks and positive identities; and to reduce segregation and stigmatisation of homeless people within services and communities.

This thesis presents an analysis of Argentine social-policy interventions targeting poverty alleviation in the post-2001 period, concentrating upon the critical processes and forces that have shaped them. The core argument, which is examined via a case study, is that the historical patterns within institutional and political decisions in Argentina (i.e. policy legacies) have had an impact upon more recent developments in social policy. A policy-centred approach is established through historical analysis, in which the characteristics of Argentine politics, as well as the configuration of actors and causes that have influenced social policy, are explored. In particular, social-protection and poverty-alleviation policies are analysed. Using this methodology, the thesis examines patterns within Argentine political economy and welfare, and articulates how various forces pushed the country towards a crisis point. Furthermore, the ways in which new policies have responded to the developing crisis are scrutinised. Here, institutional weakness (in which executives have had excessive latitude to shape policies) is identified as a key issue that has influenced the development of Argentina’s political economy and social protection system. Clientelism, populism and insurrection are also established as important processes surrounding the origins and nature of social policy, as well as the recognition of poverty as a political issue. On this subject, this thesis provides a new account of social-policy development in Argentina by contributing to our understanding of the processes that define, firstly, the structure of the political system and, secondly, power relations in the country. It also broadens knowledge of the background and historical events that have influenced changes to social policy, as well as assessing the impact that these factors have had on contemporary social policy interventions – particularly in terms of poverty alleviation. The thesis concludes that the 2001 crisis led to an economic and political backlash and thus constituted a critical juncture that allowed for the return of (leftist) clientelist practices, which became manifest during President Duhalde’s term in office. In particular, the implementation of the Plan Jefes y Jefas de Hogar Desocupados (a key poverty-alleviation programme that offered income support to those outside the formal labour market) by presidential decree altered the exclusionary pattern of the history of Argentine social protection. It also reinforced the President’s role as the main policy-maker and veto-player in the country. This policy, which was established specifically to address a state of emergency, remained in place after economic recovery started and, indeed, the expansion of social protection continued, with the Seguro de Capacitación y Empleo and the Plan de Inclusión Previsional being adopted soon after, also by presidential decree. Such moves indicate that, as this thesis contends, once incremental adjustments to policies are introduced, they affect future policy decisions; here, a different, inclusionary path was carved, which led to the continued expansion of social protection in Argentina.

The links between higher income inequality and lower well-being have been widely researched, but the individual-level mechanisms that are thought to underpin these associations lack a clearly specified theoretical basis. Specifically, whether income is relevant to well-being primarily by capturing material resources or psychosocial status has not been unambiguously determined. In this thesis these individual-level mechanisms are examined in relation to psychological distress in parents and behavioural problems in children in a large, nationally representative UK sample. Two key pathways are examined: first, individual-level income status comparisons, and second, the role of inequity in workplace rewards. The first pathway – individual-level income status comparisons – is explored by examining the associations between absolute income, distance from the regional mean income, regional income rank and parents’ psychological distress (Study 1, research question 1) and children’s behavioural problems (Study 2, research question 2). Specifically, these studies examine rank theory, which states that people are sensitive to their ordinal income position due to an evolutionary-based cognitive capability. Income rank has previously been associated with adults’ well-being, but rank theory has never been examined in children. In parents and children, material and psychosocial mechanisms were both associated with well-being: higher absolute incomes were associated with improved well-being at all incomes, while higher rank was only beneficial to well-being at higher incomes. Status differences therefore appear to be more salient to parents and children living in higher-income households. These associations were also replicated for children’s internalising and externalising behaviours. The possibility that income interacts with measures of socioeconomic disadvantage in its associations with well-being is also explored (research question 3), identifying both reinforcing and mitigating effects of socioeconomic disadvantages. These studies provide the most rigorous examination of rank theory in adults to date, and also offer the first evidence that psychosocial mechanisms contribute to children’s well-being. The second pathway – inequity in workplace rewards – is explored in relation to parents’ psychological distress and overall health (Study 3, research question 4) and children’s behavioural problems (Study 4, research question 5). Workplace inequity is associated with impaired well-being in employees, but objectively defined measures of workplace inequity have been neglected despite their potential methodological advantages. The potential relevance of parents’ workplace inequity to children’s well-being has also never been examined. Using a definition of workplace inequity based on wages and occupational social class, under-rewarded parents had a higher likelihood of poor overall health and higher psychological distress, while over-rewarded parents had a lower likelihood of poor overall health. Behavioural problems were lower in children of over-rewarded fathers, but behavioural problems were not associated with fathers’ workplace under-rewards, nor with mothers’ workplace rewards. Objectively measured experiences of workplace inequity are therefore relevant to well-being in parents and children. These results highlight that income status – whether defined as income rank or inequity in workplace rewards – is associated with well-being in parents and children. Policy interventions should focus on increasing absolute incomes, addressing multiple socioeconomic disadvantages and considering the wider issues of status comparisons and their negative associations with well-being.

No description available.

This thesis explores and evaluates the usefulness of asset-based community development (ABCD) to develop opportunities for participation with homeless people. Current research suggests that asset-based ways of working can promote effective alternatives to needs-based procedures and engage service users within health and social care production and delivery. ABCD may be defined as a process whereby underutilised local community ‘assets’ are drawn together to deliver social and economic benefits (McKnight and Block, 2012). However, little research into the applicability of ABCD has yet been undertaken with homeless people and associated non-statutory agencies. The research was undertaken within a small homelessness charity primarily operated by volunteers. As a volunteer within the charity I undertook a critical action research inspired approach into exploring the benefits of and challenges involved in using ABCD as a method of facilitating increased involvement of homeless people in a food distribution project, and investigated the wider applicability and challenges of ABCD as a means of enhancing involvement of homeless people. The strengths and weaknesses of undertaking participatory research and the issues around combining the roles of volunteer and researcher are reflected upon to share knowledge and experience of action research. Through undertaking this research as a process of investigation into how a homelessness organisation implements ABCD combined with a critical reflection of the role of the researcher as participant observer a rich and detailed insight into the research aims has been discerned. The research increases understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of ABCD in practice with a marginalised group and shows notions of a ‘homeless community’ and a ‘culture of homelessness’ to be of negative value in assisting homeless people to become more engaged within the community. It highlights the need for a more critical form of ABCD incorporating notions of power. In conjunction, it has enhanced opportunities for homeless people to engage and influenced practice within the charity.

The thesis examines three issues related to Chinese rural households’ well-being and poverty status over the period of 1989-2006. Each of them corresponds to a substantive chapter (Chapter 3-5). Chapter 1 introduces the stages of poverty reduction in rural China following the reforms that started in 1978 and discusses some problems related to further poverty reduction and increases in welfare. Chapter 2 provides a general description of the data set used in the substantive chapters. It includes a discussion of the construction of the panel and the justification of the construction and use of the key economic variables. It also uses this panel to provide some preliminary explorations on households’ poverty status and inequality. Chapter 3 examines the welfare loss brought about by the increasing uncertainty attached to households’ consumption flows. Along with significant economic growth over more than three decades, rural households’ livelihood has become more uncertain in terms of greater volatility and inequality in their consumption. Our estimate is that households’ welfare would have risen up by approximately one third if there were no such uncertainties. Farmers and the chronically poor appear to suffer most among all sub-groups from the welfare loss associated with this uncertainty. Chapter 4 extends the existing literature on poverty in rural China from a perspective of households’ agricultural asset holdings. The analysis finds multiple equilibria in asset dynamics. In the presence of limited insurance, households’ exposure to various shocks and risk forces them to engage in conservative livelihood strategies: they may prefer low-risk low-return production to more profitable but riskier investment in asset accumulation. As a result, some households may be trapped into lower incomes in the long-term. Based on the findings in Chapter 4, Chapter 5 empirically identifies the dynamic asset threshold. It categorises households into either the downward or upward mobility group in the long-term. Then, this chapter measures to what extent falling below this asset threshold may affect households’ probabilities of being poor. Both static and dynamic estimates suggest that insufficient asset holdings substantially increase the chances of falling into poverty. Chapter 6 summarises policy implications indicated by the empirical analyses in three substantive chapters. Overall, education, health insurance and off-farm employment appear to be the key factors if there is to be a further improvement in Chinese rural households’ welfare and reduction in poverty.

Alors que le nombre de personnes sans-domicile n’a cessé d’augmenter depuis les années 1980, la « question SDF » a fait l’objet d’une réponse sociopolitique de plus en plus spécialisée. Afin d’analyser cette réponse, la thèse étudie la professionnalisation de la prise en charge des personnes sans-domicile en France. Elle s’appuie sur une enquête ethnographique et par entretiens (n=77) réalisée dans divers dispositifs d’accompagnement et de soins : accueil de jour, centre de santé, dispositifs de veille sociale et sanitaire, hébergements médicalisés ou non, réunions et commissions partenariales. Des analyses statistiques et archivistiques complètent l’analyse. L’étude restitue d’abord le rôle déterminant des professionnels de santé dans la formation d’un espace pluridisciplinaire et spécialisé de prise en charge. Elle se focalise ensuite sur le quotidien du travail d’accompagnement et de soin : à travers une division du travail originale, travailleurs sociaux et professionnels de santé sont engagés dans des relations de coopération et de concurrence pour répondre aux problèmes qu’ils ont à traiter. L’analyse se concentre finalement sur les modalités de régulation et d’harmonisation des pratiques et des représentations professionnelles. La formation d’une culture professionnelle commune facilite les échanges et les passages de relais entre professionnels, tout en réaffirmant les domaines de compétences de chacun. Inscrite au croisement de la sociologie des groupes professionnels et de la sociologie des politiques sociales, la thèse montre la multiplicité des mécanismes et des processus à l’œuvre dans la professionnalisation de la prise en charge des sans-domicile. Celle-ci forme une juridiction partagée entre les professionnels du travail social et de la santé qui luttent, coopèrent et se coordonnent selon des modalités et des temporalités diverses pour prendre en charge la question SDF. / While the number of homeless people keeps rising, homelessness has been tackled as a specific issue since the 1980’s. In order to study the political response that has been drawn to solve it, this dissertation analyses the professionalization of health and social care to the homeless in France. It relies on an ethnographical inquiry within various medical and social institutions, which is completed with statistical and archival materials as well as interviews (n=77). The dissertation first details the making of a multidisciplinary field addressing the issue of homelessness. It highlights the specific role of health professionals in the making and development of such a field. The study then focuses on the day-to-day medical and social work that takes place within dedicated institutions. Through a specific division of labor, medical and social workers are involved in relations of both cooperation and competition in order to solve the problems that they face. Eventually, the study addresses the issue of regulation and harmonization of professional practices and representations. Such processes depend on the making and diffusion of a common professional culture which both facilitates the exchanges between professionals and reminds them of the limits of their own expertise. Drawing on the sociology of professional groups and the sociology of social policies, this dissertation highlights the various mechanisms and processes that participate in the professionalization of health and social care to the homeless. Homelessness forms a shared jurisdiction within which social and medical workers cooperate, coordinate and compete through various ways and temporalities.

Previous analyses of homelessness have been accused of lacking theoretical and conceptual clarity. This study aimed to rectify this through an analysis of data collected using a qualitative longitudinal research methodology on the transitions through homelessness made by twenty-eight people in a Scottish city. Three key factors were found to influence the transitions the participants made – the access to different forms of capital (the resources) they had; their social networks and relationships; and experiences of ‘edgework’ (experiences of traumatic risk situations, such as domestic violence; or of voluntary risk taking such as drug use; that encapsulate the need to negotiate risk on both emotional and physical levels). These factors may affect anyone’s lives, but only when their resources are depleted to the point they have to rely on the state in this way do they become ‘homeless’ and enter the material and emotional ‘reality ‘ of homelessness. This is the new theory on homelessness, causation and individual actions, developed here – the ‘stressed’ theory. By the end of the research the majority of the participants (nineteen) were living in their own tenancies. It may have appeared that those who had their own tenancy had made integrative transitional passages out of homelessness, however the majority of the participants were actually found to be ‘flip-flopping’ on the edge of society, whether still homeless or not. When the fundamental structural reality they operated in had not changed, their risk of homelessness and the motivation for actions that appeared to have led to their homelessness, remained. Actions they engaged in to assert their agency were also actions that were motivated by, and then recreated, the structural reality they operated within – a reality of marginality and a poverty of resources. This was also what provided the rationale for actions that may appear irrational, such as drug use, in the face of making a transition out of homelessness. A key aspect of these transitions however was that desp

This thesis presents findings from a longitudinal study of young people living in poverty providing a unique insight into their lives. The research set out to explore three themes, namely how young people end contact successfully (or not) from support, their experiences of the ‘transition to adulthood’ and also what triggered, helped and hindered those who were trying to desist from offending. It was revealed that a small number never left Includem’s Transitional Support, a unique service set up in Scotland providing emotional and practical help for vulnerable young people in this age group. For those who did leave, many had limited to no other support in their lives and were reluctant to ask for help again even when they were in real need. They were all acutely aware of their precarious situation. ‘Adulthood’ denoted certainty for them and was not viewed as a feasible destination. Members of the group dealt with this differently. Almost all retained hope of achieving their goals and in doing so suffered a form of ‘cruel optimism’, conversely, a smaller number scaled back on their aspirations, sometimes even to the extent of focusing on their immediate day to day survival. Over the course of the study most participants became more hopeless, isolated and withdrawn. Although they still wanted to achieve their original ambitions of having a job, own place and being settled this appeared less likely over time. A key finding from this study is that those who managed least had accepted the idea that independence was about ‘going it alone’ and proving oneself by oneself, but on the other hand, those who coped better viewed independence as being interdependence and welcomed help from others. It emerged that those who had offended had done so to achieve a sense of belonging, rejected by home and education. By desisting they moved from having some element of status and respect to then living a legitimate but often impoverished existence overshadowed by their past. This study opens up a series of questions about the pains of desistance and the pains of poverty. It is suggested that considering desistance and adulthood in terms of citizenship would emphasise the individual’s and societies interdependence so that rights, responsibilities and potential are recognised. At present, I argue that there is a mutual dismissal. Society dismisses impoverished youth and they in turn do not see that society holds anything for them. I call for renewed hope so that inaction and continued poverty and inequality are not rendered inevitable, and for criminologists to also embrace the idea of interdependence so that this issue is dealt with beyond the parameters of this field.