The presence of asylum seekers within the UK and their claims to social welfare and employment rights presents one of the greatest challenges to sovereignty and the traditional constructs of Marshallian citizenship. Yet in an increasingly cosmopolitan world the UK’s obligations stretch beyond responsibility for its own citizens, as evidenced by the case of asylum seekers whom upon the declaration of seeking refuge must be admitted to the State and provided with subsistence to avoid destitution. Accordingly, the UK is bound by a number of international instruments that provide rights outside the legal constructs of UK citizenship which results in conflict between the traditional boundaries of social inclusion centred on citizenship, and those based on universal human rights. Drawing upon a number of primary and secondary sources, including international human rights law and cosmopolitan theory, this thesis analyses the welfare and employment arrangements for asylum seekers in the UK using NGO data to ascertain the impact of policies in practise. It argues that the withdrawal of social rights from the asylum seeking community over the last two decades has resulted in a significant imbalance between the rights and interests of the State and those of asylum seekers. In light of these conclusions, the thesis recommends that the Government adopt a cosmopolitan approach to welfare provision which prioritises human need over immigration status and suggests a number of reforms which will better respect the asylum seeking community. In doing so, it is hoped that the study will contribute to the development of an ethical asylum support system which reflects the humanity of its subjects. Within the current political climate such an exploration is considered crucial as the specific policies of the asylum support system and their impact upon human rights remain relatively unexplored within academic literature.

The Coalition government’s (2010-2015) programme of public sector reform and austerity resulted in fundamental changes to the orientation of community development in England. This thesis investigates what happened to community development in England during this five-year period and its implications for professionals, volunteers and local people involved in community development processes. A post-structuralist discourse analysis methodology was operationalised and the empirical work consisted of 20 interviews with key social actors involved in community development processes in a case study local authority in the north east of England. Using post-structuralist discourse analysis, the transcripts were analysed alongside 54 key texts including: discourse by political and policy leaders, national and local policies, and academic debate. This thesis makes an original contribution to knowledge by demonstrating how the Coalition programme silenced community development as a distinct and legitimate practice, and re-shaped it as social enterprise, volunteering and community organising. The empirical findings establish four available discourses of community development. Yet, the hegemonic Enterprise discourse totalised the policy landscape and ‘othered’ community development as a bureaucratic, top-down, inefficient and ineffective relic of the previous New Labour government. In conjunction with the public sector cuts, this resulted in the decline of the community development worker subject position in England; with community development professionals increasingly nudged to adopt the subject positons of social entrepreneurs, professional volunteers and, to a lesser extent, community organisers. Local people were similarly nudged to volunteer in community development, social enterprise and community organising processes; and more skilled volunteers encouraged to take on professional responsibilities unsalaried. These findings suggest that the silencing and re-shaping of community development as social enterprise, volunteering and community organising is a ‘new’ permutation of neoliberal hegemony to roll-out citizen responsibilisation where local people provide community services rather than ‘relying’ on state intervention and resources. This thesis concludes that the Coalition programme exploited the ambiguity of community development and, in doing so, exposed four historical problems in the community development field. To protect community development from future attacks, this thesis proposes a genealogical post-doctoral study to unearth these problematic roots to then cultivate a community development free of such underpinnings.

Philosophiae Doctor - PhD / The broader conception of poverty as ‘quality of social reproduction’ demonstrates the delicate nature of the interaction between the institutions of the family/household, the economy and the state. These institutions interact in the dispensation of individual, productive and collective consumptions important for social well-being and social reproduction in society. The gap in the configuration of these consumptions relationship opens the space for the institution of micro-credits to thrive in South Africa to the detriment of adequate ‘quality of social reproduction’ especially for people living in ‘poverty range’ or ‘precarious prosperity’. The lack of comprehensive social policy regime provides the recipe for the consumption of micro-credit at the desperate, need and choice dimensions, in order to close the gap between income and consumption needs to facilitate social reproduction of concerned family/households. Micro-credit consumption is viewed as an individual response, in the absence of collective consumption in the form of social policy, to smoothen individual consumption, and to cater for the strain or challenges of social reproduction. The implications of this, for concerned family/households, are imperative to how poverty is perceived, hence, the question ‘the lords of poverty’? In addition to the income and expenditure conception of poverty, the understanding of poverty dynamics will be enriched by engaging with the method through which the poor and ‘precarious prosperous’ (people living within ‘poverty range’) respond to the gap between their income and expenditure to finance shortfalls in their consumption needs. The relief sought from micro-credit (the focus of this study) to finance the gap in consumption needs can alleviate poverty, and at the same time perpetuates it through chronic indebtedness. The patronage of micro-credit in the form of cash loan, retail goods credit and informal micro-credit in the way people living within the ‘poverty range’ live their lives, as well as the activities of micro-credit institutions are highlighted in this study. Consumer credit consumption has become such a permanent feature of the social reproduction efforts of individual households in South Africa that it is crucial to understand the broader institutional interaction that may account for this. Further, it is important to understand how the patronage of consumer credit impact on the need that prompted it in the first place and other implications that may speak to the quality of social reproduction of households. These are the core problematics that are engaged in this study. The relationship between poverty (as well-being) and the consumption of micro-credit is considered within the broader framework of political economy. The effects of predatory institutions, such as microcredit, could be significant for the quality of social reproduction of households.

This thesis develops an alternative critique of social urban regeneration practice by using a political-governance approach to examine the impact of regeneration governance upon barriers and opportunities for social sustainability. The research responds to a call from scholars to refocus sustainability research on the institutional, political and governance space that fosters or marginalises its presence and form. This ethnographic case study involved a year-long cycle of participant observation within the extensive Hastings regeneration governance infrastructure, and interviews with key stakeholders in that regeneration community. An analysis using NVivo was undertaken of thirty-one interviews, fifty regeneration governance meetings and the documents from each meeting. From that data emerged a strong argument for the centrality of the specificity of place in the construction or obstruction of social sustainability. Of particular importance is the impact of the socio-political context and the institutional and cultural legacy of New Labour partnership-led regeneration. The alternative critique identified in the Hastings example, in part emerges from the agency of a large-scale, political, and active Voluntary Community Sector (VCS) that is integral to, and embedded into the local governance infrastructure. The alternative model of activism employed by the VCS core utilises governance norms and practices to navigate the complex regeneration policy and governance landscape to contribute to, and disturb dominant agendas. In this regeneration landscape a distinctive local socio-political context, an alternative model of activism, and a valued good governance partnership culture enable what other commentators have termed 'actually existing' social sustainability (AESS). The research findings advance an understanding of principal critiques of the New Labour regeneration project, including the notions of 'post-political regeneration tactics' and democratic deficit, through a critical analysis of their presence in terms of their obstruction of AESS. The alternative critique that emerges from this research explores a possible shift in the locus and production of power, and the redistribution of roles in UK regeneration practice that enables a stronger VCS position.

This dissertation is unique in looking at Sudanese NGOs and not at the INGOs in Sudan. Most of the literature concentrates on the role of INGOs in Sudan and neglect the contribution of Sudanese NGOs. The research offers a corrective to these stereotype created by the literature on Sudanese NGOs. This study focuses on important aspects of the voluntary sector in the Sudan. It describes informal traditional practices and indigenous associations, like communal labor, rotating savings and credit associations, and migrant associations. Although these social forms have been given some attention in the third world studies literature, the subject has never been dealt with systematically in the field of Sudanese studies. The study reveals the strengths and weaknesses of Sudanese NGOs. It doesn't, however exaggerate the role of Sudanese NGOs, given the local context. On the other hand we can not underestimate their contribution to poverty reduction efforts and peace process and in realization of rights in the last two decades. The study focuses on the present political situation in the Sudan, including the regime's institutions and its social organizations on the one hand and the position of social and political oppositions on the other. It shows how Islamic movement uses religion and power to sustain and protect a system which has lost its credibility and legitimacy among many Sudanese citizens. It focuses on the rise of the National Islamic Front (NIF), its growth and development from a small political party to the third political power, based on the election of 1986, and to a party of full ruling power as a result of the NIF military coup of 1989. It also discusses and analyzes the nature of the government organizations and the causes leading to the failure of the Islamic project in the country. The rise of Islamic movement in Sudan can be viewed as part of the decline of local initiatives as the center of the social capital. The rapid changing situation in Sudan since 1989 is gathering by new momentum with the government policies of control and restriction, on the one hand, and with the increasing numbers of civil society organizations seeking to legitimize their identity and recognition, on the other hand. The study discusses the NIF-NGO relations and concludes by raising issues of concern and discussing the way out as an alternative approach contributing to development process.

Há um consenso na literatura de que a criança que trabalha tem um rendimento escolar menor, e atingirá um nível de escolaridade final mais baixo do que o alcançado por aquelas que não trabalham. Conseqüentemente, quando adultos, terão salários menores do que os indivíduos que começaram a trabalhar mais tarde, e esse mecanismo é o que também se conhece como ciclo de perpetuação da pobreza. Partindo da hipótese de que as crianças trabalham para complementar a renda da família – ou seja, trabalham porque são pobres – as iniciativas que visam o combate ao trabalho infantil ajudam a diminuir as diferenças entre pobres e não-pobres, uma vez que atua numa de suas causas. Enfim, são ações capazes de quebrar o ciclo que mantém pobres várias gerações de uma mesma família. Os programas Bolsa Escola em geral não exigem formalmente que a criança seja afastada de atividades laborais para que o benefício lhe seja concedido. Porém, como existe a obrigatoriedade da freqüência escolar, que reduz o tempo disponível para outras atividades, e é realizada transferência em dinheiro que substituiria a renda do trabalho da criança, entende-se que a saída do mercado de trabalho é um efeito colateral ou transbordamento (spillover) de um programa cujo objetivo explícito é incentivar a demanda por educação formal e aliviar a pobreza corrente. Avaliou-se o impacto dos programas de bolsa escola sobre o trabalho infantil no Brasil, utilizando os microdados da PNAD 2001, por meio de duas estratégias complementares: i) modelo próbite em que a variável dependente é um se a criança trabalha e zero se não trabalha; e ii) regressão por mínimos quadrados ponderados, para as crianças que trabalham, em que a variável dependente é o número de horas semanais trabalhadas por mês. É possível concluir que o programa é eficiente na redução do número de horas mensais de trabalho das crianças, e que uma bolsa adicional diminui jornada das crianças que trabalham em duas horas na área urbana e três horas na área rural. No entanto, os testes realizados não foram conclusivos em relação à decisão da família de inserir suas crianças no mercado de trabalho. / There is a consensus in the literature that if a child works his/her level of schooling will decrease and consequently he/she will receive lower wages in adult life, forcing their children to work to guarantee family subsistence. Based on the hypothesis that children work to complement family income, the initiatives to eradicate child labor helps to diminish the differences between the poor and non-poor. The minimum income for school attendance programs – like bolsa escola in Brazil - in general do not request formally that the child quits his/her job to receive the benefit. However, since school attendance is mandatory, which reduces the available time for other activities, and there is a cash transfer that substitutes the child’s income from work, the decrease in the labor market participation is a spillover effect of the program, whose objectives are to stimulate the demand for formal education and to alleviate current poverty. As a way to evaluate the impact of the bolsa escola programs on the child labour in Brazil, based on microdata from PNAD 2001, a regression model was estimated by weighted least squares for the weekly hours worked by children and a probit model for the family’s decision of children’s participation in the labor force. It is possible to conclude that the program is really efficient to decrease children’s weekly hours of work, but the test for participation in the labor force was inconclusive. An additional bolsa has diminished in two hours the weekly hours worked by children in rural areas and in three hours in urban areas.

Orientador: Cláudio Salvadori Dedecca / Dissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Instituto de Economia / Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-17T10:57:33Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Carvalho_VictoriaEcheverriade_M.pdf: 1938659 bytes, checksum: 6cbc010c440b606c5ae7f786f8f6df8b (MD5) Previous issue date: 2010 / Resumo: Este trabalho situa-se no âmbito da discussão sobre a conceituação e definição dos termos Política Social e Welfare State assim como as tipologias deste último enfatizando as origens e o desenvolvimento dos regimes de proteção social em países previamente selecionados. Nele são apresentadas diversas análises sobre os principais fatores que determinaram as origens e o desenvolvimento do Welfare State, com base em diversos autores como Wilensky, Offe, O'Connor, Esping-Andersen, Orloff, Skocpol, dentre outros. Também são apresentadas as tipologias de Titmuss, Esping-Andersen, Ferrera e Moreno. A exposição desses estudos culminou na formulação de um quadro útil da configuração dos regimes de proteção social nos países de economias capitalistas avançadas e no Brasil. Pretende com isto contribuir para a reflexão teórica sobre papel das políticas sociais na sociedade atual / Abstract: This work lies within the discussion about the concept and definition of Social Policy and Welfare State and also about the Welfare State's typologies emphasizing the origins and development of social protection schemes in countries previously selected. Several analyses of the main factors that determined the origins and development of the Welfare State are presented based on several authors as Wilensky, Offe, O'Connor, Esping-Andersen, Orloff, Skocpol, among others. The Welfare State's typologies developed by Titmuss, Esping-Andersen, Ferrera and Moreno are also presented. The exhibition of these studies culminated in the formulation of a useful and configured framework of social protection schemes in the advanced capitalist economies and in Brazil. The intention is to contribute to the theoretical reflection about the role of social policies in today's society / Mestrado / Economia Social e do Trabalho / Mestre em Desenvolvimento Econômico

The inclusion of the right of access to social security in the Constitution did not meet with wholehearted approval in South Africa. This right, however, is of vital importance for the future upliftment of the country. The present social security system is based upon a clear distinction between social assistance and social insurance. There is a gap in current social security provisions in that the unemployed middle aged individual is not covered. Unemployment itself is one of the greatest challenges obscuring the implementation of a comprehensive social security system. The Constitutional right is to have ‘access’ to social security and the amount of resources at the state’s disposal is directly related to increasing this right, although it is true that a number of available resources are misspent. The state must take reasonable legislative and other measures, within its available resources, to achieve the progressive realisation of the right of access to social security. The principles of solidarity and ubuntu must be cultivated so that national social development becomes a concern for all citizens. There are numerous problems facing South Africans in attaining the goal of access to social security – even if national social development does become a priority. Budgetary constraints, poverty, unemployment, HIV/Aids and foreigners are examples of these. By making social security a priority for everyone, existing ideas (almost all of which have merit) may be converted into long-term solutions for poverty and unemployment. Currently, numerous opportunities to salvage the situation are being overlooked as a result of the lack of a comprehensive and structured plan to better the access to social security. The constitutional right of access to social security is enforceable, although the jurisprudence in this field remains underdeveloped. Conditions are currently favourable, within the country and beyond its borders, for an imaginative and concerted attempt to be made to find potential solutions. It is possible for resources to be increased and for tax benefits to be incorporated for businesses which have the capacity to contribute. The issue of defence spending is controversial, but could hold the key to lowering unemployment. Should jobs be created, it is likely that they will initially be of a temporary nature. Consequently, provisions are needed to ensure some guarantee of income in the lacuna between when a job is lost and another found. Ultimately, one thing is certain: the constitutional right of access to social security will only be complete once the people who are recipients of this right make sacrifices and create corresponding duties for themselves to ensure that the next generation of inhabitants of this country are not facing similar problems. The state’s goal should be to ensure that the basic rights which all people enjoy in terms of the Constitution (in particular the other socio-economic rights) are guaranteed for the duration of their existence, even if the level of benefits received by such people is low.

In Scotland, as in many other welfare states, the organisation of care homes for older people takes place in a highly contested space where debates about demographics, limited financing and changing expectations of the state compete with questions about choice, rights, equality and models of care. These services intersect the formal boundaries of the public and private sectors as well as the lines between public and private life. The production of care home services crosses several policy spheres, including local governments, the devolved Scottish administration and the UK government and includes numerous organisational bodies, such as care home providers, the care regulator and the voluntary sector. At the centre of this intersection lies the work of contracting and the production of a national framework agreement for care home services in Scotland called the National Care Homes Contract (NCHC). This contract is both the bridge between the public and private sector and a formalised link between the individual and the institution. In this thesis, I depict the NCHC document as an artefact which links these spheres and the work of contracting as the practice of maintaining that relationship. I take up the concept of boundary objects and suggest that the NCHC functions as a bridge between multiple fields of practice and is a useful tool for understanding the competing perspectives of people who plan and deliver care home services in Scotland. In this thesis, I reveal the different, and at times competing, perspectives which surround care home services for older people and the stabilising work that is undertaken to manage these differences. This research utilises an interpretive approach to examine the creation and ongoing implementation of the NCHC. Fieldwork for this research was conducted over 12 months and includes interviews with local authority planners and contract managers as well as care home owners and managers from the independent and third sector, each of whom do particular kinds of work to create, implement and use the text. A textual analysis of the framework agreement is also used to support this research. I examine the work of making, re-­‐making and using the NCHC at three levels: national policy actors, local government contract managers, and managers of local care homes. Each group undertakes a kind of policy work: first to create the NCHC, then to implement it in local jurisdictions and finally to use it within local service delivery. Stabilising work takes three primary forms: text work designed to stabilise meaning, relational work designed to translate meaning across boundaries of practice, and ethical work, a value-­‐ based emotional work that underpins the first two kinds of everyday labour. I suggest that this work is first and foremost driven by a need to stabilise the care home sector and that it is deliberative in nature and conflict ridden such that the use of the contract in practice is often resisted. In working to stabilise this system, the values of this work come into conflict – triggering both caring and resistance responses within the sector. In giving an account of stabilisation, I provide a micro-­‐sociology of the meaning making, relationship-­‐building and conflict which underpins policy work. I draw conclusions from this about the discretion of policy actors at all levels of the system, the rational-­‐technical and emotional nature of their work, and the unexpectedly deliberative policy space of contracting in Scotland.

This thesis explores the role and relevance of the concepts of participation and service user involvement for work with sexually exploited children and young people. The central research questions are: how do young people at risk of, or affected by sexual exploitation, experience their rights to involvement in decision-making processes about their care? What is the meaning and value of the concept of participation from service users’ own perspectives? And what are the gains of involving these young people in decision-making processes about their care? The research involved in-depth qualitative interviews with twenty young service users and ten practitioners. Three theoretical frameworks underpin the study; a constructivist approach to childhood; sociological approaches to agency, and discourses of children’s participation rights. The analysis of data was informed by both narrative and grounded theory approaches. The thesis argues that young people’s perspectives on professional welfare, though rarely recorded or allowed to inform policy and best practice, shed new insight onto the efficacy and limitations of existing child protection practice with adolescents at risk of sexual exploitation. Consideration is given to how young people experience and respond to services, including their decisions about disengaging from or circumventing professional support. The thesis concludes that these demonstrations of agency and power, though often interpreted as deviant, are essentially rational and often protective. Through this lens young people’s agency is recognised as a resource rather than a problem. The thesis concludes by arguing that the ability of support services to protect young people affected by sexual exploitation is contingent on the degree to which they involve young people in decision-making about their care. Rather than standing in opposition to paternalistic approaches to protection, the narratives suggest that participation and empowerment are necessary conditions of a protective service, especially for those considered most marginalized or vulnerable.