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Outside the city walls: the construction of poverty in Alberta's Income and Employment Supports Act

Considerable research has been done on conceptions of poverty and on the welfare state; however, there is little research into the relationship between the two the ways in which poverty discourses shape welfare states and how transitions in welfare states influence poverty discourses. Using Critical Discourse Analysis, I explore the underlying construction of poverty in Albertas income-support policy as it has developed within an active social policy framework. In the government documents analyzed, poverty is constructed as an objective and neutral assessment of unmet basic needs and is effectively removed from political debate. Also constructed as a lack of labour-market attachment, the poverty discourse that does exist is subsumed within the market discourse. The thesis argues that we need to expand our conceptions of poverty to improve our poverty alleviation strategies, to revitalize the place of social policy in Alberta, and to enrich the way in which we live together. / Family Ecology and Practice

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:AEU.10048/1557
Date11 1900
CreatorsGoa, Birte Hannah Katherine Ruth
ContributorsBreitkreuz, Rhonda (Human Ecology), Givens, Lisa (Library and Information Studies), Oak, Arlene (Human Ecology)
Source SetsLibrary and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeThesis
Format507667 bytes, application/pdf

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