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An increasing number of Australians are experiencing food insecurity due to rising costs of living and stagnant wage and welfare growth, as a result an increasing number of people are reliant on charity to meet their food needs. This research employs qualitative methods to explore the experiences of people who are reliant on emergency and community food assistance. The two main findings of this study are that people relying on charity often experience humiliation and embarrassment when accessing these services, and that when accessing theses services, they feel both judged and judgemental of others. Findings of this study highlight some of the challenges faced by people experiencing food insecurity and hunger.
Moving disabled people ‘off benefits and into work’ has been an explicit aim of work-first welfare reform since 2008, increasingly punitively since 2010. The aim of this article is to demonstrate, for the first time, how Universal Credit (UC) fits with and intensifies that strategy. Empirical data from 28 in-depth interviews with 19 claimants (nine were interviewed twice) and three focus groups with 23 Jobcentre staff show how UC full service applies mainstream job search conditionality to people with mental health problems. Ongoing fear of sanctions, financial hardship, surveillance and social isolation relating to digital design had adverse impacts, including for those without previous mental health problems.
We investigate relative poverty rates among older adults from a unique dataset using an actuarial method applied to a public reverse mortgage in South Korea, which liquidates home equity and converts the assets to a readily available income. We find that it increases disposable income by approximately 20 per cent on average for older adults, and the improvement is more effective in the low-income quintiles. Due to the increased income, elderly poverty rate reduces significantly by 10 percentage points to about 31 per cent. Therefore, the elderly poverty rate following the OECD standard overestimates the elderly poverty rate and could misguide welfare policies.
This article examines the influence of political ideology on meta-stereotypes and stereotypes of homeless people, on the causal attributions of homelessness, and on willingness to increase public funds allocated to homeless people among the members of three groups in Madrid (Spain): a) homeless group; b) domiciled service-users group; and c) domiciled non service-users group. Results show differences in the influence of political ideology based on having had direct experience of homelessness. Left-wing interviewees showed a greater willingness to increase funds allocated to homeless people, attributed homelessness to societal causes to a greater extent, and showed greater agreement with indulgent stereotypes.
This study examines policy efforts to reduce administrative burden and to increase accessibility to unemployment insurance (UI) during the COVID-19 crisis in Israel and the consequences of these for claimants. A mixed-method approach was applied, utilising administrative documents, interviews and survey data. The findings suggest a mixed trend: burden-reducing measures were introduced but were constrained by the system’s preexisting infrastructure. While some claimants experienced the process as simple, many others experienced it as onerous, primarily due to a lack of communication with authorities. Two key insights for successful implementation of burden-reduction policies are highlighted: a well-established infrastructure and bidirectional communication.
Post-Brexit, UK migration rules treat ‘EU- and non-EU citizens equally’. Thus, a much larger number of working migrants have less access to social rights than before. This article compares how the different welfare entitlements for working migrants and non-migrants affect the incomes of 21 hypothetical households; some workers are single, some have a child. Using micro-simulation, we assess the risk of poverty and the extent of inequality for migrants and non-migrants. We show that the system excludes new migrants from the social contract which defines the rights of UK citizens as working parents, leading to significant poverty risks and inequality.
This book is about the contemporary reparations movement and the case for redress for ongoing anti-Black racism; considered to be systemic in modern society (Feagin and Elias, 2013; Tourse et al, 2018). Despite the undoubted progress made by the civil rights movements in both the US and UK, and the integration of Black citizens within Commonwealth countries, contemporary Black and African-American citizens arguably continue to suffer disadvantage. Evidence consistently suggests that Black citizens are disproportionately represented in the negative aspects of criminal justice; being more likely to be stopped and searched by policing agencies (Bowling and Phillips, 2007; Torres, 2015) to be disproportionately represented in prison populations (Pettit, 2012; Lammy, 2017) and are believed to receive stiffer sentences for offending compared to their White counterparts (Burch, 2015). In addition, Black citizens are more likely to be in the lower socio-economic bracket in society and suffer disadvantage in areas of housing, education, access to certain professions and representation in the higher areas of social life. As Oliver and Shapiro explained when assessing the position in the US, ‘African Americans are vastly overrepresented among those Americans whose lives are the most economically and socially distressed’ (2007: 91). The same is true in the UK, where Black citizens are overrepresented in respect of inner-city, low-income housing, educational attainment, an area where we speak openly of an attainment ‘gap’ (Richardson, 2015) and where Black citizens are rarely represented at the higher levels in criminal justice agencies such as the police, the judiciary and higher political office. In addition, Black citizens regularly raise concerns about disadvantage, unequal or unfair treatment and contend that even when they do play by the rules of society their ability to achieve some types of success may be adversely affected by structural barriers.
The previous chapter identified that reparations have been considered by the US government in cases where the state acknowledged an obligation to pay reparations for harms attributable to government action; namely the harms caused to native Americans and Japanese Americans. In this case, state acceptance of the case for reparations is arguably linked to direct action that harmed citizens and amounted to an infringement of human rights.
This establishes an important consideration in reparations discourse; the notion that where states can tangibly be determined to be culpable for harm to an identifiable group or individuals within a group then reparations may be due at a state level. Such reparations amount to a form of compensation for the harm caused and ‘damages’ owed to the affected group or collection of individuals. This chapter expands on Chapter 4’s discussion of this principle via an in-depth case study of another reparations case; restitution for the Holocaust and the losses suffered by Jewish people during World War II. The nature of these reparations is well documented, and a robust legal and administrative process was created to allow for the making of claims, the administration of payments and review of the operation of the scheme. Records exist concerning the nature of reparations owed and of the affected individuals. Reparations were also given to native Americans where the state has accepted the necessity of providing federal aid and redress as a consequence of state exploitation, and to Japanese Americans for internment following the Pearl Harbor attack.
This chapter further examines the case for reparations through a restorative justice and human rights lens. In doing so, it also applies a critical criminological perspective to examining the nature and type of reparations and the purpose of reparations. This chapter draws on contemporary human rights and international criminal law to critically evaluate conceptions on repairing harm.
The chapter’s discussion identifies and conceptualizes reparations as a human rights issue and draws on selected case law and judicial principles from the ICC, the ECtHR and the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to discuss issues surrounding remedying international crimes such as war crimes, genocide, unlawful discrimination and other human rights abuses including modern slavery, with a focus on how these might be remedied within contemporary justice systems.
While acknowledging that contemporary law cannot be retrospectively applied, this chapter identifies that reparations can take many forms from apology and state recognition of the harms caused by CAH like slavery, through to financial compensation, affirmative action or social rebuilding that contributes to social justice. The chapter also contains analysis using contemporary examples of reparations mechanisms to discuss how international principles could arguably be applied to the issue of ongoing reparations for slavery and its legacy of anti-Black racism.
Reparations arguably have a strong basis in international law since World War II. Governments may agree to reparations through political settlements in order ‘to draw a line under the past and provide new opportunities for victims’ (Moffett and Schwarz, 2018). Reparations, as a legal mechanism for resolving a dispute have the potential to provide for a practical remedy to an identified social or political need while also resolving individual or group rights to a remedy for harm directly caused to them.
