We have a long history of publishing in the area of social justice and are committed to progressive social change. Since our inception 25 years ago, we have built a reputation for publishing scholarship that focuses on improving individual lives and that reaches beyond academia to government, professionals and the wider public to inform policy and practice.
Key to our publishing in this area is the Journal of Poverty and Social Justice, an internationally unique forum for leading research on the themes of poverty and social justice, the SSSP Agendas for Social Justice series, and the Key Issues in Social Justice series.
Social Justice and Human Rights
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How is life in social isolation seen from the viewpoint of people who experience persistent poverty? Given the systemic denial of self-representational agency from those living in poverty and the neoliberalisation of the welfare state, this article turns to those who remained invisible to either the media or the state during the pandemic. In line with current tendencies to prioritise the voice and lived knowledge of people in poverty, we provided our interlocutors with a specifically designed diary tool to allow them to share their mundane experiences and thoughts at their own discretion. Using these diaries of women and men in poverty, and complementary interviews, this article unpacks the ways our participants deal with and understand their everyday relationships with the absent state, mostly welfare and education. Based on the themes that emerged from our interlocutors’ journals, our findings reveal the Janus-faced abandoning/monitoring state that they routinely confront. We then demonstrate how they are constantly chasing the state, struggling to receive the support they lawfully deserve. At the same time, being subjected to practices of state monitoring and surveillance often results not only in mistrust but also in withdrawing almost altogether from the welfare services and social workers, and turning to alternative support networks. We conclude by offering two insights that accentuate, on the one hand, what we and our diarists already know, namely that they count for nothing. Still, on the other hand, the act of self-documentation itself reveals the representational agency of those brave diarists who refuse to forsake their worthiness as citizens.
Based on an employer-focused political economy framework, this qualitative study investigates how employers are represented in and affected by the policymaking of in-work benefits (IWBs), given employers’ political status and labour market conditions. Respondents addressed the importance of employers’ tacit support of the wage subsidies funded by the government. Arguably, it was considered that IWBs did not have a direct impact on wages, but they subsidised employers as a constraint against the minimum wage, boosted the workforce’s availability, and reduced recruitment costs for employers. This research substantiates the understanding of IWBs by integrating the perspectives of policy stakeholders and expands IWBs’ case studies in an authoritarian context.
Internationally, many care-recipients and unpaid carers are not receiving the services they need to live full and independent lives, representing substantial social injustice. We explored unmet need and inequalities in receipt of long-term care services in England. Methods comprised in-depth interviews and secondary analysis of UK Household Longitudinal Study dyad data from 2017/2019. We found widespread unmet need for services overall and inequalities by sex, ethnicity, income, and area deprivation. Aspects of long-term care policy, service delivery, people’s material resources, and constrained and unconstrained choice all played a role.
Support for the unemployed in the UK has become increasingly conditional. This included enforced unpaid work, Mandatory Work Activity (MWA). This was sold as an innovative feature of ‘twenty-first century welfare’ by the 2010–15 government; however, it actually represented the restoration of older techniques of government. This article, compares MWA with enforced work regimes from the last days of the Poor Law in the 1930s. It highlights similarities between both regimes but also significant differences: in the 1930s different claimant groups were subject to different coercions, whereas in the MWA regime, claimants were treated as a homogenous category in need of discipline.
This article examines how recent welfare reform in the UK has caused systemic violence to people with severe disabilities who are reliant on state benefits. It evaluates the underpinning discourse framings and changes in welfare policies, using concepts of debility and recognition to reveal the inherent contradictions in policies targeting people on the ‘wrong side of inequality’. To help contribute to a recognition of the impact of these changes, the article gives voice to six people with severe disabilities who, through their benefit stories, expose the impact of this violence. Despite these injustices, their stories reveal lives lived with great courage and resilience, and worthy of much greater recognition.
Chapter Three outlines a wide range of social and structural barriers that may discourage legal claims and explores the available data on the effectiveness of equality legislation in practice. Even where national measures are adopted, it is unclear how effective they are in practice, as states have generally failed to gather information on the operation of disability harassment law. The chapter begins with an overview of the barriers to making equality and disability harassment complaints, followed by a discussion of the success rates for equality claims, including harassment claims. The chapter argues that even where legislation is adopted to address disability harassment, a wide range of social and structural barriers may discourage legal complaints. Furthermore, even where disability harassment claims are brought, the available evidence suggests that the rate of success is not high. Relatively little work has been done to establish the reasons for this, though general research on equality claims may be indicative. The chapter therefore highlights the importance of continued monitoring and research, as well as the need for disaggregated disability equality data.
Disabled people report high levels of harassment worldwide, often based on intersectional characteristics such as race, gender and age. However, while #MeToo and #BlackLivesMatter have highlighted ongoing experiences of sexual and racial harassment, disability harassment has received little attention.
This book focuses on legal measures to combat disability harassment at work. It sets disability harassment in its international context, including its human rights framework, and confronts the lack of empirical information by evaluating the Irish legal framework in practice.
It explores the capacity of the law to address intersectional harassment, particularly that faced by disabled women, and outlines the barriers to effective legal solutions.
This chapter highlights the difficulty in achieving effective vindication of human rights at the national level. It argues that while human rights frameworks may offer detailed guidance for combatting disability harassment at work, these are not always effective when implemented in national legislation. Differences between human rights frameworks may potentially lead to gaps in implementation, but without adequate monitoring and data, it is difficult to know what is happening on the ground. This chapter therefore argues not only for revised national frameworks that are in compliance with human rights requirements, but also for continued monitoring and increased transparency to enable barriers to be identified and addressed, as well as for positive employer duties to combat disability harassment at source.
This chapter outlines the social and legal context for disability harassment in Ireland. It highlights similarities between disability harassment rates in Ireland and internationally, and outlines the key legal provisions on disability harassment at work contained in the Employment Equality Acts 1998–2021. The chapter argues that, while Irish law complies with European Union requirements under the Framework Employment Directive, it fails to satisfy the requirements of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities in relation to intersectional discrimination.
This chapter outlines the human rights framework for addressing disability harassment. It focuses particularly on three of the most significant instruments for addressing disability harassment at work in the European and global contexts. These are the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, the Framework Employment Directive in the European Union and the International Labour Organisation Violence and Harassment Convention 2019. The chapter demonstrates the importance increasingly accorded in human rights to intersectional analysis, particularly in relation to gender, though also encompassing other intersecting characteristics, such as race and disability. It also highlights some important gaps in protection against harassment for persons with disabilities. Finally, the chapter explores the potential of the International Labour Organisation convention to advance protection from work-related disability harassment.
