Social assistance and the end of poverty

Published date01 March 2024
DOIhttp://doi.org/10.1177/13882627241241469
AuthorStine Jørgensen
Date01 March 2024
Subject MatterArticles
Social assistance and the end
of poverty
Stine Jørgensen
(Faculty of Law), University of Copenhagen, Denmark
Abstract
This article aims to address the stigma and stereotypes inherent in the system of social assistance
by addressing poverty as a matter of discrimination. Through the lens of discrimination, the article
argues that the welfare system reproduces the very structures it aims to abolish in its alleged care
for people living on the margins.
Keywords
Poverty, social assistance, stereotypes and prejudice, discrimination, social exclusion
Entry
Social inequality and poverty are persisting problems even in welfare states. Almost 22% of the
population in the European Union were, according to Eurostat, at risk of poverty in 2022
(Eurostat, 2022). In the EU, eradicating poverty and social exclusion has therefore been a priority
for decades. In 2017, a right to be protected against poverty was proclaimed by EU institutions in
the European Pillar of Social Rights, and from this a series of anti-poverty measures have been
adopted. The Council Recommendation on adequate minimum income and active inclusion (the
Recommendation on minimum income)
1
and the EU directive on adequate minimum wages in
the European Union
2
are the most prominent of these. These anti-poverty measures address
Member Statessocial protection and labour market systems to ensure a minimum income for
everyone, in combination with initiatives that support (re)integration into the labour market.
Corresponding author:
Stine Jørgensen, Social Law, Equality and Discrimination Law, Faculty of Law, University of Copenhagen, Karen Blixen
Plads 16, København S, 2300, Denmark.
Email: stine.joergensen@jur.ku.dk
1. Council Recommendation of 30 January 2023 on adequate minimum income ensuring active inclusion,
2. Directive 2022/2041 on adequate minimum wages in the European Union, OJ L 275, 25.10.2022, p. 3347.
Article
European Journal of Social Security
2024, Vol. 26(1) 2743
© The Author(s) 2024
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/13882627241241469
journals.sagepub.com/home/ejs
In particular, relieving the poor through social assistance benef‌its, including active labour market
policies, takes centre stage in the f‌ight against poverty. This is, however, not due to the ability
of social assistance to effectively lift people out of poverty, as social assistance systems have
thus far demonstrated limited success in achieving lasting solutions for poverty alleviation.
In my view, the approach taken in the EU context to addressing poverty has thus far proven inad-
equate. This raises more fundamental questions regarding the legislative strategy to combat
poverty. The current approach is based on the premise that poverty stems primarily from a lack
of economic resources. Consequently, the strategies employed are limited to modernizing existing
legal frameworks aimed at assisting individuals in poverty by guaranteeing a right to minimum
income, along with measures to integrate them into the labour market. While it is of course import-
ant for individuals to have a right to a minimum income to live on, this approach simplif‌ies what
poverty is. It thus runs the risk of overlooking the stigma and the prejudice that come with living in
poverty, and how this stigma is also ref‌lected in the social assistance systems and the legal inter-
pretation of rights to social assistance. This places the focus of poverty-alleviation efforts on the
shoulders of the individual, leaving the responsibility of the social structures undisturbed.
In this article, I will advocate the inclusion of discrimination and prejudice as contemporary
dimensions of poverty. This will add to the understanding and handling of poverty. Poverty,
from this perspective, is more than just a lack of suff‌icient resources. It is a result of complex inter-
actions between individuals, institutions, and broader social and legal structures. In these interac-
tions, the law plays a signif‌icant role in maintaining and validating existing institutional
arrangements that privilege some and disadvantage others. Efforts to combat poverty are therefore
also about the fundamental perceptions and stereotypes underlying institutional arrangements, such
as the system of social assistance. This approach moves beyond a mere economic understanding of
poverty. It accepts that the unequal relations between groups in society form part of the understand-
ing of poverty, and addresses these power relations to acknowledge the identity and moral habitus
of those groups that are assigned an inferior position in society. These prejudices not only place
vulnerable people in a subordinate position in society; they also help to keep others in a privileged
position by maintaining the social order.
This article does not claim to be exhaustive in the sense of offering a solution to the problem of
poverty. Rather, the aim is to add nuances and perspectives to the existing body of legal scholarship
on poverty and social exclusion, particularly as this scholarship has unfolded in the context of EU
social law. I f‌irst provide a contextualizing of poverty within legal scholarship, considering both
social law and discrimination law. In the section on social assistance, I offer a discrimination per-
spective on the mechanisms of poverty in social assistance, exemplif‌ied by the recently adopted
Recommendation on minimum income. Specif‌ically, I concentrate on the stereotypes ingrained
in this system, which impact both the understanding of poverty and the complexities associated
with addressing it effectively. The analysis of social assistance illustrates specif‌ic and actual man-
ifestations of poverty and social exclusion in a welfare context and at the same time provides an
insight into the discriminatory dimensions of poverty.
Law, poverty, and social exclusion state of play
There is no single, universally accepted def‌inition of poverty, and the concept is interpreted differ-
ently across various traditions. However, poverty is most commonly interpreted as an economic
category and is quantif‌ied using either absolute or relative terms. In the EU context, poverty is
often situated within the discourse of politics and economics (Bergman, 1995; Schulte, 2002).
28 European Journal of Social Security 26(1)

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