The political and social construction of poverty : Central and Eastern European countries in transition / Serena Romano.

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This study sheds new light on the issue of why poverty is never a 'neutral' phenomenon, but rather is always the result of more or less explicit social and political constructions. It illustrates how poverty and anti-poverty policies have been conceived, designed and implemented in Central Eastern Europe over the last century. The way in which social inclusion policies are conceived and constructed not only affects the final shape of poverty but also helps to define the very nature of each welfare system.

THE POLITICAL AND SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF POVERTY; Contents; List of figures; Acknowledgements; Preface; Outline of the book; Part One: The construction of poverty before 1989; 1. Social policy in Central Eastern Europe; Social policy, communism and post-communism; A post-communist welfare regime?; Central Eastern European welfare states between reconstruction and adaptation; The social and political construction of poverty as a theoretical problem; The construction of boundaries; The deserving poor; 2. The lifespan of a model: the construction of poverty before 1989

The pillars of the soviet welfare state'More than a state secret': the concept of poverty under communism; Normative perspectives on poverty and unemployment; The construction of poverty in communist countries before 1989; The poor under communism; 3. Poverty in transition; The socialist welfare state without socialism; The taboo revealed: old and new dimensions of poverty; A new construction of poverty?; Social inclusion and social compensation; Part Two: Poverty and welfare reforms after the transition; 4. East meets West: CEE countries, monetary institutions and the European Social Model

From the soviet bloc to the European UnionInternal dynamics of change; Central Eastern social standards vs the European social model; Between growth and cohesion? The impact of international actors; 5. The new poor in the new Europe: the end of a stigma?; Poor relief reconfigured: from the social safety net to minimum income schemes; Hungary; Poland; The Czech Republic; Slovakia; Estonia; Slovenia; The social construction of EU differences: a problem of measurement?; New strategies, new functions: the new anti-poverty platform; 6. The construction of poverty in times of austerity

Social policy and the economic crisis: a new wave of welfare retrenchment?The global crisis and its impact on poverty profiles in CEE countries; Measuring the effect of the crisis; The crisis in CEE countries: political responses; Poverty and the crisis between retrenchment and expansion trajectories; Conclusions; From communist rule to the global financial crisis; Functional adaptation: regulating what?; Ideas, discourses and the normative framework: the deserving poor yesterday and today; Institutional reconfiguration: the discretionary construction of poverty?

Redistributive dynamics: who gets what?Deserving and undeserving groups in Central Eastern Europe today: the new poor; Roma families and poverty: invisible boundaries, invisible statistics and the silent variable; Past and new representations of poverty; References; Index

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