Here are some of the ways the Poor Law legacy influences the way we think:
- The Poor Laws established the notion that there are categories of deserving and undeserving people. They not only argued that it was possible, but that it was necessary to separate people into one of these two categories. This taught us that it's necessary to judge the poor.
- The Poor Laws taught us that there are things that the poor have to do to prove that they are deserving. You're only deserving if you're really desperate and unable to work for what is deemed to be legitimate reasons.
- White British middle-class identity is very much tied up into the ideas we have about deservedness. Whiteness is understood as more deserving than any other racial identity. Middle-class British values are understood as more deserving that any other values. This influences which perspectives and issues are recognized as legitimate.
- Principles like less-eligibility and means-testing, which are still alive and well in many of our social policies, influence us to think that we should always be connected to the labour market. We are told over and over again that working the shittiest job is preferable to receiving income supports. These ideas create a stigma against people who aren't working. Basically, if you're not working, you're not considered deserving.
- Structural causes of poverty aren't addressed. It wasn't really until the Great Depression and the widespread unemployment that came with it that lots of people realized that there were other things besides people's choices and morality that caused poverty.
Even today, we're so preoccupied with scrutinizing the poor that we don't recognise structural causes. Just like in 1834, poverty is still very much thought of as something the poor are responsible for.
- The wants and needs of employers and elites are valued over the wants and needs of the people experiencing poverty. The idea of less-eligibility came from what elites wanted, not from the wants of people who actually experience poverty. This tells us that it's the elites who deserve to be heard.
- These ideas justify the scrutiny and surveillance of the poor. In order to receive welfare, your means have to be tested and your assets scrutinized. Moreover, you're scrutinized over and over again to make sure you continually meet requirements. Gatekeepers to supports, like social workers, have the ability to go through very personal information, like bank account information. This is very invasive and wouldn't be tolerated for any other population but the poor. Our system assumes all people in poverty are undeserving until proven otherwise. If you're in poverty, you're thought of as guilty until proven innocent.
These centuries-old ideas inherited from the Poor Laws not only influence social workers and politicians, but they teach all of us to judge people in poverty.
These ideas shape how we think about deservedness and "welfare fraud". They teach us that it's okay to judge the poor and they inform how we judge the poor. We think that only people who are suffering with very little to their name are deserving of social supports. We activity look for cheats, for fraud, and for any and all assets someone might have that could make undeserving. We means-test each other. We are part of the process of judgement and surveillance.
In a previous post, I challenged someone who argued that people on welfare shouldn't be allowed to own an iPhone or an iPod. The assumption made was that if someone is poor, they shouldn't be allowed to have anything of monetary value because that makes them a "cheat". This is means-testing. This is an example of judging a stranger because we think that because they own something of value, they must not be legitimately poor. This is us judging someone as undeserving because we've been taught to think that poor people don't deserve to have anything but the bare essentials.
These kinds of arguments are directly informed by the Poor Law legacy. When we judge the poor like this, we're regurgitating centuries-old ideology that's premised on giving people in poverty as little as possible and forcing them into the workforce.
The Poor Law legacy remains with us. It informs how we're able to think about caring for people in poverty and about who we think is deserving of that care.
I think it's important to know about the legacy of the Poor Laws. It reminds us that the ideas we have about poverty are not innate. The Poor Laws emerge out of a certain context. We treat many of these ideas like they're a given, but they're not. We haven't always thought about poverty this way and not everyone thinks about poverty this way. This gives me hope that we don't always have to think about poverty this way -- that we can unlearn this legacy and create a world where we don't judge people experiencing poverty -- a world where we assume everyone is deserving.
Sources: "Changing Politics of Canadian Social Policy" by James J. Rice and Michael J. Prince, "Surveillance and government of the the welfare recipient" by Ken Moffat, "Working their way out of poverty? Gendered employment in three welfare states" by M. Baker, "If you're in my way, I'm walking: the assault on working people since 1970" by Tom Workman, "An outrage to common decency: Historical perspectives on child neglect" by K. Swift, the SWP302 lecture at Ryerson University on September, 17th, 2012, & the Social Assistance Statistical Report: 2008.
