Policies and discourses of poverty during a time of recession and austerity

Abstract

This article introduces this themed issue which challenges government policies and discourses using evidence from the UK 2012 Poverty and Social Exclusion Study. Policies and discourses prioritising the role of individual deficiencies and highlighting the structural problems of the welfare state in poverty causation are nothing new. However, they re-emerged vigorously in the UK following the 2007–8 global financial crisis and ensuing economic recession. The articles forming this themed issue seek to challenge in different ways this prevailing discourse. This introductory article draws upon Bacchi’s ‘what is the problem represented to be’ (‘WPR’) approach to examine the ways in which poverty was problematised by the Conservative–Liberal Democrat Coalition government (2010–15). It argues that this problematisation silenced structural processes associated with the government’s commitment to neo-liberalism, resulting in devastating, socially harmful consequences.

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