There is a tendency to grant the “moral right” of recourse to state aid to people considered, in the collective imagination, as vulnerable. The “good poor” are often perceived as not responsible for their situation and therefore deserving of public assistance. Other people, especially those who are not recognized as unfit for work, are perceived as the main culprits for their economic situation; the aid granted to them sometimes arouses anger in their regard, mistrust as to their goodwill.
However, the paths leading to social assistance are paved with a multitude of situations that cannot be reduced to the fact of being idle or not. How to explain such a clear distinction in the representation of merit in receiving public assistance?
Already in medieval times, helping the poor was greatly encouraged by the Church. The decrease in available resources added to the increase in the number of individuals in a situation of poverty, in particular due to the relentlessness of the plague, forces a moral distinction between the individuals who require help.
In the 19the century, this distinction resurfaced during an exodus from the countryside to the cities due to industrialization. It is then judged that certain peasants who have spent their life in the countryside are “unsuited” since they are not able to acclimatize to factory work. This representation is still present today; the social assistance systems of Quebec as well as in several industrialized countries are greatly colored by it.
Regardless of the moral judgment that one may pass on last resort assistance and its beneficiaries, it is of interest to ask who benefits from these widely shared representations of poverty. Recently, the Collective for a Poverty-Free Quebec deplored the lack of effective solutions proposed by various political parties. Indeed, it is clear that the revision of the social safety net, particularly topical with inflation, is not part of the issues of the current campaign, although several players in the field have been sounding the alarm for quite some time.
revolving door
Quebec’s social assistance system was once established as public assistance of last resort, a moment of temporary respite granted by the state that allows people to regain balance in their life situation. The loss of a spouse, a separation, the threat of exhaustion or even the need to improvise a caregiver are all situations likely to cause a person to “fall” on last resort help.
However, it now looks more and more seriously like an accelerator towards the cheap labor. As soon as you set foot in the gears, you must actively participate in a job search, whatever it is, unless you have obtained a medical certificate proving your difficulty. It is still necessary to have access to a family doctor or a specialist to be available immediately to assess us. The State thus hopes to develop the employability of the beneficiaries; for him, this is the main problem.
That said, the effect observed is rather that of a “revolving door”, an interminable back and forth between jobs with unenviable conditions and justifications at the welfare office. However, several groups of experts have considered the question and have often underlined the inability of the state to provide a viable solution to individuals whom it considers to be “special cases”, such as those listed above.
Would these representations of “merit” in relation to public aid encourage the status quo of a state with populist tendencies? By maintaining a system that maintains individuals in such a way as dependent on the State and, it must be said, in a situation of poverty, successive governments avoid a reorganization requiring large public funds on a temporary basis. , while depriving themselves of individuals with varied skills.
The attention thus diverted towards the beneficiaries, like the judgment of which they are the object, allows the State to maintain in place a cumbersome and inefficient system having repercussions both on health and on the availability of labor. work. Thus, he digs the gap of inequalities, does not compel himself to face to the criticisms of the electorate that rain down during the reforms and fails to tackle a complex societal problem for which he is partly responsible. At best, it creates programs that fall into bureaucratic limbo that even its own agents are often unaware of (see the article on the Supplement to the work premium by Daigneault and Macé, 2020).
Jobs at all costs
In 2018, the Collective for a Poverty-Free Quebec asked the various political organizations to present their action plan to fight poverty. Among the parties that responded to the call, the CAQ was the only one to say that it saw last-resort assistance as a time to “begin the process of integrating the labor market”.
Conveying such a conception of the social safety net clearly demonstrates the way in which the party conceives of poverty: a situation for which the individual is himself responsible and from which the only possible way out is employment. At a time when poor households are now mostly made up of working people, what should we think of a government that has such a representation of poverty?
In 2023, the third government action plan to combat poverty will expire. An electoral issue of great importance in the post-pandemic era in a nation considered “rich”, the revision of the social safety net is everyone’s business and deserves to be addressed in more depth in the current campaign.