SCARCE WAYS: PROCESSES OF SOCIAL PRODUCTION AND REPRODUCTION IN THE MINIMUM INCOME

Abstract

Portugal established in 1996 the Guaranteed Minimum Income (Law Nº 19-A/96), defined as an instrument of social policy with two components: 1) the financial provision to the poor and 2) a socio-professional insertion program for beneficiaries and their households. It is, therefore, fundamental to study and evaluate the impacts and structural constraints that this politics has caused, in the context of a weak Portuguese welfare state, seeking to understand the relationships between the objectives detailed in the law and actual practices in its application. We focus the analysis on beneficiaries, their characteristics and their ways of live, as well as in institutional practices and in their organizational models. But this analysis also requires the study of the factors and processes of vulnerability that tend to perpetuate themselves and remain in the beneficiary populations and the analysis of the forms and models of institutional intervention. It is pertinent to consider whether the policies of integration have or not a unifying role. This will mean that the logic of integration can act as a leveling factor, standardizing practices and social representations as the effect of institutional functioning. Or, rather, the analysis of social practices, ideas and value systems of the beneficiaries and professional actors will distinguish conflicts and oppositions, giving rise to groups that manage the paradoxes of integration policies from different resources. Still, the weakening of the structures, the multiplicity of partners and specific initiatives can be important obstacles, as important as most people hardly know the bureaucratic and administrative channels. This study is held in the empirical area of Vila Nova de Gaia, Porto, Portugal.

Keywords

• inclusion, social policy

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