Poverty

This book represents a timely, engaging, and significant contribution to our understanding of the relationship between law, politics, and poverty. It will serve as a catalyst for debate over the future of social and economic rights in the welfare state. -- Lorne Sossin, Faculty of Law, University of Toronto

While poverty persists as a major social problem, Canadians are increasingly framing their concerns over poverty and its consequences as issues of human rights and citizenship. This volume examines the ideas and practices of human rights, citizenship, legislation, and institution-building that are crucial to addressing poverty in this country.

Recent years have seen the retrenchment of Canadian social programs and the restructuring of the welfare state along neo-liberal lines. Social programs at both the federal and the provincial levels have been cut back, eliminated, or recast in exclusionary and punitive forms. Poverty: Rights, Social Citizenship, and Legal Activism responds to these changes by examining the ideas and practices of human rights, citizenship, legislation, and institution-building that are crucial to addressing poverty in this country.

The essays in this volume investigate current trends in social, political, and legal anti-poverty activism. They challenge prevailing assumptions about the role of governments and the methods of accountability in the field of social and economic justice. Through their analysis of rights advocacy and the interconnectedness of law and politics, the contributors also demonstrate that the fight for social and economic justice is vibrant and of critical importance.