In a famous 13th century poem, poverty is portrayed as an ogress. On the other hand, Saint Francis referred to it as Lady Poverty, and Jesus Christ’s Sermon on the Mount assigns the poor a very relevant role in Christian doctrine. Reflections on poverty have thus always been influenced by a wide range of values: moral condemnation of the poor vs. indigence as an obstacle to equality that charity must remove, or as an issue of justice and liberty (whoever is too poor cannot assert her/his formal rights) as opposed to a symptom of economic failure. And the list could go on and on, since discussions of poverty are always multi-faceted.
Let’s circumscribe the discussion and think of poverty as the end-effect of other underlying social phenomena such as exclusion: integration can only be achieved with the active engagement of individual at risk of exclusion. So not only the right to and principle of equality are at play here, but also moral duties.
Policy actions must be undertaken that allow for a personalized integration process (Levinas’ face of the Other), while requiring commitments from the subject being exposed to the risk of exclusion, be it because of drug-addiction, alcoholism, unemployment, truancy, health problems, and the like. Inclusion involves costs that must be shared by the recipient.
Speaking of duties in welfare policy may seem a paradoxical development in an age where international law increasingly acknowledges fundamental rights for all individuals on the planet: but is the formal enlargement of fundamental rights enough to solve the problem of exclusion? The answer is implicit: no, unless solidarity actualizes that fundamental right.
And this line of reasoning can be extended beyond poverty, to citizenship and the various ways of integrating individuals in a political community. Public powers must manage integration processes and especially be wary of the possibility of isolating rather than integrating. Effective social policies are based on commitments undertaken by individuals aspiring to be included and integrated, who thus must cooperate and share the costs according their conditions and possibilities, because solidarity is a two-way duty, not a unilateral right.
by Fabrizio Fracchia,
Full Professor of Administrative Law, Università Bocconi