Social Work, Social Justice, and Social Welfare Policy: A Human Rights Agenda

1
Social Work, Social Justice, and Social Welfare
Policy A Human Rights Agenda

• Shawn Cassiman
• School of Social Work University of
  Wisconsin-Madison

2
The History of Social Welfare In the United
States-Exceptional?

• Laggard
• Leader
• Or

3
Laggard

• The standard view of the United States Welfare
  State, is that it is slow to evolve and will
  eventually catch up or converge to the European
  models that are stronger and offer more
  comprehensive protections from market vagaries
  common in Capitalist regimes (Smeeding, 2004
  Helco, 1995).

4
Leader

• Other scholars (Skocpol,1995) argue that the
  United States in advancing veterans and mothers
  pensions was actually an early welfare state.

5
Private Pensions

• Hacker (2002) describes social welfare in the
  United States as skewed strongly in the direction
  of private pensions supported by public tax
  dollars.

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Contingent Welfare State

• Group Identification Welfare claims based upon
  group membership.
• Deserving
• Undeserving

7
Our Truly Exceptional Nature

• Only industrialized nation without universal
  healthcare.
• Almost 45 million (including many children) lack
  insurance coverage.
• Highest infant mortality rate among
  industrialized nations.
• Growing number of homeless and hungry.
• Huge prison population

8
Myths of the Other

• Poverty is an individual problem
• The culture of poverty
• The welfare queen
• Economic mobility

9
Populations at risk of poverty

• Research by Rank (2004) indicates that the
  majority (approx. 60) of all Americans between
  the ages of 18-64 will have need to access
  means-tested welfare benefits over the life
  course.

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The Oppressive Nature of Poverty

• the class-oppressed--the socioeconomically
  poor-are the infrastructural expression of the
  process of oppression.
• Leonardo Boff and Clodovis Boff, Introducing
  Liberation Theology

11
Revisiting Convergence or the global race to the
bottom

• Recent international evidence suggests that
  rather than the U.S. converging toward a European
  style of welfare state provision, with child
  allowances, etc., the opposite may in fact be the
  case, driven by the U.S. and the globalization
  discourse (Schram, 2004).

12
Globalization as Justification

• The retreat from the welfare state is
  rationalized by the pressures of globalization,
  which include
• Increasingly mobile capital
• Increased mobility of labor
• Decreased autonomy of the nation state

13
Globalization as Opportunity

• For organizing across interest groups
• For advancing a human rights agenda
• For fostering understanding of commonalities
  among peoples
• For setting limits of toleration
• For strengthening international governance

14
The Potential of a Human Rights Perspective in
Social Welfare

• Useful not only in relation to International
  social work, but domestic
• As a framework for examining social welfare
  policy
• In organizing previously fragmented needs claims,
  or demands for social justice, based on group
  membership
• Recognition of the multiple interdependencies
  among peoples and places

15
Social Work and Human Rights, an Agenda

• Following recommendations of the Council on
  Social Work Education, provide social workers
  with an opportunity to gain a working knowledge
  of human rights
• Human rights as an alternative framework to the
  current social policy making models of rational
  and political

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A Call to Action

• In the Universal Declaration of Human Rights we
  already have a framework that recognizes and
  supports basic economic human rights, such as
  education, health care, the right to organize,
  and safe housing.
• What can we do?

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Plan of Action

• Join Human Rights organizations such as Amnesty
  International
• Organize grassroots efforts within a human rights
  framework
• Put pressure on our senators and congressional
  representatives to ratify articles within the
  declaration supportive of economic human rights
  (Articles 21-26).
• Incorporate human rights into professional
  organizations
• Share the story of Human Rights

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• the poverty of the poor is not a call to a
  generous relief action, but a demand that we go
  and build a different social order.
• Gustavo Gutierrez, The Power of the Poor in
  History.