Suchergebnisse

Résumé

"Extreme poverty"

The international discourse on «extreme poverty» often proves itself largely ignorant of the characteristics of the affected populations' life experience. If a more adequate knowledge is to be built, two essential aspects have to be taken into account. First, poverty and extreme poverty require to be distinguished since they relate to different realities. Second, they must be interpreted as relative notions insofar as they refer to phenomena which can only be properly apprehended when considered in connexion with the context in which they appear. These elements have important epistemological consequences : research in social sciences is invited to distance itself from its usual concepts and categories so as to embrace a more intercultural approach.

Poverty is a reality in modem societies, even the developed ones. Whilst a traditional form of poverty exists characterised by what has been called "poverty culture", these is also a new form of poverty, a consequence of the tensions in the economic system and the labour market. What is new about the Minimum Integration Income, compared to classic targeted forms of benefit, is that while trying to help the poor it also attempts to offer them a way to integrate depending on their personal ability to rejoin the active population. Starting with a survey conducted in the Indre department in France, we shall try to analyse the characteristics of these two types of poverty and then we shall study what had become of the individuals in question one year later. Revealing as it has done the pauperisation of the Social fabric, the Minimum Integration Income has made it possible to alleviate the desocialization of one section of the population, that is, the most underprivileged.

Resumé Qu'elles viennent de sources institutionnelles, scientifiques ou associatives, les informations sur la pauvreté et l'exclusion en donnent des représentations très différentes. L'Observatoire national de la pauvreté tente de les confronter et de cerner la complexité des situations. Pour une meilleure orientation des dispositifs sociaux ?