Rescuing the Vulnerable: Poverty, Welfare and Social Ties in Modern Europe (International Studies in Social History Book 27)

"In many ways, the European welfare state constituted a response to the new forms of social fracture and economic turbulence that were born out of industrialization - challenges that were particularly acute for groups whose integration into society seemed the most tenuous. Covering a range of national cases, this volume explores the relationship of weak social ties to poverty and how ideas about this relationship informed welfare policies in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. By focusing on three representative populations - neglected children, the homeless and the unemployed - it provides a rich, comparative consideration of the shifting perceptions, representations and lived experiences of social vulnerability in modern Europe"--Back cover Covering numerous European nations, this volume explores social ties, poverty, and how their relationship informed the strategies of governments in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.