Rescuing the Vulnerable Poverty, Welfare and Social Ties in Modern Europe [Hardcover]

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 industrializationchallenges 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 populationsneglected children, the homeless, and the unemployedit provides a rich, comparative consideration of the shifting perceptions, representations, and lived experiences of social vulnerability in modern Europe.

This volumes focus on the young, the homeless, and the unemployed is particularly welcome given the limited amount of scholarship within histories of poverty and welfare on these groups. The books underlying principles are of universal significance and will be of interest to the general reader of welfare history.? Olwen Purdue, Queens University Belfast

Beate Althammeris a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Trier and a visiting lecturer at the University of L?neburg. She is author of?Das Bismarckreich 1871-1890(2009) and co-editor of the volumesBettler und Vaganten in der Neuzeit (1500-1933)(2013) andThe Welfare State and the Deviant Poor in Europe, 1870-1933(2014).

Tamara Stazic-Wendtis a doctoral student at the University of Trier and is currently completing her dissertation on unemployment in rural Germany during the interwar period. Her recent publications include The New Morocco Settlement between Trier and Euren, Germany: Drawing Boundaries and Constructing Deviance, 1925-1933 inThe Welfare State and the Deviant Poor in Europe, 1870-1933(2014).

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