“Reproduction of family poverty from the welfare regime point of view, in the Cuban current context”.
Author: Peña, angela I, angelap@ffh.uh.cu
Department: Department of Sociology
University: Univeristy f Havana, Cuba
Supervisor: Dra. Teresa Muñoz
Year of completion: 2014
Language of dissertation: spanish
Keywords:
reproduction of poverty
, family
, welfare regimes
, wellbeing
Areas of Research:
Family Research
, Poverty, Social Welfare and Social Policy
, Stratification
Abstract
The thesis argues about how the changes that are taking place in recent years in Cuba are implying a radical transformation for the constitution of welfare regime in a macrosocial and formal perspective. Also, it discusses about how is this affecting the opportunities of sustaining the aspiration of social equity defended in the island for more than 50 years.
With this purpose it is analyzed both the process of transformation that takes place under the title “Updating social and economic development model” from the perspective of welfare regime analysis, and its current and future implications over the reproduction of family poverty.
The basis for the study are in the revision of important antecedents in Latin-America about the topic, in order to support the scrutiny of the Cuban case which has no traditions in this sense and in a context of reduced data available for the analysis. The Cuban case study based on a traditional perspective, is combined with the reading of family coping strategies. The objective is to contrast the institutional frame of formal welfare regime with the integration that poor family´s strategies make in the reproduction of everyday life.
It is affirmed a transit from a welfare regime centralized in universalistic State social policies toward a familiaristic system with space for market role. Such change is reinforcing poor family´s disadvantages because the way they integrate welfare actors in their coping strategies is contradictory with the new model. Poor families still depend on State provision which is in a process of retraction. This takes place without the creation of mechanisms for overcoming poverty and instead is contributing to its reproduction.
The new scenario is making each welfare actor to play roles in the explanation of poverty reproduction, and with this is placing new challenges to break the cycle. This issue becomes a critical aspect for the legitimacy of the changes in place.
