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.
"?a readable collection of interesting case studies on a topic likely to interest many political sociologists, historians, area specialists, and scholars of poverty and welfare in both the social sciences and the humanities? The breadth and innovative use of archival and literary sources make the work overall a trove of interesting ideas for comparative and historical researchers." ? Contemporary Sociology
"This volume's 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 book's underlying principles are of universal significance and will be of interest to the general reader of welfare history." ? Olwen Purdue, Queen's University Belfast
