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Chapter 11 explores undocumented migrant deaths on the U.S.-Mexico border. Recent changes to border policies have led to an increase in migrant deaths. In order to make sense of this humanitarian crisis, political economic theory that considers power and structural inequalities is applied. A careful review demonstrates how, coupled with historical trajectories in Latin America, the rise of neoliberalism has led to increases in social inequality and violence, resulting in increased migration as the oppressed flee in the hopes of finding a different life. Due to the dangerous conditions encountered along the journey, many migrants die every year attempting to find this new life.

When a political system is as dominated by business interests as it is in Hong Kong and where social expenditure is not permitted to hinder the pursuit of profits, the credibility of both the policy makers and their decisions must always be in danger. However, this chapter shows that the community does not judge the government and its merits by the social benefits which it provides. Income inequality does not provoke unrest, and the affluent do not arouse envy, however unfairly the workforce is rewarded for its sustained high productivity and its resilience. Incompetence is criticised, but is not politically fatal. The real test of Chief Executives and their ministers turns out to be mostly about their ethics.

Efforts to increase social expenditure by professionals in the health and welfare sectors were beleaguered by the financial and bureaucratic barriers erected by the colonial administration. The more generous funding allocated to health, education and welfare in the 1990s was too little to make up for earlier decades of under-spending. The future major social services were under serious threat as British rule was coming to an end. Opposition to social expenditure was gathering strength because of the growing prestige of the business model as the key to public sector efficiency. The social reforms had come so late in the colonial era that they were easily reversed.

The chapter reviews a catalogue of policy decisions which aggravated rather than relieved the physical and mental distress of those least able to care for themselves. In both the health and the welfare fields, individuals and their families, suffered from mistreatment that ranged from uncaring to callous. The government-business nexus was convinced that social expenditure was a luxury that threatened even the world’s richest economies with ruin and which Hong Kong could not afford. Nevertheless, the poverty created by Hong Kong’s Third World legacy and the current shortfalls in social expenditure could not be dismissed indefinitely.

Precarity is at the heart of human experience. In every period of life, all people would seem to face some minimal types and levels of precarity simply in being alive and in having to navigate an ever-changing world. At the same time, precarity is particularistic: some kinds of precarity may be unique in different periods of life, and some people and groups have more of it, or more serious types, than others. To understand the sources and consequences of precarity in later life, it is important to understand the life course: how individuals’ past experiences affect later ones, and how social forces open and close opportunities and structure pathways through life. A life course perspective helps reveal where, when, how, and for whom precarity occurs, and what legacies it carries in the lives of individuals, families, and societies. The chapter covers 12 key lessons about how life course dynamics matter in creating, minimizing, or eliminating the precarity of ageing.

This chapter shows how the community came to give overriding priority to the preservation of Hong Kong’s unique combination of personal freedom, social stability and open and honest government, In the process, the deprived, disadvantaged and disabled lost their traditional defenders, and the advocates of social reform declined in numbers and influence. Yet, there was still a collective conscience at work in Hong Kong, whose indignation at revelations of mistreatment of victims of life’s tragedies was usually prompt and politically too overwhelming for officials to ignore.

This chapter provides an overview of the book by drawing out four key themes which emerged through the chapters as of key significance for understanding youth employability in the United Kingdom: regionality, social inequality, liminality and risk. Taking each of these in turn, the chapter demonstrates how the pervasive force of neoliberalism shapes youth employment policy and youth labour markets in the diverse regions of the UK. In order to ‘get in’ and then to ‘get on’, Britain’s young people must demonstrate neoliberal qualities such as individualisation, responsibilisation and resilience to risk. At the same time, the ability to perform this version of the self is powerfully shaped by social structure.

This chapter focuses on Brazil's racial order, characterized by widespread miscegenation and cultural blending. The country implemented a ternary racial order characterized by fluid racial markers that distinguish individuals as White, multiracial, and Black based on physical appearance rather than ancestry. Moreover, there was no legalized racial discrimination. Social inequality was supposedly based on class and culture. Brazil's racial democracy was popularized in anthropologist Gilberto Freyre who argued that the Portuguese colonizers, compared to their Anglo-North American counterparts, were receptive to miscegenation and generous in differentiating multiracials from Blacks. However, these phenomena were motivated by self-interest, and related respectively to the ratio of European men to women, and the ratio of Whites to Blacks.

Comprehensive Social Security Assistance (CSSA) is widely mistrusted by the community as a whole. Most of the opposition to social security is based on myths - that CSSA encourages workers to give up their jobs - something shamelessly created by the government and business leaders and supported by respected academic opinion. The system is designed to be as unpleasant and demeaning as possible for applicants and their children. The two largest groups of beneficiary – the elderly and the unemployed - have no alternative to CSSA because of the government-business collaboration since 1967 to prevent or postpone the introduction of a universal scheme for retirement (the Mandatory Provident Fund) and unemployment (social insurance).

Across Europe, systems of education and lifelong learning have the potential to either widen or reduce existing patterns of social inequality. The expansion of educational opportunities over the last two decades has tended to cement rather than erode social divisions. Knowledge extensive policies are required to ensure that access to higher education and lifelong learning is available to as many people as possible. In addition, there is a need to ensure that people with few or no educational qualifications have access to work which pays a living wage and ensure their social inclusion.

The act of simply noting the presence or absence of skeletal trauma is not enough; bioarchaeologists need to expand and take more into consideration as violence involves much more than trauma. As Haagen D. Klaus discusses in this chapter, structural violence is disparity related to health, nutrition, or quality of life that exists in one subgroup and not another as a result of social inequality. According to Klaus, however, structural violence does not exist in all societies but is likely present only in those cultures with established hierarchical systems where one group has coercive control over another group's well-being. This form of violence is often not considered violent because it is normalized within the society, which allows it to become endemic and persist over generations. The value of understanding structural violence for bioarchaeologists is that it provides an interpretive framework for understanding a broader spectrum of violence in the past.

The chapter explores the ambiguity of the notion of dignity in Pufendorf’s natural law theory. On the one hand, dignity (dignatio) denotes the moral status of human beings in virtue of which they have to treat each other as equals. On the other hand, Pufendorf holds dignity and natural equality to be compatible with social inequality, notably with servitude and slavery. Moreover, when he deals with the comparative value and reputation (existimatio) of human beings, he admits that their moral status is conditioned by their readiness to behave as social beings. Human beings can thus lose their basic moral standing and are then considered as common enemies of all.

This chapter examines how ideas about crime and criminals are shaped by neoliberal cultural discourses of personal responsibility that not only justify why people need to be armed but also rationalize inequality and obscure the social reproduction privilege. Respondents’ perceptions of what motivates criminals is a central focus of the chapter, including a race and class analysis of what makes school shooters different from gang members, and how perceptions of poverty are tied to ideas about criminality. Most respondents believe that criminals are simply looking for an easy way to survive, something they see as being in stark contrast to their own commitment to personal responsibility and hard work. Their CHLs and guns more generally are extensions of a commitment to self-reliance that in its most extreme form manifests in elaborate disaster preparedness plans.

Hong Kong’s economic problems since 2000 are the official excuse for cuts in social spending. But the problems themselves are the outcome of deliberate choices made by Chief Executives and Financial Secretaries. These decisions were not forced on the SAR government by business leaders, even though their main aim was to promote business interests regardless of the adverse consequences for ordinary families and for the needy and disabled individuals. These policies were a legacy from the colonial era and reflect a deeply-rooted culture shared by the business and professional classes as well as the civil service.

Housing is the single biggest factor in determining a family’s quality of life and is for most people their single biggest investment. Hong Kong housing standards have long been disgraceful. The SAR government has slashed public housing budgets, and the private sector has become increasingly unaffordable in this century. The current crisis is the predictable but preferred outcome of official policies. It can also be shown to be an unnecessary concession to the developers.

Chapter three demonstrates that changing medical responses to alcohol abuse developed in a social context of capitalist transformation and economic instability. Developing class distinctions, along with new conceptions of gender and race, shaped both perceptions of heavy drinking and the experiences of those who suffered the consequences. The chapter constructs a social portrait of inebriates through a study of over 1,500 individuals recorded as having died of alcohol abuse in Philadelphia between 1825 and 1850. Delving into hospital records, burial registers, almshouse dockets, and other sources, the chapter links medical concerns with pathological drinking to the growth of a socially distinctive middle class, the rapid growth of urban poverty, and fears about urban decay and epidemic disease, especially cholera. The chapter argues that as temperance became the sine qua non of social respectability, the persistence of heavy drinking among the status conscious middle-class drove new medical responses to and definitions of pathological drinking.