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Despite the significance of the issue, however, we observe that the focus of the bulk of recent research on global income inequality has been on determining its direction and magnitude of change (i.e. whether it is increasing or decreasing, and by how much) in the era of neoliberal globalization. I believe that this situation is unfortunate for two reasons. First, determining the direction of inequality turned out to be a very arduous task due to several methodological and data problems as well as the difficulty of establishing a clear causal linkage between globalization and inequality so that much of the effort in this area did not give satisfactory results. Second and more importantly, even if we cannot agree about the direction of inequality, there is one observation in the literature that has been long established and agreed upon: The current level of global income inequality is very high. Therefore, I argue that instead of spending valuable resources on a futile globalization vs. inequality debate, the scholarship should expend more effort in pursuing the question of how to solve (or at least alleviate) the problem of global inequality. In the light of this observation, the primary purpose of this paper is to review the existing policy recommendations on addressing global income inequality.

During the Cold War many aspersions were cast upon young, leftleaning activists of the 1930s, often made by former young radicals themselves. That should not eclipse what they believed, the policies they pursued, and the goals they sought at the time. Looking at the 1930s through the perspective of activist youth allows for a greater understanding of the decade as a time of uncertainty when anything seemed possible: the end of capitalism in America, the rejuvenation of free enterprise; the spread of fascism, true political freedom; world peace, world war. During the decade, no one knew how it would all play out. Youth wanted to make sure they had a voice in the ultimate outcome because they believed their perspective was valid and because they wanted to make America live up to its promises. The 1930s, they therefore believed, was the opportune time to remake America politically, economically, and socially. It was activist, left- leaning youth who first recognized the potential for drastic change in America, seizing upon the desperation of Harlan County, Kentucky, coalminers in 1932 as the personification of economic deprivation. Rallying to the coalminers’ cause, young idealistic college students set out from New York City only to be met by the cruel reality of coal country’s brand of law and order. Regrouping, the organizers of the trek used the experience to establish youth- led organizations on the college campus, the most notable of which was the National Student League (NSL). The NSL and other student groups, like the Student League for Industrial Democracy (SLID), found fertile ground on academic quadrangles, especially those located in New York City, where they hoped to plant their roots for radical change. Their concern for Reed Harris’s academic freedom at Columbia University, emerging just one week after the Harlan County trip, found a ready audience among students chafing against the authoritarianism of college administrators. Their demands for more economic opportunity were thus coupled with demands for more freedom and democracy. Extrapolating from their personal experiences, supporters of the left leaning groups began to expand their vision of what America should be from the college campus to the larger society and from New York City to the nation, all the while catalyzing a confluence between the local and national situations. The plight of the Scottsboro Boys highlighted the discrepancy between professed loyalty to freedom and equality and the reality of racism in America, unmasking the kind of hypocrisy they would not tolerate. In agitating for the Scottsboro Boys’ acquittal, they were fighting once again against the larger issues of discrimination and prejudice. This case allowed them a national platform upon which to base their calls for freedom, democracy, and equality. Yet the tenor of those calls was also determined by more immediate cases of prejudice, like those suffered by CCNY track star Welford Wilson. This constant pull between local and national events kept young activists’ ideology grounded upon pragmatic solutions at the same time they would brook no compromise with what they believed to be not only morally righteous positions, but those founded upon quintessential American ideals. In order to bring about the changes they desired, youth activists realized they would have to become political players and the only way to do that was to create larger, inclusive youth organizations to act as political lobbying groups. Such a conclusion coincided with the rising menace of fascism abroad, prompting youth to come together in forming popular front organizations where liberals, socialists, and communists worked together to promote peace as a way to ensure political, economic, and social freedom and equality. The resulting American Youth Congress, created in 1934, and American Student Union, established in 1935, were youth- led organizations that immediately began pressuring the New Deal Administration to do more for young people, basing their argument upon the premise that doing so would allow America to live up to its promise. It is true that membership in youth organizations represented only a small fraction of young people in the United States, but, as Joseph Lash argued, this is not a fair gauge of their influence because they became a motivating force in a wider coalition that recognized the great dangers con- fronting the country and the world.1 The synergistic outcome for activist youth was a fully formed worldview that sought to safeguard freedom, equality, democracy, and peace. Pressuring Congress for more appropriations for the National Youth Administration, making sure that agency provided equal opportunity for all young people through a democratic organizational structure, and lobbying for a more inclusive American Youth Act brought youth leaders into the American political mainstream. Yet at the same time, the AYC and ASU were actively promoting peace through radical methods, like the Student Strike Against War. The Janus- faced nature of working with the Administration on domestic policy, but maintaining a particularly critical stance toward its foreign policy meant the youth organizations acted independently in what they believed to be youth’s best interest, but it also meant that the relationship between the organizations and the Roosevelt Administration remained fraught with tension. That tension heightened during the Spanish Civil War. Seen by youth as a portent of the world war to come, they actively protested the war itself; but, at the same time, this was a war against fascism fought by the beleaguered Loyalists who, like young Americans themselves, were fighting for freedom, democracy, and equality. The Spanish Civil War, then, catalyzed the breakup of the youth’s popular front organizations as young people split ranks based on which ideal they prioritized as a necessary precondition for the others: peace on the one hand and freedom, democracy, and equality on the other. The policy impasse between the advocates of collective security and the advocates of pacifism led many socialists to withdraw from the ASU and AYC. With unity broken, the weakened organizations were left to face a world quickly dissolving into war. In 1939, the dimensions of the fascist threat to world peace were reconfigured around the Nazi- Soviet Pact and the subsequent German invasion of Poland and Soviet invasion of Finland. The difficulties in creating peace increased exponentially. As the war in Europe gained momentum with the Nazi invasion of Scandinavia and the low countries in April– May 1940, and the fall of France in June 1940, it exacerbated tensions within the youth organizations. Many withdrew from the ASU and AYC because of what they perceived as the imminence of a war from which the United States could not remain aloof. Continuing to pursue peace seemed futile. For others, there had never been a more auspicious time for dedication to peace. Once the Soviet Union—what many believed to be the last hold out for peace—was invaded, the possibility of avoiding world war crumbled, as did the youth organizations themselves. 230 Conclusion At the same time they were confronted with the fascist threat abroad, youth activists were attacked by the red- baiting House Un- American Activities Committee, chaired by Texas Democratic Congressman Martin Dies. Youth organizations’ reputations as communist safe havens, coupled with those organizations’ criticism of FDR’s foreign policy, caused a breach in the relationship between the young activists and New Deal administrators that severely damaged their ability to affect policy. As some youth leaders became increasingly supportive of American interventionism, other youth leaders found themselves advocating a program favored by isolationists. Liberals withdrew from the ASU and AYC in order to support America’s burgeoning war effort, further fragmenting the organizations that quickly dissolved after December 7, 1941. The demise of the youth organizations does not dispel their significance. The vision of and for America those organizations advocated expressed the desire of a generation of young people ravaged by Depression to create a better world—one in which America lived up to its ideals of freedom, democracy, and equality. Even as some former youth leaders went to work for the FDR Administration2 and the FDR Administration turned its back on youth programs,3 youth’s vision lived on.4 Some former youth leaders, such as Joseph Lash and James Wechsler, went to war.5 That war, Eric Sevareid said, “was for us not merely a crisis in our physical lives but an intellectual and moral purgatory.”6 And although “it would be possible, no doubt, and in an accepted tradition, to write of this university period with the humorous superiority of tolerant adulthood, to regard it as a natural manifestation of naïve idealism of youth,” Sevareid explained, “it would be easier, but it would be an error of judgment” because “we had a definite effect upon our times.”7 In like fashion, the times affected those young people. The events of the Depression decade spurred youth to action. It was their understanding of what each event meant for freedom, democracy, equality, and peace that determined their actions. It was not just their actions, then, but the understanding that girded them that helps bring to light the problems and possibilities of the 1930s.

The argument for engaging young people as partners in public work, rather than objects of policy, is rooted in a set of normative values. Youth should not be treated as “citizens of the future”; they are citizens now who experience, interpret, and sometimes resist the policies that organize their everyday lives.11 They deserve to be heard about the institutions and policies that influence their lives, as enshrined in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.12 These values shaped my approach to this research. I acknowledge having an agenda in the sense that I want to highlight the conditions under which youth develop and exercise their collective political agency. I draw on the view of Paolo Freire and others in the community organizing tradition that people who experience the sharp edges of systemic failures ought to be leaders in collective efforts to understand and dismantle them. As a white male from an upper middle-class background, I acknowledge my outsider status in this struggle and engage in ongoing reflection about how my racial privilege shapes my approach to this work. I aspire to provide insight that comes from careful empirical analysis and solidarity with young people’s claims to voice and dignity. The empirical claims in this book draw on evidence from ten years of research in settings— both in and out of school— where youth of color interpreted and took action to solve complex problems ranging from inadequate schools to media bias to barriers to college. The book presents findings from three research studies carried out between 2003 and 2012.13 The first study, an ethnography of youth activism, focused on groups in the San Francisco Bay Area where high school youth worked with young adults to develop campaigns to address issues relevant to youths’ everyday experiences. One group was motivated by Oakland’s dropout rate and wanted to expand opportunities for student voice and leadership in the schools. Another organized a campaign— Don’t Believe the Hype— which called for West Oakland’s youth to be portrayed with dignity and accuracy by local media. The third organized a conference to educate young people about how the upcoming Iraq war (this was in 2003) would affect their Southeast San Francisco neighborhood. The second study, called Tracing Transitions, was a participatory action research project carried out with students whose high school had been shut down. Our goal was to document student perspectives about the closure and find out how displaced students fared in transitions to new schools. Because this was action research, when the study was over youth researchers shared their findings and recommendations with national and local policy makers, including testifying at a federal congressional hearing on urban education. The third study differed from the first two by focusing on school classrooms as contexts for young people to engage in critique and collective agency. The project, called Critical Civic Inquiry, co-led with Shelley Zion and Carlos Hipolito-Delgado, worked with secondary school teachers to provide opportunities for their students to discuss, investigate, and take action to dismantle educational barriers such as unsafe school climates or inadequate facilities. We investigated sociopolitical learning among students and the conditions in schools that supported or frustrated action civics projects.

Recent quantitative research has begun to show links between critical consciousness and an array of positive developmental outcomes, including political engagement, employment, and psychological wellbeing.31 Critical conversations about racism and inequality can also contribute to stronger teacher-student bonds.32 Educational scholars such as Jeffrey Duncan-Andrade and Eric DeMeulenaere have written about the corrosive effects on students’ trust in teachers when the latter fail to acknowledge or witness the stresses or barriers in their everyday lives.33 Experiences of racial microaggressions need to be brought out into the open where people can talk about what they mean and how to dismantle them. This kind of educational work is challenging, even risky, if not carried out in a way that is respectful of young people’s dignity and agency. The point is not to persuade someone she is oppressed or deliver a lecture about how she should see the world. One of Freire’s biggest targets of criticism was what he called the “banking model of education,” which presumed that the teacher possessed the right information and just needed to deposit it into the learner’s head. Critical education, instead, is dialogic and egalitarian. You ask questions, you share experiences, you encourage deliberation about different perspectives. And, perhaps most important, these critical conversations must recognize and support people’s sense of hope and agency. They are not intended merely to substitute self-blame for system-blame, without action. Freire was as skeptical of idle talk as he was of mindless activism. Praxis signals a mix of smart analysis and efforts to change things. Luis, Gabriela, their classmates, and the teacher demonstrated this potent mix of critique and collective agency in a project they developed over the course of the year to address the problems of racism and xenophobia that surfaced on Cinco de Mayo.

Income inequality has become a familiar term in American political discourse. It limits social mobility and has a damaging effect on U.S. democracy. Education inequality is its close sibling. People are more and more aware that public education has not delivered on its promise of providing equal opportunity. These are deep and persistent problems that youth activism will not solve alone. But new youth movements, some intentionally cultivated in educational settings, others formed in response to unwelcome policies, point a way forward. They provide hope in a time of dispossession; not just hope, but strategies for expanding educational opportunity and sustaining a more participatory democracy.

When young people engage in social critique they begin to denaturalize inequality and question attributions that locate the source of failure inside the person. They begin to change the narrative about the intelligence and worth of young people of color. They construct increasingly complex and more adaptive explanations for and responses to their social environment. When paired with the kinds of collective action found in youth organizing, the developmental changes that ensue are not merely inside the head. Action in the public square is significant because it can catalyze a shift in social relations . The interactional space, for example, where Bianca and Lucy spoke back to the district officials who closed their school, much like the space where Denise addressed the Oakland School Board and Luis and Gabriela patiently reasoned with their principal, was powerful because of their claims to be seen and heard. This rests on a view of development that privileges one’s roles and visibility within a community, where identities are produced by the way people position themselves and are positioned by others.14 The shift toward understanding youth as political beings is not just about their own development, but also about what it can catalyze for broader changes in society. This book’s case studies of young people and their organizing campaigns demonstrate the interdependence of youth development and democratic renewal. Part I showed how youth and institutions benefit when youth experience intentional opportunities to critique their sociopolitical worlds and take action to address problems. The case of Luis and Gabriela documented their experience of a classroom project where the goal was to denaturalize the social order of Roosevelt High and invite students to change that social order. Luis and Gabriela jumped at this opportunity with enthusiasm and articulated a critique of the racism and cultural myopia that existed at the school. Case studies of DREAM Activism and Padres & Jóvenes Unidos showed the broader kinds of impact young people can have when sustained in the context of social movements. Campaigns for immigrant rights and to end the school-to-jail track show contemporary examples where youth of color build power that changes the cultural and political landscape. Later, in a kind of reverse case, I discussed the kinds of problems that ensue when young people are not at the table for highstakes school reform decisions. Although the closure of Jefferson High School motivated activism by a cadre of students, it also had damaging consequences for many of their peers. Taken together, the case studies lend empirical evidence to the argument of this book: Young people are political beings who, when offered the right opportunity structure (and sometimes even when not), can marshal their political critiques into sustained action that is good for the actors and good for society.

The interdependent relationship between youths’ political engagement, their development, and societal health is the central focus of this book. Youth and societal institutions are strengthened when young people, particularly those most disadvantaged by education inequity, turn their critical gaze to education systems and participate in efforts to improve them. The book’s case studies of youth organizing and student activism analyze what these experiences mean for young people and why they are good for a socially just democracy. This research is motivated by questions about the relationship between youth activism, human development, and democratic renewal: What is youth activism and how does it contribute to youth development? How might collective movements of young people expand educational opportunity in the United States and resuscitate participatory democracy? The practical need for such research is stark. The long-standing practice in American schools has been to treat high school students as dependent recipients of services.7 This status, while providing important legal protections, reinforces social constructions of youth as immature and restricts them to limited forms of participation.8 How might schools become places where student voice is part of the fabric of institutional decision making? What kinds of learning ecologies are necessary to support youths’ engagement in public work with their teachers? Similarly, although youth development programs have adopted rhetoric that emphasizes young people’s assets and strengths, youth-adult partnerships are still the exception rather than the norm.9 Youth-adult partnerships call for a more radical engagement with youth as people , by building sustained intergenerational collectives that deliberate and act together around an issue of shared concern.10 This book pushes and extends the asset-based approach by providing evidence about young people as partners in decision making rather than just targets of remediation. Rich examples, grounded in the exigencies of practice, are provided that generate tools and strategies. What roles do organizers play? How do young people, who are typically novices in the political realm, learn the necessary skills for participation?

Concern, like so many organisations began as an ‘activist’ group – we became active for specific change, against hunger and famine (originally in Biafra) and for basic human needs and human rights. Today we remain active in the same struggles across many different parts of the world, especially in the Developing World where some of the most deep-seated and enduring human rights violations continue. Concern continues to believe and argue that activism is a vital part of the agenda for eradicating hunger and absolute poverty, inequality and injustice and in building better and more just alternatives. Today, Concern is active in four key areas: • We respond to emergencies and to people’s most immediate needs • We invest in long term human development • We undertake advocacy work on behalf of the world’s poor • We undertake education work here in Ireland to stimulate understanding of the issues and challenges In order to build a better and more just world, fundamental change is needed and needed urgently. This change will not come about simply through the actions of organisations such as Concern and others or indeed simply as a result of the actions (and inactions) of governments. Fundamental change involves all of us.

TEACH (AND LEARN) THE ISSUES Education on the issues is vital; understanding them and how we ‘feel’ about them; their causes, potential solutions, challenges and choices. Debating and analysing the issues is vital for all our futures. BE PROFESSIONAL, PLAYYOUR ROLE Everyone has a role – doctors, bakers, lawyers, drivers, farmers; whatever area we work in is related in one way or another to the issues through trade, ingredients, law making, ecology etc. Just as we can make a difference at home and in our community, we can (and should) make a difference through our work places and practices! CHALLENGE WRONG REGULARLY ‘Someone should do something about that, it’s wrong’; how many times have we heard or said that; speak out (about trade, torture, waste, pollution, women’s rights etc.); get colleagues to write that letter, send that email, make that post, support that cause (many organisations already do, does yours?). BE POLITICAL – ultimately, issues of inequality and injustice in the world are political; don’t leave it to others to take on the issues as you may disagree with them as to how they do so; make your thoughts, ideas and solutions heard politically. Organisations like Concern,Amnesty, Friends of the Earth cannot do the job alone.

At present there is a great variety of relatively novel policy instruments, amongst them forms of basic income, which may conceivably be put to use in counteracting the emergence of a dual economy, under the more restrictive conditions outlined above. But it should be noted that at present also, the proponents of basic income may have more of a rough ride to stay in the race, for two connected reasons. First, since basic income has to prove itself in an economically and politically more constrained envi- ronment, the tax cost of guaranteeing the ‘firm unconditional floor’ – if pitched at the level of subsistence needs – is now even more likely to be perceived as prohibitive than it was a decade ago. As a consequence, only partial and piecemeal movements toward unconditional entitlements of benefit are the ones that are going to figure seriously in the comparative exercise of optimal policy instruments for solving the new social ques- tion. Secondly, unlike before the early 1990s, basic income can no longer be presented as the only alternative to the status quo of work- and means-tested conditional bene- fits, with its large unemployment and poverty traps. For in the policy debate on the new social question, competing instruments have entered the field, such as Earned Income Tax Credit, and various kinds of wage subsidies to employees. These instru- ments, it is now claimed, are able to remove inactivity traps just as efficiently as a basic income would be able to, and moreover, in ways that avoid the controversial feature of basic income: its loosening of the links between transfer income and the obligation to perform paid work.

These changes in the terms of the debate imply that forms of partial basic income and forms of work-oriented benefit and labour-market policies slide into a broad con- tinuum of alternatives, each of which can claim to tackle the new social question in terms of its effects on promoting access to employment at the low end of the labour market, preventing poverty, and fighting social exclusion. The advantages and draw- backs of each of these alternatives thus have to be sorted out by a very careful compar- ative analysis, and in the course of such analysis, as the contributions of Paul de Beer and of Philippe Van Parijs, Laurence Jacquet and Claudio Salinas clearly show, it is dif- ficult to claim a knock-down superiority for any particular policy alternative.Thus it is perhaps fair to say that basic income, after having won a certain kind of respectability as a normatively unorthodox way of addressing the deficiencies of existing welfare state arrangements, is now taken seriously enough to be put to the test under rather harsher conditions than its proponents may have anticipated. One object of this volume is to see if basic income can survive this test.

However, basic income is being increasingly discussed in a more pragmatic context. This discussion is mostly concerned with the efficiency part of the above claim. Here, basic income is proposed as the most viable way of reconciling two of the welfare state’s central objectives – the alleviation of poverty and full employment – while at the same time allowing scope for making the labour market function in a more flexible and dynamic way. One of the reasons why basic income has attracted interest is that it seeks to reinterpret the compatibility of these two central objectives, reflecting the fact that social policy and economic policy can no longer be conceived separately. Thus, in recent years, basic income has appeared on the agenda of institutional reform as a pro- posal which combines adequate social protection with the demands of flexible labour markets, and may lead to a more equitable distribution of income, paid work, care work and free time among men and women.As such, it has to be pitted against the claims of (partly or fully) competing policy instruments in the welfare state: collective working time reduction, subsidized employment, paid parental care, early retirement, education- al and sabbatical leave provisions, the minimum wage, and schemes of ‘workfare’.

This book is divided into two distinct but interrelated parts, both of which reflect the main topics of the 1998 Congress of the Basic Income European Network. 1 The first part, ‘Policy Objectives’, analyzes the potential of basic income vis-à-vis other policy schemes to achieve the above-mentioned goals of welfare state reform. The second part, entitled ‘Political Chances’, reviews the state of the debate on basic income in var-ious European countries. Although the book can be seen as following up on Arguing for Basic Income, it has a different point of departure. Arguing for Basic Income concentrated on the ethical controversies around unconditional grants, which, as noted above, have been part of the general debate from the start. It attempted ‘... to spell out a plausible conception of the just or good society which could provide firm foundations for the legitimacy of an unconditional income’ (ibid.: 8) and ‘… to derive basic income from an explicit formulation of the ideal of a free, equal or good society’ (ibid.: 29). These controversies, which are concerned with rethinking the regulative principles of solidar- ity and justice in the welfare state, have not yet come to rest.2 As customary in applied political philosophy, the arguments are exchanged at a high level of abstraction. Most recently, the main question has been whether granting people a substantial, or even the maximally sustainable, basic income is an appropriate instrument of liberal-egalitarian justice. The answers seem to depend on how the egalitarian aim of compensating for unequal endowments can be combined with the liberal aim of holding people respon- sible for their personal choices. At the level of detailed policy implications in societies with developed welfare state institutions, competing interpretations of liberal-egalitar- ian justice then generate different positions regarding the desirability of either work- sensitive or unconditional compensation to the worst-endowed members of society: the working poor, and those who are more or less chronically excluded from the labour market, and hence depend on transfer income. In this debate, the proposal of introducing a basic income in the welfare state typically serves as a testing ground for exploring the relative attractiveness of abstract normative positions entertained on the political Left.3

A fourth agreed broad point on causes of global inequality is that positions along the collectivist-individualist spectrum are substantially influenced by policy choice. Neither capitalism nor the way that resulting surpluses are distributed is a‘natural’process. So-called ‘market forces' do not exist outside of society and politics. Instead, it is socially constructed rules that bring order and direction to an economy, and these rules substantially shape distributional outcomes. This principle - that governance matters - is as valid for a global economy as it is for any national or local economy. To take some concrete examples, it matters hugely for the nature and scale of global inequalities when rules governing money determine that certain currencies such as the euro will circulate across the planet, while others such as the kwacha will not. Likewise, it matters substantially for the distribution of global resources when intellectual property regimes divide benefits between inventors and users in particular ways rather than others. It also matters enormously for the division of global wealth when rules of taxation determine who pays how much to which public authority. It furthermore greatly matters how rules of social policy set minimum wages, pension arrangements, access to health care, etc. And it matters considerably for global resource distribution when migration rules allow some people to move with relative ease across the planet, while others are locked into (usually highly disadvantaged) places. Hence, huge global inequalities prevail in good part because existing governance arrangements create and sustain those gaps. By the same token, alternative rules and regulatory institutions for the global economy could significantly reallocate resources more evenly across humanity. Indeed, many progressive redistribution of global resources requires major changes to global economic governance.

Social workers who connect the personal to the political can learn from the ways in which activists integrate hope into their critical analysis, and use hope to build movements that can disrupt the power imbalances inherent to capitalist systems and structures. Interestingly, the two participants who indicated their profession as social work also identified as activists, acknowledging that although these roles intersect in some ways, they are also distinguishable. One described these roles as different "hats" that he wears at the same time. As George, Barnoff, and Coleman (2007) explain, many social work agencies have "become captive to the ideological and political agendas of their funders" (p. 67) within a field being constrained by neoliberal policies. As such, social work has compromised "a longstanding professional commitment to social justice" (George et al., 2007, p. 68). The identity of "activist" may be perceived as too radical or too specialized. As a result, social workers may indeed have to put on a different "hat" in order to pursue anti-poverty activism - or activism of any kind. A similar study could focus solely on social workers who engage in activism in order to explore differences and commonalities in the way members of the profession identify with activism and employ hope in their work. Although not all of the participants interviewed in this study identified as social workers, they all indicated that their activist careers began as post-secondary students. These settings provide a sense of community for young people who are developing both their own critical analysis of the world and their own sense of morality, primarily in relationship to their peers and potential mentors. Social work educators could con the potential for students to connect outside of the classroom and in the community - to one another, to faculty, and to groups on campus that focus on social justice issues. By engaging students in different communities and cultivating solidarity and hope, educators could foster an activist spirit in students that would complement their burgeoning critical analysis. Further research could explore the explicit and implicit connections between activism and post-secondary education in relation to the development, specifically, of critical hope - an understanding of the need for social, political, and economic change, coupled with a belief that change is possible

The second sense in which Anderson is concerned about the actual realization of equality relates simply to her many attempts to specify through elaborate, highly informed discussions, how the fundamental principle of relational equality is to be applied on specific policy issues. She has consistently sought to bridge the gap between pure, normative political philosophy, policy, and real politics. For example, her seminal 1999 paper on ‘the point of equality’ entails precise discussions of the policy implications of her relational conception of autonomy for the compensation owed to people with disabilities or support for people who choose to have children. In several articles (2016a; 2016b), she has made the case for social insurance policies, retracing the historical origins and the normative force of these proposals. She also studied the implications of relational equality for the issue of ‘market risks’ in contemporary society, that is, what kinds of constraints should be placed upon markets so that unjust outcomes are mitigated (2008). In her recent work on workplace democracy, she has shown the implications of her critical view of the capitalist firm as a space of governance for management and economic policy (2015a). Finally, a third sense in which Anderson is concerned with equality becoming ‘real’ relates to methodology. She contrasts her approach with those of moral and political philosophers who develop ideal proposals independent of the historical and sociological facts about human societies (2015b). In contrast, Anderson has sought to anchor her normative claims in thick descriptions of human societies, drawing on economic theory, to discuss technical aspects of distributive justice. She refers to the history of social movements to show how her conceptual model formalizes the actual claims made by individuals and groups seeking justice (Anderson 2014a), and she uses history and sociology to defend her original, republican theory of the firm (2017). Anderson describes this approach to political philosophy as a form of pragmatism (2014a, 2015b). Crucially, the pragmatist method is consistent with the definition of ‘real equality’ and republican political theory. On the pragmatist account also, it is only if equality is conceived as the outcome of free, inter-personal interactions, based notably on the exchange of justifications, that it has a chance of being actually realized. In the 2014 Amherst Lectures Anderson closes the circle by arguing that it is precisely by studying how real social movements have enforced more equality that we can learn how equality can become real (2014a). This is a powerful, performative gesture since it relies on a realist, historical account of actual implementation of equality through activities of contestation (and not just moral argumentation), on the basis of which it can be argued what equality as relational entails.

Philosophical approaches and theories of justice. Students need to engage in critical analysis before they are able to formulate their vision of a just society and engage in social change. This vision will provide professional goals to strive toward and the passion to direct their energies. Theories of justice, such as Rawls (1971), would permit students to consider how they would distribute resources. Rawls’ theory asks what we would consider a fair and just distribution of resources if we were poor. Utilitarianism, in turn, proposes that we should assess consequences of actions based on the greatest good for the greatest number of people. As an alternative philosophical position, deontology (Friedrich, 1949), espouses that there are certain universal rules we need to follow since everyone needs to be respected, no matter what the consequences are for the majority of people. This and other philosophical approaches and theories can help students use critical thinking skills to develop their vision about what is fair and just in structuring society and distributing resources. An experiential exercise to help students think about fairness and justice in the distribution of resources involves assigning students to groups and providing some groups with abundant resources, others with average resources, and others with hardly any resources. They are asked to complete a project and those who complete it first are labeled “winners.” A little more time is allowed until more people can complete the project, and those who finish last are labeled “losers.” Then students can dialogue about how resources are distributed in society at large and what is just and unjust, e.g., affirmative action policies. Critical analysis of power. Students learn how the concentration of wealth allows the few to have inordinate power to set policies and structure the economic and political systems. The intersection of wealth and power in the political system creates a power elite that excludes the vast majority of the population. Students examine the policies, practices and political processes that stratify society, disadvantaging middle and low-income people and bestowing major advantages on the 1% (e.g., union busting, inequitable income tax structure, the personhood status of corporations, gentrification and Citizens vs. United). As a result, the rest of the population often feels powerless and fatalistic about changing the system. This critical analysis helps students appreciate the roots of the oppression of low-income people. The rich can exclude low-income people from having any influence, even to the extent of disallowing their vote and invalidating democracy. In 2013, the Supreme Court eliminated the formula which mandated that states with a historical record of voter discrimination to be monitored by the federal government to be in compliance with equal voting rights (Caldwell, 2015). This law favors those who wish to lessen the voting power of the poor and persons of color, hence increasing the power of the wealthy. Experiential scenarios of the Theatre of the Oppressed (Boal & McBride, 1979) can help students visualize and symbolize misappropriation of power and give students an opening to step in, break up that power, and redistribute influence more equitably. Students see the oppression up close and see themselves as actors capable of creating change. Historical perspective. A historical perspective enables students to have a contextual view of the treatment of the poor, the successful and unsuccessful attempts to ameliorate or eliminate their hardships, and the barriers and strategies used by those with a vested interest in perpetuating poverty. The adoption in England of the 1601 Poor Laws led to greater community responsibility and pejorative labeling. Our treatment of the poor has varied from forcing low-income people into poorhouses (Day & Schiele, 2013), to the War on Poverty effort to give low-income people money directly from the government to decide for themselves how to solve problems related to poverty. Students study the history of social movements, legislative reforms, and social action efforts. Social movements may include unionization, particularly the Rank and File movement led by the social worker Bertha Capen Reynolds (Reisch & Andrews, 2002). The Occupy Wall Street movement sought to raise consciousness about the inequality in society (VanGelder & Staff of Yes! Magazine, 2011). The Kensington Welfare Rights Organization focused on raising awareness, engaging in subversive action (e.g., taking over abandoned housing), and developed a poor people’s university to educate leaders to end poverty (VanWormer, 2004). Legislative reforms during the Great Depression such as Social Security, reduced poverty dramatically (DeWitt, 2010). Past and current social movements, social actions and reforms can help students see that decreasing poverty is realistic and that we can learn from the past to set directions for future change. In addition, students could learn about the struggle of the social work profession over focusing on service provision or on becoming a political force in the country. Studying the Code of Ethics would reveal the social work profession’s aspirations to engage in social and political change domestically and globally. It demonstrates the unique paradigm of social work, the person-in-environment framework. Political practice. Political practice requires an understanding that the oppression of individuals, families and groups is rooted in the societal context and requires critical analysis and actions to change the status quo. This type of practice does not necessarily require engaging in political activities with the government, such as voting or working in elections. It requires engaging in policy-sensitive practice (understanding how policies or lack of policies impact people) or policy-related practice (advocating for clients under the existing policies) or policy practice (developing, proposing, or seeking changes in policy), or any combination of the three (Jansson, 2014). For students concentrating in clinical work, it may mean sensitizing clients to the injustices of policies and empowering them to engage with others to create change. Students analyze the interventions, policies and practices of their internship and work settings, for their potential to reinforce or challenge oppressive systems. In turn, they learn strategies to challenge systems that are insensitive to the needs of the people they serve. It is important to sensitize students to the need of balancing meeting clients’ needs with working for systemic change to better meet those needs. Personal is political. Students, by reflecting on their own lives, can recognize how they have been influenced by the socio-economic-political context and the privileges and/or sanctions/barriers incumbent upon their status. By analyzing the environmental context of their own lives, they are better able to directly understand the impact on their own lives and that of their clients. The dialectical relationship between people and society is explored to assess the influences that community/society has on us and the impacts that people can and have had on it. This dialectical process can be shared with clients to help them feel more powerful and see their problems as societal issues. The woman’s movement serves as a powerful example of consciousness-raising that assessed the given “reality” and replaced it with a reality more true to women’s own experiences. This renaming led to actions creating greater equality for women (Bricker-Jenkins, Gottlieb, & Hooyman, 1991). Reflection/Action. Students’ consciousness is raised by studying theories of poverty and justice, the historical context in the U.S. and in other countries, and the principle that the personal is political. This heightened consciousness enables students to examine the current meta-messages and so-called reality. The often harsh light shed on what is actually occurring creates a desire to be a catalyst for change. The goal is to link reflection and action (praxis). For example, consider the culture of poverty theory that stresses the immutability of poverty and places blame on low-income people for their plight. Students whose consciousness is raised recognize these myths and are more prepared to assist clients to debunk these assumptions and deal with their internalized oppression. Just as students become aware of the larger picture and take action, similarly a parallel process may occur for clients. Students may then assist clients to associate with or form action groups of like-minded people to channel their awareness and anger into action. People power to create change. Students learn that their clients (and they themselves) can bring about change through collective action. Conventional wisdom says that ordinary people must persuade those with formal decision-making power to make change. However, for progressive change to occur, it may need to come from the bottom up, with ordinary people challenging and resisting the ideas and actions of “leaders.” It is empowering to provide examples of people power in the United States and globally so that students do not despair, mistakenly believing that they and their clients are powerless to bring about change. Examples from history and current affairs can help to illustrate this to students (e.g., deposing Marcos in the Philippines, overturning apartheid in South Africa, passing the Americans with Disabilities Act, the civil rights movement, the passage of the Violence against Women Act). A list of local people without formal authority who are making a difference in their own community could be provided to students who would then choose one to interview. From these natural leaders, students could learn what they have done and the length of time it has taken to accomplish their goals. Strategizing to democratize power. Students identify groups in power, the strategies they use to stay in power, and what can be done to redistribute power among the population. The studying of social movements is an excellent way to inform students how to get their ideas on the public agenda, delegitimize existing pronouncements from power-holders, reframe the debate, and persuade the public that alternative ideas are more in line with the best values of the country than are those of the power holders (Moyers, 1990). For example, the “right to work” is a misnomer, obfuscating that it is really about busting unions rather than workers’ rights. Once students can see through deceptions such as this one, they can provide the facts to refute the arguments and compose alternative proposals. The strategy would be to take back the values of security and family well-being that the other side is falsely claiming to uphold and show that their own ideas truly protect workers’ rights. Debunking powerlessness. Students need to believe in their own efficacy in order to bring about social change. Lerner (1986) created the concept of “surplus powerlessness,” to explain people’s feelings and beliefs that they have much less power than they actually have. They act on the basis of that belief and create a self-fulfilling prophecy that no matter what they do, they cannot effect change. For this reason, they believe they should not try. Lerner (1986) states that we learn from a young age and throughout our lives that we need to obey authority and do what we are told to do. If we are idealistic, we risk being chided for naiveté and immaturity. The authority structure is maintained by teaching values of being a team player (i.e., not going outside the standards or group norms), not rocking the boat if you want to be successful, and minding your own business. Students could reflect upon how they have internalized these messages to follow authority and conform to cultural norms. They can do critical self-reflection to determine when such conformity is necessary for their own and the collective well–being and when it is not. They can also reflect the payoffs of powerlessness for themselves (e.g., unaccountability and lack of responsibility for one’s own choices and inaction in the face of injustice). Students could also respond to such questions as, “When have you ever challenged someone in authority who was committing an injustice against someone else?” “How have you ever stood up to people who are making a prejudicial joke?” Alternatively, they could perform role-plays about how they would respond to an unjust situation.

Indeed, the study of social inequality is more urgent than ever, especially if higher education is to fulfill its mission as a promoter of expanded opportunity and well-being. Students, professors and administrators need a deeper understanding of how human disparities have developed, why they persist and how they continue to evolve over time. They also need to understand how the forces of social inequality inform the habits and practices of colleges and universities today. To understand inequality is to understand the modern world and the forces that created it. More to the point, understanding inequality is precondition to overcoming it: that is, to healing the wounds of the past, generating social solidarity and rebuilding a more just society.

Duke University has created a new path for focused study of inequality in the undergraduate curriculum. We are excited to announce a new minor in inequality studies, a program of study that constitutes a collaboration between the department of history and the Samuel DuBois Cook Center on Social Equity. The program, which the university will launch officially during the spring 2021 semester, is believed to be just the second of its kind in higher education in the United States.

Earlier, I discussed the controversy over reforming state law to treat gender as an elective identity. In this final example, I want to approach prefigurative law reform from a different angle and ask: what value is there in a research project acting as if more radical proposals around gender were on the law reform table?47 In their 2017/18 consultation on reforming the Gender Recognition Act, policy-makers in both Scotland and England and Wales solicited public views on how and whether to make gender transitioning easier and less pathologising. Questions posed included: how many transitions can someone have; to what genders; at what age; and through what means?48 Yet, a more fundamental question remained unasked, even as it became tacitly invoked by the move towards self-determination and the growing gender-neutrality of statutory law: Are there good reasons for people to continue to be legally gendered, issuing from the sex registered at birth? This ‘decertification’ question (Cooper & Renz, 2016) is at the heart of a three-year collaborative research project on the Future of Legal Gender (FLaG).49

In Britain, different social relations structure people’s lives, as they also structure the law, but many – including ethnicity, sexuality and religion – do not give rise to a legally assigned personal status, for instance as gay or Jewish. In contrast, the formal legal status accorded sex/gender places people within defined categories and obliges them to undergo official procedures for their status to change. Legal gender status doesn’t just affect those who need to transition or who object to the category they are placed within. The symbolic importance which the law attaches to a binary structure, in requiring birth-sex to be registered, suggests that sex – lived socially as gender – marks a distinction that is human-shaped and that matters. This is not just a critical mattering; it is also a normative claim about who and what we are (see Cooper & Emerton, 2020). But what alternative arrangements are possible? And can a prefigurative law reform project help to anticipate and establish pathways for reform? We might think of prefiguration here as having two dimensions. The first centres on process, and the challenge of undertaking a mock law reform project in collaborative, critically reflexive ways (see also Macdonald & Kong, 2006, p. 27). The second, which I want to consider, involves taking a radical proposal, not currently on the law reform table, and acting as if it was already under review, and so accelerating its detailed consideration (if not its enactment). De Smet’s (2015) discussion of Vygotsky and ‘proleptic learning’ is useful here. Proleptic learning involves ‘anticipat[ing] or imagin[ing] competence through the representation of a future act or development as already existing’ (de Smet, 2015, p. 91). A prefigurative law reform project comes to understand the implications of legal change by acting as if the questions and choices at stake were reasonable to attend to in the present. But does this assume that what we learn today about future possible changes to legal gender status will retain their value? In the case of law reform, the life expectancy of imagined consequences can be brief as conditions change, lessening the benefits of earlier rehearsal. I therefore want to consider the value of prefigurative law reform as an intervention in the present (rather than an effective managing of the future), and to address the significance of the ‘as if’ in this process.

From its earliest years, the disabled people’s movement has argued for a welfare state which would include user controlled, pro-active services, delivered within a framework of rights and entitlements and where there are meaningful rights of redress (see, for example, European Network on Independent Living, 1989). As Mike Oliver says:

[the welfare state remains] an essential ingredient for the development of a truly inclusionary society. That is to say, a society in which both disabled and non-disabled people can participate and realise their full potential and where the notion of disability and all its associated deprivations are little more than a dim and distant memory.

Social protection is an essential condition for social and economic development for all, but particularly for those who experience poverty and social exclusion. Social protection programmes can play a crucial role in alleviating and preventing poverty and vulnerability to secure people's well-being. They can also enhance the productivity, employability and economic development of people by creating better income-earning opportunities for them. Moreover, social protection can foster social inclusion and participation by ensuring effective access to food, health care, education and support services. Thus, well-designed social protection programmes have the potential to directly improve the enjoyment of rights of persons with disabilities. Regrettably, traditional disability-welfare approaches have promoted the opposite, building and spreading charity and medical perspectives in social protection responses. As a result, for too long, many national social protection systems resulted in furthering paternalism, dependence, segregation and institutionalization of persons with disabilities, limiting their opportunities to live independently in their communities. The United Nations (UN) Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities challenges these views, promoting social protection systems that are inclusive of persons with disabilities and which facilitate active citizenship, social inclusion and community participation. The Convention calls on States parties to ensure that persons with disabilities receive equal access to mainstream social protection programmes and services as well as access to specific programmes and services for disability-related needs and expenses such as support services. Against this background, this article aims to discuss why and how States and other stakeholders should ensure the establishment of disability-inclusive social protection systems, in conformity with the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.

A federal jobs guarantee that includes people with disabilities, while also fighting for equitable compensation, will better the economic reality for those living in poverty. A jobs guarantee will not force people with disabilities to work, but simply guarantee that any person who wants to work will be able to do so while also receiving benefits.

Fair compensation must also be part of that guarantee. Raising the federal minimum wage to at least $15 an hour and eliminating subminimum wages for 321,000 workers with disabilities would similarly help combat the high rates of poverty among people with disabilities.