Contested Approaches in the Study of Poverty: The Canadian Case and the Argument for Inclusion

Abstract

Using data from the Canadian case, we suggest that approaches to poverty in post-industrial society which tend to focus on a growing underclass or a systemically excluded group ought to be put into question. In its place emerges a picture of a highly mobile, internally heterogeneous social category, whose percentage of the population remains relatively stable even as its internal composition undergoes continuous change, a result as much of economic as non-economic factors. The contemporary poor, in this respect, resemble other sections of the stratification order and form part of the wider process of inclusion that characterizes modern societies in the current period.