Impoverishment, the new and old poor. A palimpsest of fuzzy inscriptions

Abstract

This paper aims at setting out a reflection about the conditions of poverty and the processes of impoverishment in Latin America. It starts from empirical data as approximation, but it focuses especially on a qualitative perspective that intends to study how the images and figures of the poor and poverty are consolidated in the region from the perspective of the neoliberal management (and then briefly commenting the so-called “post neoliberalism”), taking three focal points in particular: a discussion on the constitution of the welfare State in Latin America and the consolidation (and later neoliberal destitution) of the future and the promise as its axis, related to the development of the citizenry figures; legitimization ( and later delegitimization) of the figure of the worker as a model of “honorable” poverty, referring to the model of social mobility in terms of center-periphery reversibility; and its progressive appearance in the setting of the impoverished middle class, a situation that contributes unprecedented elements to the matter at hand.