Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant: Only the 'Truly Needy' Need Apply: Intersections between Policy and Poverty in the Case of Peru

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Brown University doctoral student, Kristin Skrabut, with the guidance of Dr. Kay B. Warren, will undertake research on the development, implementation, and effects of antipoverty policies, from the perspectives of both those who design and implement the policies, and those who are poor. The research is important because to create more effective programs to alleviate povery it is necessary to understand how the policies created by bureaucratic organizations connect with the beliefs and livelihood strategies of the impoverished. This study examines what happens to policies as they are disseminated across contexts and considers how micro-practices are linked to macro-processes. The research will be carried out in two sites in Peru, an urban shantytown whose residents have a long history of poverty, and a city only recently impoverished by the devastating 2007 earthquake in 2007. Peru is a good site for the research because the Peruvian government has consciously constructed a two-pronged policy of formalization and focalization, which both formally gives rights to poor citizens and also defines only some as "truly" deserving of assistance." This kind of policy is found in many nations and so the results will be generalizable to other contexts. Using ethnographic techniques of participant observation, semi-structured interviewing, and discourse analysis, the researcher will investigate the interface of antipoverty policies and the livelihood strategies of potential beneficiaries in these two urban extreme poverty zones. Through this comparison, this study will answer the following questions: (1) What considerations govern how the "truly needy" are defined across different social sectors and bureaucratic agencies, and how do acts of measuring poverty contribute to this definition? (2) How do formalization and focalization (inclusion and exclusion) interact to shape the way that poverty is understood and how poverty reduction programs are implemented? (3) In the age of democratic decentralization and globalization, how are designations of the "truly needy" complicated by pre-existing understandings of race and class in urban areas and the presence of other state-like entities? Research findings will be of interest to policy makers at national and international levels and personnel working in development and poverty alleviation. The resarch funding also supports the education of a social scientist.