Social exclusion and labour
Authors: Guimarães Ana Paula , Rebelo Fernanda 
Published: April 2022

Objectives: This paper aims to analyse the evolution of the Welfare State by looking at the intersection between its current reconfigurations in face of great societal crises (2008-09 and 2020) and the emergence of a suspicion speech regarding deservingness of different beneficiaries to the social protection regimes. Method: Critical analysis based on literature review focusing on the genesis of Welfare State in light of the recent transformations occurred within societies, aiming to understand the dimension of deservingness (its conceptualization, application and variables) in the access to the social protection system. Results: The Welfare State is a 20th Century heritage that allowed for the development of social policies grounded on the Keynesian defense of the principle of Universal rights and in the understanding of social solidarity as one of the most visible faces of social justice. Positioned as the core of the social welfare paradigm, the universal social protection system has functioned for three decades as the mechanism for dealing with social risks, simultaneously potentializing social cohesion. A result of several types of mutations, being the crises of the second half/last quartet of the 20th century and the two already remarkable crises of the 21st Century, the social protection systems have suffered from significant influences that have affected their configuration and presuppositions. Above all, it is highlighted the change to an activation model in which the underlying postulate is that of the selectivity based on the logic of deservingness. Work is now a constitutionally enshrined right, but it has not always been so. From a historical point of view, work, as an instrument of public power, was a weapon of the State at the service of the regeneration of people who were able to work. From a political-economic perspective, work was seen as a source of subsistence and, simultaneously, as a weapon to control the rural exodus in order to avoid the shortage of agricultural products and, consequently, hunger. At the same time, compulsory labour guaranteed public peace and reinforced good social habits, with the aim of regenerating people and guaranteeing a persevering image and good organization of Portuguese society towards the outside world. In this research, we focused our attention on the perspective of imposed labour by virtue of the adoption of social and economic policies by the public power that historically decided it was convenient and adequate. The main objectives were to analyse the protection of labour and the worker in the Constitution, as well as to study the issues related to imposed labour and the repression of begging, in a historical-evolutive perspective. Some economic benefits granted by the State nowadays were also analysed. The methodology followed to achieve the outlined objectives was based both on documental analysis, mainly, on legal sources, such as international instruments, the Portuguese Constitution and ordinary law, and on an important part of the doctrine, on this very vast subject, with recourse to that which was considered the most adequate, given the characteristics of the present study, complemented with the culling and processing of empirical data concerning economic and other social benefits provided by Social Security. The results obtained revealed that discrimination and inequality are often linked to factors of disadvantage or social and/or economic vulnerability of certain people or groups of people, which distances them from the perimeter considered sufficiently dignified and dignifying for the human being, far from the desirable degree of well-being. It was concluded that the granting of survival benefits and the so-called social insertion income by the social security system tries to dilute the poverty threshold. Other support of a non-pecuniary nature is also granted, among them, the monitoring and definition of insertion programs and life projects, with the aim of contributing to obtaining employment and social integration. There has been a shift from a view of mandatory work as a duty to serve the purposes of the public authorities to work as a right to self-sufficiency and self-realization for the individual, with the state responsible for ensuring this right.