disputas sobre el gobierno de la pobreza en España durante la Gran Interrupción

Abstract

In this article, the discourses around wealth redistribution policies in Spain based on the case of disputes around the Minimum Living Income during the Great Interruption —the period of health and economic crisis from March to September 2020— are analyzed. To do this, the most meaningful moments in the evolution of the public debate on the policy are synthesized and analyzed: the outbreak of the pandemic in March, the approval of the Minimum Living Income in June, and the first phase of implementation of the policy until September of 2020. The analysis of political, media and activist discourses shows the disputes in the ways of tackling poverty, on the one hand, with the initial openings of the political imagination to innovative policies —such as the Universal Basic Income or the Quarantine Income— or the normalization of an approach to the expansion of social and economic rights, and on the other hand, the transversal affirmation of the work ethic, the narratives of stigmatization of people without income, the modes of control, bureaucratization and government of the poverty, and the technocratic justification of the policy as an improvement of the minimum income system of the regions. Despite the continuities and discontinuities in the discursive frameworks, it is concluded that the disputes analyzed around the Minimum Vital Income express some of the social tensions derived from the trends of growing inequality since the 2008 crisis, which have not been reversed to date