Paper short abstract:

In this paper, I analyze views on poverty and citizenship present in the Bolsa Familia Program public debate. I draw on content from newspaper articles from 2004 to 2012 and interviews.

Paper long abstract:

The establishment of a minimum income has been a point of controversy in Brazilian politics and society since the last 20 years. On one hand, advocates for the implementation of such a policy have characterized it as a right inherent to every human being, this way, framing it in terms of human rights. On the other hand, it has been rationalized as a matter of rights of citizenship. This last perspective argues that providing people with standards enough to enable them to exercise their rights of citizenship is one of the main duties a State is compromised with.

The main point here is the ability of the preponderant discourses on needs to detach poverty from some of the sources of socio-economic and political inequality to which it is related. By stressing some sets of problems and setting aside others, each approach makes a choice for conflicting conceptions on: The relationship between state and society, the relations between global and local and what belongs to the public sphere and what concerns to the private realm in matters of needs.

In this paper, I present an overview of the debate on the "Bolsa Família" Program from 2004 to 2012, and briefly discuss the main reasoning present in it. Discussions concerning questions such as: "who is entitled to the program", "what should be provided, food or money", and "how to make the poor more productive" are informed by theories, and ideologies. What do they tell us about social consensus on poverty and inequality in Brazil?