Humiliation and Child Poverty

Abstract

As a matter of justice children have several claims and are entitled to a range of goods. In this paper I will argue that one of these goods is positive self-relations (self-confidence, self-respect, and self-esteem). Since poverty during childhood distorts the proper development and experience of these three self-relations it violates children’s claims to justice. I will defend this argument in three steps: (1) I will introduce and examine three types of positive self-relations (self-confidence, self-respect, and self-esteem) and argue that children are entitled to all of these; (2) I will move on to examine the concept of humiliation and argue that acts of humiliating are unjust even if the victims do not experience them as humiliating; (3) finally, I will provide six arguments as to why it is humiliating for children to live in poverty. The six arguments presented in the last section are: (a) poverty is connected to other forms of injustice; (b) poverty is undeserved and represents an arbitrary feature of affected children for which they cannot be held responsible; (c) poverty is widespread among children; (d) poverty is imposed on children because they are part of a larger social group; (e) poverty is an enduring humiliation and not just an occasional incident; (f) the humiliation caused by poverty targets the particular vulnerability of children as developing beings. Based on the humiliating nature of poverty, which violates children’s claims to the aforementioned types of positive self-relations, I can conclude that it is unjust for children to live in poverty.

This chapter is a revised and significantly expanded version of the paper: “Humiliation and Justice for Children Living in Poverty”, published in: Azafea – Revista de Filosofia 16 (2014), 57–72. http://revistas.usal.es/index.php/0213-3563/article/view/13031/13395. Reprinted with permission of the journal.