{"id":15688,"date":"2015-07-27T20:31:18","date_gmt":"2015-07-27T19:31:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.glass-cage.com\/dianas_blog\/?p=15688"},"modified":"2021-01-13T10:42:25","modified_gmt":"2021-01-13T10:42:25","slug":"france-wants-to-outlaw-discrimination-against-the-poor-is-that-so-ridiculous","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glass-cage.com\/dianas_blog\/2015\/07\/27\/france-wants-to-outlaw-discrimination-against-the-poor-is-that-so-ridiculous\/","title":{"rendered":"France wants to outlaw discrimination against the poor \u2013 is that so ridiculous?"},"content":{"rendered":"

I like this idea, but i don’t think we will be seeing a UK version anytime soon.<\/i><\/p>\n

\n

\"PoweredThis article titled “France wants to outlaw discrimination against the poor \u2013 is that so ridiculous?” was written by Frances Ryan, for theguardian.com on Monday 27th July 2015 17.03 UTC<\/a><\/p>\n

In France it could soon be illegal to discriminate against people in poverty<\/a>. Under proposed legislation \u2013 already approved by the senate and likely to be passed by the chamber of deputies \u2013 it would be an offence in France to \u201cinsult the poor\u201d or to refuse them jobs, healthcare or housing.<\/p>\n

Similar laws banning discrimination on the grounds of social and economic origin already exist in Belgium and Bolivia, but the French version is said to be the most far-reaching. Anyone found guilty of discrimination against those suffering from \u201cvulnerability resulting from an apparent or known economic situation\u201d would face a maximum sentence of three years in prison and a fine of \u20ac45,000 (\u00a332,000).<\/p>\n

It is easy to judge the proposed French law as showing the worst excesses of the state, or to bemoan the practicalities of how difficult it could be to implement. But most of us are content to outlaw discrimination on the grounds of race, religion, or sex. Is it so ridiculous to add poverty to that list? And if it does feel ridiculous, why is that?<\/p>\n

Whether it\u2019s the discrimination of people in poverty or how government should respond to it, this is not a problem just for other countries. \u201cPeople think that because we are poor, we must be stupid,\u201d Or\u00e9ane Chapelle, an unemployed 31-year-old from Nancy, eastern France, told Le Nouvel Observateur. Micheline Adobati, 58, her neighbour, who is a single mother with no job and five children, said: \u201cI can\u2019t stand social workers who tell me that they\u2019re going to teach me how to have a weekly budget.\u201d One study reported by<\/a> The Times found that 9% of GPs, 32% of dentists and 33% of opticians in Paris refused to treat benefit claimants who lacked private medical insurance. Doctors say they are \u201creluctant to take on such patients for fear that they will not get paid\u201d.<\/p>\n

Does any of this sound familiar? These are attitudes \u2013 and even outright discrimination \u2013 that have been growing in Britain for some time. You can hear it in stories about local authorities monitoring how much people drink or smoke<\/a> before awarding emergency housing payments. Or when politicians respond to a national food bank crisis by saying<\/a> the poor are going hungry because they don\u2019t know how to cook. It is there in the fact that it\u2019s now all too common for landlords to refuse to rent flats to people on benefits<\/a>. Britain is front and centre of its own discrimination of the poor \u2013 whether that\u2019s low-income workers, benefit claimants, or the recurring myth that these are two separate species.<\/p>\n

Economic inequality cannot survive without cultural prejudice. The media and political rhetoric surrounding the new round of cuts \u2013 from the benefit cap to child tax credits \u2013 shows this well enough. Benefit claimants \u201cslouch\u201d on handouts as hardworking taxpayers toil away to pay for them. Families on benefits should reproduce \u2013 or \u201cbreed\u201d \u2013 as little as possible. Benefit sanctions \u2013 a system in such dire straits that Iain Duncan Smith\u2019s own advisers have warned that it needs to be reviewed<\/a> \u2013 are based on the very premise that the feckless poor need an incentive to get themselves out of poverty.<\/p>\n

It is reflective of the success of the demonisation of people on low incomes or benefits that discrimination against these people could be seen as less damning than when it happens to other groups. Equally, to believe that \u201cthe poor\u201d do not deserve protection from such prejudice buys into the myth favoured by our own government: poverty is a personal choice that the individual deserves to be punished for.<\/p>\n

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010<\/p>\n

Published via the Guardian News Feed<\/a> plugin<\/a> for WordPress.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In France, denying jobs, healthcare or housing to people in poverty is well on the way to becoming illegal. The UK could learn from such a crackdown on demonisation<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,48,255,233,254,111,195,281,110,109,66,194,68],"class_list":["post-15688","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-musings","tag-article","tag-comment","tag-discrimination-at-work","tag-europe","tag-france","tag-frances-ryan","tag-money","tag-opinion","tag-poverty","tag-social-exclusion","tag-society","tag-work-careers","tag-world-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6NRDR-452","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":897,"url":"https:\/\/glass-cage.com\/dianas_blog\/2010\/09\/19\/stigma-and-discrimination\/","url_meta":{"origin":15688,"position":0},"title":"Stigma and discrimination","author":"diana Stone","date":"September 19, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Stigma and discrimination Stigma and discrimination can have a huge impact on the lives of people affected by depression and, for many, they are the single biggest barrier to recovery. 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