Conclusion

Abstract

While it is certainly true that the development of European welfare states from the late nineteenth century onwards resulted in the protection of more and more of their citizens against a growing number of risks, it is also true that, at the same time, exclusionary regimes persisted, changed their form and rationale, and frequently intensified their hold on those on the margins of society. This book analyses such inclusionary and exclusionary regimes and practices from the specific perspective of how the emerging European welfare states perceived and treated the people who had always lived on their margins — beggars, vagrants, criminals, prisoners and the mentally handicapped. Could they profit from the development of the welfare state or did they in fact miss out on opportunities offered by it? How does our understanding of the formation of European welfare states at the turn of the twentieth century benefit from such a perspective and what does this tell us about the differences between them? Whereas the introduction to this volume concentrates primarily on the research contexts concerning the social construction of deviance, these concluding remarks will try to link some of this volume’s findings to other research strands on European welfare regimes and welfare policies in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.