Book launch: Buying and Selling the Poor
Buying and Selling the Poor goes behind the scenes of Australia’s multibillion-dollar welfare-to-work industry to explore the human impacts of privatisation and how Australia responds to unemployment and disadvantage. Join the authors as they discuss the fieldwork behind the book and why, despite decades of reform, Australia’s employment services system struggles to support so few long-term unemployed people into work.
Join the authors as they talk about Buying and Selling the Poor, a landmark study of Australia's privatised welfare-to-work market.
Tickets can be booked at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/book-launch-buying-and-selling-the-poor-tickets-320386874767
About the authors
Siobhan O’Sullivan is Associate Professor in the School of Social Sciences, UNSW. She has a broad interest in the welfare state, 'mission drift', and the delivery of contracted employment services in Australia, the UK, and around the world. She also has an ongoing interest in animal welfare policy and environmental ethics. Her previous books include Getting Welfare-to-Work (2015), Animals, Equality and Democracy (2009), as well as the edited collections The Political Turn in Animal Ethics (2016) and Contracting-out welfare services (2015).
Mark Considine is Redmond Barry Distinguished Professor of Political Science in the School of Social and Political Studies, University of Melbourne. He is best known for prize-winning research on public sector reform, new methods of governance and the street-level delivery of public programs. Mark’s previous books include Getting Welfare-to-Work (2015), Networks Innovation and Public Policy (2009), Making Public Policy (2005), Enterprising States (2001), and The Careless State (forthcoming, 2022).
Michael McGann is Lecturer in Political Science in the School of Social and Political Sciences, University of Melbourne. His research focuses on welfare governance and the street-level delivery of active labour market programs, with a particular focus on the intersection between marketisation and the intensification of social policy turns towards mutual obligations and welfare conditionality.