ABSTRACT
The idea that individuals or groups of people who share certain common characteristics can be categorised as ‘vulnerable’ has become an established part of the debate about the development of effective social policy interventions. In a time of limited resources, the argument runs, it is sensible to focus time, expertise and taxpayers’ money in the form of benefit payments on those people most at risk of harm. This is not, of course, a new idea. As Samantha Williams (2011) has pointed out in her study of the English poor laws of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, if it is possible to describe the key attributes that make a person, family or whole community ‘vulnerable’, it becomes easier to make more resources available to them and, crucially, easier to withdraw such support if their behaviour or actions transgress the boundaries of what is deemed to be socially acceptable.
