role of vulnerability in priority need, broadly and specific inclusion

• original design, intent and application of the priority need test?

policies which create or exacerbate vulnerability e.g. housing insecurity following welfare reforms, sanctioning

what role is played by comparison e.g. in the Pereira test and subsequent legislation

what definitions of vulnerability are used or assumed in legislative and policy terms

what is it about institutionalisation that leads to vulnerability? does the fact that we apply the label 'vulnerable' to people who have been in institutions tell us something about the nature of vulnerability itself?

and what does it mean if welsh legislation 'missed out' rough sleepers, who are presumably the most vulnerable under some definitions?

• S36 universalist view of need: "We are vulnerable creatures clinging together against the dark, but may be assured that the wisest among us will ensure the security and protection of the weakest. Needs are held in common; they are shared by all and are interpreted for us through such social institutions as family, community, church and state."
• S38 "The republican discourse is soli- daristic in that the citizen is constructed as a vulnerable associating subject who looks to the social collective towhich she belongs and on which she depends for mutual protection against shared risks"
• S39 "At the intersection between solidaristic citi- zenship and claims-based demands, the paternalistic approach to need comes into play, demanding or accepting protective rights to welfare. Needs are held in common, reflecting an imperative of con- formity and stability in a hierarchically ordered society. The right to have such needs met is claimed on the basis that one belongs to and accepts one’s place within the social collectivity. Such rights arise because the common denominator shared by all members of society is a degree of present or potential vulnerability. "

p41
Concerns have been voiced that such convertibility may not be straightforward, insofar as it requires that those who are most vulnerable actively assert, demand and seek their rights (see chapter two and Goodin, 1986, p255).

p55
It was anticipated that the homeless men sought to take part in the research would, to a greater or lesser extent, be vulnerable, with the sample likely to include individuals who suffer with addiction issues and/or mental health problems.

Children
p445
vulnerability in children. Their ‘needs-based construction of vulnerability’ acknowledges complex intrisic and extrinsic factors and ‘has parallels with . . . “more fluid constructions of diversity”’ (Jopling and Vincent, 2015: 15)

Agency
p445
wider notions of impaired agency, risk and harm are implicated in typical depictions

Conclusion
p453
I have aimed to showthat as both description and explanation of experience, vulnerability has crept horizontally and vertically into policy, everyday life, and institutional life, especially in education. This has created vulnerability as a predominantly psycho- emotional concern rather than a structural and political one

Social control and paternalism
p469
Given concerns about theway inwhich vulnerability discourse may be used to create dangerous new categorisations and binaries, and to effect social control and paternalistic intervention in the lives of those classed as vulnerable, it is important that we do not valorise vulnerability as a guide for new modes of legal and policy reform. This is perhaps most salient in contexts such as disability and adult social care, where the concept of vulnerability is eyed with suspicion due to its perceived synonymous relationship with weakness and powerlessness, and its traditional ascription to disabled people to enable controlling interventions

p475
These concerns capture the sense that vulnerability as an indicator in social policy
can be dangerous, and may lead to interventions which reinforce power positions, which prevent the ability to develop resilience or personal preventive strategies, and which work to normalise ‘acceptable’ behaviours. However,

p473-474

The central point here is that far from reinforcing categories of ‘vulnerable’ groups, the universal understanding of vulnerability as shared ontological experience allows us to begin to dismantle and question the binaries, categories and resultant legal and policy responses currently engendered and perpetuated in law. It helps us to reframe our ontological experience as a shared and often positive interaction between our bodies and our context, including through relations with others and institutions. It also brings to the fore otherwise obscured or hidden institutional or systemic elements which can exacerbate the experience of vulnerability.

A number of theorists are challenging traditional approaches to vulnerability, which saw it as a group or status based concept, linked to an inherent condition such as age or disability, and seeking to situate the concept within understandings of all individuals as interdependent, relational and, as such, universally ontologically. At the forefront of this is the work of Martha Fineman who has sought to re-imagine, at a political level, what we mean by vulnerability (Fineman, 2008). Central to Fineman’s thesis is the notion of ontological ‘universal vulnerability’, advancing the idea that all human beings, by the very nature of being social beings, are vulnerable. Whilst

Social determinacy and social risks
p485-486
Vulnerability is then a socially determined condition of exposure to social risks that undermines material living standards and affects the sense of identity and self. Therefore,weargue thatwhilst vulnerabilitymay be regarded as a universal condition,
and hence a potentiality to be experienced by all individuals, we need to perceive it as socially determined and necessarily shaped by the environment in which individuals or groups exist and which determines to what extent this potential vulnerability actually manifests itself and consequently affects well-being and life chances. The more resilient individuals or groups are, as a result of being supported by social institutions such as families, local communities, stable employment or the social protection system, the less vulnerable they are in practical terms

Flourishing as an opposite
p457
There is, however, a critical literature that seeks to understand the social, economic and political relationships that produce vulnerability and its potential opposite, flourishing. This article draws on this theoretical literature, focusing particularly on relational accounts of autonomy, capabilities and functioning, and the role of societal institutions

Political economy of vulnerability
p457-458
Critiques of this individualistic and rational use of the term have sought to bring political economy back into an understanding of vulnerability. The vulnerable subject is positioned in relation to economic liberalism and increasingly selective state welfare provision (Brown, 2014, 2015). Similarly, McLaughlin (2012) notes the increasing emphasis on individual vulnerable identities at the expense of collective accounts, neglecting political, social and economic factors that shape experience in relation to societal structures. Contemporary characterisations purposefully ignore howvulnerability is produced and reproduced in society, emphasising, as Brown et al. (this issue) elaborate, an account of vulnerability imbued with normative assumptions about deservingness, deviance and deficit

Capacity and basic needs
p464-465
Now labelled meeting basic needs (Doyal and Gough, 1991), this dimension extends explanation to recognise a broader consideration of services, goods and wants. These include intermediate basic needs such as childhood security and safety.... As Doyal and Gough (1991) emphasise a basic needs approach requires explanation of the capacity for action through agency and the ways in which this might be constrained or liberated.

The second dimension, drawing on capability theory (Sen, 1999), is relabelled as
capacity to be reflecting the extension in this discussion to understand the opportunities and constraints individuals experience in exercising functions to address vulnerabilities or to flourish

Each of these dimensions of vulnerability cannot be divorced from the third
dimension, access to service providers... the cases in this article highlight how inequalities persist and may often be exacerbated for individuals who are unable to develop relationships to connect the three dimensions of the longitudinal space of vulnerability elaborated. They are not able to act to bring about change to reduce vulnerabilities.

Stigma
p8
In discussions of public responsibility, the concept of vulnerability is sometimes used to define groups of fledgling or stigmatized subjects, designated as "populations."' 9 Vulnerability is typically associated with victimhood, deprivation, dependency, or pathology.

p8-9
In contrast, I want to claim the term "vulnerable" for its potential in
describing a universal, inevitable, enduring aspect of the human condition that must be at the heart of our concept of social and state responsibility. Vulnerability thus freed from its limited and negative associations is a powerful conceptual tool with the potential to define an obligation for the state to ensure a richer and more robust guarantee of equality than is currently afforded under the equal protection model.

Embodiment
p9
Vulnerability initially should be understood as arising from our
embodiment, which carries with it the ever-present possibility of harm, injury, and misfortune from mildly adverse to catastrophically devastating events, whether accidental, intentional, or otherwise. Individuals can attempt to lessen the risk or mitigate the impact of such events, but they cannot eliminate their possibility. Understanding vulnerability begins with the realization that many such events are ultimately beyond human control.25 Our embodied humanity carries with it the ever-constant possibility of
dependency as a result of disease, epidemics, resistant viruses, or other biologically-based catastrophes. Our bodies are also vulnerable to other forces in our physical environment: There is the constant possibility that we can be injured and undone by errant weather systems, such as those that produce flood, drought, famine, and fire. These are "natural" disasters beyond our individual control to prevent.

Structural interaction
p10
Because we are positioned differently within a web of economic and institutional relationships, our vulnerabilities range in magnitude and potential at the individual level. Undeniably universal, human vulnerability is also particular: it is experienced uniquely by each of us and this experience is greatly influenced by the quality and quantity of resources we possess or can command.27 Significantly, the realization that no individual can avoid vulnerability entirely spurs us to look to societal institutions for assistance. Of course, society cannot eradicate our vulnerability either. However, society can and does mediate, compensate, and lessen our vulnerability through programs, institutions, and structures. Therefore, because both our personal and our social lives are marked and shaped by vulnerability, a vulnerability analysis must have both individual and institutional components.

Vulnerability analysis
p20
A vulnerability analysis greatly magnifies state responsibility for the institutions and structures the state constructs and utilizes. Vulnerability analysis demands that the state give equal regard to the shared vulnerability of all individuals, transcending the old identity categories as a limitation on the recognition that the state has a vital role to play in protecting against discrimination. A vulnerability analysis begins by first considering how the state has responded to, shaped, enabled, or curtailed its institutions. Has it acted toward those institutions in ways that are consistent with its obligation to support the implementation and maintenance of a vital and robust equality regime-a regime in which individuals have a true opportunity to develop the range of assets they need to give them resilience in the face of their vulnerabilities?

Sarewitz et al 2003

• advocate vulnerability-informed policies as opposed to risk-avoidance policies as a means of mitigating the impact of extreme events
• p810: William Hooke of the American Meteorological
  Society has suggested that vulnerability reduction can be framed in terms of fundamental human rights— that modern society has an obligation to ensure that all citizens live in homes and communities that provide a basic level of protection from the threat of disasters

Prowse 2003

• p6: use of the word ‘vulnerability’ encourages a view of societies and people as ‘passive’ and non-responsive (Hewitt in Quarantelli 1998). In this sense the condition of ‘vulnerability’ appears to emphasise weakness, a lack of agency, and an inability to cope among ‘affected’ societies and people (Ibid., Bankoff 2001).

Prowse 2003: 12
Key to the discussions of vulnerability and risk in the CPRC literature is the suggestion by Hulme et al. (2001) that:
“What poor people are concerned about is not so much that their level of income, consumption or capabilities are low, but that they are likely to experience highly stressful declines in these levels, to the point of premature death. This approach suggests that poverty can be seen as the probability (actual or perceived) that a household will suddenly (but perhaps also gradually) reach a position with which it is unable to cope, leading to catastrophe” (p.9).
This definition of poverty can also be seen as a particularly accurate proxy for a definition of vulnerability, especially due to its emphasis on the risk (whether real or imagined) of being unable to cope

• risk seen as a precursor to vulnerability
  
  

p21
As noted above, the implicit definition of vulnerability in the ‘Meanings’ paper as ‘the probability of an inability to cope’, frames the discussion and this highlights the importance of engaging with the relationship between risk and vulnerability.

Prowse 2003: 21
We have seen how increased attention is currently being paid to the ‘concept’ of vulnerability, and that just as the multi-dimensional nature of poverty is a complex subject to unravel, so vulnerability is also a phenomenon which is extremely hard to capture. For instance, Webb and Harinarayan (1999) assert that “assessing vulnerability is like trying to measure something that is not there. It is an absence of security, basic needs, social protection, political power and coping options” (p.298).

See also Prowse 2003: 22
The starting point in disaggregating vulnerability is the internal/external distinction proposed by Chambers (1983, 1989):
“Vulnerability thus has two sides: an external side of risks, shocks, and stress to which an individual is subject to; and an internal side which is defenceless, meaning a lack of means to cope without damaging loss” (Chambers 1989, p.1).

p23
Moser (1998) also utilises a two-step model of vulnerability but uses the concepts of sensitivity and resilience to significantly change the focus and emphasis of Chamber’s internal/external distinction

Levy-Vroelant 2010: 445
The ‘social paradigm’ itself is undergoing transformation with the importation of the concept of vulnerability from the field of development (Thomas, 2010). This shared matrix (being the concept of vulnerability and its corollary, that of risk)

Levy-Vroelant 2010: 447
, the concept highlights a deficiency, a lack and a failure (of
health, rights and power). But, according to her, it is based on two sources, the first being psychological and medical, and the second ‘humanitarian’. The fact is that the concept of vulnerability,which has largely entered political language as well as that of scientific research in the social sciences, is used to qualify individuals or groups that, as a result of their characteristics, need to be helped and assisted.

See also Levy-Vroelant 2010: 448
The development in European social states of the concept of frailty with regards the elderly is contemporary with that of risk, with the latter understood to be the basis for access to or eligibility for social assistance, an approach that takes the place of having the right to assistance (Beck, 1992), explains H´
el` ene Thomas. The fact of being exposed to stressors and of the individual not being able to adequately cope due to physical,mental or social difficulties (similar to victims of catastrophes or poverty) prevents the individual from efficiently dealing with a situation resulting from risks and hazards. In the best of cases, the social and political use of vulnerability invites the search for an antidote from within the resources of each individual. In the worst of cases, the state becomes more penal and imposes compliant behaviour through social control or even repression (Wacquant, 2009). In either case, the doctrine of vulnerability refocuses public policies around intensified personal accountability rather than on rights and collective protection systems

Levy-Vroelant 2010:449

The impossibility of having a general and operational definition of vulnerable groups is due to the link with the concept of risk which, by definition, proceeds by estimation and is largely dependent on context. The lack of efficiency in classifica- tion, no matter howsophisticated it might be, also results from the placing of persons and groups into competition for access to rare housing resources. The more that the definition of vulnerable populations is linked to the concept of risk, the more it is encompassing. The FEANTSA categories (ETHOS), for instance, cover all situa- tions concerning bad housing, lack of housing and the insecurity of housing status. As a result of the concept of specified social risk, which defines a large number of groups that are vulnerable because the people are at risk (children, isolated individ- uals, single-parent households, immigrants, the disabled, the elderly, etc.), housing policy priorities tend to dilute and enlarge poverty by considering the difficult living conditions of people rather than just their financial insecurity

2010: 1
"Vulnerability is posited as the characteristic that positions us in relation to each other as human beings and also suggests a relationship of responsibility between state and individual"

p9-10

• uses universal vulnerability to ground state responsibility to ensure meaningful equality and autonomy of its citizens