Identify to regulate. Meanings and practices of social assistance in republican Madrid.
Keywords:
Urban politics, Second republic, Unemployment, Social assistanceAbstract
The aim of this article is to analyse the features and meanings of the municipal policies developed during the Second Republic in Madrid in order to set in motion formal mechanisms of social assistance around two closely interconnected issues within the urban sphere: poverty and unemployment. Relying on several unreleased records of Madrid City Council, this paper will discuss about the way in which both problems were officially conceptualised and addressed through practical applications. In order to fulfil this purpose, we analyse the social classifications and the empirical procedures that civic authorities articulated to identify and regulate the population groups that, driven by poverty, were liable to receive the social aids granted at a local level.