From the trenches: experiences after a year of minimum living income

Abstract

This article is the result of a joint construction resulting from the shared experience of vulnerable people affected by the public policies that have implemented the minimum vital income (MVI) —as applicants and/or recipients— and citizen platforms for the defense of citizens’ rights that have accompanied them in the process. The MVI is a benefit aimed at preventing the risk of poverty and social exclusion of people who lack basic economic resources to cover their basic needs. This benefit is aimed at very specific groups and subject to a series of requirements. In conversation with the co-signers of the article, the following pages focus on the need to propose a view that, beyond the regulatory framework and media discourse surrounding the insertion income policies, focuses on the administrative procedures and bureaucratic practices that shape the daily management of these benefits, giving rise to situations of openness or closure that condition access to social rights. Insofar as the IMV is configured as a nascent subjective right, its implementation constitutes a privileged place from which, precisely, to analyze the regulatory and bureaucratic deployment that accompanies it, as well as the political uses that have been made of it.