Vulnerability and Marginality in Human Services by Henrickson, Mark and Fouché, Christa (Book review)

Abstract

This book, comprising nine chapters, provides a detailed exploration of the concepts of vulnerability and marginality in human services. It examines how policy makers apply these labels to groups of people as if they were static or fixed human characteristics in order to manage them for social policy purposes. In fact, these categories are temporal and most people are vulnerable at some points in their lives. The authors, who are social work academics in Aotearoa New Zealand, believe that professionals and human services organisations use the descriptors of vulnerability and marginality generally in deficit‐focused, negative and ‘othering’ ways. In so doing, they ignore how political and social circumstances create vulnerability and deliberately position people at the margins of community and social participation.