The Oxford Handbook of Social Welfare in the Global South

The Oxford Handbook of Social Welfare in the Global South offers a critical examination of social protection systems across the Global South, interrogating their role in addressing inequality, mitigating crises, and fostering transformative development. Structured around three core themes--equity, resilience, and systemic change--the volume explores how social protection policies are designed, contested, and reconfigured in diverse political and economic contexts. Moving beyond technocratic assessments, it situates social protection within broader struggles over rights, governance, and social justice, revealing both the promises and limitations of these systems in an era of compounding global challenges.

This handbook bring together leading scholars and practitioners to dissect the interplay between social protection and development across Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East. Contributions interrogate how cash transfers, healthcare reforms, and labor policies function as instruments of both stability and exclusion, while probing the political tensions that shape their expansion or retrenchment. Case studies-from South Africa's contested welfare reforms to Thailand's rapid scaling of universal child grants-demonstrate how institutional legacies, advocacy coalitions, and crises reshape policy trajectories. At the same time, the volume highlights persistent gaps in coverage, particularly for informal workers, women, and displaced populations, arguing for rights-based approaches that transcend temporary fixes.

Pushing the debate on social protection in bold new directions, this volume challenges conventional assumptions about targeting, conditionality, and fiscal sustainability while foregrounding questions of power, participation, and historical contingency. Taken together, the volume not only maps the current landscape of social protection but also redefines its future-as a dynamic field of governance, a site of political struggle, and a potential catalyst for more inclusive futures.