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LATVIA’S HIDDEN NEW POOR SOUP KITCHEN USERS IN RIGA Henriette Tveit Thesis in partial fulfilment of the Cand. Polit. degree in Human Geography Department of Sociology and Human Geography University of Oslo November 2006 I would like to especially thank the users and staff at the Riga soup kitchens, who despite their difficult situation shared their personal stories, their hopes, dreams and despairs. A special word of thanks goes to the sisters at the Missionaries of Charity, who welcomed me with open arms and gave me the opportunity to give something back as a volunteer at their soup kitchen, and to Laura, my translator, who proved invaluable to this study and also became a dear friend. I would also like to thank my family and friends old and new in Norway, Latvia and elsewhere for all their help and support, keeping my spirit up on the long and winding road towards the completion of this thesis. Finally, a word of praise is due to Erik, who was the reason for me moving to Latvia in the first place, supported me all throughout the process of writing this study. 2 PREAMBLE: LATVIAN TRANSITION, SOUP KITCHENS, LIFE AND DEATH ........................................................ 4 THE RE-EMERGENCE OF LATVIA, AND OF POVERTY ................................................................. 6 INTRODUCTION: „THERE IS NO POVERTY IN LATVIA‟ ................................................................................... 6 THE RIGA SOUP KITCHENS: KNOWN TO FEW, SERVING MANY ...................................................................... 9 OBJECTIVES: LATVIA‟S HIDDEN „NEW POOR‟ .............................................................................................10 STRUCTURE OF THE THESIS.........................................................................................................................11 DEFINITIONS, CONCEPTS, THEORIES ..............................................................................................13 „DEVELOPMENT‟ AND HOW TO MEASURE IT ...............................................................................................13 NEO-LIBERALISM AND ITS CRITICS .............................................................................................................17 THEORIES OF TRANSITION AND THE EX-SOVIET TRANSFORMATION ............................................................20 „POVERTY‟ AND HOW TO MEASURE IT ........................................................................................................21 INEQUALITY AND POLARISATION ................................................................................................................26 HISTORY, POLITICS, SOCIOECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT ..........................................................27 A HISTORY OF DOMINATION .......................................................................................................................27 INDEPENDENCE REGAINED: LATVIA RE-EMERGES ON THE EUROPEAN MAP ................................................29 NEO-LIBERALISM AS THE TRANSITION MODEL OF CHOICE ..........................................................................30 SOCIAL EFFECTS OF TRANSITION: 15 YEARS OF POST-SOVIET DEVELOPMENT ............................................31 Political development: turmoil becomes the norm ................................................................................32 Influencing factors on Latvian development: corruption and distrust ..................................................33 Transition economy: sharp contraction and consumer-fuelled growth .................................................37 Employment, unemployment and underemployment..............................................................................39 Social and human security .....................................................................................................................42 The Latvian welfare system ...................................................................................................................45 Health and lifestyle ................................................................................................................................46 Living standard and inequality ..............................................................................................................48 METHODOLOGY: A QUALITATIVE AND QUANTITATIVE COMBINATION ...........................53 LAURA, MY TRANSLATOR ...........................................................................................................................53 QUANTITATIVE AND QUALITATIVE METHOD, PARTICIPANT OBSERVATION .................................................54 TARGET GROUP AND INFORMANTS .............................................................................................................55 QUALITATIVE INTERVIEWS .........................................................................................................................56 QUANTITATIVE QUESTIONNAIRES...............................................................................................................59 PARTICIPANT OBSERVATION AND INFORMAL CONVERSATIONS ..................................................................59 LIMITATIONS TO THE EMPIRICAL RESEARCH ...............................................................................................61 ANALYSIS: A SOUP KITCHEN PERSPECTIVE ON POVERTY ......................................................65 AN INFORMANT OVERVIEW ........................................................................................................................65 The soup kitchen users; who are they? A quantitative overview ...........................................................67 STRUGGLES, OBSTACLES, POSSIBILITIES OF THE RIGA POOR .......................................................................68 Employment and income: managing without neither ............................................................................71 Housing: a main worry among the poor ................................................................................................73 Health: an unaffordable luxury .............................................................................................................76 SURVIVAL STRATEGIES: BLACK-MARKET JOBS, FRIENDS, SOUP KITCHENS..................................................79 THE SOCIAL SECURITY SYSTEM: A LOOSE-KNIT SAFETY NET ......................................................................84 POVERTY AND SOCIAL EXCLUSION: POWERLESS, IGNORED AND LONELY ...................................................89 THE EXPERIENCE OF TRANSITION; PERCEIVED CAUSES OF POVERTY ...........................................................92 Personal experiences of the transition ..................................................................................................92 Causes of poverty as seen by the poor ...................................................................................................96 CONCLUSION: NEO-LIBERAL ‘SUCCESS STORY’ AND THE GROWTH IN POVERTY ........99 References ...........................................................................................................................................105 3 Preamble: Latvian transition, soup kitchens, life and death On an unusually cold winter day in Latvian capital Riga in February 2004, I was on my way to my first visit to a soup kitchen run by the Diakonijas Centrs (Diakonia Centre of The Evangelican Lutheran Church in Latvia)1 on the other side of the river that runs through the city of 870,000 inhabitants. In this small Baltic nation of 2.3 million, at that time standing at the threshold of NATO and European Union entry after painful years of reform since breaking free from the Soviet Union in 1991, no one wanted soup kitchen queues to rise up as a symbol of the other side of the coin of all those efforts to reform. Despite being the poorest of the 10 post-Communist EU newcomers and struggling with huge socio-economic differences, those in political and economic control were united in their efforts to portray Latvia as a success story. Soup-kitchen queues had no place in this picture, and the issue of poverty was usually pushed under the carpet or glossed over in the public debate. I was unsure about what to expect, since so far I had concentrated my field work on a soup kitchen run by the spiritual order of Hare Krishna, located in one of Riga‟s main streets just outside the picturesque Old Town and in defiance of public decorum, which demanded that any images of poverty be removed from the heart of the city. The Hare Krishna centre was in fact more than a soup kitchen, comprising both a restaurant- style dining room for paying costumers and a facility for providing food for the needy, where people patiently lined up outside to wait for their handouts. The Diakonia soup kitchen was situated in a run-down area of Riga that was far removed from the political and economic elite, tourists and other visitors. Luckily I found the little park that I had been told would be the right place, but there were no sign of any soup kitchen. However, plenty of poor-looking people in ragged clothing were hanging around, indicating that something was about to happen. Suddenly a white van stopped by the park and out came three smiling women and two men carrying huge casseroles of soup. In no time a provisory stand had been set up with bowls, spoons, bread and soup, and a queue of people stretched throughout the park. This grassroots aid effort was over in about