The Politics of Aspiration brings together valuable contributions from Jim Murphy MP, Trevor Phillips, Chair, Commission for Equality and Human Rights, Chief Rabbi Sir Jonathan Sacks and several other commentators and academics on the importance of aspiration as a driving force in ending poverty and increasing social mobility in the UK.
The complex interaction of forces and circumstances that conspire to keep those who are born in poverty in the same situation for the duration of their lives, and which makes social exclusion a transgenerational phenomenon, are the subject of this collection. It presumes that fighting social exclusion is both an ethical and an economic imperative: we have an obligation to address those conditions that prevent individuals from fulfilling their capabilities irrespective of their start in life, and which prevent them imagining and achieving a different kind of future. Fairness in life chances is taken to be the primary objective.
The purpose of this collection of essays is to deepen political understanding of the barriers to further social mobility and to the realising of personal aspiration, particularly among the most disadvantaged sections of society, and to identify further steps that the government can take to overcome these barriers, through clear, incisive analysis from leading experts in the field.
