This chapter tries to put the phenomena analysed in other chapters – varieties of British begging – into an international context. It would be absurd to attempt a classification of national begging cultures, or even a categorisation of global begging practices, and I have neither the knowledge nor the desire to embark on such a task. What is feasible and useful is a comment on those factors in the global economy that contribute to the re-emergence of begging as a widespread social phenomenon in Britain and the USA in the 1980s, when it had largely disappeared during the ‘golden age’ of welfare states (Esping-Andersen, 1996). And it also seems relevant to comment on the specific features of this phenomenon, both in an historical and geographical comparative perspective.

Begging as a street-level economic activity represents a return to practices that were common in previous centuries in all the developed economies, and which both welfare states and state socialist systems sought to eliminate. The cultural context of begging was one of alms-giving as the predominant form of poor relief, and one which was embedded in systems of religious belief and duty, and in interactions between fellow members of the great religious faiths. In so far as begging is still a highly visible feature of social life in some developing countries, it retains many of these connotations, and hence lacks the stigma attached to it in developed ones.

In this chapter I shall argue that new global economic conditions, because they fundamentally change the bargaining position of unskilled workers throughout the developed (and much of the developing) worlds, are now contributing to a reappearance of many forms of street-level economic activity. The prevalence and forms of begging in any city or rural area are explicable in terms of the informal alternatives available, and the cultural resources of the economic actors. At the end of the chapter, I shall go on to look at interactions between beggars and their fellow citizens – and the moral dilemmas that are posed by and reflected through them – in the context of policy regimes once designed to relieve poverty through collective welfare systems, but which increasingly seek to promote welfare through paid work.