Looking at one of the World Bank's current objectives - the "struggle against poverty" - this paper seeks to contextualize the moment in which the the category "poverty" enters the prescriptions of that institution. This involves the analysis of some of its reports on that topic, followed by an analysis of the significance of the use of the concept in the elaboration of social policies for "developing" countries. We suggest that the use of the concept "poverty" makes reference to a clearly defined theoretical framework linked to neoliberalism. By prioritizing "the poor" as the target of its policies, it performs a dislocation of social policy from the universal notion of "right" and, in the last analysis, suggests the supression of the idea and the reality of social citizenship.
poverty; neoliberalism; social policies; World Bank