Discourse on Poverty and Empowerment Practices of Poor Family Groups of the Family Hope Program in Makassar City

Abstract

This article examines the discourse on poverty and the practice of empowering poor families in the Family Hope Program (PKH) in Makassar City. PKH is known as a conditional cash transfer scheme that links cash assistance with compliance with education and health requirements, but at the praxis level, empowerment is often realized through Family Capacity Building Meetings, social assistance, and data verification mechanisms that form power relations between the state, companions, and beneficiary families. With a conceptual qualitative approach that combines critical discourse analysis of the Fairclough model and a synthesis of the latest scientific literature, this article shows that the discourse of feasibility and compliance tends to shift the meaning of poverty from structural issues, such as informal inequality, public services, and urban slums, to individual behavioral issues. The novelty of this article lies in the formulation of three poverty discourse paths that work simultaneously in PKH in Makassar, namely administrative categorization, behavior normalization, and political legitimacy, as well as in the reading of empowerment as a double-faced arena that has the potential to strengthen poor family agency while reproducing administrative discipline if not supported by local economic access. The policy implications offered include strengthening rights-based empowerment, improving poverty data governance, and expanding the space for deliberation for beneficiary families as policy subjects, not just administrative objects of social assistance.