Writing a book about human dignity is a moral rather than a professional duty. It is also a responsibility to the poor and weak, with whom we meet and about whom we read. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Geneva Convention Relative to the Treatment of Prisoners provide all societies with the same guidance for safeguarding human dignity. Based on the principles on human rights enshrined in these documents, we can condemn the Nazis’ ‘final solution’ – the extermination of Europe's Jews during the Second World War – the Japanese army's Nanking massacre of 1937 and its sexual enslavement of Chinese and Korean women, and more recently American soldiers’ abuse of Iraqi prisoners. Unfortunately, a government's systematic abuse of welfare recipients through its deliberate portrayal of claimants as lazy and abusers of welfare, its exercising control over their behaviour through ‘compulsory voluntary work’, the publication of social assistance recipients’ names, and the limitation of lifetime welfare rights to a few years have never been treated as illegal actions. On the contrary, such welfare measures are being practised in both developed and developing countries, embellished with titles like ‘welfare-to-work’, ‘workfare’ and ‘active labour market policies’. This is the issue that our project addresses, and we hope that the project contributes to framing welfare policies that can effectively enhance the dignity of unemployed citizens.

We are grateful to Mr Nigel Horner of the School of Social Sciences at Nottingham Trent University for providing Dr Chan with an opportunity to gather key literature and to conduct interviews in Hong Kong. Through the visit he gained an up-to-date understanding of unemployment issues in Hong Kong and China following interviews with several university and government researchers and a member of the Hong Kong Legislative Council.

Our gratitude also goes to Dawn Rushen, Rowena Mayhew, Laura Greaves, Helen Bolton and Natasha Ferguson at The Policy Press. Because of their patience, support and effective work, we are able to publish the result of our project while facing tremendous teaching and family commitments.

Most gratitude should go to our families for their understanding as we worked at midnight and during holidays, and for their unfailing support for our academic exploration.