Description: Although much has been written about secularization, religion remains a key issue in many social policy areas, such as, for example, education, family policy, health care, and abortion policy. When paying attention to the relationship between religion and social policy, scholars typically adopt an historical perspective, which is necessary to grasp the evolution of religious beliefs and institutions over time, as they interact with changing social policy issues. This stream aims at improving our knowledge of the role of religion in social policy and, more generally, to promote the development of historically-informed approaches to welfare state stability and change that take into account the changing role of major social institutions such as religion and the family over time. We are particularly interested in paper that focus on faith-based organizations, political parties, family values and structures, and issues of path-dependency and incremental yet transformative social and policy change.   

Comparative papers and in-depth country studies of one or more the issues listed above are especially welcomed. Moreover, the stream organizers are interested in papers reconstructing the history of social policy in Europe, but also in the role of religion and other historically-constructed social institutions in contemporary social policy, given the fact that there are new dynamics and trends at stake. The organizers also welcome papers studying the history-religion-social policy nexus outside of Europe.

Convenors:

Daniel Béland, Johnson-Shoyama Graduate School of Public Policy, Saskatoon, SK, Canada; daniel.beland@usask.ca

Rana Jawad, Department of Social and Policy Sciences, University of Bath, Bath, BA2 7AY, UK; R.Jawad@bath.ac.uk

Emmanuele Pavolini, Macerata University, Via Don Minzoni, 22a – 62100, Macerata, Italy; emmanuele.pavolini@unimc.it

Description:

Social policies are generally made at a different level from where they are delivered and experienced, with spatially displaced and dispersed supply and demand. This stream invites contributions to explore this ‘distance’, theoretically and empirically; to reflect on understandings of ‘the welfare state’ when the local comes to the fore and to identify patterns and challenges that emerge when social policy is analysed within its geographical and social landscapes.

Using the central-local nexus as an analytical lens invites for a fresh look at social policy developments and outcomes, and helps to understand how different policies interact with space. Examining this more systematically will enable identifying key challenges for welfare states and future welfare reforms.

Central-local tensions play out differently in different national contexts and governance regimes; they may take on different meanings and effects in urban landscapes compared to rural areas and may be more pronounced with respect to certain policy fields, such as social care or education, than with others. Such is the example of public childcare which, in most cases, is centrally designed but locally delivered. This creates delivery and opportunity gaps across geographical localities, something often overlooked in comparative welfare state research. The central-local dimension may help shed new light on the role of family and community networks in different welfare state contexts, and how these may fill the gaps created by different challenges arising from varying access and service logistics in rural, scarcely populated areas compared to cities with pressure on places and long waiting lists.

This stream invites contributions from across disciplines, including social policy, political science, ethnography, social work and geography. We invite papers that offer analytical discussion grounded in local knowledge, be it around policy design, delivery or experience/consumption thereof, that attempt to identify key features, for example in cross-country or cross-regional comparison, or in conceptual terms.

Convenors:

Ingela Naumann,  School of Social and Political Science, School of Social and Political Science, University of Edinburgh Campus, Chrystal Macmillan Building 15a George Square 2RD, Edinburgh EH8 9LD , UK. Email: Ingela.naumann@ed.ac.uk.TW @JanaSvenska

Jana Javornik, University of East London, Docklands Campus, University Way, London E16, UK.  Email: j.javornik@uel.ac.uk

Description:

Esping-Andersen highlighted that the state-market nexus structures inequalities within welfare regimes. Since then, most policy research assesses employment inequalities at this nexus as if individuals interact directly with the labor market via the laws of labor supply and demand. In reality, group inequalities are configured within firms, with as much variation across workplaces as across occupations. Workplaces are also the sites where government equality mandates are often implemented and/or monitored. In addition, workplace-specific policies related to hiring, performance evaluation, compensation, and termination further shape employment and wage inequalities predicted by gender, parenthood, race-ethnicity, and immigration status. Papers in this stream would therefore use either qualitative or quantitative methods to further our understanding of the role of workplaces in structuring group inequalities vis-à-vis social policies. For example, how do accrued wage penalties associated with the lost experience during parental leave vary across workplaces in Norway and Germany? Or what workplace characteristics magnify or reduce gender differences in wage effects predicted by parental leave? The potential for European research in this area is particularly rich given the availability of register or administrative data for social research. Depending on submissions, sessions might be organized around any one (or more) of the above categories (parenthood, race, gender, immigrant), which encompass interests of a large number of ESPAnet members. Another possibility is for a session to be structured around how specific organizational features and social policies interact to structure group employment (in)equalities. For example, which organizational features reduce barriers to private-sector employment associated with family-friendly social policies? The proposed stream reflects the conference theme vis-à-vis new paradigms, because the intersection of organizational and policy effects is a new area of research. As such, the research could contribute to the development of more effective social policies that take into account the potential range of their workplace ‘translations’.

Convenor:

Lynn Prince Cooke, Professor of Social Policy, University of Bath, Claverton Downs, Bath UK BA2 7AY, l.p.cooke@bath.ac.uk

Description:

Despite inheriting similar social protection systems from the communist past, post-communist welfare states have followed rather different paths in the past 25 years. While there is a general consensus that these welfare states can no longer be considered a distinctive welfare regime type in their own, a distinction is often made between the more successful Central and Eastern European welfare states (especially the Visegrad countries and Slovenia) and the rest. However, such generalisation conceals the large variation within both clusters, in terms of institutional set-up, spending levels, the relative importance of policy actors, as well as in terms of the social legitimacy and social outcomes of welfare provision.

Analysing and interpreting these differences (as well as similarities) can help enrich the field of comparative welfare studies, not only by extending the geography of welfare state literature in an ‘easterly direction’, but also by testing and extending general knowledge on the relationships between welfare inputs, processes and outcomes. Yet, up until now, there is a dearth of studies of former communist welfare states, especially those that are now part of the Commonwealth of Independent States. What are best practices and well-functioning welfare policies in these countries? Can Western models be applied in the East and are there Eastern cases that could be relevant for the West?

The stream welcomes both theoretical and empirical papers that focus on the welfare states of formerly communist countries. The papers are preferably comparative, but country case studies with a more general and theoretical approach can be accepted as well. The topics covered may include, but need not be limited to, (the relations between) institutional designs, policy processes and actors, welfare outcomes (income, health, work, wellbeing), and welfare attitudes.

Convenors:

Professor Wim van Oorschot, Centre for Sociological Research KU Leuven, Centre for Sociological Research KU Leuven, Centre for Sociological Research KU Leuven.

Dr. Ave Roots, Institute of Social Studies University of Tartu, Lossi 36,  51003 Tartu, Estonia, ave.roots@ut.ee.

Description:

The European Union’s support of spatial mobility, motivated by specific needs of European labor markets, has resulted in an increase of migrant inflows. Currently, most migrants in the European Union (EU) are non-EU nationals (Eurostat 2017). Members of this group of migrants often work in low-skill jobs, face unfavorable working conditions and have limited access to social welfare (OECD 2015). Besides the working conditions of migrants, international or transnational migration poses questions about family life and social cohesion in local contexts. In the context of migrant families, a growing number of researchers conceptualize migrants and their kin as transnational families (Baldassar, Merla 2014). A series of recent studies has focused on the role that state policies and international regulations play in facilitating or hindering family solidarity across borders (Kilkey, Merla 2013).

The access to family policies however represents largely neglected phenomena in the social policy research (Williams 2012). Feminist literature, which locates social rights at the intersection of welfare regime, labor market and gender (Daly, 2011), applies this framework to the study of migrants’ care arrangements, adding the dimension of migration regimes (Lutz, Palenga-Möllenbeck 2012).                    

This stream encourages case studies and international comparisons, which explore the access to formal welfare same as informal care and protection practices of migrant and transnational families. In particular, we would welcome papers that would fit in any of the following topics:

• Access to social rights of the migrant populations;
• Work-life balance practices in the migrant and transnational families;
• Differences in access to social citizenship among the migrants with various ethnic and national backgrounds;
• Family formation and possibly shifting gender relations among the migrants;
• Transnational families, transnational parenthood/motherhood/fatherhood;
• Characteristics of migrants’ labor market participation;
• Care-workers, migration regimes and migration chains.

Convenors:

Lenka Formankova, Institute of Sociology, Czech Academy of Sciences, Jilská 1, 11000 Prague 1,   Czech Republic, E-mail: lenka.formankova@soc.cas.cz

Dorota Szelewa, School of Social Policy, Social Work and Social Justice, University College Dublin, Hanna Sheehy-Skeffington Building room A104, Belfield, Dublin, Ireland, E-mail: dorota.szelewa@ucd.ie

Guðný Björk Eydal, Faculty of Social Work, University of Iceland, Sturlugotu 101 Reykjavík, Iceland, Email: ge@hi.is

Description:

For the past decade, the EU has moved from one major crisis to the next. The global economic and financial crisis resulted in the Euro crisis from about 2010 onwards, and was followed by the European unemployment crisis. From 2015, European countries faced the so-called “refugee crisis”. Meanwhile, the Brexit decision (2016) is only the most extreme expression of the legitimacy crisis of the EU as a supranational organisation.

Social policy has always been a marginal field of EU policies, most of the competencies still being with member states. What stands for EU social policies are, amongst other things, coordinating regulations for EU migrant workers; exchange of students; take-up of health care services across borders; and respect, protection and fulfillment of social rights.

In this panel we discuss the development, current state, and possible future of EU social policies in the context of multiple crises. Papers could address, for example, issues of social rights development in the context of within-EU migration, or in the face of challenged EU institutions. Or they could be of a more general nature on the question of whether or not, in the face of these multiple and simultaneous crises, EU social policies are gaining or losing importance. Papers could speak to different social policy fields (e.g. labour markets in the context of new protectionism; or implications for health care provision given national retrenchment in health insurance). Paper could also address interrelations between the EU and national social policies, between the EU internal and external policies, between the EU and the other actors in external environment (e.g. the EU external action in the field of social policies or economic, social and cultural rights, or the EU trade-development nexus).

The contributions can be considered for publication as a Forum or Special Issue in ‘Global Social Policy’.

Convenors: 

Prof. Dr. Alexandra Kaasch, Junior Professor in Transnational Social Policy, Bielefeld University, Faculty of Sociology, Post Box 100 131, 33501 Bielefeld, Germany, alexandra.kaasch@uni-bielefeld.de

Anatoly Boyashov, PhD student, Bielefeld University, RTG ‘World Politics’, Post Box 100 131, 33501 Bielefeld, Germany, anatoly.boyashov@uni-bielefeld.de

Description: Pension systems around the world have been reformed in several ways in order to maintain fiscal sustainability and to provide adequate old-age income in the face of population ageing and changing conditions at the labour market. Many of the recent reforms aim at postponing retirement and lengthening the life time employment required for full pension rights. At the same time, de-standardization of employment and different forms of self-employment are becoming more common. As a result, inequalities in old-age income and retirement seem more prevalent again.

This stream focuses on recent reforms of pension systems design and their consequences for individual retirement behaviour as well as inequalities in old-age income, wealth, and wellbeing. We invite contributions on (but not limited to) following themes:

• Atypical employment, flexible careers and pensions
• New forms of flexible retirement and combining work and retirement
• Extending working lives, later career employment
• Consequences of changing working careers for later life health and wellbeing
• Inequalities in pension provision due to gender, disability and migration
• The interplay of pension, family and labour market policies
• The changing roles of public, occupational and private pension schemes

We particularly encourage contributions providing novel empirical insights. Submission may be both nation-specific and comparative.

Convenors:

Dr. Kati Kuitto,  Finnish Centre for Pensions, Research department, Email: kati.kuitto@etk.fi, Address: Kirjurinkatu 3, 00065, ELÄKETURVAKESKUS, Finland.

Prof. Dr. Katja Möhring, University of Mannheim and Collaborative Research Center SFB 884 "Political Economy of Reforms, Email: moehring@uni-mannheim.de, Address: A 5, 6, 68159 Mannheim.

Description:

Social policies in multitiered polities generate specific problems and opportunities. Traditional scholarship has highlighted a number of mechanisms: for example the contribution of social policy to “region” building at the sub-national level; the incentives to  engage in a “race to the bottom” in social standards or the role of constituent units as laboratories where new policies are developed.

More recent research has emphasised a new range of mechanisms that can be generated by a multitiered welfare state structure, which are less well understood. Multitiered welfare states can engage in cost shifting, i.e. different levels of government can push clients onto programmes for which they bear no financial responsibility. For example, national authorities can limit access conditions to national programmes de facto pushing clients onto locally run social assistance programmes. Local authorities, in turn, can support their clients in gaining entitlements to national social insurance programmes. The fact that cost shifting is possible raises the issue of “institutional moral hazard”,i.e. the incentive for a level of government to take advantage of an existing scheme run by a higher level.

The issue of institutional moral hazard is particularly salient in current thinking on the development of social policies at the EU. In its roadmap for the completion of the European Economic and Monetary Union, the European Commission proposes (as one of the possible options) a Eurozone “re-insurance” of national unemployment benefit schemes; in the debate on this (or related proposals) the potential problem of “institutional moral hazard” features prominently.

Moreover, the issue of social policy in multitiered welfare states has acquired a new relevance in Europe as a consequence of the emergence of new subnational pro-autonomy movements. Against this background, we welcome papers that:

• Revisit old scholarship on multilevel governance and social policy, both in relation to federal countries and to the EU
• Focus on the link between policy design and institutional moral hazard
• Investigate the role of social policies in the context of pro-autonomy movements

and provide a theoretically driven empirical analysis  at the EU, national or subnational level.

Convenors:

Giuliano Bonoli, Swiss Graduate School of Public Administration, University of Lausanne, Bâtiment IDHEAP, CH-1015 Lausanne, Switzerland. giuliano.bonoli@unil.ch

Frank Vandenbroucke, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Netherlands. F.I.G.Vandenbroucke@uva.nl

Description:

Social policy analysts emphasize the need for evidence-based policy-making. In principle, evidence-based policy-making aims to two goals:  1) to produce data and knowledge on existing programs here and there for evaluation the performance of different programs, their costs, distributional consequences, efficacy etc. 2) to build policy decision on knowledge and better and more rigorous information than just on political values. The first goal is linked to scientist and the second one is built on the interplay of the scientific community and political decision makers.

At many levels, the idea is more or less settled and the principle of evidence-based policy-making is accepted. However, there are many obstacles. One problem is that evaluations and evidence based on existing programs always are backward looking, i.e., they tend to be ex post evaluations. Some conclusions can be drawn and recommendations given but everything is based on the present-day situation.  Therefore, recommendations that are based on today’s world will be somewhat biased.

On promising possibility to solve that problem is to use policy experiments that in many countries and becoming common procedures to ex ante test policy options before they are implemented for the total target group be it the total population or some specific sub-group of it. IN many countries and in many fields of social policy there are different kinds of experiments going on.  The aim of the stream is to bring together scholars utilising experiments. The stream collects experiences and knowledge on these bath-breaking approaches and effective tools for evidence-based policy-making. 

Theme of the stream

We encourage papers on various kinds of experiments in social policy. Experiments can be large-scale experiments based on population samples, small-scale experiments based on limited number of participants, they can be various kind of survey experiments. Papers can also be based on ‘natural experiments’, i.e., experiments that were not deliberately planed but by accident they offer an experimental setting (treatment, treatment group and control group). Also papers on ‘fictive’ experiments based on micro- and macro simulations are welcome.  

Convenors:

Signe Jauhiainen, signe.jauhiainen@kela.fi, KELA, the Social Insurance Institution of Finland,PoBox 450, FI-00101 Helsinki, Finland.

Olli Kangas, olli.kangas@kela.fi, KELA, the Social Insurance Institution of Finland,PoBox 450, FI-00101 Helsinki, Finland.

Description:

Recently increased electoral relevance of Radical Right Parties in several European democracies and the shift toward an “alternative” right in the US has driven scholars’ attention to right party positions on economic issues, redistribution and, last but not least, the welfare state. This constitutes a challenge to established theories in the literature, which have largely emphasized the role of political actors such as left-wing parties in welfare state expansion and retrenchment as well. By contrast, with the exception of studies on neoliberalism, the programmatic options, welfare preferences and related political strategies of different types of right-wing parties - Christian democratic, conservative, radical right, etc… – have remained largely under-researched.

Against such backdrop, this session welcomes papers analyzing, either theoretically or empirically, the role of right parties – and especially radical right parties - in social policy-making in Europe and beyond. This topic is addressed from an interdisciplinary and multidimensional perspective, thus welcoming contributions from political scientists and sociologists working in the fields of comparative politics, social policies, as well as electoral and opinion studies. Papers may include comparative analyses – covering more than one country and/or policy sectors - and case studies addressing the following questions:

* What are the main differences in terms of social policy preferences among Christian democratic, Conservative, Liberals, and Radical Right parties? Have they changed as a result of the economic, financial and Euro crises?
* What factors do contribute shaping welfare preferences on the right of the political spectrum – e.g. i) new or well-entrenched Rokkanian cleavages; ii) welfare state settings - i.e. universalistic vs occupational vs means-tested; iii) welfare state sectors (health care, pensions, unemployment, anti-poverty policies) iv) political competition dynamics both among (right vs left) and within camps (right vs right).
* What are the social policy reforms pursued by Right Parties once in government? Do they pursue neoliberal social policy reforms, or different right-wing parties have diverse ideas and positions on key welfare issues?
* What are the potential consequences of the recent rise of radical right parties for established welfare arrangements in the EU?
* Are new coalitions of right parties - interest groups emerging? What are the coalitional underpinnings of reform adoption, or rather policy inertia, under right-wing governments?

Convenors:

Marcello Natili, Dipartimento di Scienze Sociali e Politiche - Università degli Studi di Milano, Via Conservatorio 7, Milano, E-mail: marcello.natili@unimi.it.

Matteo Jessoula, Dipartimento di Scienze Sociali e Politiche - Università degli Studi di Milano,Via Conservatorio 7, Milano, E-mail: matteo.jessoula@unimi.it

Description:

The decision of the United Kingdom to leave the European Union (BREXIT) carries many implications for European social policy. Challenges arise for the UK itself as it seeks to identify a new basis and orientation for its social policy and welfare state. Elsewhere, neighbouring countries, such as Ireland, may need to alter existing social policy provisions to protect the entitlements of citizens, in particular those living near the Northern Ireland border.

The departure of the UK from the European decision-making table may also provide an opportunity for renewed progress on the ‘social Europe’ agenda. The recently published European Pillar of Social Rights (November 2017) provides a new roadmap for the development of European welfare systems and associated citizen’s rights. Does the absence of the UK make this agenda more likely to succeed? Similarly, will the emergent interest in broader objectives for European policy, beyond the narrow economic focus of recent decades, be fuelled by opportunities and prospects that arise in the post-BREXIT era.

The aim of this stream is to gather contributions dealing with the challenges, opportunities and prospects that arise, directly or indirectly, as a consequence of BREXIT. We encourage contributions on (but not limited to) the following themes:

• BREXIT and its implications for social policy in various European countries
• The consequences of BREXIT for ‘social Europe’
• European social policy, migration policy and labour market policy in a post-BREXIT era
• BREXIT as a catalyst for implementing the European Pillar of Social Rights

Convenors:

Dr Micheál Collins, School of Social Policy, Social Work and Social Justice, University College Dublin, Ireland. ml.collins@ucd.ie

ml.collins@ucd.ieProfessor Michelle Norris, School of Social Policy, Social Work and Social Justice, University College Dublin, Ireland. michelle.norris@ucd.ie

Description:

Spurred by fiscal pressures arising from an ageing population, changing family structures, and calls for greater empowerment from a new generation of consumerism-minded users, European welfare states have implemented a wide range of transformations to long-term care for frail older people. These have included the introduction of several forms of user choice, the marketization _(through competition) of care, the shifting of responsibilities for care provision and healthy ageing to individuals and their families (for example, through financial incentives for families to internalize care provision or outright legal obligations to care), or the transfer of responsibilities for care to local levels of government (de-centralization). While Esping-Adersen’s welfare regimes and subsequent critique drew attention to the inequalities arising from different forms of organizing care provision (most prominently gender); the impact of these more recent developments on inequalities of care (again gender, but also socio-economic condition, geographic location) has not yet been fully understood, particularly from a comparative perspective.

The present stream aims to discuss this gap by inviting researchers to submit research on the impact of transformations to long-term care systems in inequalities. We particularly welcome and prioritize papers addressing the following issues:

• Comparative research confronting most similar or most different systems across Europe,
• Findings taking a life-course perspective on the issue at hand, for example bye.g. exploring the impact of raising retirement age on the need and use of long-term are across different population groups,
• Research exploring intersections of different inequalities in care, namely socio-economic condition and spatial inequalities, or gender, or ethnicity,
• Theoretical contributions proposing new frameworks or theoretical concepts to define and analyse inequalities in long-term care and analyse inequalities in long-term care.

Convenors:

Ricardo Rodrigues, European Centre for Social Welfare Policy and Research, Berggasse 17, 1090 Vienna, Austria, rodrigues@euro.centre.org

Valentina Hlebec, University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Social Sciences, Centre for Welfare Studies, Kardeljeva pl.5, 1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia, Valentina.Hlebec@fdv.uni-lj.si

Description:

Poverty and social exclusion in industrialized societies have been traditionally associated with long-term unemployment and household joblessness. To address these issues and to ensure the sustainability of pension and social protection systems in the era of population ageing, many governments across the European Union and beyond have introduced policies aimed at stimulating labour market participation of the disadvantaged groups such as young, older, low-skilled workers, women and migrants. However, recent evidence shows that, in today’s labour market, having a job is not sufficient to guarantee freedom from poverty for the employed and their households. Many EU countries experienced a rise in in-work poverty rates in recent decades (Marx and Nolan, 2012; Eurofound, 2017; European_Commission, 2016).
In-work poverty is undoubtedly related to precarious employment, including low pay, low work intensity, temporary employment, informality, forced self-employment, etc. (Horemans and Marx, 2013; Lohmann, 2009; Maitre et al., 2012; Van Lancker, 2011; Broughton et al., 2016). Nevertheless, while labour market characteristics are measured at an individual level, in-work poverty is a household level characteristic. As a result, not all precarious workers are living in working poor households, and not all working poor households contain precarious workers. Therefore, government measures aimed at tackling precarious employment and in-work poverty might not fully overlap.
In addition to the labour market characteristics, in-work poverty may be associated with the design of the tax-benefit systems. While concern for poverty motivates governments to redistribute income by providing benefits for the low income households, those might weaken the incentives to undertake paid work or to increase hours of work for all household members (Jara and Tumino, 2013), and, in particular for secondary earners in couples who are predominantly women (Rastrigina and Vereshchagna, 2015).
This stream seeks contributions focusing on the various aspects of in-work poverty and precarious employment, including low-pay, forced self-employment, non-guaranteed hours etc. We especially welcome papers that are able to provide evidence on:

• the links between precarious employment and in-work poverty in cross-national perspective;
• the effectiveness of various policy interventions aimed at addressing precarious employment and in-work poverty;
• the consequences of the design of major institutions such as the tax-benefit system for in-work poverty and precarious employment.

References:

Broughton A, Green M, Rickard C, et al. (2016) Precarious employment in Europe: Patterns, trends and policy strategies. European Parliament.
Eurofound. (2017) In-work poverty in the EU, Luxembourg: Publications Office of the European Union.
European Commission. (2016) Low pay and in work poverty: Preventative measures and preventative approaches, Luxembourg: Publications Office of the European Union.
Horemans J and Marx I. (2013) In-work poverty in times of crisis: Do part-timers fare worse? ImPRovE Discussion Paper No. 13/14. Antwerp.
Jara HX and Tumino A. (2013) Tax-benefit systems, income distribution and work incentives in the European Union. International Journal of Microsimulation 6: 27-62.
Lohmann H. (2009) Welfare States, labour market institutions and the working poor: A comparative analysis of 20 European countries European Sociological Review 25: 489-504.
Maitre B, Nolan B and Whelan CT. (2012) Low pay, in-work poverty and economic vulnerability: a comparative analysis using EU-SILC. The Manchester School 80: 99-116.
Marx I and Nolan B. (2012) In-work poverty GINI Discussion Paper 51.
Rastrigina O and Vereshchagna A. (2015) Secondary earners and fiscal policies in Europe. Luxembourg: European Commission - Directorate-General for Justice.
Van Lancker W. (2011) The European world of temporary employment: Gendered and poor? European Societies 14: 83-111.

Convenors:

 dr. Silvia Avram, Institute for Social and Economic Research (ISER), University of Essex, Wivenhoe Park, Colchester, United Kingdom CO43SQ, Email: savram@essex.ac.uk

dr. Daria Popova, ISER, University of Essex, Wivenhoe Park, Colchester, United Kingdom CO43SQ. Email: dpopova@essex.ac.uk

Description:

Housing as a system is one of the hidden pillars of welfare state which has provided citizens with a sense of assurance of societal habitat needs, with a stability of communities and even with a(n) (ontological) security of different households since maturity of modern welfare state. At the same time, nowadays there is an ongoing political discussions and questions appear in public discourse about privatization and retraction of welfare system in housing sector. Usually nowadays apparent various crisis in housing systems of different welfare states can be characterized as one of the neoliberal manifestations, consequences of globalization, or results of welfare system marketization which brings challenges in coping of old and new issues of housing needs. These challenges have very different effect on European welfare states, and it can be discussed within different context, taking in account different reference points of comparison. As for example, the whole welfare and housing systems in the Europe spotlights the cleavages in disciplined financially north and the austerity imposed in the south, and matured of the west and post-socialist of the east. This conference streamline proposes to bring attention on a variety of topics on housing system as a part of contemporary welfare state – such as austerity policy and how it is affecting housing provision circuit; marketization of the whole housing sector in the presence ongoing consequences of global economic crisis; housing policies at a national-local level; issues of social (public) and/or private housing sector; regional and urban policies affecting housing provision and the rights to affordable housing for different target groups; various contemporary demographic (life-cycle) trends affecting housing sector (like ageing, youth or other demographic groups risks at poverty and housing deprivation and homelessness) – and how the issues can be solved.

Convenor: 

Chief Researher dr. Ruta Braziene, Vytautas Magnus University, Jonavos str. 66-211, LT-44191 Kaunas, LITHUANIA

Dr. Apolonijus Žilys, Vytautas Magnus University, Jonavos str. 66-211, LT-44191 Kaunas, LITHUANIA

Description:

The idea of granting each (adult) citizen an unconditional basic income, independent of means test or work requirement, has made major strides in recent policy debates across Europe. Several countries in Europe and North-America are experimenting with or planning basic income-inspired trials, while in other jurisdictions basic income is considered at the highest level of policy-making.

Mainstream policy actors embracing a policy proposal that until very recent was considered to be part of a radically utopian fringe raises a number of policy questions, which we expect the proposed abstracts to cover. What explains the current interest in the basic income proposal? Are we experiencing a genuine window of opportunity firmly embedding basic income into the policy process in mature welfare states, or are we instead witnessing a fad that is likely to fade when feasibility constraints are taken into account? What are the key policy determinants for understanding the feasibility and stability of basic income against the background of established institutions and policy configurations as well as recent developments in European welfare states? Which social, economic and political factors affect the building of a robust basic income constituencies and a stable political coalition across stakeholder groups and political actors? What challenges need to be overcome and which trajectories are most suited to pilot and/or institute a basic income? How must basic income models be adapted to accommodate political and institutional constraints? Does systematic variation in how different welfare regimes respond to political challenges explain the variation in basic income models under consideration?

This stream aims to advance the policy debate around basic income by critically examining these and related questions in the context of the European welfare states. Our aim is to put the policy research into basic income on a firm theoretical and empirical footing by selecting contributions that employ insights from recent welfare state and political economy research to examine aspects of basic income design and implementation. We are particularly interested in contributions that investigate novel aspects of and/or adopt novel methodologies in examining the political economy of basic income. We will also give priority to contributions that embrace a distinctively comparative focus to draw out the diversity of opportunities, constraints and trajectories in the basic income debate across European welfare states.

Convenors:

Dr. Jurgen De Wispelaere, Institute for Policy Research, University of Bath, UK, Email: jurgen.dewispelaere@gmail.com

Prof. Heikki Hiilamo, Department of Social Policy, University of Helsinki, Finland, Email: heikki.hiilamo@helsinki.fi

Description:

Parenting across households, either because parents have separated or because mothers were single at the time of birth, is a common phenomenon in Europe and the Western world. Policies that seek to manage separated parents’ relationships across households – for example, child support policies, child custody legislation, legal provisions that afford protection from domestic violence and child abuse – are subject to a great deal of politicking and review.

In this context, what might gender justice entail? UN Development Fund for Women (2010) defines gender justice as the ending of inequalities between women and men that are produced and reproduced in the family, community, market and the state.  Notably, solutions often require equitable approaches rather than simply equal treatment. Yet separated fathers’ rights activists promulgating their version of gender justice imply that mothers are interchangeable with fathers and have drawn on the language of gender neutrality and gender equality to argue for equal care time post-separation.

But what would gender justice for both separated mothers and separated fathers look like from a feminist perspective that adopted a more equitable approach, rather than simply equal treatment? Might the vision of gender justice based on equity vary by nation-state? What would be the implications of this vision of gender justice for the raft of policies that impinge on the lives of separated mothers and separated fathers and their children?

We invite qualitative, quantitative or theoretical research papers that:

• critically address a particular dimension of policy in relation to post-separation parenting, highlighting its deficiencies in gender justice terms;
• draw on a gender justice perspective to identify and discuss the problems that arise from interactions between different policies relating to post-separation parenting;
• offer a vision of what gender justice for post-separation parents might look like in general or in relation to a specific area of policy.

Convenors:

Professor Christine Skinner,  Social Policy and Social Work, Alcuin College, C Block, University of York, York, UK, YO310TX, Christine.skinner@york.ac.uk

Associate Professor Vivienne Elizabeth, Sociology, University of Auckland, Private Bag 92019, Auckland, New Zealand, v.elizabeth@auckland.ac.nz

Description:

The enduring 4^th industrial revolution is expected to fundamentally change way we live, work and relate to each other: the new technologies will fuse the psychical, digital and biological worlds and effect profoundly all disciplines, economies, and societies (Schwab 2016). The technological change will greatly affect how welfare states need to develop to address new (technology-driven) risks and how social policies must deal with shifts and disruptions that technological advancement produces, including e.g. new forms of work such as platform work. At the same time, new technologies open novel possibilities for meeting existing risks in more effective ways, for instance those connected to disabilities, education, integration and even in area of social and health care. This panel seeks to contribute to the emerging discussion what is the role of social policies in the new technological era. We welcome contributions that aim at advancing our knowledge about how social policies deal with consequences of new technologies and how social policy analysts can contribute to the better governance and policies of these technologies. In other words, we welcome state of art papers that push the boundaries of the (classic) welfare state analysis and analyze the role of social policies in current time that comes with a great promise but also with peril. The papers submitted can make theoretical contributions, but we are predominantly interested in papers providing empirical (qualitative or quantitative) accounts. The domains of social policies are broad, and we invite papers that look at the role of technology in various social policy domains: for example, from papers analyzing the impact of digitalization on the labor markets and the quality and quantity of jobs, papers on e-skills and 21^st skills at education to papers assessing the effectiveness of innovative policy measures such as individual training accounts, or papers investigating the employment of technology in health and social care policies.

Convenors:

Minna van Gerven, University of Twente, Postbus 217, 7500 AE Enschede, The Netherlands, minna.vangerven@utwente.nl

Stefano Sacchi, University of Milan, Via Conservatorio 7, 20122 Milan, Italy, stefano.sacchi@unimi.it

Description:

The stream focuses on the governance of “marginal living”; i.e. on design, implementation and evaluation of policies and interventions that aim at those whose presence in public space is often unwelcome and/or controversial – the rough-sleepers, beggars, informal street vendors, casual labourers and regulars at private charities. The fact that many of them have dropped out of the welfare state, or might have never truly entered it, constitutes a (moral) challenge to the state and its agencies, exposing their ineffectiveness in providing an appropriate safety net and/or enhancing social inclusion of all. At times, it may also constitute an indirect accusation – when dropping out is an (inadvertent) result of state intervention.  

The specific questions to be addressed in this stream touch upon: (a) the social and policy response (incl. stigmatisation, criminalisation and medicalisation but also (inherent) encouragement) to the individuals and groups who stay out of the welfare system pose; (b) the evaluation of interventions and policies at all levels of governance that address extreme types of marginalisation; and – last but not least – (c) the mechanisms that (inadvertently) contribute to or diminish their (further) marginalisation, such as the increased regulation of public space or gentrification.

We give no preference to either theoretical or empirical papers or to any specific method of social scientific inquiry. All papers touching upon the governance of “marginal living” are welcome, and especially those that employ a comparative lens and/or an interdisciplinary perspective. We also welcome methodological papers which address the issue of the invisibility of “the excluded”, the challenges this invisibility poses for knowledge acquisition and (innovative) methodological solutions to document the perspectives of the excluded (e.g. through peer-to-peer approaches).

Convenors:

Nienke Boesveldt, Utrecht University, Faculty of Social Sciences, Heidelberglaan 1, de Uithof, 3584 CS Utrecht, the Netherlands. e-mail: n.f.boesveldt@uu.nl 

Dorota Lepianka, Utrecht University, Faculty of Social Sciences, Heidelberglaan 1, de Uithof, 3584 CS Utrecht, the Netherlands. e-mail:  d.a.lepianka@uu.nl

Description:

Social policy and social work emerged initially as responses to industrialization.  Ever since, social workers have been instrumental in implementing social policies and addressing the negative implications of rapid industrialization and globalization.  However, it is only recently that the social policy discourse has fully incorporated analysis of the nexus between social policy and social work.   The goal of this stream is to further thinking about the ways in social policy impacts, and is affected by, social workers in diverse national settings. 

Papers in the session should relate to two perspectives on this issue.  A top-down perspective will seek to explore the impact of social policies on social workers charged with implementing these policies.  Papers could explore the impact of developments in social policy on social workers, such as welfare state retrenchment, New Public Management, out-sourcing of social services, new fields of social policy activity (such as climate change), and evidence-based policy.  The forms in which policies redefine, change or reinforce the role of social workers and the ways in which social workers, as street-level bureaucrats, as agents of take-up, or as community organizers address these policies, and the factors associated with this, are possible subjects relating to this perspective.  

A bottom-up perspective focuses on social workers’ impact on social policies.   This is termed “policy practice” and reflects the social work profession’s traditional call for social workers to engage in efforts to further social justice and service-users’ needs through policy change.  Here the emphasis will be on forms of policy interventions by social workers, the factors that impact engagement in this type of activity, and the results of these efforts.   Studies that focus on policy-related activities on different levels (local, state, national, international) and at diverse stages in the policy process are encouraged. 

Diverse theoretical, disciplinary and methodological approaches are welcome.

Convenors:

Prof. John Gal, Baerwald School of Social Work and Social Welfare, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel, John.gal@mail.huji.ac.il

Prof. Idit Weiss-Gal, Shapell School of Social Work, Tel Aviv University, Israel, iditweis@tauex.tau.ac.il

Description:

The three Baltic States (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania) have gone through dramatic socioeconomic changes since the fall of the Soviet regime. Their social policy systems have been rebuilt, reformed and reinvented since 1990s. The sustainability of the social policy structures has became one of the key question: How much welfare state structures of the Baltic States after more than 26 years of transition are sustainable in the long run and able to meet increasing old and new social challenges such as ageing, increasing various inequalities, (e)migration, poverty, long-term unemployment, refugee crisis and climate change? After more than 26 years of transition, the Baltic States are still in search for a sustainable welfare state model that combines social justice, environmental concerns and economic efficiency.

The panel invites papers which analyse recent changes in the welfare state systems of the Baltic States. Studies in all social policy fields (social security, family policy, labour market, healthcare, pension policy, education, housing policy, policy attitudes) are welcomed. The potential contributors on the following topics are especially appreciated:

1. Recent social policy reforms;
2. Poverty, inequality and well-being;
3. Social policy issues related to migration and ethnic minorities;
4. Family policy and gender;
5. Social trust and social policy.

The session invites papers that address welfare state problems in the three Baltic States from a comparative, a single country study or country’s regional perspective and from various disciplinary viewpoints.

Convenors:

Jolanta Aidukaite, Vilnius University, professor, Faculty of Philosophy, Institute of Sociology and Social Work, E-mail: jolanta.aidukaite@fsf.vu.lt

Mare Ainsaar, Tartu University, senior research fellow, Institute of Social Studies, Lossi 36, Tartu, Estonia, E-mail: mare.ainsaar@ut.ee

Description:

Health care provision and funding are currently a key issue in the European context of population ageing and fiscal consolidation. The share of healthcare expenditure in GDP is high in most of the Member States even if it has been decreasing in a few countries since the big recession. Obviously, this subject involves public health issues and it is a matter of redistribution as well.

At least two entry points are possible:

- Europe of health: patient and health professionals mobility, impact of European economic governance (specific country recommendations under the European semester and aid conditionalities for the Member States concerned by such programmes)

- National reforms in terms of organization (care services and facilities, relationships with health care providers, etc.) and health care funding (ongoing changes in funding arrangements regarding the share of public and private financing, the level of the out-of-pocket payments, etc.)

The scope of this stream is intended to be quite broad. Papers on consequences for welfare and poverty, inequalities in access to healthcare, Europeanisation in the field of healthcare and health insurance and comparatives approaches are of course also expected.

Convenor:

Pascale Turquet, Senior lecturer in economics, Jean Monnet Chair “Social policy and inclusive growth”, University Rennes 2, Campus Villejean, Place du Recteur Henri Le Moal, CS 24307, 35043 Rennes cédex, France, pascale.turquet@univ-rennes2.fr

Description:

Over the last years, there has been renewed interest in research into labour market segmentation and labour market mobility across Europe. One main focus has been the role of institutions or institutional change and their impact on labour market segments and labour market mobility. This includes legislation as well as social and employment policies regulating open-ended contracts on the one hand as well as policies facilitating flexible forms of employment on the other hand, e.g. fixed-term contracts, temporary agency work or self-employment. A second area of research has evolved around the role of actors, including firms, employee representatives and social partners influencing the actual use and empirical shape of different forms of employment and their social consequences, the mobility from unemployment into employment as well as the mobility between segments. Thirdly, the consequences of segmented labour markets in terms of professional careers and patterns of transitions, unequal access to social protection or implications for subjective wellbeing, health or families have been studied. Overall, notable differences in patterns of labour market segmentation have been found not only between countries, but also across sectors or occupations and over time. The proposed stream is open to both conceptual and empirical papers. We encourage in particular the submission of papers that explore new ways to analyse labour market segments and labour market mobility. We invite contributions based on qualitative, quantitative or mixed methods. We are interested in both cross-country comparative papers or single country studies. They might focus on certain segments of labour markets, also if taking a sectoral or occupation-specific perspective.

Convenors:

Werner Eichhorst, IZA and University of Bremen, Germany,  Email: eichhorst@iza.org

Valeria Pulignano, Centre for Sociological Research, KU Leuven, Belgium, Email: valeria.pulignano@kuleuven.be

Discussant:

Wim van Oorschot, Centre for Sociological Research, KU Leuven, Belgium, Email: wim.vanoorschot@kuleuven.be

Description:

Family policy plays an essential role for the achievement of the pan-European objective to create a ‘new welfare state’. Not only is family policy vital for safeguarding economic wellbeing of families with children and for enhancing gender equality, it is also central for the human capital and life prospects of children over the life cycle. The growing importance of family policy in Europe can be seem in the fact that during the 2000s, many European countries not traditionally committed to large-scale family policy have adopted dual-earner family policies, for instance investments in childcare, in order to increase parental employment as well as gender equality, and thereby also to strengthen the economic wellbeing of families with children. At the same time, however, the great depression and the Euro crisis have faced European welfare states with increasing economic strains and fiscal problems that have paved the way for recurring waves of austerity measures. In conjunction with insecure labour markets and an increasing diversity of household structures, this has resulted in a diversity of family policy changes with mixed outcomes as many countries today face increasing levels of child poverty and other family-related social problems. Despite the ambitious objectives as those stated in the Europe2020 strategy, European welfare states seem to be in constant flux with diverse policy reactions to common problems. The objective of this stream is to assess the drivers and patterns of family policy change across Europe and to discuss their outcomes on family wellbeing. The stream welcomes papers that analyse one, or all, of these topics from a quantitative or/and qualitative perspective. It gives priority to comparative assessments, but also welcomes nation-specific studies on the topics presented above.

Convenors:

Professor Mikael Nygård, Åbo Akademi University, Faculty of Education and Wellbeing Studies, Strandg. 2, PB 311, FIN-65101 VAASA, FINLAND, e-mail: mikael.nygard@abo.fi

Dr. Mia Hakovirta, University of Turku, Department of Social Research, Assistentinkatu 7, FIN-20014, TURUN YLIOPISTO, email: miahak@utu.fi

Description:

Migration to and within the EU has become one of the most salient and contested issues in the EU. Core concerns are those associated with migration and social protection. The real and imagined challenges and opportunities that migration poses for territorially bounded social systems is evident in discourses on fiscal gains and burdens, welfare magnet effects, race to the bottom/social dumping, and the like. Phenomena like ‘Brexit’ has made evident that the political tensions arising at least in part from these sorts of concerns are to be taken seriously.

The issue matter is highly complex: social protection and migration are issues that relate to migration policy, the specificities of social protection systems and national labour markets, as well as other policy fields. This complexity is interpreted, conveyed and employed differently by different actors at different levels in the system of multi-level governance that constitutes the EU. Accordingly, also policy responses to these questions may vary at different levels.

This stream seeks to bring together papers addressing the broad topic of politics of migration and social protection at different levels in the EU. Possible topics include, but are not limited to: 

• What is the nature and determinants of politicisation of migration and welfare?
• How do differences between different categories of migrants, and specifics of welfare states and social policies, matter to the politics of social protection and migration?
• What policy outcomes of the politics of migration and social protection can be distinguished?
• What (different) patterns of public opinion can be found within the EU (member states) on topics like migration, social protection and welfare, and how does it relate to associated politics?

Convenors:

Cecilia Bruzelius, cecilia.bruzelius@uni-tuebingen.de, University of Tübingen, Institute of Political Science, Research Unit Comparative Public Policy, Melanchthon Strasse 36, D-72074 Tübingen, Germany 

Mikko Kuisma, mikko.kuisma@uni-tuebingen.de, University of Tübingen, Institute of Political Science, Research Unit Comparative Public Policy, Melanchthon Strasse 36, D-72074 Tübingen, Germany 

Description:

Social policy research at heart is interested in identifying causal relationships. We are interested in the reasons for policy changes, we are interested in evaluating the consequences of policies for society, and we are interested in how policies affect individual behavior or attitudes. At base, the questions motivating our research are causal. Yet, social policy analysis has always struggled with the establishment of causal relationships because it has to deal with a special set of problems. We often encounter issues such as collinearity, multiple alternative explanations, and limited variation in our explanatory variables as a consequence of the country-comparative setup of our research.

However, in recent decades the social sciences have witnessed a surge in studies that closely follow the basic idea of counterfactual designs (or a so-called potential outcomes framework of causality). More and more social policy researchers have come to embrace counterfactual designs, as they offer a multitude of ways how to tackle these issues and how to identify causal relationships in our research field. In contrast to other methodological developments, counterfactual designs do not overtly emphasize advanced econometric models but put the focus on research design. Following the basic idea of randomized experiments, it brings along a distinct way of thinking about how to set up studies and how to identify causal relationships.

This stream will explore methodological innovations in comparative social policy analysis. We invite contributions that closely follow and apply a counterfactual design. In particular, we encourage papers relying on natural or quasi-natural experiments, survey and framing experiments, matching, instrumental variables, fixed effects panel designs, difference-in-differences-approaches, and regression discontinuity designs. Paper proposals for the stream should thus not only include the research question, theoretical background, and results, they should provide specific detail on the analytical approach taken to establish causality.

Convenors:

Thomas Biegert (London School of Economics and Political Science, UK), OLD 2.53, Houghton Street, London WC2A 2AE; t.biegert@lse.ac.uk

Elias Naumann (University Mannheim, Germany), B 6 30-32, 68161 Mannheim; naumann@uni-mannheim.de

Convenor:
Mara Yerkes, M.A.Yerkes@uu.nl, Department of Interdisciplinary Social Science, Utrecht University, Heidelberglaan 1, 3584 CS Utrecht, The Netherlands.

Jekaterina Navickė, jekaterina.navicke@fsf.vu.lt, Institute of Sociology and Social Work, Vilnius University.