scholarly journals Public policy-making and risk profiles: Scandinavian centre-right governments after the turn of the millennium

2016 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 495-518 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christoph Arndt
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
Life Course ◽  
Labour Market ◽  
Low Income ◽  
Risk Profile ◽  
Comparative Case Study ◽  
Turn Of The Millennium ◽  
High Support

Recent theoretical advances in the welfare state literature have outlined the differences between labour market- and life course-related schemes as centre-right parties have difficulties in enacting retrenchment on life course-related schemes because these concern every voter. In contrast, the textbook risk profile of centre-right parties’ electorates allows them to cutback on labour market-related schemes as these parties get negligible support from workers and low-income voters. Conducting a comparative case study of recent Danish and Swedish centre-right governments, this article analyses the stylized assumptions on the party level by comparing two similar centre-right governments, which differed in their voter coalitions’ risk profile. I first argue that centre-right governments are generally constrained by the popular entrenchment of the universal welfare state when it comes to life course-related welfare schemes. Second, I argue that the leeway on labour market-related schemes is contingent on the actual risk profile of the centre-right’s electorate, and thereby move beyond the stylized assumptions from recent literature. In this respect, the Danish centre-right did, in contrast to its Swedish counterpart, gain power with an unusual high support among working-class voters which constrained its latitude on labour market-related schemes. I find that the Danish centre-right governments after 2001 acted with bound hands thanks to its high working-class backing, and refrained from outright cutbacks on both labour market- and life course-related schemes until 2010 except for labour market outsiders. In contrast, the Swedish centre-right had a much lower working-class backing and therefore engaged in some outright cutbacks of labour market-related schemes such as unemployment benefits directly after taking office 2006. The centre-right’s actual voter coalition’s risk profile is thus an important determinant for its public policies and its leeway for policy-seeking.

scholarly journals Diversity for Whom? Gentrification, Demographic Change, and the Politics of School Integration

2018 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 16-43 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah Diem ◽  
Jennifer Jellison Holme ◽  
Wesley Edwards ◽  
Madeline Haynes ◽  
Eliza Epstein
Keyword(s):  
School Districts ◽  
Economic Integration ◽  
Low Income ◽  
Comparative Case Study ◽  
District Leaders ◽  
Critical Policy Analysis ◽  
School Demographics ◽  
The Face ◽  
Critical Policy

Gentrification and the displacement of low-income residents of color from neighborhoods where they have long resided has accelerated over the last 20 years. In some cities, this process has begun to impact school demographics. Although research shows that school districts experiencing gentrification are responding in ways that fuel segregation and inequality, in some contexts gentrification is viewed by administrators as an opportunity to seek racial and economic integration. In our exploratory comparative case study, we examined districts in gentrifying cities pursuing integration in the face of rapid gentrification. Our critical policy analysis illustrates how district leaders’ diversity efforts can be overshadowed by their desire to appease and attract gentrifying families. Although districts are maintaining or increasing diversity in gentrifying contexts, our study raises broader equity questions that call for further inquiry of within-district equity and the displacement of students.

scholarly journals The Influence of Social Class on Family Participation in Children’s Education: A Case Study

2021 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Salvador R. Vazquez ◽  
Patricia M. Greenfield
Keyword(s):  
Social Class ◽  
Los Angeles ◽  
Low Income ◽  
Formal Education ◽  
Comparative Case Study ◽  
Family Participation ◽  
Middle Income ◽  
Children's Education ◽  
Children’S Education

Parental involvement in children’s education is commonly accepted as beneficial. However, family social class plays a crucial role in the efficacy of homework help. In a comparative case study, a low-income immigrant family from Mexico and a middle-income family in Los Angeles were observed helping their children with math homework and were asked questions about goals, tutoring strategies, and beliefs about learning. Qualitative analysis focused on two effective teaching methods: scaffolding and productive struggle. The low-income mother with little formal education provided direct help rather than a scaffold, and disapproved of hard problems. However, an older sibling with more education than her mother used scaffolding and believed that difficult problems aid learning. In these respects, she resembled the college-educated middle-income mother. The sister exemplifies how older siblings in immigrant families provide bridges to educational achievement for younger siblings. We suggest effective ways for schools to involve parents who lacked educational opportunity themselves to participate in the education of their children.   How to cite this article: Vazquez, S. R., & Greenfield, P. M. (2021). The Influence of Social Class on Family Participation in Children’s Education: A Case Study. Revista Colombiana de Psicología, 30(1), 133-147. https://doi.org/10.15446/rcp.v30n1.89185

Cambodian girls' recommendations for facilitating menstrual hygiene management in school

2013 ◽  
Vol 3 (4) ◽  
pp. 612-622 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan Connolly ◽  
Marni Sommer
Keyword(s):  
Low Income ◽  
School Environment ◽  
Low Income Countries ◽  
Comparative Case Study ◽  
Teaching Methodologies ◽  
Menstrual Hygiene ◽  
Menstrual Hygiene Management ◽  
Hygiene Management ◽  
Sanitation And Hygiene

Inadequate school water and sanitation facilities in many low-income countries, including Cambodia, are problematic for pubescent girls as they reach menarche and must subsequently manage monthly menses while attending school. This comparative case study explored girls' own suggestions for improving the pubertal guidance they receive in the classroom, and for modifications of existing school water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) facilities in order to better meet schoolgirls' menstrual hygiene management needs. Key findings included girls' recommendations for teaching methodologies that encourage questions and practical content regarding puberty and menstrual management before the onset of menarche, and WASH-specific recommendations for the increased availability of water and sanitary materials in toilet stalls and greater privacy from boys and other girls. Incorporating girls' recommendations into WASH, health and education related policy and programming in low-income countries would allow girls to comfortably and confidently manage menses within the school environment.

Should the Economic Life Course be Redesigned? Old Age Security in a Time of Transition

1995 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 335-359 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Myles ◽  
Debra Street
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Life Course ◽  
Low Income ◽  
Age Distribution ◽  
Age Groups ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Economic Life ◽  
Old Age Security ◽  
Consumer Finances ◽  
The 1960S

ABSTRACTThe last “great pension debate” in Canada came to an end in the early 1980s but is now about to resume. The terms of debate have changed significantly, however. As a contribution to the debate, this paper aims to identify emergent positions and the new social, economic and political conditions to which they are a response. “Conservative” strategies have emphasized privatization of the pension function and greater emphasis on providing income-tested benefits to the low income elderly. New “progressive” alternatives have advocated a redesign of the welfare state to allow for a more flexible model of retirement and the economic life course more generally. Each is a response to real changes in the fiscal capacities of governments, the conditions for successful economic performance and the distribution of economic risk among age groups. The empirical core of the paper uses data from the Survey of Consumer Finances to show how the age distribution of economic well-being has changed since the the 1960s when the current welfare state was designed. Our aim is not to resolve the debate but to set it in context and identify the main assumptions and models underlying alternative strategies for reform.

“Good” and “Bad” Workers and the Collapse of the Expected Life Course: The Postwar Working Class in Detroit (USA) and Łódź (Poland), 1940s–1980s

2020 ◽  
pp. 088832541989120
Author(s):  
Agata Zysiak
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
Life Course ◽  
The Other ◽  
Social Imaginary ◽  
Late Capitalism ◽  
Welfare Benefits ◽  
Industrial Structures ◽  
The Social ◽  
Mode Of Production

Two former industrial giants on opposite sides of the globe—the well-known and extensively studied city of Detroit (USA) and the lesser-known but regionally important city of Łódź (Poland)—developed in historically differing economic and political circumstances but have much in common. In both cases, postwar prosperity brought the working class to the center of the social imaginary, resulting in the emergence of a corporate welfare state on one side of the Atlantic Ocean and a socialist one on the other. Thus, two “workers’ El Dorados” were based on almost opposite lifestyles, values and models of society, and each lasted for no more than one generation. Changes in industrial structures and locations, the inflexibility of the mono-industrial giants, and a general shift to late capitalism and the post-Fordist mode of production affected both cities. Workers’ biographies were experienced through the primacy of work as a means of individual, social, and state reproduction. Factory work offered a device for the allocation of social worth and welfare benefits across time in both contexts. The latter is examined by the construct of a “good worker” and the creation of an imagined, expected life course in the postwar welfare projects, as well as the generational division of workers.

Assisted living facilities as sites of encounter: implications for older adults’ experiences of inclusion and exclusion

2019 ◽  
Vol 40 (7) ◽  
pp. 1577-1593 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rachel V. Herron ◽  
L. M. Funk ◽  
D. Spencer ◽  
M. Wrathall
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Low Income ◽  
Assisted Living ◽  
Social Inclusion ◽  
Community Dwelling ◽  
The Other ◽  
Comparative Case Study ◽  
Assisted Living Facilities ◽  
Canadian City

AbstractMost of the existing literature on inclusion and exclusion among older adults focuses on community-dwelling individuals. In this article, we draw on the results of a comparative case study to explore how older adults in two assisted living settings experience inclusion and exclusion. One site was a low-income facility and the other a higher-end facility in a mid-sized Canadian city. Bridging together geographies of encounter and gerontological approaches on social inclusion, we analyse interviews with tenants and key informants to explore when, where and in what ways these groups experience inclusion and exclusion in these particular settings. Tenants’ narratives reveal how their encounters, and in turn their experiences of exclusion and inclusion are shaped by experiences throughout their lifecourse, the organisation of assisted living spaces, communities beyond the facility, and pervasive discourses of ageism and ‘dementiaism’. We argue that addressing experiences of exclusion for older adults within these settings involves making more time and space for positive encounters and addressing pervasive discourses around ageism and ‘dementiaism’ among tenants and staff.

The Regulation of Employment

2021 ◽  
pp. 605-623
Author(s):  
Patrick Emmenegger ◽  
Paul Marx
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
Labour Market ◽  
Job Security ◽  
Temporary Employment ◽  
Employment Contracts ◽  
Coordinated Market Economies ◽  
Production Models ◽  
Security Regulations ◽  
The Welfare State

The regulation of job security is an important, but understudied, aspect of the welfare state. This contribution reviews academic debates that aim to explain the development of job security regulations across time and countries. While earlier debates focused on dismissal protection as an issue contested between capital and labour, the varieties-of-capitalism approach has emphasized the complementarity between job security regulations and the production models in coordinated market economies. Recently, political economists have begun to discuss diverging regulatory trajectories for open-ended and temporary employment contracts. This is argued to produce ‘labour market dualism’ and conflicts within the working class between ‘insiders’ and ‘outsiders’. The labour market crisis that began in 2008 seems to have changed the politics of job security regulations in those countries that were heavily affected.

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