scholarly journals Theorizing children’s social citizenship: New welfare states and inter-generational justice

Childhood ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 142-157 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dympna Devine ◽  
Tom Cockburn

This article argues that children’s social status and positioning as children needs to be foregrounded in discussions of social citizenship and the re/development of the welfare state against a backdrop of neo-liberal economic and social reform. Set within a theoretical model that highlights the circular and de-centered exercise of power across fields of action, the subject of children’s citizenship, understood as a “citizenship habitus” is explored, taking the exemplar of education and migrant children’s positioning within schools.

1989 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 371-397 ◽  
Author(s):  
Göran Therborn

ABSTRACTAn analytical perspective for grasping how welfare states relate to the ordinary life-pursuits of their population and how the latter relates to the welfare state is needed. What welfare states do is distinguished into social administration, social education, social reform, and social steering. Steering reaches furthest into people's lives. As such it is problematic both to integrative and aggregative theories of democracy; it can also include the possibility of calling forth more signals from the population than less ambitious democratic policies. A systematic overview of aggregate Swedish household data the major activities of households provides a basis for analysing how the population is affected by and affects the welfare state. The state appears as an important provider of work, housing, childcare, and leisure; the most effective signals from households to the state come forward when public provision and subsidy have created tight markets. From the household perspective, signals to government through individual action of various sorts, direct or mediated, appear crucial even in very organized Sweden.


2021 ◽  
pp. 345-363
Author(s):  
Ann Shola Orloff ◽  
Marie Laperrière

This chapter traces how scholars have conceptualized the relationship between gender and welfare states, examining significant differences among mainstream, gender-aware, and feminist perspectives. We discuss how feminist scholarship has broadened scholars’ understanding of social citizenship, how gender structures, and is structured by, the policies and institutions of the welfare state, and how women and men participate in social politics. We describe how insights from intersectionality theory and the adoption of more fluid conceptions of gender have shaped investigations of social policies and politics, bringing greater accuracy to analyses of the gendered effects of welfare states. Finally, we turn to analyses of how welfare states have reorganized in response to crises of care. We conclude by discussing normative debates over the role of welfare states in reducing gender inequalities and supporting people’s choices about care and employment.


2021 ◽  
pp. 0308275X2097409
Author(s):  
Milena Marchesi

This article argues for gendering affective citizenship and humanitarianism. Both of these ‘regimes of care’ are understood to work through benevolent affect, to mobilize citizens in the wake of the retrenchment of the welfare state. Ethnography with Italian-origin women volunteers at a Milanese association shows that the affect and motivations of affective citizens can starkly deviate from benevolence and ‘do-gooderism’. Analyses of post-Fordist affective citizenship focus on the shift from waged labour and state-mediated forms of social security to precarious labour and privatized responsibilities for welfare, implicitly centring the (male) breadwinner as the subject of these transformations. By contrast, this article seeks to call attention to the continuities in unwaged care. In so doing, it shows how the Fordist legacy of gendered citizenship ‘haunts’ its post-Fordist affective and humanitarian reconfigurations and highlights the contradictions and contestations that mark ongoing transformations of social citizenship in Europe.


2018 ◽  
Vol 48 (1) ◽  
pp. 127-145 ◽  
Author(s):  
SHARON BAUTE ◽  
BART MEULEMAN ◽  
KOEN ABTS

AbstractThis study investigates how support for Social Europe is related to citizens’ welfare attitudes. On the one hand, welfare attitudes can spill over from the national to the European level, given that Social Europe aims to achieve similar goals to those of national welfare states. On the other hand, support for the welfare state can be an obstacle, if citizens perceive the nation state and the European Union as competing or substituting governance levels. Using data from the 2014 Belgian National Election Study, we take a multidimensional approach to Social Europe, capturing attitudes toward social regulations, member state solidarity, European social citizenship, and a European social security system. Results demonstrate that citizens who are more positive about the welfare state are also more supportive of Social Europe. However, positive welfare attitudes do not affect all dimensions of Social Europe to the same extent. The spillover effect of support for basic welfare state principles is strongest for policy instruments of Social Europe that are less intrusive to national welfare states (EU social regulations). By contrast, welfare state critique has a stronger impact on support for more intrusive instruments (European social citizenship).


2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 12-33
Author(s):  
Martin Powell

This article explores when the welfare state was established in Britain. First it examines the definitions of the welfare state, before turning to outline the methods and criteria used in exploring the establishment of welfare states. It then discusses the criteria that have been applied to the British case (expenditure; legislation; content; social citizenship; antithesis of the Poor Law) before critically analysing the arguments for different creation periods for the British welfare state (Old Poor Law; nineteenth century; Liberal reforms; inter-war period; 1945; later periods). It is concluded that while the strongest case and the greatest number of dimensions suggest 1945, in the words of T H Marshall: ‘we may still be in doubt what was the exact combination of circumstances in Britain in the 1940's which evoked that cry of "Eureka !’


2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 125-141
Author(s):  
Fiona Dukelow

This article reviews the recommodification of social policy in the context of financialised austerity capitalism and post-crisis welfare states. It sets out an understanding of recommodification as a multiple set of processes that involve the state in labour market-making, by shaping labour’s ‘saleability’. Under conditions of finance-dominated austerity capitalism, the article argues that recent dynamics of recommodification complicate the long established Piersonian observations. For Pierson, recommodification signifies how elements of the welfare state that shelter individuals from market pressures are dismantled and replaced with measures which buffer their labour market participation. This article examines ways in which recent policy trends in recommodification, whether by incentivising or coercive means, increase exposure to labour market risks and connect with the growing inequalities between capital and labour under post-crisis re/financialised austerity capitalism. This analysis is paired with a synoptic review of recent labour market trends and reforms across the European Union. As recommodification evolves, the insecurity it institutes raises fundamental questions about the underlying nature of social citizenship which are also addressed.


2020 ◽  
pp. 026101832097850
Author(s):  
Anika Seemann

This article critically examines the Danish ‘ghetto initiatives’ of 2004, 2010, 2013 and 2018, with a particular focus on their implications for ‘social citizenship’. Its approach is twofold: firstly, it explores how each of the four major ghetto initiatives constructed ghettos and their residents as a problem for the welfare state, and what policy measures were proposed to address the problems identified. Secondly, it examines the legislative changes that resulted from each of the ghetto initiatives and assesses their implications for social citizenship. In doing so, it relates its findings to the different developmental stages of social citizenship in Danish welfare state history. The article argues that the ghetto initiatives have led to an unprecedented spatialization and ethnicization of social citizenship which mark a radical departure from the guiding principles of post-1945 Danish welfare thought and practice.


1990 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-25 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philippe van Parijs

ABSTRACTNo major reform of the welfare state has a chance of going through unless one can make a plausible case as to both its ‘ethical value’ and its ‘economic.value’, that is, that it would have a positive effect in terms of both justice and efficiency. In this essay, this rough conjecture is first presented, and its plausibility probed, on the background of some stylised facts about the rise of modern welfare states in the postwar period. Next, the focus is shifted to the current debate on the introduction of a basic income, a completely unconditional grant paid ex ante to all citizens. It is argued that if basic income is to have a chance of meeting the strong twofold condition stipulated in the conjecture, some major changes are required in the way one usually thinks about justice and efficiency in connection with social policy. But once these changes are made, as they arguably must be, the chance that basic income may be able to meet the challenge is greatly enhanced.


2005 ◽  
Vol 70 (6) ◽  
pp. 921-948 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Brady ◽  
Jason Beckfield ◽  
Martin Seeleib-Kaiser

Previous scholarship is sharply divided over how or if globalization influences welfare states. The effects of globalization may be positive causing expansion, negative triggering crisis and reduction, curvilinear contributing to convergence, or insignificant. We bring new evidence to bear on this debate with an analysis of three welfare state measures and a comprehensive array of economic globalization indicators for 17 affluent democracies from 1975 to 2001. The analysis suggests several conclusions. First, state-of-the-art welfare state models warrant revision in the globalization era. Second, most indicators of economic globalization do not have significant effects, but a few affect the welfare state and improve models of welfare state variation. Third, the few significant globalization effects are in differing directions and often inconsistent with extant theories. Fourth, the globalization effects are far smaller than the effects of domestic political and economic factors. Fifth, the effects of globalization are not systematically different between European and non-European countries, or liberal and non-liberal welfare regimes. Increased globalization and a modest convergence of the welfare state have occurred, but globalization does not clearly cause welfare state expansion, crisis, and reduction or convergence. Ultimately, this study suggests skepticism toward bold claims about globalization's effect on the welfare state.


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