scholarly journals Immigration policy and the modern welfare state, 1880–1920

2019 ◽  
Vol 29 (4) ◽  
pp. 463-477 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sara Kalm ◽  
Johannes Lindvall

This article puts contemporary debates about the relationship between immigration policy and the welfare state in historical perspective. Relying on new historical data, the article examines the relationship between immigration policy and social policy in Western Europe in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when the modern welfare state emerged. Germany already had comparably strict immigration policies when the German Empire introduced the world’s first national social insurances in the 1880s. Denmark, another early social-policy adopter, also pursued restrictive immigration policies early on. Almost all other countries in Western Europe started out with more liberal immigration policies than Germany’s and Denmark’s, but then adopted more restrictive immigration policies and more generous social policies concurrently. There are two exceptions, Belgium and Italy, which are discussed in the article.

1992 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-17 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alan Walker

This article examines the relationship between poverty and the welfare state and attempts to answer the question as to why poverty has persisted under all welfare states. Several major reasons for the persistence of poverty are advanced, and the author argues that the main factor underlying the failure to abolish poverty is the conflict between economic policy and social policy. The challenge to welfare states from the New Right is examined—particularly the contention that welfare states themselves create poverty and dependence—in the light of evidence of the impact of the Thatcher government's policies in Britain. Finally, the author proposes an alternative approach to the abolition of poverty, one that is based on the integration of economic and social policy.


2013 ◽  
Vol 340 ◽  
pp. 621-625
Author(s):  
Fang Liu

The development of the modern welfare state is not isolated; their welfare policy implementation depends on the advanced economy, extensive coverage, the perfect system, the diversification and welfare system mandatory. Social network analysis is just take this dependence into account, and develop corresponding method to deal with the relationship between variables. This paper, based on the p* model analysis, takes Sweden and Finland, two typical Nordic welfare state, as the examples, and finds the differences in disease disability insurance, unemployment insurance and etc. To understand these differences is of great importance to think about whether to conduct the reform of the welfare state, and how to combine the concrete national conditions with the reform.


2014 ◽  
Vol 25 (3) ◽  
pp. 129-146
Author(s):  
Primoz Krasovec

The text has three aims: first, to explain the relationship between capitalism and neoliberalism, as well as to clarify the very term ?neoliberalism?, diverging from the usual explanations; second, to trace important changes in the organization of labour in late capitalism; and three, to establish the consequences of both neoliberalism and the new organization of labour with regards to social policy, but also to describe and classify the most important forms of change in social policy. Besides these main theoretical goals, the text also debates the limits of the ?welfare state?, in the light of deeper structural regularities in capitalism.


Author(s):  
Irina Araújo ◽  
Marta Simões

The aim of this chapter is to examine the relationship between globalisation and the size of the welfare state taking into account the respective composition. The efficiency hypothesis argues that globalisation leads to a reduction in the size of the welfare state since this can harm international competitiveness and drive away capital flows, while the compensation hypothesis poses that globalisation induces an increase in the welfare state in order to provide citizens with wider coverage against the risks of globalisation. This relationship is analysed for 31 OECD countries over the period 1980-2010 using data on social expenditures and the KOF Index of Globalisation and their different components. The results obtained indicate that overall there is a positive association between globalisation and the size of the welfare state, more intense for spending on housing-related benefits, active labour market programs and other social policy areas, and mostly felt through political globalisation. Globalisation loses significance for the explanation of family and unemployment benefits.


2018 ◽  
Vol 48 (1) ◽  
pp. 21-41 ◽  
Author(s):  
ANTHONY KEVINS ◽  
ALEXANDER HORN ◽  
CARSTEN JENSEN ◽  
KEES VAN KERSBERGEN

AbstractSocial class, with its potentially pivotal influence on both policy-making and electoral outcomes tied to the welfare state, is a frequent fixture in academic and political discussions about social policy. Yet these discussions presuppose that class identity is in fact tied up with distinct attitudes toward the welfare state. Using original data from ten surveys fielded in the United States and Western Europe, we investigate the relationship between class and general stances toward the welfare state as a whole, with the goal of determining whether class affects how individuals understand and relate to the welfare state. Our findings suggest that, although class markers are tied to objective and subjective positional considerations about one's place in the society, they nevertheless do not seem to shape stances toward the welfare state. What is more, this is equally true across the various welfare state types, as we find no evidence that so-called ‘middle-class welfare states’ engender more positive middle-class attitudes than other regimes. Based on our analysis, we propose that researchers would do better to focus on household income rather than class; while income may not be a perfect predictor of attitudes toward the welfare state, it is a markedly better one than class.


Author(s):  
Fred Powell

This chapter explores the ideal of the welfare state with particular reference to Ireland and why it matters to us as European citizens. It discusses the origins of the welfare state, the relationship between welfare and citizenship, Ireland's position within welfare state frameworks, Irish social policy, and the crisis of legitimacy in the welfare state. It is argued that in the reconstructed reality of postmodern society, the challenge of social policy is to respond reflexively to changing needs and demands. The challenge to a universalist welfare state based on social obligation, common citizenship and human rights is manifest. If populism is to be the shape of things to come, where does that leave the welfare state? Is it possible to have a welfare state in a polarised and fragmented social order? This is the great social, political and intellectual challenge of postmodernity.


2014 ◽  
Vol 67 (1) ◽  
pp. 114-154 ◽  
Author(s):  
Margaret E. Peters

What explains variation in immigration policy, especially policy regulating low-skill workers? A common argument invokes prejudice against foreigners as an explanation for why nations close their economies to immigrants. This prejudice has been ubiquitous throughout history even as immigration policies changed. Social theories of this sort may be descriptively true but are not helpful in predicting variation in policy. Other scholars have turned to the role that native labor plays in protecting its interests against immigration, but they have not explained why labor is able to restrict immigration when it has not been able to restrict trade, even though open trade has wreaked as much, if not more, havoc on labor. A third group of scholars focuses on states' concerns about the fiscal costs of immigrants as an explanation for the changes in policy over time. While fiscal costs are likely to play a role, this argument cannot explain exclusion prior to the creation of the modern welfare state in the early twentieth century. Finally, a fourth group of scholars has examined the power of immigrants themselves. While immigrants clearly affect immigration policy in democracies, they have never been a sufficiently large plurality of the polity to be able to change policy on their own, and they have less voice in autocracies where they can more easily be deported.


1999 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 283-312 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher A. Colderley

Throughout the 1980s, neoconservative governments—fueled by the conviction that the delivery of goods and services is more efficient when left in the hands of the nongovernmental sector, and that nonprofits are more sensitive to personal and individual needs because they are not bound by “bureaucratic” and “majoritarian” constraints—called upon volunteer activity to substitute for the state in many areas of social policy. This doctrine viewed “the relationship between government and the nonprofit sector in terms that are close to what economists would call a zero-sum game.” Advocates of this position believed that once the welfare state dissipated most social welfare activities would be (re)supplied through the expansion of the third sector. Despite the prominence of these beliefs, the evidence overwhelmingly suggests otherwise.


Author(s):  
Sven Schreurs

Abstract In academia and beyond, it has become commonplace to regard populist parties – in particular, those on the radical right – as the archetypical embodiment of politics of nostalgia. Demand-side studies suggest that nostalgic sentiments motivate populist radical-right (PRR) voting and welfare chauvinist attitudes, yet systematic analyses of the nostalgic discourse that these parties promote have not been forthcoming. This paper seeks to fill that lacuna by analysing how the Freedom Party of Austria, the Dutch Party for Freedom and the Sweden Democrats framed the historical fate of the welfare state in their electoral discourse between 2008 and 2018. It demonstrates that their commitment to welfare chauvinism finds expression in a common repertoire of “welfare nostalgia,” manifested in the different modes of “reaction,” “conservation” and “modernisation.” Giving substance to a widespread intuition about PRR nostalgia, the paper breaks ground for further research into nostalgic ideas about social policy.


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