Welfare to work, social justice and domination: an introduction to an interdisciplinary normative perspective on welfare policies

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-24
Author(s):  
Anja Eleveld ◽  
Thomas Kampen ◽  
Josien Arts
Keyword(s):  
Social Assistance ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
Welfare To Work ◽  
Philosophical Perspective ◽  
Welfare Policies ◽  
Legal Literature ◽  
Legal Perspective ◽  
Assistance Systems ◽  
Republican Theory ◽  
Normative Perspective

In the last decades, rights to social assistance benefits have become more conditional. Governments in Europe, as in other welfare states, have sought to ‘activate’ their unemployed citizens by requiring them to participate in mandatory work programmes. This chapter examines how liberal and communitarian thinkers have justified or rejected welfare-to-work (WTW) policies within social assistance systems and how these policies have been legitimised by key notions of inclusion, responsibilisation, employability and empowerment, which correspond with liberal and communitarian justifications of WTW. Drawing on critical socio-legal literature, the authors question these justifications and clarify their decision to explore WTW from a threefold normative perspective that takes into account: 1) power relations and human social rights (the legal perspective); 2) lived experiences within WTW relationships, including endemic power asymmetries and perceptions of justice (the sociological perspective); and 3) the republican theory of non-domination (the philosophical perspective). The last part of this chapter introduces the chapters of this book.

Pressing, repressing and accommodating: local modes of governing social assistance recipients in welfare to work programmes in the Netherlands

2020 ◽  
pp. 211-236
Author(s):  
Josien Arts
Keyword(s):  
The Netherlands ◽  
Policy Design ◽  
Social Assistance ◽  
Case Managers ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
Welfare To Work ◽  
Discretionary Power ◽  
Local Modes ◽  
Local Practices ◽  
Republican Theory

This chapter shows the differences between local welfare-to-work programmes in the Netherlands in terms of the ways in which social assistance recipients are directed towards paid labour: through pressing, repressing and accommodating modes of governing. Based on 13-month ethnographic research in three Dutch social assistance offices, this chapter argues, first, that the observed local differences result from decentralisation of policy design and implementation as well as increased discretionary power for case managers. Second, that the different local practices can be understood as varieties of neoliberal paternalism legitimised through various forms of stigmatisation of social assistance recipients that leave little room for them to revolt against disfunctioning policy and wrongful treatment. Third, by means of using the republican theory of non-domination, this chapter argues that the observed local differences (between as well as within municipalities) and limited room for social assistance recipients to voice their concerns indicate that Dutch welfare-to-work policies work partly in arbitrary ways and are insufficiently democratically controlled.

scholarly journals Smaller net or just fewer to catch? Disentangling the causes for the varying sizes of minimum income schemes

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jussi Tervola ◽  
Merita Jokela ◽  
Joonas Ollonqvist
Keyword(s):  
Social Assistance ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
Nordic Countries ◽  
Methodological Framework ◽  
Political Will ◽  
Minimum Income ◽  
Weak Evidence

The sizes of minimum income schemes vary significantly even in welfare states that are considered similar. For example among Nordic countries, the share of recipients is almost double in Finland compared to Nordic peers. Considering the strong political will to diminish the receipt of last-resort benefits, we demonstrate a methodological framework to evaluate the reasons for varying number of beneficiaries and apply it to two Nordic countries, Finland and Sweden. By using microsimulation of eligibility rates, we examine the role of social assistance legislation, first-tier benefits and non-take-up. Relatively high number of beneficiaries in Finland is traced back to social assistance policies such as higher norm levels and earning disregard but also to lower non-take-up rate of social assistance benefits, which potentially reflects looser discretion and asset test. We also find some, albeit weak, evidence that the implementation reform of social assistance in Finland 2017 has further reduced non-take-up.

scholarly journals Software-Sorted Exclusion of Asylum Seekers in Norway and Finland

2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Funda Ustek-Spilda ◽  
Marja Alastalo
Keyword(s):  
Social Life ◽  
Asylum Seekers ◽  
Science And Technology Studies ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
Foreign Born ◽  
Welfare Policies ◽  
Democratic Regimes ◽  
Welfare Systems ◽  
Made In ◽  
The Welfare State

As James Scott writes, to be able to govern, administrative bodies need to make objects of government legible. Yet migrant persons do not fall neatly into the categories of administrative agencies. This categorical ambiguity is illustrated in the tendency to exclude asylum seekers from various population registers and to not provide them with ID numbers, which constitute the backbone of many welfare states in Europe. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in Norway and Finland, and in Eurostat and UNECE, we study how practices of population registration and statistics compilation on foreign-born persons can be beset by differential and at times contradictory outlooks. We show that these outlooks are often presented in the form of seemingly apolitical software infrastructures or decisions made in response to software with limited, if any, discretion available to bureaucrats, statisticians, and policymakers. Our two cases, Norway and Finland, are considered social-democratic regimes within Esping-Andersen’s famous global social policy typology. Using science and technology studies and specifically “double social life of methods,” we seek to trace how software emerges as both a device for administrative bookkeeping and also for enacting the “migrant” categories with particular implications for how the welfare state comes to be established and how welfare policies come to be implemented. We note that even if all statistical production necessarily involves inclusions and exclusions, how the “boundaries” are set for whom to include and exclude directly affects the lives of those implicated by these decisions, and as such, they are onto-political. This means that welfare policies get made at the point of sorting, categorizing, and ordering of data, even before it is fed into software and other administrative devices of government. In view of this, we show that methods enact their subjects—we detail how the methods set to identify and measure refugee statistics in Europe end up enacting the welfare services they have access to. We argue that with increasing automation and datafication, the scope of welfare systems is being curtailed under the label of efficiency, and individual contexts are ignored.

scholarly journals Solo Parents: Mother-Work and/or Other Work? Libreal, Conservative and Solidaristic Policies

1970 ◽  
Author(s):  
Celia Briar
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Welfare Policy ◽  
Collective Responsibility ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
Individual Responsibility ◽  
Ideal Types ◽  
Welfare Policies ◽  
English Speaking ◽  
Community Responsibility ◽  
Policy Direction

In recent years, New Zealand has been following the American lead in expecting solo parents (in practice mainly mothers) to move off state benefits and rely upon a combination of their own earnings from paid employment plus contributions from the absent parent. However; whilst this policy direction is fast becoming the greater norm in the 'residual' welfare states of the English speaking nations, there are greater variations in Europe. For the purposes of this paper, three broad classifications in welfare policy towards mothers are used: liberal (prioritising individual responsibility), conservative (a focus on family and community responsibility) and solidaristic (state/collective responsibility). These are of course 'ideal types', and the welfare policies of all nations examined contain elements of all three approaches to welfare. The paper assesses the extent to which each of these approaches provides solo mothers with genuine options regarding paid I unpaid work, and freedom from poverty.

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