In the course of the 1990s, the welfare states of modern western societies were confronted with new and changing challenges that were, in part, contradictory. These challenges were caused by exogenous processes, including globalisation and EU integration, as well as endogenous processes involving social and economical change within European societies (Esping-Andersen, 1999, Esping-Andersen et al, 2002). As a consequence of such processes, social security systems came under pressure (Ferrera and Rhodes, 2000; Scharpf and Schmidt, 2000; Hinrichs, 2001). At the same time, new demands pertaining to social security developed as a result of changes in the life histories of individuals...

In recent years changing labour markets accompanied by increased and persisting unemployment have been seen as requiring reforms in social security for those in the labour market. Across many countries there have been reductions in the duration and replacement rates of social security and restriction in its coverage (Clasen, 1999; Gallie and Paugam, 2000; ILO, 2000). Thus, “[i] ncreases in insecurity in society have been accompanied by decreases in the availability of social security” (Hill, 1999, p 89).

These declines in social protection have been driven by changing policy goals. There has been a narrowing and obscuring of objectives, which...

Overarching this chapter is a question that is of critical importance to the well-being of millions of Europeans and, indeed, to the character of the EU itself. In a nutshell, will the dominant social model (or models) promote exclusion or inclusion, or something in between? Will it aim for social justice for all, or only for the most needy or most deserving? Will it strive for an ambitious high-quality welfare horizon or settle for a minimum safety net? The importance of these questions is emphasised, as is the urgency of the answers they require, by the fact that, in some...

This chapter is intended to shed light on the heuristic value of a lifecourse perspective for analysing welfare policy changes and their impact on individuals and their social protection, integration and citizenship. The concept of the life course helps us link a macrosociological analysis of this institution to a microsociology of the biographical trajectories of individuals. In this respect, it is a fundamental conceptual tool for analysing and understanding rearrangements in the changing relation between labour markets and welfare policies.

This chapter’s starting point is the assumption that every societal model interconnects three spheres: the labour market, the welfare state...

Citizenship has become a key concept in many fields of social science, from the analysis of social rights to normative political theory and empirical research on political participation and political culture (Andersen and Hoff, 2001). With such a broad scope of applications a variety of meanings¹ inevitably follows (van Gunsteren, 1998). This problem is aggravated by the fact that precise definitions are often missing in the literature. Definitions tend to be replaced by vague notions that citizenship is about rights and duties — or about equality and empowerment, eligibility and entitlements, membership and participation, integration and civicness and so on. These...

The aim of this chapter is to challenge the concept of citizenship in the light of the main paradox of politics and democracy, consisting of the dialectic of inclusion and exclusion within a delimited territory. A reconstruction of the recent debate on social citizenship, multiculturalism and cosmopolitanism — which refers to the transformation of the welfare state, the process of European unification and the effects of globalisation — allows for the reconceptualising of the notions of marginalisation and social policy within a more complex international scenario. This factor should permit one to extend and, at the same time, to restrict the political/cultural...

The activation of social protection is one of the most important current transformations of social protection across Europe. However, there is disagreement about how it should be interpreted. The purpose of this chapter is to point out that:

The concept of activation can be used in both a broad and narrow sense. In the broader sense, it reaches well beyond what is usually described as ‘activation’ (all sorts of welfare-to-work programmes and making work pay policies).

There is no such thing as one universal activation rationale: instead, a diversity of solutions persists for activation in both the broad and narrow...

This chapter focuses on the role of activation policy in the active society and especially on the employment and social integration effects of the Danish active line in labour market and social policy. First, the concepts of the active society and activation are investigated. Second, it is shown how the idea of the active society and activation is put into practice in different ways depending on particular ideological and institutional settings. Third, a closer look is taken of the Danish active line which has been promoted as ‘best practice’ since in the 1990s by the OECD and EU Commission in...

Activation policies are at the core of the changing face of welfare. Previous analyses of the activation phenomenon have focused on whether activation policies fit into or cause changes in different welfare regimes (Torfing, 1999; Barbier, 2004; Barbier and Ludwig-Mayerhofer, 2004). Similarly, a significant number of studies have demonstrated that activation policies rebalance the relationship between rights and obligations (Kildal, 2001; Kvist, 2002; Gilbert, 2002; van Oorschot and Abrahamson, 2003). Conversely, the number of studies examining the field-level administration of activation programmes is limited (Handler, 2003; Olesen, 2003). In other words, our knowledge concerning the implementation of activation policies is...

One of the crucial themes that has emerged as a background and premise for feminist scholarship and debates is the gendering of inequality during the past 30 years inspired by feminist politics. Gender equality has become part of the political agenda in western democracies and social movements have taken up the struggle for women’s equal rights all over the world. Feminist scholars have studied the gendered links between the family, the state and the market and have reconceptualised the division between public and private, between paid and unpaid work and care and between equality and difference (Hobson et al, 2002)....

In fordist industrial society, the term ‘citizen’ was constructed as employed citizens who, by virtue of their relatively strongly standardised employment biographies on the basis of full-time employment, received social rights that were connected to the cultural concept of ‘decommodification’, that is, rights to maintain a reasonable standard of living during periods beyond employment, including unemployment, retirement and illness (Esping-Andersen, 1990, 1999). The ‘worker citizen’ was, in many societies, also defined as the male breadwinner who, through his employment income and social security claims, was able to support a financially dependent wife and children. Housewives were seen as ‘non-working’ and...

In western industrialised countries labour markets have traditionally been the arena of life through which individuals are integrated into the society. The labour markets do not provide only economic security for individuals, but also provide social contact. Fundamental changes in the labour market, globalisation and the development of the information society have lead to an increasing exclusion of individuals from the labour market. Unemployment and early retirement have become more common than ever in developed societies. This has affected also the life course of ageing people (Guillemard and Van Gunsteren, 1991). Nowadays individuals rarely leave the labour force at the...

This chapter considers the issue of early exit and marginalisation from a British perspective. The UK can be described as having a liberal welfare regime (Esping-Andersen, 1990). According to Esping-Andersen (1999, p 74): “liberal welfare regimes in their contemporary form reflect a political commitment to minimise the state, to individualise risks, and to promote market solutions.” In terms of labourmarket policy, this is exemplified by the dominance of needs-based and means-tested unemployment benefits as well as the relatively high importance of occupational pensions. Moreover, liberal social policies favour a passive approach to employment management and largely unregulated labour markets.

Building...

In public debates on unemployment and social protection, the unemployed and beneficiaries of social security schemes have often been considered as passive clients who need to be activated by others. It has been assumed that their lack of resources, and especially labour power, turns them into passive victims and objects rather than active actors and subjects (Offe, 1973; van Berkel, 1997; Williams, 1998; Williams et al, 1999). However, over the last two decades we find a number of empirical cases of social mobilisation of and by social security claimants in several western European countries (Halvorsen, 2001). This is a relatively...

In the 1990s, there was a widespread belief in the inertia of the welfare state. In contrast, we now observe quite far-reaching changes in welfare policies, and several possible directions seem to be open for tomorrow’s welfare states. In brief, we are in the midst of a thoroughgoing reform of welfare systems. Welfare policies are changing in response to new challenges, new actors and changing power relations. We also face new discourses about welfare that are disseminated across the rich welfare states.

Current conceptualisations and explanations of welfare state change are not always very helpful for analysing these often quite...