This book explores the European welfare model, arguing that the rollout of European policies for welfare services has led to increased marketization. The author argues that the rise of profit-making in utilities, transport, child and health care is exacerbating rather than reducing inequalities among citizens, demonstrating how the marketization of European welfare has taken place over successive rounds of policymaking for European integration. These rounds have motivated national level public services reform, as well as contestation over these measures from civil society groups. The study traces the developments of policymaking at EU level since the late 1980s, offers in-depth studies of contentious debates which have sealed the fate of welfare services at the turn of the century, and offers insights on the problems involved with prolonged austerity in Europe. This book therefore shows how European integration is provoking a democratic challenge to what kind of Europe citizens want.
In this study, an international and multidisciplinary team take stock of the promise and shortfalls of 'Social Europe' today, examining the response to the Eurocrisis, the past decade of social policy in the image of the Lisbon Agenda, and the politics that derailed a more Delorsian Europe from ever emerging.
This volume provides a comprehensive overview of the role of local governments around the world in the management of the migration, integration and development nexus. Drawing on case studies from the Global North and South, this comparative work fills a lacuna in the existing literature which has focused largely on migration as addressed by European and North American cities. Further, it widens the current debate by confronting northern experiences with attitudes and strategies observed in sending countries; clearly demonstrating that international mobility has become a global issue for cities at both end of the migration spectrum. This innovative work will provide a valuable resource for students and scholars working in the social sciences, public policy and development; in addition to practitioners and policymakers.
This edited volume brings together leading international researchers in an attempt to disentangle and understand the multiple conflicts of sovereignty within the European polity in the aftermath of the 2008 economic crisis. While most research on sovereignty focuses on its international dimensions, what makes this volume distinctive is the focus on the mobilization of sovereignty discourses in national politics. Contrary to tired paradigms studying clashes between national and supranational sovereignty, the various chapters of the volume offer a provocation for the readers - what if these old vertical conflicts of sovereignty are increasingly complemented by horizontal conflicts between executives and parliaments at both the national and international level?
This open access book, supported by FEPS and Fondation Jean-Jaurès, centres on the work of contemporary progressive feminist thinkers and the idea that there is no democracy without gender equality. The authors develop the concept of a feminism that works for everyone - regardless of their gender, social or cultural identity - in the context of EU policy. The book features gender experts with multidisciplinary backgrounds from across Europe, providing a comprehensive exploration of efforts to move away from "gender backlash" rhetoric and towards a new gender contract for a fairer, more equal European Union.
This volume offers a unique interdisciplinary and comparative perspective on contemporary processes of othering by state institutions in relation to dynamics of racism, xenophobia, sexism, homo-transphobia, as well as ethnic- and class-based discriminations. It focuses on eight original case studies empirically grounded in various domains of the `social state', in Southern African and Western European contexts: the education and health care systems, the regulation of work and of procreation rights, and institutions in charge of granting asylum. The authors provide key insights on how states produce Others, and on how othering contributes in turn to the process of state formation and the politicization of public action.
