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This open access book constitutes a transnational and multidisciplinary inquiry of the most pressing challenges faced by young people Not in Employment, nor in Education or Training (NEET) in rural areas across Europe.. Rural NEETs are one of the most invisible segments of the youth population, in spite of the fact that the percentage of NEETs is higher in the countryside, compared to those in suburban and urban areas across the EU and many of the Southern and Eastern European countries. This book identifies and analyses different factors that may contribute to or hamper youth social development and social inclusion. Among them are main individual features of rural NEETs, the quality and characteristics of rural NEETs'informal social networks and support, the singularities of formal and non-formal education in rural areas and how they shape the transition from school to work, the role of employment services in providing adequate institutional support, the importance of policy package designor the role of new paradigms of rural development to uphold vulnerable young people in the European countryside. The contributions offered in this book provide a new model of analysis and comprehension of rural NEETs'personal development and social inclusion. This book therefore establishes the state of the art regarding available knowledge on rural NEETs, and represents an inspirational resource for new research agendas on the subject of vulnerable rural youth in Europe. This book also forms the policy design in areas such as education, employment, and social welfare in rural areas.

In diesem Buch wird der aktuelle Zustand der österreichischen Sozialpartnerschaft und ihrer Kontextbedingungen aus verschiedenen disziplinären Perspektiven (Soziologie, Politikwissenschaft,Rechtswissenschaft und Wirtschaftswissenschaft) in ausgewählten Bereichen beschrieben und diskutiert. Im Fokus stehen die Antworten sozialpartnerschaftlicher Akteure auf aktuelle gesellschaftliche, politische, rechtliche und wirtschaftliche Herausforderungen, wie etwa Digitalisierung, Transnationalisierung von Wertschöpfungsketten, ökologische Transformation, neue Formen der Beschäftigung, Arbeitsmigration und die Neuordnung der politischen Kräfteverhältnisse.

In Europa schrumpft die Mittelschicht, was für eine Reihe von EU-Mitgliedsländern bislang kaum untersucht wurde. Dies trifft auch auf Österreich zu, welches sich durch Umbau der Sozialpolitik, Flexibilisierung des Arbeitsmarktes, Zuwanderung und einem Aufstieg rechter politischer Parteien in einem starken Umbruchprozess befindet. Dies ist der Hintergrund für eine in diesem Sammelband erstmalig vorgenommene Analyse des Schrumpfens der österreichischen Mittelschicht. Der Band ist multidisziplinär angelegt (Autor•innen aus Soziologie, Ökonomie, Politikwissenschaft, Zeitgeschichte), und versammelt theoretisch orientierte und empirische Beiträge etablierter Autor•innen wie auch Nachwuchswissenschaftler•innen.

Die anhaltende Transformation des Sozialstaats ist mit einer Bedeutungszunahme tarifvertraglicher Regulierung von sozialer Sicherung verbunden. Der Band bietet erstmals einen umfassenden Überblick über den Stand und die Entwicklung tariflicher Sozialpolitik. Als Bestandsaufnahme enthält er umfangreiche und die zeitliche Entwicklung nachzeichnende Darstellungen für die Alterssicherungs-, Arbeitsmarkt-, Gesundheits- und Familienpolitik in verschiedenen Branchen. Die Untersuchung fragt zudem nach den grundsätzlichen Wahrnehmungen, Einschätzungen und Bewertungen der Tarifvertragsparteien hinsichtlich der Verlagerung sozialpolitischer Verantwortung auf das System der industriellen Beziehungen. Neben Branchen und sozialpolitischen Feldern vergleicht die Studie auch Institutionensysteme. Obwohl mit Deutschland und Österreich zwei institutionell sehr ähnliche Distributionsregimes gegenübergestellt werden, finden sich erhebliche Unterschiede zwischen den beiden Ländern sowohl in Hinblick auf den Vertariflichungsgrad als auch auf die Sichtweisen von Arbeitgeberverbänden und Gewerkschaften. Im Ergebnis zeigt sich: Die Möglichkeiten der Tarifpolitik, eine den Interessen der Beschäftigten angemessene soziale Sicherung zu organisieren, hängen ab von den Rahmungen des Gesetzgebers: Auch bei zunehmend vertariflichter sozialer Sicherheit bleibt der Sozialstaat in sozialpolitischer Verantwortung.

This open access volume addresses the role of external actors in social protection in the Global South, from the Second World War until today, analysing the influence of colonial powers, superpowers during the Cold War and contemporary donor agencies. Following an introduction to the analysis of external actors in social policy making in the Global South, the contributions explore which external actors were dominant in the decades after World War II, and how they shaped early and contemporary social protection making in developing countries. The latter half of the collection elucidates important players in the contemporary transnational social policy arena, such as donor organizations and international organizations, and critically evaluates the potential for and limits of the explanatory power of external actors in social protection making in the Global South, considering the relative contribution of external and domestic influences. By examininghow transnational relationships and external actors have influenced the formation, development and transformation of social policies in the developing world, this collection will be an invaluable resource for scholars interested in social protection in the Global South from a range of disciplines. These include political science, social policy, and sociology, as well as historians of the welfare state, international relations scholars and scholars working on global and transnational social policy and development policy.

This book analyses social conflict among fishers in Indonesia by implementing class theory, thus adopting a new approach to analysing fishers'conflicts in Indonesia. In using this approach, the book enables a comprehensive understanding of the nature of fishers'social conflicts. It demonstrates that the primary cause triggering conflict among fishers in Indonesia is not exploitation, but domination. This domination causes injustice in terms of access among fishers, which in turn threatens their livelihood. The author unpacks the influence of political parties, and how macro-economic conditions and public policy have become contextual variables of these class conflicts in the fisheries community. The book presents the unique characteristics of class conflicts among fishers compared to class conflicts in industrial sectors, underpinned by Marxist theory. This book will be relevant to fisheries policy-makers in Indonesia and abroad, researchers and students in anthropology, sociology, and development economics, as well as community and rural development specialists and conservationists.

Die Coronakrise wirkt als Seismograph der gegenwärtigen Gesellschaft. Die Widersprüche und Pathologien werden unmittelbar sichtbar und insbesondere die gesellschaftsprägende Kraft der Digitalisierung führt deutlich vor Augen, dass Gestaltung das Gebot der Stunde ist. Durch die Pandemie werden Verunsicherungen gesteigert, ökonomisch-soziale Verwerfungen verschärft und individuelle Enttäuschungen produziert. Der neue Blickwinkel kann aber auch positive Funktionen haben und den Diskurs zu sozialen Innovationen beleben. Hierzu gehört die Revitalisierung staatlicher Interventionen, die ebenfalls bei Transformationsprojekten wie der Energiewende oder den demografischen Herausforderungen gefordert ist. Die Pandemie kann so als Beschleuniger von Prozessen gesehen werden, die sich bereits im Wandel befinden. Hierzu zählt auch der Wertigkeitsverlust marktlicher Regulierungen. Die Zukunftsfähigkeit einer Gesellschaft wie auch wirtschaftliche Wertschöpfungen hängen von einerfunktionierenden staatlichen Infrastruktur und öffentlicher Daseinsvorsorge ab. Die Relevanz eines schützenden Staates und zivilgesellschaftlicher Organisationsformen, wie sie sich etwa in den solidarischen Hilfen manifestierten, sind als Narrative anerkannt. Deshalb dürften Neujustierungen der zentralen Steuerungsressourcen Zivilgesellschaft, Staat und Markt Auftrieb erfahren.

Folgen des demographischen Wandels und die Belastung der Familien durch die strukturellen Rücksichtslosigkeiten der gesellschaftlichen Verhältnisse sind lange vernachlässigte Herausforderungen, die im kommenden Jahrzehnt die politische Agenda in der Bundesrepublik mitbestimmen werden. Der Autor hat diese Themen als einer der ersten in die wissenschaftliche Diskussion gebracht. Seine hier erstmals im Zusammenhang veröffentlichten Analysen aus vier Jahrzehnten sind weiterführende Beiträge für ein vertieftes Verständnis der aktuellen Probleme – u.a. zum demographischen Altern, zum Strukturwandel von Ehe und Familie, zur Familienpolitik, zu den Generationenbeziehungen und zum Wohlfahrtsstaat.

Die Beiträge dieses Sammelbandes befassen sich mit Theorien und Modellen sowie Ansätzen für die Praxis der Schuldenprävention und Armutsbekämpfung. Die Beitragsautorinnen und -autoren untersuchen, wie benachteiligte Personengruppen erreicht werden können, sie beleuchten die Zusammenhänge zwischen Armut, Verschuldung und Schuldenprävention und thematisieren die Vermittlung von Finanzwissen und Finanzkompetenz für die Zielgruppe der Schülerinnen und Schüler und Auszubildenden. Das Buch zeigt den aktuellen Fachdiskurs zur Praxis der Schuldenprävention im deutschsprachigen Raum auf und gibt Hilfestellungen, um die Arbeit zu diesem Themenkomplex zu reflektieren und theoriegeleitet weiterzuentwickeln.

This book provides selections from the seminal works of Karl Marx, Max Weber, W.E.B. Du Bois, and Charlotte Perkins Gilman that reveal some of the reasons why class, race, and gender inequalities have proven very adaptive and can flourish even today in the 21st century.

This book is open access under a CC BY 4.0 license.This book analyses the considerable variation in the shares of private provision for core services in education, health and social services, in the Scandinavian countries.The chapters compare countries, service areas, and the for-profit, non-profit and public sectors. Each focuses on different levels of change: the mix of welfare providers, national laws and regulations, governance in municipalities, nursing homes and schools, and finally, the consequences experienced by the users of the services. The authors ask which combinations of governance structures, service sector providers, and user choice give the best results for active citizenship. Promoting Active Citizenship will be of interest to students and scholars across a range of disciplines, including Public Administration and Management, Non-Profit Management, Social Policy, Innovation in Public Service, Social Care and Education and School Research.

To a backdrop of ageing societies, pension crises and labour market reforms, this book investigates how the policy shift from early retirement to active ageing has affected individual retirement behaviour. Focusing on eleven European countries, the United States and Japan, it brings together leading international experts to analyze recent changes in pension systems. Their findings demonstrate that there has been a fundamental transition in pension policies and a steep increase in older workers'retirement ages and employment rates. Yet changes in retirement behavior are not evenly distributed across all societal strata. This raises the serious concern that an overall rise in the retirement age will be accompanied by the re-emergence of social inequality in the transition from work to retirement. This innovative edited collection will appeal to students and scholars of sociology, economics, political science, human resources management, gerontology and social policy, and also to policy-makers and professionals dealing with older workers.

Lewicki examines how current salient discourses of citizenship conceptualize democratic relations and frame the'Muslim question'in Germany and Great Britain. Citizenship is understood not as a static or monolithic regime, but as being reproduced through competing discourses that can facilitate or inhibit the reduction of structural inequalities.

This book discusses key issues in global and regional social policy, exploring Bob Deacon's pioneering approach to regulation, rights and redistribution. It addresses the role of international actors in shaping social policy and discusses the problems and possibilities of new alliances for global social justice.

A new addition to the Palgrave Studies in Communication for Social Change series, this book sets the stage for subsequent books by identifying and analysing the current gaps in the field. It critically reviews the theory, practice and strategies of Communication for Social Change in relation to occurring structures, policies and discourses.

Black Masculinity in the Obama Era provides an in-depth examination of the current state of black males and identifies the impact of living in the Obama era. In the era of the first black president, Barack H. Obama, this book gauges the status of black masculinity and provokes discourse to discover whether his election and presence has had an influential impact on black male achievement. A purposeful sample of black males was asked, what does it mean to be a black male in the 21st century? Throughout the interviews with black males, we learn that the'Obama Effect'has not had the intended impact on black male achievement and black males continue to be plagued by structural and cultural forces that have historically burdened their plight and level of achievement.

Drawing on the experience and insights of 70 researchers across 7 countries and from a diverse range of cultures, regions and disciplines, this book explores the issues and ethics involved in cross-cultural research and how such research can be done with integrity.

Richard Hauser Irene Becker Johann Wolfgang Goethe-University, FrankfurtlMain This volume marks the end of a research project of the editors titled'The Devel­ opment of the Personal Distribution of Income in Germany'that was financed by the Hans Bockler Foundation from 1994 to 2001. This research concentrated on a national perspective, studying many aspects of income inequality and poverty in West Germany between 1969 and 1998 and extending the analyses to inequality in East Germany after the German reunification. Now at the end point of our empiri­ cal analyses, we want to expand the perspective to other research in this field, to challenges for future research, and to the European dimension, rather than to summarise all our results, which is done in another bookl. In 2001, the German goverrunent published its first Poverty and Wealth Re­ 2 port, which also draws on results from our research project. Thus, the intention of this volume is threefold: presenting and advancing Gernlan reporting on poverty in other coun­ and wealth, examining experience with advanced reporting schemes tries, and discussing comparative concepts for social monitoring in the European Union.

Based on interviews with entrepreneurs, professionals and regional party cadres'from a range of age groups, this book argues that Western class categories do not directly apply to China and that the Chinese new middle class is distinguished more by socio-cultural than by economic factors.

This book argues that Americans'belief in post-racialism, rooted in both ideology and material progress among racial minorities, is wrong because both old and new patterns of racism continue to hinder the acceptance of African Americans as true equals in American society, despite the recent mobility of the black middle class.

The book analyses intersections between gender and diversity through cross-national studies of European public spheres. The approach confronts research on European democracy and the public sphere with gender and diversity research and reflections about European equality and diversity issues are based on new research from a large-scale EU project.

How does an industrial community cope when they are told that closure is inevitable? What if this is only the last in a 200 year long line of threats, insecurities and closure? How did people weather the storms and how do they face the future now? While attempts to regenerate communities are everywhere, we do not often hear from the people themselves just how they managed to create safe collective spaces or how the fall of the whole house of cards brought with it effects which can be felt by young people who never knew the town when it was an industrial heartland. We hear the story of how men and women tried to cope and still want to retain their community in the face of its destruction. What can they and will they have to pass to the next generation and where will that leave the young people themselves, who have nothing to stay for but are unable to leave? This book examines these crucial questions facing post-industrial societies.

This book analyzes the political and material conditions driving contemporary border control policies and discusses the processes that mediate popular and official understandings of border-related fatalities.

This book examines experiences and implications of'against-the-grain'school choices, where white middle class families choose ordinary and'low performing'secondary schools for their children. It offers a unique view of identity formation, taking in matters like family history, locality and whiteness.

This book analyses the current debates around national identity and multiculturalism by addressing three key questions; why do so many people treat as common sense the idea that they live in and belong to nations? And, why, and for whom, might this idea be significant, notably in an era of increasing global uncertainty?

This book discusses the meaning and practice of British community cohesion policies, youth identities in racially-tense areas and the British government's attempts to'prevent violent extremism'amongst young Muslims.

Proposing an aggregative conception of vulnerability, this book provides a new framework for understanding individual experience of, and resilience to, vulnerability and promotes the need to find remedies for exposure to involuntary dependence, the unsecured future and the painful past.

This book takes the political theory of intersectionality - the most cutting-edge approach to the politics of gender, race, sexual orientation, and class - and introduces it to the general public for the first time.

This book provides a focused and critical international overview of the intersections between race, crime perpetration and victimization, and criminal justice policy and practice responses to crime perpetration and crime victimization.

Demand for owner-occupied housing has expanded dramatically across modern-industrialized societies in recent years leading to volatile increases in residential property values. This book explores the rise of modern home-ownership as a cultural, socio-political and ideological phenomenon.

Drawing on new empirical research with disabled people in the UK, and considering the work of theorists such as Berlin, Habermas and Mouffe, Ellison's ideas of proactive and defensive engagement and Turner's'sociology of the body', Beckett proposes a new model of'active'citizenship that rests upon an understanding of'vulnerable personhood'.

This volume draws together an impressive series of papers that explore enduring and new problems in the construction and analysis of British social policy. Critical but accessible, the various chapters cover methodological issues and the nature of competing claims about social policy'knowledge', racism and health services, citizenship and access to housing and other amenities, and the importance of the environment as an emerging area for social policy debate.

This new textbook for students of social theory considers the role of public intervention in social and economic processes. It is a clear, critical discussion of different theoretical and political perspectives on social policy.Barry Hindess begins with the ‘consensus'view, shared by senior politicians, civil servants, and academics throughout much of the postwar period. This view depends on two beliefs: in the capacity of government to manage the economy; and in the development of a qualitatively new relationship between the state and the population. The first is discussed in relation to Crosland's The Future of Socialism, and the second in relation to Marshall's conception of citizenship and Titmuss's account of social policy.The consensus view generated serious objections, and Hindess examines two in particular. One is the argument that the view itself causes a destructive, competitive struggle between sectional interests for state intervention in their favour. The other, from the left, is that what Tawney called ‘the strategy of equality'has failed, and that a more radical attack on inequality is required.The remaining section looks at the Marxist and liberal alternatives to the consensus view. In conclusion, the author discusses firstly the essentialism of the market both in consensus and (in very different ways) in liberal and Marxist thought; and secondly the place of principles such as freedom and equality in political discussion and the analysis of social conditions. He shows that market and plan are not necessarily incompatible.Freedom, Equality, and the Market, with its careful assessment of the key texts, will be important reading for undergraduate students of sociology and social policy.