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Loneliness in old age is a multifaceted issue influenced by personal, social, and environmental factors, necessitating a holistic approach. However, most research has predominantly focused on individual-level risk factors, with limited attention given to institutional factors such as social policy. This study investigated how social policies impact loneliness among older adults. Multi-level analysis was conducted using data from the 2017 wave of International Social Survey Programme, involving 6,337 older adults from 23 OECD countries. The analysis revealed that higher public spending on welfare and old-age pensions significantly reduces the likelihood of loneliness among older adults. These findings confirm the protective role of generous social policies in addressing old-age loneliness. They underscore the need for long-term changes in welfare systems to enhance the public response to the significant social risk posed by old-age loneliness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At the core of practice for many non-Indigenous Australian social workers is learning how to work in deeply respectful, culturally appropriate ways alongside First Nations Peoples. Larrakia and Warumungu woman, and Northern Territory social work scholar, Dr Christine/Karen King’s (2011) writings provided the impetus for this inquiry. King (2011) invites social workers to critically reflect on their practice and worldviews. Responding to this invitation, 10 non-Indigenous social workers with policy, academic, and/or practice experience conducted a co-operative inquiry into the question “What have we learnt about practising social work in the Northern Territory, Australia?” We explored the uniqueness of the Northern Territory and identified three interwoven themes. The first theme grounds our practice to Place—on Country. Here, we identified the importance of engaging with the diverse histories of the Peoples we work alongside. Second, we reflected on our vulnerability as social workers and explored the limitations of our professional knowledge base for working with First Nations Peoples. The third theme relates to the importance of engaging with First Nations Peoples’ worldviews. We conclude by affirming the importance of social work practice being led by First Nations People on Country.IMPLICATIONS Social workers working in the Northern Territory alongside First Nations Peoples will benefit from engaging with vulnerability, reflexivity, and critical reflection on their values, understandings, language, and unexamined aspects of practice and cultural self.Social workers in the Northern Territory need to commit to ongoing learning and ground their practice with First Nations’ worldviews and wisdom.Social workers working in the Northern Territory alongside First Nations Peoples will benefit from engaging with vulnerability, reflexivity, and critical reflection on their values, understandings, language, and unexamined aspects of practice and cultural self.Social workers in the Northern Territory need to commit to ongoing learning and ground their practice with First Nations’ worldviews and wisdom. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The criminal status of prostitution has received greater attention from policymakers and advocates in recent years, but systematic policy change has yet to take root in the United States. These efforts have been both motivated and challenged by a strong moral discourse, resulting in policies that are more reflective of ideology than efficacy. While the popularization of sex work through online avenues like social media has altered the traditional concept of sex work, there is an incomplete understanding of public attitudes toward decriminalization in this modern market. Using national data from 519 U.S. adults, the present study applied Moral Foundations Theory to investigate support for sex work decriminalization in three venues (brothel, online, street). Overall, results show lower support for decriminalization of street sex work compared to brothel and online sex work, and that the effects of moral foundations on support for decriminalization are consistent across all venues. Individualizing foundations (i.e. harm, fairness) do not predict support for decriminalization, while binding and liberty foundations explain some variation in support. Implications of the findings speak to the potential barriers to criminal justice reform in this area and the role of moral arguments in this dispute. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social housing policies in neoliberal contexts have become residualized. The notions of housing vulnerability and vulnerable populations emerged as a new organizing principle for the housing policy agenda and interventions in many countries. However, there is no cohesive and shared understanding of the characteristics and types of vulnerable households and housing situations, nor the drivers and consequences of different forms of vulnerability. This leads to questions about how to apply the concept to address people's right to housing. This special issue presents research into what housing vulnerability means in different world regions, what structures and systems may be driving it, and the variety of experiences of housing vulnerability. These studies use different theoretical frameworks, methodologies, and empirical contexts to examine factors and initiatives that drive or counter housing vulnerability, fostering a dialogue towards critical housing research and policy agendas that meet our expectations of housing as a human right. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The scholarship of Fritz Scharpf has inspired a leading strand in the debate on 'social Europe', but his arguments deserve more critical scrutiny than they have received. In contrast to his thesis about a 'structural asymmetry' that prevents the EU from functioning as a social market economy, national welfare provision has not been systematically undermined by regulatory competition, supranational liberalisation and fiscal rules, whereas there has been more positive integration of social policies than he anticipated. I contend that we can gain a richer theorisation of European welfare governance by challenging Scharpf on his own terms, which entails recovering key elements of his actor-centred institutionalism. From this perspective, I discuss four dimensions along which we should reconsider the relation between European integration and national welfare regimes: the cognitive and normative orientations of decision-making actors, the role of interaction orientations and socialisation, social policymaking as a problem-solving process beyond distributive bargaining, and the bounded legitimation of the EU as a diverse union of welfare states. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Policy failures in response to crises become visible, and the social reactions they trigger change the world. Building on critical failure studies and ontology of Spanish fracaso in policy research we propose to approach policy failures as ‘fracasopolicy’ – regimes for which the issue of failure is inherent. Published work on policy failures in the pandemic allows us to map out three such regimes: (1) someone has to fail, (2) the failure that isn’t there and (3) everything we touch turns into failure. We discuss how policy-failure relationships reveal the entanglement of past oppressions and power configurations; and how they provide fertile soil for currently emerging kinds of domination – vaccine nationalism, pandemic necropolitics. Revealing the manifestations of fracasopolicy, we show, will allow us to develop critical knowledge about our world and demystify failures, though we should also be aware of the risks of developing a narrative that romanticizes and overrepresents these. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Accessibility and security issues pertaining to people with disabilities in Zimbabwe’s urban areas have so far received limited priority in scholarship and social policy. This is a major deviation from the prerequisites for disability inclusion, rights-based governance and development, and transformative social policy. Using qualitative research methodology, the paper addresses this compelling lacuna by exploring selected germane issues affecting people with disabilities, and advances policy options that Zimbabwe and other countries can implement to transform the well-being of this often excluded and trivialized group. The article acknowledges current effort for improving accessibility and security in and of urban areas but more importantly shows that people with disabilities are experiencing multiple problems due to glaring deficiencies in urban policy, amenities, and services. Transformative disability policy buttressed by a multi-stakeholder approach is indispensable in improving the situation of people with disabilities in relation to accessibility and security in urban areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Following #MeToo, sexual violence and consent have become more important to Australian governments, policy makers, and organisations addressing gender-based violence. Locating consent in a specific social system of ‘labour’, this article takes social reproduction as an entry point to examine the experiences of refugee and migrant anti-violence advocates in Australia. I suggest that current discourses of consent, as bodily autonomy and judicial power, act as a site of social reproduction through the creation of norms that uphold patriarchy and whiteness. Considered in this way, marginalised groups such as refugee and migrant women are not afforded adequate space and resources to theorise consent based on their own lived experiences. Interview participants (n = 19) are active in their ethnic and faith communities addressing GBV, as well as in organisations such as NGOs and policy domains. Utilising a lens of ‘Transformative Labour’ (Swanson, Resha Terae, and Erin Devorah Carreon. 2024. “Uncovering the Transformative Labor in Black Women’s Community Work.” Affilia, 08861099231223935. https://doi.org/10.1177/08861099231223935), the findings demonstrate the limits of consent when applied to refugee and migrant communities; the ways a history of different feminisms play out in current front-line interventions; and how mainstream, dominant groups might make space for marginalised groups to articulate their own identities, and the time and resources to theorise consent based on their own struggles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Understandings of tourists' contemporary information needs that emphasize spontaneous travel decision-making and tourism as an exclusively pleasurable experience do not account for the contexts of people with dementia and their carers, for whom travelling requires unique adaptations. Through netnography in four online fora, this paper investigates the hitherto under-researched travel information needs of informal carers of people living with dementia. The qualitative data highlights the breadth of pre-travel information needs and their strong emotional dimensions both when carers plan to travel with and without the person with dementia for whom they care. Our analysis uncovers the complex, interdependent nature of travel-related information queries which refer not only to narrow tourism themes but also to health, healthcare and social policy. This exploratory paper concludes with recommendations for addressing the travel information needs of this globally growing category of people, wherein collaboration across destinations, tourism and hospitality industries, the healthcare sector and other stakeholders may be required. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AbstractWho is protected by social security? This article explores this question by tracing the chronological sequence of inclusion into old age protection in the Ottoman Empire and Turkey. The focus lies on how legislation defines the groups that are covered by old age pensions. We argue that the old age protection system transformed from being aimed at protecting people working for the state, towards covering diverse societal groups and aspiring to universal social protection. The Ottoman Empire institutionalised its centuries-old system of protection of elderly state employees surprisingly early, through pension funds in the late nineteenth century. The Republic of Turkey maintained this approach for several decades, pointing to continuities between the late Ottoman Empire and the early Republic. From the mid-twentieth century onwards, the state transformed old age protection with new schemes for mostly employment-based groups. The analysis reveals intriguing parallels between political inclusion and inclusion in old age protection, with key expansions in the scope of old age protection mirroring shifts in the political regime. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study examined whether monetary investment and parenting practices mediate the association between family and hardship and primary school achievement in a sample of Bangladeshi children (N = 1140; M age = 9.11, SD = .88 at baseline). The questionnaire method was used for data collection. The results from structural equation modeling suggested that although all factors partially mediated a predictor–outcome link, parenting practices explained a greater amount of variance in the associations with children’s poor achievement as compared with monetary investment after accounting for background factors. We discuss future directions for social policy and research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Finnish correctional labour facilities, which were closed institutions that operated on the basis of forced labour from the 1920s to the 1980s, were designed mainly to detain individuals perceived to be vagrant, maladjusted or alcoholic and those who were defaulters on child maintenance or the paying back of poor relief. These people had committed no crimes but were detained as a result of administrative decision-making. This article considers what grounds there were for sending people to correctional labour facilities from the perspective of the local level of the municipalities in which the individuals lived and were most likely known (including as neighbours) to the local social board members who made decisions. The main argument is that local social boards in northern municipalities primarily used correctional labour facilities to solve problems of placement originating within institutions themselves or, if outside, typically in family life. By analysing the types of cases that, in the view of social board members, were sufficiently problematic to require intervention, the article shows that everyday experiences might differ significantly from the legal grounds for detention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper introduces a novel dataset on working-time regulation for 197 territories between 1789 and 2010 to document how working hours have become globally standardised through public policy. Descriptive analysis shows that working-time reforms are global in scope, rare events, sizable once undertaken and tend to reduce hours. Democracies were historically more likely than autocracies to regulate hours, but this is not the case now, and there has never been a large gap in the content of their regulations. Whereas independent states always regulated hours to a greater extent, over half of all dependent states just prior to decolonisation regulated hours with more generous regulations than independent states. Based on these patterns, the paper first makes a methodological plea for more long-term historical studies and, second, sketches two possible explanatory frameworks for working-time reforms. One highlights shocks to the powerbase of antiregulation coalitions; the other highlights international normative change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dhaka's rapid urbanization, income inequality and unplanned growth have brought this megacity to international attention. Although limited elements of ethnoreligious segregation are prevalent in the city, a general concern in the existing literature is that the city is failing to provide distributive justice to its citizens. This paper explores the current socio-spatial division of Dhaka city to understand its patterns and underlying causes. The paper uses the isolation index ($$x{P_x}$$ x P x ), Moran's I (I) index and location quotient (LQ) to understand the pattern of segregation in Dhaka. At the same time, the local indicators for spatial association (LISA) contribute to recognizing clustering patterns in this city. In the context of limited national census data on urban services, this study triangulates its findings through geospatial analysis of existing census data, interviews, and field observations. Results suggest that the eastern part of the city is segregated because of poor urban service conditions. Small clusters of affluent neighborhoods are emerging in Dhaka, whereas enclaves of isolated neighborhoods with inadequate housing and service situations are evident at the city core. Limited housing supply, geographic constraints, elitist planning, the concentration of investment in the city core, budgetary limitations, and management failure have resulted in the isolation and clustering of neighborhoods with poor living conditions. In its conclusion, the paper cautions that segregation requires more policy focus and calls for policy interventions to address the underlying causes of segregation in Dhaka. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent literature on authoritarian stability and legitimation has highlighted the role of propaganda and information control, national identity politics, participation technologies and other communication strategies autocrats use to shape public opinion. The authoritarian tool kit is, incomplete if we do not account for governance-related measures. Focusing on authoritarian social policy and contributing to the literature on the authoritarian welfare state, this study measures the political effects of unconditional and conditional cash transfers, specifically focusing on child subsidies, that the Russian government has increasingly integrated into its policy tools. Social policy and child support earn the government political dividends in terms of shoring up public support and have acquired added significance over the last few years. It is part of the current social pact that enables authoritarian resilience during Russia's war against Ukraine and that is made possible by the actions at the federal, regional, and municipal levels of government. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

EU foreign policy is highly dependent on EU member states, but we still lack a coherent conceptual framework that does justice to the interdependences and co-constitutive relations between EU countries. Building on relational theory and social psychology, we develop a social relational model about group emotions in the Council that conceptualises under what conditions emotions play a role in EU foreign policy decision-making. We formulate scope conditions detailing when the performance of emotions might allow member states to accumulate relational power (e.g. process power), which can in turn allow for the emergence of group emotions and even drive policy changes. Most notably, we shed light on group dynamics within the Council, determining if and how group emotions inform the EU´s policy response to norm contestation. Our framework helps understand why processes of emotional appraisal, contagion, and emergence might sometimes help propel the EU into action, whereas other times they seem to have little or no effect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explores the tension between journalists' personal social media accounts and newsroom social media policies to understand how newsroom managers exacerbate journalism's labor crisis by de-professionalizing the field through restrictive policies. To analyze this tension, we conduct a critical discourse analysis of (1) managerial discourses collected from newsroom social media policies and scholarly literature and (2) journalistic discourses collected from in-depth interviews with 37 U.S. journalists. We find that newsroom social media policies require journalists to make four sacrifices in service of their organization's reputation: individuality, opinion, voice, and privacy. This leaves journalists feeling frustrated by their lack of agency when it comes to engaging with the public and pursuing social media success. We conclude that this conflict contributes to journalism's human resources crisis by limiting journalistic professionalism and autonomy, both of which are crucial for job satisfaction and journalism's democratic mission. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the population ages and supportive services are increasingly delivered in home- and community-based settings, greater demands are placed on family caregivers. This essay introducing the special issue of the Journal of Aging and Social Policy discusses signs of progress on policies to ease the burden on family caregivers. It introduces a series of articles that reflect the growing body of research on caregiver-related policy actions. These actions range from expanding access to paid family leave and payment for providing care, to ensuring access to better data about family caregivers and improving the post- hospital discharge experiences of rural and underserved caregivers. It also explores a major conundrum around caregiving policy – why progress on family caregiving policy has been so slow, despite its clear importance to the health and welfare of those who receive supports, as well as to those providing supports. In addition, the essay discusses developments, such as Biden administration actions and the RAISE Family Caregiver Advisory Council, indicating that the political dynamic around caregiving has changed, concluding that this is a uniquely hopeful time for family caregiver-related policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Commuting, the spatial mismatch between work and residential locations, necessitates integrated urban and transport policies to mitigate its societal impacts. While cross-border commuting (CBC) is increasing and governance of border regions is on the rise beyond national borders, no systemic review of this specific commuting pattern exists. We aim to consolidate the CBC literature accumulated over the years into a coherent and synthetic framework. Our systematic review assembles an inaugural comprehensive corpus of cross-border commuting literature. It reveals three transversal key topics (transport-oriented topic, qualitative approaches versus a lack of quantitative data, and a large majority of European papers) and four sub-topics (patterns, determinants, impacts and policies). Moreover, we consolidate findings through meticulous mapping of evidence, where most links are traced between the determinants and the level of flows across borders. Finally, the discussion offers directions for future research, with an exhortation to explicitly link policies to sustainability and social concerns, and the necessity for standardised datasets for methodological comparability across cases and in alignment with general commuting research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Policy practice refers to the engagement of social workers in policy processes as part of their job. Over the last decades the discourse on policy practice has expanded significantly. However, missing still is a comprehensive and systematic discussion focused on the ethical dilemmas that emerge when social workers engage in policy practice. The aim of this article is to offer a novel conceptual framework that identifies and categorises the diverse potential ethical dilemmas that emerge when social workers engage in policy practice. The framework draws upon the general conceptual and empirical literature on ethical issues within social work, the more specific macro practice literature which discusses ethical dilemmas, and our experience as teachers who have instructed social workers and social work students in policy practice. It combines two axes: the first axis relates to three prevalent types of ethical conflicts common both in direct and macro social work practice and the second relates schematically to three explicit or implicit decisions that social workers are required to take either prior to, or during, their engagement in policy process. The interactions between these two axes create 19 policy practice ethical dilemmas that are presented in the article. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We conducted interviews with parents earning low wages to understand their experiences related to financial responsibilities and use of government and informal resources in Raleigh, North Carolina. Inadequate economic opportunities and assistance programs, and high costs of living, compounded into cycles of playing catch up on expenses. Assistance programs aimed at alleviating hardships related to poverty were described as piecemeal. We found that social and economic systems failed to support parents earning low wages. Our findings suggest that ordinances that assure a livable minimum wage paired with expansions of safety net programs could better meet the needs these parents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What is the relationship between social policy reforms and issue salience in public opinion? Extensive research analyses policy feedbacks on policy preferences and the influence of policy preferences on policy change. Scant research, however, considers the link between reforms and issue salience – i.e., the perception of importance citizens attach to a topic. We address this gap in the literature through the comparative study of the salience of the 'pension issue'. Drawing on a novel dataset covering 2010–2020 and 28 European countries, we argue that the passage of pension reforms shapes pension salience. Multilevel fixed effects models indicate that pension reforms that include either contracting or expansionary provisions are positively related to pension salience. In contrast, expansionary and contracting reforms, by themselves, are not robustly associated with pension salience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study reports on the outcomes of internationalising a course on Nutrition for medical students. Two interventions towards internationalised learning experience included: 1) introducing new readings and activities that invited students to consider geographical and cultural factors of dietary recommendations and 2) asking students to suggest an intervention for a hypothetical patient with a nutritional problem through discussing the assigned case in purposefully mixed groups. Changes were made both in the group that predominantly consisted of home students (N = 18) and the group of international students (N = 21). The interventions encouraged an increase in student awareness of the cultural and geographical contexts of nutrition. Students learnt through sharing diverse knowledge and experience and recognised peer learning experience as useful and enjoyable. The innovation achieved more impact in the group of international students than in the group of home students, in which diversity and previous experience from learning in multicultural groups was low. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After decades of increasing integration and institutional development in EU foreign policy, the persistence of informal groups calls into question the understanding of European integration as a straight progressive line from informal to formal cooperation. Nonetheless, to date there is no systematic empirical knowledge of informal groups in EEC/EU foreign policy. To address this knowledge gap, the article offers an exploratory study. By means of social network analysis, it maps the frequency and types of informal groups in EEC/EU foreign policy in regard to Kosovo, Libya and Syria in three different phases of EEC/EU foreign policy integration. The article’s findings show that the frequency of informal groups has remained fairly stable across the three phases of EEC/EU integration considered. At the same time, informal groups have generally been relatively small, like-minded, and dominated by individual member states. Overall, these results suggest that by accommodating member states’ interests, especially those of powerful states and of states for which certain foreign policy issues are particularly salient, informal groups have provided the cooperation needed for the coherent functioning of the EEC/EU foreign policy system. While doing so, they have consolidated as socially meaningful patterns among member states’ representatives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article is concerned with the emotional effects of homelessness on women who are mothers. It develops a multi-disciplinary conceptualization of "haunting" to bring understanding to the ongoing grief and trauma associated with losing a home and children. It explores how women's embodied and affective experiences are not just responses to deeply distressing events, but inextricably intertwined with the unfurling of housing and child protection policies, sometimes long after a policy decision (eviction, child removal). Drawing on biographical research with 26 women, the article contributes new insights into both our limited understanding of women's homelessness but also scholarly work that recognizes the diffuse power of social policy and its harms. The article advances a novel understanding of women's lived experience of homelessness by conceptualizing and empirically investigating the emotional effects of policy decisions as hauntings that permeate past, present and anticipated futures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The issue of stigma has long been a central topic of discussion regarding the low uptake rate of targeted welfare programs. However, empirical evidence examining this claim within Global South countries remains scarce, particularly in Indonesia. Our study employed a qualitative approach, utilizing data from 33 interviews conducted in two areas with high poverty rates, evaluating the extent of institutionalized stigma that deters individuals from claiming Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT/PKH) benefits. Contrary to prevailing assumptions, our study found no clear link between stigma and the uptake of CCT/PKH programs. We found that the direct experiences of the interviewee with the repeated mistargeting of CCT distribution in sites under examination have eroded the significance of stigma, leading to unashamed claims by beneficiaries, regardless of their eligibility. Furthermore, our research unveiled that the CCT/PKH distribution is not merely an institutional process; it is highly interdependent, influenced by complex personalized meanings among beneficiaries with diverse goals. For example, some beneficiaries use the CCT as collateral to access loans from informal financial institutions, while others use it for socio-cultural purposes. This research contributes to the social policy literature by emphasizing the dysfunction of institutionalized stigma in affecting the decisions of (non-)eligible individuals to access welfare benefits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues that when integration discourses are used in newspaper articles to discuss social policy issues, the issues are framed as being "about migrants" and not as issues that impact the population at large; through this migratization of policy issues, integration discourses are weaponized and may be used to justify welfare retrenchment. Integration discourses have received growing attention from critical migration scholars, who often focus on how the concept of integration reinforces ideas related to the nation-state and issues explicitly related to migrants and migration; however, more general social policy issues also use integration discourses. Against this background, the current study questions what integration discourses "do," particularly referring to two cases published in local newspapers in Nordland County, Norway: the cash-for-care benefit (kontantstøtte) and adults' right to upper secondary education. The results show (1) the gendered process of migratization that ascribes general policy issues as "migrant" issues and (2) how integration discourses are used to delegitimize these policies and, ultimately, to justify welfare retrenchment. The findings demonstrate that integration discourses transform the discussion of general policy issues into being "about migrants" with implications for the welfare state at large. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The prevalence of child labour in Bangladesh is a major concern, exposing children to hazardous working conditions with severe physical and psychological impacts on their well being. This ethnographic study investigates the interplay between the agency and vulnerability of child labourers in hazardous battery-recycling workshops, exploring the social, economic, and cultural factors that contribute to their vulnerability. The research posits that while addressing poverty and socio--economic challenges is essential to combat child labour, a blanket ban on child labour in developing countries might be unfeasible due to complex economic factors. Therefore, the study suggests a middle ground between the 'absolutist universalist' and 'contextualist' approaches. This approach entails improving working conditions, enforcing age-related labour laws, and revising child labour policies to reflect the needs and views of children and their families. It emphasises participatory decision-making and introduces support measures for children compelled to work, including residential vocational schools and stipends. The study also advocates treating hazardous child labour as child abuse, legally combating it, and increasing public awareness against such practices. Additionally, the paper underscores the necessity of re-evaluating current social policies and thoroughly assessing anti-poverty initiatives to effectively curb child labour. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How does inclusion in social policy programs strengthen individuals' support for redistribution, and lead to spillovers in support for future social policy programs? We study a unique dataset of 1,300 Moscow residents to estimate the effect of participating in a government-sponsored redevelopment program on preferences for redistributive social policy. Our design exploits features of the program designed to foster institutional trust by engaging citizens in the policy design process. We report a positive effect: individuals in buildings slated for redevelopment are more likely to agree that the government should reduce income differences between rich and poor, provide for the unemployed, and provide public housing. Our findings suggest that increased trust in the government is a channel through which program participation affects redistribution preferences, show how programs can be used strategically to promote a redistributive agenda, and suggest a pathway for the co-persistence of redistribution preferences and redistributive state policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The National Council of Italian Women (CNDI) was an internationally-oriented confederation of women's associations founded in Rome in 1903, which was affiliated with the International Council of Women (ICW). Previous studies on the Italian Council have considered its origins and the biographical aspects of its members in the first half of twentieth-century Italy, while the Council developments and action during the democratic regime of the second half of the twentieth century have been less studied. First, this article aims to understand the impact of female associations on Italian social policy developments by examining the CNDI between 1958 and 1963. The study makes a historical reassessment of an emancipatory narrative, addressing the participation and social demands of Italian women in the context of the 'economic miracle'. Second, this article reflects on the role of NGOs and voluntary activism in shaping welfare state developments in the post-war period. The analysis will use primary and edited sources from the CNDI and the Ministry of Labour held at the Central Archive of the State in Rome. The CNDI represents a significant case study that aids in our understanding women's social demands from below. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the Fordist era, trade unions promoted welfare state expansion and coverage against risks for the broader workforce. With the shift to the post-industrial economy, however, new economic groups have been left without representation. This is particularly evident for women: despite a rapid increase in female employment since the 1980s, unions' membership base remains anchored in the male, old and industrial working class. Without the crucial pressure of labour, welfare systems have failed to enhance the reconciliation of work and family life. Under which conditions do unions support the expansion of work-family policies? Marshalling evidence from 20 OECD countries in the 1980–2010 period, this paper investigates the role of political actors in family policy reform. Findings suggest that unions promote the expansion of work-family packages when they are gender-inclusive and have institutional access to policy-making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores a collection of circa 400 applications for 'begging letters' conserved in the archives of the Privy Council of the Austrian Netherlands from the late 1760s to the early 1780s. Such Lettres de Quête were issued in the name of the Habsburg monarch to subjects who had lost their possessions to fire or other natural disasters, and allowed their bearers to travel around begging. By means of a qualitative reading of the materials, the article uncovers underlying administrative procedures while throwing light on the social selectivity, practices and gains associated with this little-known phenomenon. By demonstrating that such 'begging letters' were customary policy practice, as they probably were in neighbouring countries, it signals their importance as an early modern mode of disaster relief and highlights their ambiguous role as a policy paradox in the context of increasing criminalisation of begging and vagrancy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite many policies produced to mitigate racism and other forms of discrimination in the public education sector, the inability to implement these policies fall short. These policies may appear to address inequities by attempting to meet legal requirements, however, they do not always address the structural power dynamics grounded in white supremacy which continue to perpetuate systemic racism. Drawing on examples from the Ontario public education sector such as employment equity policies, Afrocentric Alternative Schools in the TDSB and the Student Resource Officer program in Toronto schools, I illustrate how positivist inspired "evidence-based" policy processes fail at offering policy solutions for equity issues by ignoring those who do not fall into the purview of the economic and political interests of dominant stakeholders in the policy process. Deploying an anti-racist and anti-colonial framework, I examine the superficial attempts to garner inclusivity through equity policies that continually fail to heal the wounds of exclusion by reproducing multiple band-aid policies rather than formulating a restructuring of public education in the Ontario public education system that will allow equity seeking groups a place at the table. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing from the theoretical and empirical results of a European research project, this paper tentatively elaborates a post-neoliberal framework for social policy and welfare reform. We argue that for moving beyond neoliberalism it is not sufficient to just increase the generosity of social policies: what is also needed is 'social empowerment', i.e. processes of democratization of social policymaking that effectively redistribute power in society, making welfare institutions increasingly accountable and responsive to citizens, including marginalized ones. Building on reflections and learnings emerging from our work in the research project, we show that a capability and human rights informed participatory action research involving civil society organizations, marginalized citizens and academic researchers, can offer potential pathways forward to advance a post-neoliberal social policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Censuses serve as a reliable basis for policy formulation. However, a census' objectivity is challenged by its own mission of creating categories to make sense of the reality it is called to document. Simply put, a census is intrinsically political because it makes choices about what to show and how. This paper analyses the Census of Punjab for the years 1941, 1951, 1961 and 1971 to locate the concepts and practices the census used to document language. It tests the proposition that, as a category-maker, the census was a player in the politics of the subjectivity it was engaged in documenting—language politics. It finds that the census adapted its modus operandi to the circumstances, altering the definition of mother tongue and tabulation of mother tongue data in ways that supported or countered specific stakes involved in the politicisation of linguistic identity. The paper highlights that in Punjab, the census had a more actively political role in addition to the well-documented one of a tool mobilised by other actors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This work presents some of the findings from a Teacher Innovation Project undertaken by faculty members at Universidad Pablo de Olavide in Seville (Spain), entitled 'Humanising the policies and (re) creating the applicability of rights.' The purpose of this project was to promote Social Work students' learning about the praxis of human rights from a critical perspective and the applicability of social policies in society. For the final product of the project, we collected narratives through the use of techniques such as group discussion and interviews with professionals and excluded groups, to create videos that presented an approach to basic concepts and the opinions of teachers and students. Once the project ended, we continued the investigation in order to evaluate the impact of the lessons using the material we created. We developed a questionnaire to find out the perceptions of the next year's students on subjects related to the initial project. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contemporary nationalism in the West tends to be understood in ethnic terms and associated with a bottom-up reaction to disliked effects of globalization, in particular migration. But there is also a top-down nationalism that is inherent in states' boundary-policing and – constituting membership policies. This paper draws the contours of a state-level neoliberal nationalism. Its imprint can be found in social policy, citizenship policy, and – the focus of this paper – immigration policy, in particular for the highly-skilled. Neoliberal nationalism combines diversity and meritocracy, and thus a modicum of cultural and economic liberalism. The prefix 'neo' flags the refashioning of political community from solidarity-based to contract-based, conditional on individual contribution and strict reciprocity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the social policy implications of the COVID-19 pandemic for adolescents and young people with disabilities in Ethiopia and Jordan. The article draws on qualitative research interviews carried out in person between November and December 2019 and by phone between April and June 2020 with 65 young people with hearing, visual and physical impairments in urban settings in both countries, complemented by interviews with key informants in government and civil society organisations working with young people. Whilst in Jordan social policy on disability is more developed, and in Ethiopia, systems are still embryonic, the COVID-19 pandemic has increased the marginalisation of adolescents and young people with disabilities in both contexts as health, education and social protection systems have been slow to mobilise targeted support and address social exclusion. This article identifies social policy gaps in Ethiopia and Jordan that must be addressed in order to support young people with disabilities during crises. Adolescents and young people with disabilities in lower- and middle-income countries are at high risk of both contracting COVID-19, and being harmed by efforts taken by governments to mitigate the spread of the virus. Our evidence shows that the COVID-19 pandemic response has negatively affected access to education, health care, employment and social protection support for adolescents and young people with disabilities in Ethiopia and Jordan, and magnified social exclusion within the community. In both contexts the pandemic has highlighted the limitations of current social policies for addressing disability-related inequalities quickly and effectively. Support that is targeted to the most marginalised adolescents and young people with disabilities, across education, health, labour and social protection sectors, should be at the forefront of social policy responses in line with the Sustainable Development Agenda 2030 to 'leave no one behind'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article shows that post-Keynesian economics is more closely tied to the proposal of equality of place rather than that of equality of opportunity. More precisely, it advocates for the approach of utilizing equality of place as a means to attain equality of opportunity. These are two conceptions of social policy. Equality of opportunity distinguishes between poor and non-poor, and state intervention is focused on poor people. This mode of intervention promotes individuals' improvements in human capital, assuming that the poor can reach the position they want through a competitive process. In contrast, the idea of equality of place is intertwined with the concept of decommodification and supply-side subsidies. It envisions a scenario in which markets might not ensure that people can access fundamental rights. Consequently, it suggests an alternate role for state intervention. Because some heterodox and post-Keynesian authors have identified with the principle of equality of opportunity, it is important to clarify the nature of the relationship between social policy and post-Keynesian economics. The principle of equality of place can provide a framework of social policy that is consistent with the tenets of the post-Keynesian tradition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the United States after the Great Recession, despite growing attention to low-income households' homeownership vulnerability, the existing works tend to take specific angles and produce only piecemeal evidence. By placing liquid assets' function of mediating financial hardships in the context of homeownership dynamics, I establish a synthesized conceptual framework. Based on data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID), I put this framework to a test and find that liquid assets not only reduce the risk of homeownership exit in general but play a pivotal role in accounting for low-income borrowers' elevated rates of exit. I discuss policy implications of the findings at the end of the paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this commentary article, Dr Folúké Bádéjọ́, Professor Pauline Maclaran, Professor Andreas Chatzidakis and Professor Simone Pettigrew offer their reflections on some of the key issues and challenges facing marketing for social good. The contributors reflect on a range of ontological, epistemological, and empirical interests, and disciplinary knowledge from social marketing, critical marketing, and transformative consumer research. They offer responses to four key questions: 1. 'What do you see as the biggest issues facing marketing for social change into the future?'; 2. 'What does critical social marketing mean to you?'; '3. What opportunities do you see for critical social marketing to interact with other disciplines and domains?'; and '4. Looking forward, what do you think the challenges might be in translating ideas from critical social marketing to policy and practice?' Some concluding remarks on the future for marketing for social change scholarship are then presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on the literature that examines business models, feminist ethics of care and social policy, this article develops a theoretical framework for uncovering gender influences on sustainable business models by women entrepreneurs in a highly patriarchal and established tourism destination. Gender influences are socially embedded drivers that inform how women entrepreneurs create and operate sustainable business model archetypes and manifest as doing gender (accepting and complying with gendered perceptions) and redoing gender (resisting gendered perceptions by displaying masculine traits or taking advantage of their femineity) in the business realm. Empirically, the article provides a qualitative analysis of in-depth interviews with women owner-managers of fourteen small tourism firms in Turkey. The study provides evidence of gender influences that materialise as gendered perceptions of identity, role expectations and legislative practices (regulative). The managerial and social policy implications that encourage and support women entrepreneurs in pursuing sustainable business models are critically examined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article, and the special issue, seek to unpack the gendered nature of entrepreneurial pathways, specifically in relation to the role of social policies. We achieve this aim by first conceptualising gender, entrepreneurship, and social policy, to highlight the need to generate a stronger research agenda on the role of social policy within gender and tourism entrepreneurship research. We next outline an overarching framework for delineating the intersection of gender, entrepreneurship, and social policy, based on a critical review of existing studies, as well as by situating the papers in this special issue. We present this discussion through three thematic framings: (1) gender and entrepreneurship, (2) gender and social policy and (3) entrepreneurship and social policy. In conclusion, we discuss the implications for social policy and practice, and in doing so call for a research agenda that situates social policy more centrally within considerations of gender and tourism entrepreneurship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Barcelona is an attractive location in Spain for tourism entrepreneurship; however, women are significantly under-represented. This study adopts a locally based perspective and a feminist ethic of care theoretical lens to give voice to tourism women entrepreneurs and members of the entrepreneurial ecosystem in Barcelona. The aim of our analysis is to understand the culture of the entrepreneurial ecosystem and seeks to answer the following research question: How does an entrepreneurial ecosystem that operates in a tourism entrepreneurship context characterized by gendered barriers, find support through gender equity resources and policies? To address this question, we have applied feminist theory to analyze the semi-structured interviews with female entrepreneurs and individuals committed to Barcelona's entrepreneurial ecosystem. Our analysis revealed three main gender equity-related issues i.) Hunting and caring: The Gender Entrepreneurship Division; ii.) Social Conditioning and gender norms: Reinforcing Gender Inequities and iii.) Entrepreneuring and the Motherhood Penalty. Our findings draw attention to gender biases and opportunities to enhance equity in the entrepreneurial ecosystem in Barcelona by employing an ethic of care and committing to diversification. We offer a theoretical framework to understand and respond to gender inequities to enhance the success of women tourism entrepreneurs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates to what extent the likelihood of young people being long-term NEET can be explained by low literacy skills, how this varies across advanced countries, and how this cross-national variation can be explained by education and social policies. We use PIAAC data and include macro-level indicators on education and social policies. We analyze the likelihood of being long-term NEET versus being in employment or in education/training among some 34,000 young people aged 20–30 from 25 countries. We find that low-literate young people are more likely to be long-term NEET. While NEET risks are associated with countries' institutional characteristics, this does not mean that these characteristics and policies always work in favour of low-literate young people. Although high levels of (enabling) ALMP generally reduce the risk of being NEET, they do so less for low-literate young people. Additionally, young people living in social-democratic welfare states are less likely to be NEET, but low-literate young people seem to profit less from this. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper draws attention to how markers of adulthood linked to education and employment form an influential social narrative and argues that these help to construct teenage motherhood as problematic. Social policies, informed by this narrative, reinforce the idea of a "correct" path through education and into employment from which young mothers deviate and must be realigned to. This paper draws on a sample of former young mothers who had largely progressed into higher education and sheds light on how their pathways were possible and what challenges they encountered. It therefore joins others in challenging common conceptualisations of teenage motherhood as inevitably leading to educational failure. This paper seeks to open a further avenue to this debate however, in that it questions the wisdom of utilising predetermined markers of success to measure the achievement of young mothers. As the accounts discussed here show, a later data collection point enables us to see how "outcomes", but also priorities, change. Furthermore, by highlighting stories of pride and joy outside of markers of adulthood, it also encourages us to reflect on the effects of a normative social narrative which depicts divergence as failure. The paper therefore seeks to strike a note of caution in the ways in which we define success. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Identifying the determinants of social mobility for children of non-Western immigrants is of vital concern as immigration pressures grow across the West. Prior studies have minimized the role of place as one such determinant but suffers from several unsupportable assumptions. We interrogate this issue by quantifying the relative contributions made by family and neighborhood characteristics in explaining the educational attainments of young adults, paying special attention to how effects differ by gender and parental immigrant status. Our statistical models provide plausibly causal estimates by controlling for geographic selection bias. We estimate model parameters using several cohorts of children raised in Oslo, Norway, for whom government registers provide exceptionally detailed information about cumulative exposures of children to family and neighborhood contexts. Our decomposition demonstrates that differences in childhood neighborhood have a substantial effect on male (but not female) immigrant-native gaps in the probabilities of completing secondary school and of enrolling in university, though these effects are smaller than those reflecting differences in family background. We discuss implications of our findings for people- and place-based social policies aimed at enhancing immigrant opportunities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fiscal preferences of populist radical right parties (PRRPs) typically entail a combination of lower tax rates and the maintenance of costly social spending categories, such as pension spending. Theoretically, this combination is doomed to inflate future public liabilities. In our mixed method study, we assess whether PRRPs in government indeed systematically cause higher deficits and to what extent the combination of tax and social policy explains their public finance. We theoretically discuss the evolution of tax policy and welfare preferences of PRRPs and contend that radical right fiscal preferences are driven by PRRPs’ ideological core claim of ‘native producerist deservingness’. Based on mixed effects models with entropy balanced weights, we show that PRRPs in government have significantly and substantially higher public deficits than governments without PRRPs and similar socio-economic starting conditions. This effect, however, is different in Eastern Europe, where PRRPs in government produce comparatively lower deficits, albeit signalling and implementing the same policy-mix as Western PRRPs. We trace the causes of the differences in outcome with an in-depth case study of the Fidesz government in Hungary from 2010 to 2014. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

New Right theories have had a major impact on British politics since the emergence of Thatcherism and the end of the so-called 'years of consensus' in the mid-1970s. In radically rejecting the conventions of postwar politics in terms of the management of both economic and social policies, the ideas of the New Right initially came to significantly shape the policies of the Thatcher government (1979–90), and indeed have continued to wield influence over other administrations in subsequent years. However, to what degree this influence has been retained as we enter the third decade of the twenty-first century is a matter of conjecture, specifically in the wake of Conservative Party 'modernization', as well as the advent of major crises such as the 2007/8 economic crash and the Covid-19 pandemic. Within this context, this article seeks to assess and analyse the ongoing legacy of the New Right and its impact on British Conservatism over this sustained historical period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This special section brings together the work of historians, anthropologists and museologists, exploring how anthropological and sociological knowledge has been produced, consumed and reproduced in India. In particular, the special section is interested in analysing how these academic disciplines consolidated themselves as sciences informing the way a newly independent nation-state was to define its future, present and past in social and cultural terms. Anthropology and sociology were seen as tools to understand the diverse ethnic, religious and cultural background of India. Scholars used these disciplines to define what aspects of society were foreign or indigenous; what cultures, religions and languages were to be preserved; and what aspects of society were to be eliminated or integrated in order to achieve 'progress'. Thus, anthropology and sociology shaped and continued to shape how we see India as a country and society. To understand how this process took place, the articles forming this special section are organised under three main categories: genealogies, methods and museums. The section on genealogies explores the way the first generation of Indian anthropologists and sociologists simultaneously challenge racial hierarchies coming from Europe while accepting caste and racial differences in India. The 'methods' sections looks at the trend of action anthropology in this case through social science approaches to 'marginal' citizens, whose cultures were explored as part of a larger citizenship complex stressing modernity, assimilation and secularism. The museum section contextualises a wide variety of national, state and house museums within the post-independence tribal integration policies and explores indigenous critiques that decolonise essentialising narratives of the state and nation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]