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With more than 10 million Muslims living in Western Europe, states are struggling to accommodate the religious needs of Muslims in state-supported institutions. Such issues include whether to fund separate Islamic schools and how or whether to teach Islam in state-supported schools. Despite these common concerns, national governments vary widely in their response to the religious needs and practices of Muslim citizens and permanent residents. This paper looks at how Britain, France and Germany have resolved these issues. We explore how pre-existing Church-State practices and institutional arrangements structured the politics of state accommodation of Muslims' religious needs in each country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the relationships between the migratory policies of the EU countries with more experience of immigration and their national political cultures. It focuses on France, Germany and the United Kingdom. It then looks at Italy, a relatively new country of immigration, which, with 3,000,000 legal immigrants, has become the fourth country of immigration in Europe and the first in the Mediterranean basin. In its final part it highlights the incipient process of 'communitarisation' of the immigration policies of EU countries in the last decade. This process, which has already entailed a significant convergence of their migratory policies, is expected to continue after the recent enlargement of the European Union. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article provides a comparative study of the labour market and social policy measures introduced in light of the COVID-19 crisis in Denmark, France, Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom between March 2020 and January 2021. Its main aim is to understand whether the crisis response has changed the structures of the welfare states concerned. Focusing in particular on the differences regarding the crisis measures taken for individuals in 'standard employment' and 'non-standard workers' in each country, it argues that, although extensive temporary protection instruments were introduced for both groups during the crisis, these did not lead to an immediate convergence as regards these groups' social protection. Rather than changing the underlying structures of welfare systems, many of the measures in fact highlighted the specific vulnerabilities of large segments of Europe's labour markets. States have, however, granted social compensation at unprecedented levels, which could result in improved infrastructures and a clearer understanding of the responsibility of the welfare state in future emergencies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article puts contemporary debates about the relationship between immigration policy and the welfare state in historical perspective. Relying on new historical data, the article examines the relationship between immigration policy and social policy in Western Europe in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when the modern welfare state emerged. Germany already had comparably strict immigration policies when the German Empire introduced the world's first national social insurances in the 1880s. Denmark, another early social-policy adopter, also pursued restrictive immigration policies early on. Almost all other countries in Western Europe started out with more liberal immigration policies than Germany's and Denmark's, but then adopted more restrictive immigration policies and more generous social policies concurrently. There are two exceptions, Belgium and Italy, which are discussed in the article. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aims: There is evidence that young people are less satisfied with their lives when they are unemployed or working in precarious conditions. This study aims to shed light on how the life satisfaction of unemployed and precariously employed young people varies across welfare states with different labour market policies and levels of social protection. Methods: The analyses are based on representative cross-sectional survey data from five European countries (Denmark, the UK, Germany, Spain and the Czech Republic), corresponding to five different welfare state regimes. For economically active young adults (N =6681), the prevalence ratios of low life satisfaction were estimated through multivariate logistic regressions. Results: In all five countries, unemployed young adults presented a higher prevalence of low life satisfaction. When we compared employees with people with permanent and temporary contracts, the former were more satisfied with their lives only in Germany and the UK, examples of conservative and liberal welfare regimes, respectively. Experience of unemployment decreased young adults' life satisfaction only in Germany and the Czech Republic, examples of a conservative and an eastern European welfare regime, respectively. In almost all countries, young adults with low economic self-sufficiency presented a higher prevalence of low life satisfaction. Conclusions: There are nuanced patterns of employment type and life satisfaction across European states that hint at welfare state regimes as possible moderators in this relationship. The results suggest that the psychological burdens of unemployment or work uncertainty cannot be overlooked and should be addressed according to different types of social provisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The literature addressing attitudes about social policy and the welfare state has been telling us for decades that welfare interventions are supported by those individuals who benefit from a specific measure. The diffusion of ‘demanding’ active labour market policies (ALMPs), however, challenges this relationship. Using a novel dataset, I analyse which individual- and country-level factors explain public support for demanding ALMPs in five Western European countries. The results show that labour market risk and ideological orientation influence public attitudes towards these ALMPs. Thereby, unemployed individuals sympathising with the political right are more strongly opposed to demanding measures than employed individuals with the same political preferences. Moreover, aggregate support is found to be correlated with the country's ALMP legacy, varying from high levels in Germany and the UK to low levels in Denmark and France. The findings suggest that most ALMPs are in fact implemented despite the opposition of their beneficiaries. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]