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With the evolution towards more service-intensive social investment welfare states across Europe, research on the institutional capacities of subnational welfare provision is increasingly relevant. Based on a comparative case analysis of three post-industrial municipalities in Europe, this article harbors a two-pronged objective: first, empirically, to show how regional and local governance capabilities are crucial to effective SI policy delivery; second, more positively, to bring out the proficiency of vertical coordination between national administration and subnational layers, alongside the critical role of horizontal policy discretion at the local level to align social benefits and capacitating services for the success of SI delivery; and, by implication, the overall responsiveness of national welfare systems to the changing nature of 21st century socioeconomic risks.

This chapter looks at the intersection between migration and labour market policies and at the mutual relationship and influence between policy choices in the realm of migration and labour market regulation. It provides a perspective on how migration impacts labour markets and traces what policy responses have been adopted in Europe from the 1950s onwards to regulate influxes and migrant labour market inclusion. The chapter adopts the regime perspective advanced by the comparative political economy and welfare state literatures to emphasize the different trajectories of European countries and highlight both structural factors and the agency of the state and labour market actors in the governance of migrant integration.

Purpose: This article contributes to the debate on how social policies and labour market regulation have been used to limit the socio-economic consequences of the pandemic by focusing on one specific economic segment of European labour markets: private consumption services, such as trade, tourism, catering and other support services. Design/methodology/approach: The analysis combines mixed methods and a variety of sources. First, we built a set of indicators from the EU-LFS microdata for 2019 and the 2018 Eurostat “Structure of earnings survey” and performed a cluster analysis (k-means) on the dimensions and indicators considered. Second, we elaborated EU-LFS data covering 2019 and 2020 (by quarter) and OECD 2020 data, and finally we traced Covid-related policy reforms for the period March 2020–December 2021 and analysed documents and information collected in different policy repositories. Findings: The paper shows the relevance and characteristics of private consumption services in different countries, demonstrating that so-called labour market “outsiders” are highly represented in this sector and illustrates the policies adopted to respond to the pandemic in different European countries. The paper asks whether this emergency has been a window of opportunity to redefine regulation in this sector, making it more inclusive. It demonstrates, however, that the common approach in Europe has been dominated by temporary, short-term and one-off measures, which do not represent major changes to the social security schemes that were in place before the pandemic. Originality/value: This article builds on the literature on labour market dualization, but approaches the concept from a different perspective – one not centred on the nature of employment relations (stable/unstable) but on economic sectors/branches. This article does not, therefore, discuss in general terms what happened to labour market outsiders during the pandemic, but rather focus attention on a specific group o

This article assumes that the theory of social capital can contribute to explaining some of the processes behind decision-making independence and the informal aspects of relationship in the implementation of social policies. To support this theoretical proposition by means of case-based empirical evidence, the article focuses on the implementation of the principle of welfare conditionality, which links the access to income support benefits on the acceptance of job search activities and training. Three comparative cases show that its implementation varies significantly in the different contexts: conditionality embodies a very weak principle in Barcelona, which is not applied in practice; in Lyon it has a symbolic function representing a formality that provides access to an unconditional right; in Gothenburg it is implemented as a stringent and effective proof of activation. Among the many institutional and structural factors that help explain these differences, the article shows that there are also specific forms of trust, group identity and mutual recognition that motivate civil servants’ agency and discretionary choices.

Barely having had the time to digest the economic and social aftershocks of the Great Recession, European welfare states are confronted with the even more disruptive coronavirus pandemic as probably, threatening the life of the more vulnerable, while incurring job losses for many as the consequence of the temporal “freezing of the economy” by lockdown measures. Befor the Covid-19 virus struck, the new face of the digital transformation and the rise of the ‘platform’ economy already raised existential questions for future welfare provision. The Great Lockdown - if anything – is bound to accelerate these trends. Greater automation will reinforce working from home to reduce Covid-19 virus transmission risks. At the same time, the Great Lockdown will reinforce inequality, as the poor find it more difficult to work from home, while low-paid workers in essential service in health care, supermarket retail, postal services, security and waste disposal, continue to face contagion risks. And although popular conjectures of ‘jobless growth’ and ‘routine-biased’ job polarization, driven by digitization and artificial intelligence, may still be overblown, intrusive change in the nature of work and employment relations require fundamental rethinking of extant labour market regulation and social protection. Inspired more by adverse family demography than technological change, social investment reform has been the fil rouge of welfare recalibration since the turn of the century. Is social investment reform still valid in the new era of ‘disruptive’ technological transformation in aftermath of Coronavirus pandemic that is likely to turn into the worst recession since the second world war? Empirically, this chapter explores how Germany, Italy and the Netherlands, in terms of the strengths and vulnerabilities of their labour market to digitization, together with their respective social investment aptitude, are currently preparing their welfare states for the intensification of technol

Whether and under which conditions immigrants should be admitted and obtain access to employment and social security is an issue of continuously high political salience across the advanced democracies. Unions and employers, as traditionally influential actors in immigration and social policymaking, have important roles to play in this area, but their exact preferences, strategies and behaviour are theoretically difficult to determine and are still only partly understood. This article outlines a series of research problems regarding the roles of social partners in the social and economic integration of immigrants and discusses how the articles contained in this special issue address these problems.

Migrant inclusion in a society is a process that ultimately succeeds or fails at the local level and cities have increasingly taken a proactive stance in delivering their own policies for integration. The literature on the topic has focused particularly on the cooperation between local political institutions and civil society organizations, underestimating the key role played by social partners. This paper demonstrates the participation of social partners in the local governance of migrant integration in three European cities: Barcelona, Lyon and Gothenburg. Drawing on process tracing analysis and qualitative interviews, the article illustrates the different responses of local unions and employers’ organizations to immigration and the variety of approaches to supporting migrant integration into employment and society. The article argues that these approaches, which take place within different institutional and structural contexts, shape different patterns of migrant inclusion and allow us to explain the new and traditional ways in which social partners operate as social and political actors.

With the evolution towards more service-intensive social investment welfare states across Europe, research on the institutional capacities of subnational welfare provision is increasingly relevant. Based on a comparative case analysis of three post-industrial municipalities in Europe, this article harbors a two-pronged objective: first, empirically, to show how regional and local governance capabilities are crucial to effective SI policy delivery; second, more positively, to bring out the proficiency of vertical coordination between national administration and subnational layers, alongside the critical role of horizontal policy discretion at the local level to align social benefits and capacitating services for the success of SI delivery; and, by implication, the overall responsiveness of national welfare systems to the changing nature of 21st century socioeconomic risks.

Purpose This article contributes to the debate on how social policies and labour market regulation have been used to limit the socio-economic consequences of the pandemic by focusing on one specific economic segment of European labour markets: private consumption services, such as trade, tourism, catering and other support services. Design/methodology/approach The analysis combines mixed methods and a variety of sources. First, we built a set of indicators from the EU-LFS microdata for 2019 and the 2018 Eurostat "Structure of earnings survey" and performed a cluster analysis (k-means) on the dimensions and indicators considered. Second, we elaborated EU-LFS data covering 2019 and 2020 (by quarter) and OECD 2020 data, and finally we traced Covid-related policy reforms for the period March 2020-December 2021 and analysed documents and information collected in different policy repositories. Findings The paper shows the relevance and characteristics of private consumption services in different countries, demonstrating that so-called labour market "outsiders" are highly represented in this sector and illustrates the policies adopted to respond to the pandemic in different European countries. The paper asks whether this emergency has been a window of opportunity to redefine regulation in this sector, making it more inclusive. It demonstrates, however, that the common approach in Europe has been dominated by temporary, short-term and one-off measures, which do not represent major changes to the social security schemes that were in place before the pandemic. Originality/value This article builds on the literature on labour market dualization, but approaches the concept from a different perspective - one not centred on the nature of employment relations (stable/unstable) but on economic sectors/branches. This article does not, therefore, discuss in general terms what happened to labour market outsiders during the pandemic, but rather focus attention on a specific group of wo

After some promise in the 1990s, European unions have grown increasingly disillusioned with regard to the results of EU social policy and EU social dialogue. The paper analyses the extent and reasons of this disillusion by looking at the impact on social dialogue of the Active Inclusion Recommendation launched by the European Commission at the outset of the economic crisis in 2008. The Recommendation led to a tripartite framework agreement at the EU level in 2010 (the only such agreement in a decade), which was then to be implemented at national and regional levels. With a multilevel governance approach, the paper looks at the extent to which social dialogue on Active Inclusion at the EU level, in six EU countries (France, Italy, Poland, Spain, Sweden, and the UK) and six regions (Rhône-Alpes, Lombardy, Lower Silesia, Catalonia, West Sweden and Greater Manchester) within those countries was somehow revitalised. The analysis, looking at both top-down and bottom-up processes and based on documentary analysis and interviews, shows that the initiative displays ambiguities similar to those of typical composite EU principles, such as famously the case of ‘flexicurity’. The multilevel governance of the EU, including the interaction between ‘soft’ employment policies and evolving ‘hard’ Eurogovernance tools, and with poor horizontal and vertical coordination, resulted in multiple distortions of the principle and, over time, to frustration. Unions’ engagement varies by level, country and region, reflecting both traditional national approaches and the local perception of ‘active inclusion’ as an opportunity. Although trade unions were more welcoming of ‘active inclusion’ than they had been for flexicurity, similar related threats and opportunities led to modest achievements and a gradual fading of the idea at the European and national levels, with some more opportunities however at the regional level. The paper concludes that, if trade unions want to engage with the idea of

The idea of ‘active inclusion’ was embraced by the European Commission in 2008 and supported financially through the European Social Fund, inspiring national and subnational reforms throughout Europe. This article analyses the role played by social partners in its implementation, using three comparative case studies to assess its transposition at the local level in Spain, France and Sweden. Despite convergence in the vocabulary used by actors involved in labour market governance, translation into local measures is different, with significant implications for policy-making. To explain the varieties of active inclusion, I focus on the interplay between structure and the agency of competing local political and social actors who participate in labour market governance.

In 2008, the European Commission relaunched the policy idea of active inclusion, with the aim of facilitating the integration of people into sustainable and quality employment. Over ten years later, and in the aftermath of one of the most trying periods in Europe’s recent economic history, this book provides a critical and timely reassessment. The Political Economy of Policy Ideas contributes to the growing scholarly literature on ideational political economy and labour market regulation by providing a systematic analysis of the idea of active inclusion and its three core principles: activation, conditionality and personalization. The research breaks new ground by detailing how divergent interpretations of these principles, by relevant social actors in different contexts, have shaped their implementation. The book is of interest to scholars and students across comparative political economy, economic sociology, welfare and industrial relations studies.

L’economia digitale e il crescente dualismo tra lavoratori protetti e non protetti stanno ponendo pressioni crescenti nei confronti delle istituzioni dello stato sociale, le quali sono sempre più inefficaci nel garantire protezione dalle varie forme di povertà e di diseguaglianza legate al mercato del lavoro. Il paradigma del social investment viene qui discusso come possibile approccio di riferimento per la risposta politica necessaria nel mondo digitalizzato e il caso italiano e tedesco sono messi a confronto per esplorare due diverse traiettorie di riforma intraprese per rispondere alla sfida della digitalizzazione.

This paper deals with two of the main topics in the debate on varieties of capitalism: first, the process of convergence or divergence between the different models; second, the identification of factors affecting the diverse outcomes in terms of inclusive growth in European countries. The analysis shows that for the two dimensions considered here, competitiveness and inclusion, models of capitalism continue to follow different paths, both in their policy configuration and outcomes. In this process, a key role is played by the agency of three actors: State, social partners and firms. Different forms of agency of these actors are identified and the diverse trajectories of the models of capitalism are highlighted, as result of the tension between institutional structure, historical legacy and the agency of these actors.