Welfare Mix Research Articles

The Emerging Welfare Mix for Syrian Refugees in Turkey: The Interplay between Humanitarian Assistance Programmes and the Turkish Welfare System

AbstractThis paper explores the key features of the emerging welfare mix for Syrian refugees in Turkey and identifies the modes of interaction between humanitarian assistance programmes, domestic policy responses and the Turkish welfare system. The welfare mix for Syrian refugees is a joint product of humanitarian assistance programmes implemented by international and domestic non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and domestic social policy programmes. Three policy domains are considered: social assistance schemes, employment and health care services. The paper suggests that granting of temporary protection status to Syrian migrants in Turkey and the agreement between Turkey and the EU shaped the welfare mix by empowering the public sector mandate vis-à-vis the humanitarian actors. As a result, the role of the public sector increases at the expense of NGOs, especially in social assistance and health care, while NGOs are increasingly specialised in protection work (especially in mental health support), where the Turkish welfare system has been weak. Employment has been essentially disregarded, in both humanitarian and social policy programmes, which casts doubt on the prospect of successful economic integration. Finally, this paper argues that the convergence of the rights of immigrants and citizens may well occur in mature components of less comprehensive welfare systems.

Social inequalities in rural England: Impacts on young people post-2008

This paper investigates the cumulative impacts of the 2008 economic crisis and its aftermath (including policy changes) on young people in a sparsely populated rural area of northern England. The paper locates the research in the context of youth studies, Bourdieu's theory of practice, concepts of welfare regimes and welfare mix, and studies of the impacts of the crisis and austerity policies on the distribution of social and societal risk. The empirical findings reveal the challenges which faced young people in rural England before the financial crisis still persist. Moreover, the overwhelming reliance of young people on family for support generates further inequalities through what might be termed ‘secondary impact austerity’: young people feel indirectly and unevenly the economic effects and policy changes which impact on parents' and communities' ability to offer them support. Thus, changes to the welfare system, loss of services and less secure forms of employment exacerbate the transfer of social risk and the deepening of poverty for vulnerable groups. This is worsened in this rural area by the moral imperatives which stigmatise access to state and charitable support. Thus, moral capital and local habitus intersect with social, economic and cultural capitals in structuring inequalities.

What policy space for diaconal institutions? Challenges from public procurement

Procurement processes with tender competition have been a preferred approach for engaging service providers in Norway. Even if the present Norwegian government finds it “essential that competition becomes an integral part of all public activity,” a simultaneous push for preserving the welfare mix of Norway has occurred, with public, non-profit, and for-profit actors. What specific measures are being undertaken to preserve the non-profit actors? How have the Norwegian authorities sought to utilize the policy space that the EU/EEA (European Economic Area) provides? The article concludes that Norway has a wide policy space for providing public health and welfare services through non-profit actors, but that this policy space is reduced if public procurement is chosen as the primary strategy for engaging non-public actors, whether non-profit or for-profit, to provide these services.

Not all experiences of precarious work lead to precarity: the case study of young people at university and their welfare mixes

ABSTRACTThe concept of precarity has gained momentum and challenges social scientists to consider the effects of labour-market insecurity across classes and welfare arrangements. This article discusses the varieties of experiences of precarious work by young people in university and identifies in which cases they are also experiences precarity. It is one of the first studies of its kind to investigate the material triggers of inequality by comparing young people’s experiences across countries (England, Italy and Sweden) and by looking at the welfare mixes available to young people who are working at university. Through a comparative qualitative research involving young people from different socio-economic backgrounds and ‘welfare mixes’, the article shows that experiences of precarity concern a minority of young people who have an absolute necessity to rely on labour-market sources, due to the lack or insufficiency of state support and family sources. It also identifies: a group of young people who feel pressure to get precarious jobs to fill a decline in family resources; and a convenient use of precarious jobs suiting the circumstances of young people with abundant family resources. Overall, the research found that precarity is deeply connected to young people’s welfare mixes.

Narrowing the gap: the middle class and the modernization of welfare in Italy

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to offer a contribution to our understanding of the changing relations of the middle classes with the Italian welfare state. The paper argues that the new interplay between public and private welfare is based on a very simplified analysis of Italian society.Design/methodology/approachThe paper aims to integrate a variety of different theoretical approaches. The paper makes extensive use of the EU-SILC database, as well as the recently updated historic series of consumer studies undertaken by the Italian National Institute of Statistics. The data used in the paper were also drawn from the biennial cross-sectional Survey on Household Income and Wealth carried out by the Bank of Italy.FindingsThe analysis suggests that the problems of Italian society include not only a high incidence of poverty, but also increasing financial constraints for households placed between the established middle class and people in conditions of persistent poverty. The current public-private mix in service delivery appears less and less capable of protecting this social stratum against the growing risk of instability across all life domains, let alone of creating opportunities and fostering social mobility.Originality/valueThe paper explores some ways in which current politics of welfare have been designed with the view of fundamentally changing the welfare regime. It highlights how the public and private welfare mix has been purposefully organized in order to introduce a new model of social protection that aims to overcome certain specific characteristics of Southern European welfare states. It examines the sustainability of this model compared to the real living conditions of the Italian middle classes.

‘Social work of boundaries’: emerging multiple social work fields in post-Soviet Eurasia

ABSTRACTThe restructuring of welfare provisions in post-Soviet Kazakhstan, a newly independent state in Central Asia, has been characterized by the shift from the Soviet welfare system dominated by the state to the welfare mix consisting of the state, the market, and the nonprofit, nongovernmental sector. One of the features of the post-Soviet welfare reconfiguration has been the development of social work as a new approach to welfare provision and an emerging professional field. This analysis draws upon key informant interviews conducted in Kazakhstan over the summer of 2012 and multiple relevant policy texts. This paper examines how the emerging fields of social work in post-Soviet Kazakhstan have been shaped by the shifting national and global policy contexts. More specifically, I identify two major fields of social work within the nongovernmental and the governmental sectors that are influenced by different institutional environments. First, domestic nongovernmental organizations have been increasingly involved in the provision of social services; and second, new or reformed governmental organizations have begun to introduce social services and social work. As a result, social work has emerged not as a coherent, homogenous field but as distinct, fragmentary fields.

The development of the social economy in the welfare mix: Political dynamics between the state and the third sector

This paper explores how social economy organizations (SEOs) position themselves in the welfare mix without being occupied by the state or market, especially in a context where they have not yet taken firm root in society. Focusing on the South Korean case, this paper analyzes the developmental path of the social economy in light of two factors: the degree of state involvement in the social economy, and SEOs’ political power. Based on these two factors, we develop four ideal types of the social economy: (1) a quasi-governmental social economy, (2) government–SEO partnership, (3) a marketized social economy, and (4) an autonomous social economy. The Korean case shows a path where politically strong SEOs and a strong interventionist state incubate the social economy. However, it also presents SEOs’ struggle to maintain their political influence to develop as an independent sector, without being occupied by the government or market.

Interplays Between Welfare Regimes Typology and Academic Research Systems in OECD Countries

Academic research systems (ARS) play a fundamental role in post-industrial societies. Using the lenses of comparative political-economy, this article (1) explores correspondence between 16 OECD countries and 12 ARS indicators, and (2) examines the extent to which Esping-Andersen’s welfare regime typology explains this correspondence. The non-parametric correspondence analysis is stable and 67.4% of the variance is explained by three dimensions: Academic Centrality, Research Workforce and Responsiveness to Market Forces. The first and most important dimension distinguishes social-democratic from liberal regimes. Findings point to interplays between welfare mix, productivism and the socialization of risks and ARS' centrality and responsiveness.

Thrift Shop Philanthropy

Although the charity thrift shop is typically treated as an apolitical nonprofit entity, it plays a significant cultural and political role in the contemporary practice of governing. In this article, I am concerned with how well-being is distributed through the governance of time and labor as it intersects with the circulation of the thrift shop commodities that fund the welfare mix. I am simultaneously concerned with how these practices of power—which are frequently degrading for those who have few options other than to interface with the institutions within which these practices originate—come to be rehabilitated as charity, in a cycle that mirrors the circulation of consumer goods upon which they depend for funding. I draw on critical theories of philanthropy, consumer culture, the welfare state, and time, as they contribute to our understanding of the inculcation of ascetics in relationship to contemporary practices of power. I substantiate these claims through an exploration of how the charity thrift shop belongs to a circuit of ascetic production involving the degradation and rehabilitation of consumer goods, which then, through the funding of training programs that belong to a particular temporal political economy, dictates the ability of many to achieve well-being by managing the degradation and rehabilitation of individuals.

The Social Investment Perspective, Conditional Cash Transfer Programmes and the Welfare Mix: Peru and Bolivia

Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) programmes have spread across Latin America since the late 1990s. They constitute one of the major changes in social policy in Latin America in the last twenty years (Barrientos, 2009). This innovation has significantly influenced the welfare mix (Esping-Andersen, 1990). Those who examine the welfare mix from a feminist perspective (Orloff, 1996; Martínez, 2008) insist that it is necessary to take into account the gender consequences of changing this mix. Based on a qualitative analysis of CCT programmes in Peru and Bolivia, this article makes two arguments. First, CCT programmes demonstrate that instead of being purely liberal or even neoliberal, the actions of the state in the production of welfare are now grounded from the perspective of social investment. Second, in Peru and Bolivia, the gendered impacts of this new state orientation nonetheless reinforce maternalistic and coercive practices.

Between the Invisible hand and the Invisible Heart. Italian Welfare Restructuring and the Quest for a New Neoliberal Hegemony

The article looks at the current restructuring of Italian Welfare putting it into perspective with both the structural contradictions of contemporary capitalism and the more contingent and specific condi-tions of contemporary Italy. Relying on the approach taken by the political economy of the Welfare State, the variegated neoliberalization studies and the concept of referentiel, the process is considered and ana-lysed both in its semiotic and material elements. Looking at the transformations of the key-actors in the pre-crisis Welfare Mix arrangement, an on-going entrepreneurial and financial change is identified, open-ing the door to two, complementary, scenarios: a smart-utopia private Welfare one for those able to pay and a repressive residual Welfare state for the poor.

Conceptualizing and responding to poverty in the Republic of Ireland in the 1960s: a case study of Dublin

The 1960s saw reformulations and rediscoveries of poverty in the West. This article examines the experience of the Republic of Ireland, a state with a large network of religious charitable agencies and a predilection for voluntary over statutory services. While sociologists have identified an Irish rediscovery of poverty as occurring in the early 1970s, it is argued here that a reframing of understandings of poverty, and the services required to address it, was apparent throughout the 1960s, in the media, in the actions of voluntary, civic and political groups, and in attempts to gather data on social problems. This article investigates the extent to which external ideas influenced a rediscovery or reformulation of poverty in Ireland, placing developments in local, national and transnational contexts. It focuses in particular on the changes within Catholicism that were key to the Irish rediscovery. Dublin is used as a case study in order to examine experiences of poverty on the ground. The correspondence associated with a charitable agency and a maternity hospital reveal the nature of the welfare mix that existed in the capital city and the way in which poverty was managed at a local level. In examining poverty from these different vantage points, this article identifies how ideas of and responses to poverty evolved in this period. It argues that while calls for the further development of collective responses to poverty were key to its reformulation, the historical dominance of voluntary agencies and the complex realities of welfare provision on the ground limited the potential for transformative change.

Managing Hybridity in a Changing Welfare Mix: Everyday Practices in an Entrepreneurial Nonprofit in Belgium

This article departs from the observation of a widely heralded shift in the governance of welfare, which is claimed to represent a more complex and uncertain institutional environment for third sector organizations (TSOs). It has been argued that hybrid organizations carry innovative potential compared to traditional nonprofits in terms of more effectively or creatively dealing with contradictory pressures from multiple institutional logics. Using a recently developed theory to study nonprofit hybrids, this paper explores the concrete organizational practice of ‘managing hybridity.’ A qualitative study of institutional logics and participant interactions in a purposively sampled ‘post-corporatist’ hybrid TSO in Belgium was conducted. Our analysis first revealed that at the organization-level, our case represented a blended nonprofit hybrid. The particular combination of competing logics, however, put complex demands on staff members, who used three types of coping strategies in their everyday routines. A managerial and service logic prevailed, at the expense of the TSO's participatory and emancipatory mission. Implications of the findings for nascent theorizing on nonprofit hybrids are discussed.

Welfare Mix and Hybridity. Flexible Adjustments to Changed Environments. Introduction to the Special Issue

Present day welfare societies rely on a complex mix of different providers ranging from the state, markets, family, and non-profit organizations to unions, grassroots organizations, and informal networks. At the same time changing welfare discourses have opened up space for new partnerships, divisions of labor, and responsibilities between these actors. For nonprofit organizations this means that they operate in complex institutional environments where different institutions and logics compete with each other. In this special issue we have collected a number of articles that analyze how organizations and organizational fields adjust to a new environment that is increasingly dominated by the logic of the market, and how in particular nonprofit organizations, as hybrids by definition, are able to cope with new demands, funding structures, and control mechanism.

Welfare Mixes and Hybridity: Analytical and Managerial Implications

The notion of a “welfare mix” has two different points of reference. One is the variety of institutional arrangements of modern welfare states in, basically, capitalist democracies. This is primarily connected to a cross-country comparative perspective, very much influenced by classic pieces of research on the varieties of welfare states in general and related typologies (above all Esping-Andersen, The three worlds of welfare capitalism, 1990; see also Arts and Gelissen J Eur Soc Policy 12:137–158, 2002; Castles et al., The Oxford handbook of the welfare state, 2011). We believe to know, for instance, that Scandinavian welfare states are much more state-centered and, accordingly, third sector organizations much less important than in, say, conservative or corporatist welfare states such as Germany or Austria or in liberal welfare states such as the United States (cf. Salamon and Anheier, Defining the nonprofit sector: a cross-national analysis, 1997). A second point of reference of the “mix” of welfare state arrangements is the combination of sector-specific institutions in the provision of welfare-related services in a given country. It is here where the notion of hybridity is particularly relevant since it is typically the arrangement of overlapping sectoral segments that characterize the “mix” in question (cf. Evers Int J Public Adm 28:736–748, 2005 for an overview). Examples are tax exempted foundations in the field of education or science, private voluntary associations providing public goods such as social services of various kinds or private goods such as housing provided by public enterprises or cooperatives.

Welfare Mix as a Contested Terrain: Political Positions on Government–Non-profit Relations at National and Local Levels in a Social Democratic Welfare State

As welfare states are increasingly challenged and replaced by welfare mix models, new ideas about the functions of non-profit and voluntary organisations (NPVOs) provoke political conflicts that should be reflected in research. This paper explores the significance of political and ideological dimensions to present changes in the Swedish welfare state regarding NPVOs as welfare services providers. Investigating both national and local level, the study addresses political as well as practical implications of the reframing of NPVOs as service providers rather than being associated with a voice function. The article shows extensive differences between national and local levels as contentious ideological cleavages at national level are dormant in local level politics. Variations in the way relations to NPVOs are structured in practice at local level appear related to factors other than political dimensions. The findings support the development of an analytical framework that reflects political dimensions and allow for empirical focus that includes national and local level politics and practices.

Liberalizzazione del corporativismo? L'evoluzione del welfare mix tedesco in una prospettiva internazionale

This paper focuses on the reorganization of the welfare mix in advanced welfare states, with a focus on Germany and in the light of recent developments in liberal Anglo-Saxon countries. Scrutinizing the relationship between the state and the non profit sector, it retraces a movement towards the liberalization of corporatism, that is, the gradual replacement of corporatist regulation by a liberal, more market-oriented approach. With this approach, proliferating in many parts of the world, non-statutory actors are welcome as service providers, albeit on the basis of a more loosely coupled partnership with public authorities. Comparing Anglo-Saxon and continental European traditions, two forms of the regulatory interface relevant to the collaboration between the state and the non-profit sector are compared: procurement (epitomized by a public body’s purchase of services within a competitive landscape of service providers), and commissioning which be understood as covering a broader range of inter-sector arrangements in which the market logic remains rudimentary. The development in Germany, it is argued, proves hybrid as the two forms coexist, albeit within a more market-driven context. In that sense, there is a liberalization of corporatism.

The governance of hospital markets — Comparing two Bismarckian countries

The privatization of hospitals has become a reform trend throughout Europe since the beginning of the 1990s. So far, the scholarly debate has focused primarily on changes in the welfare mix, concluding from the rising share of private for‐profit providers, a growing convergence of hospital governance throughout Europe. This paper sheds light on a neglected aspect of the reform trend, namely the differences in the regulation of the newly evolved hospital markets. The governance of hospital markets is discussed through the lens of the “tools of government” approach, taking Germany and France as examples. Empirically, the paper provides an overview of the major changes in the instruments applied in the field of hospital policy in both countries since the 1990s. Analytically, it contributes to the literature on policy instruments by refining the tools of government approach. We propose a typology that allows us not only to classify instruments of hospital policy but also to relate the changes in instrument choice to the changes in statehood.

A conceptual approach to the creation of public–private partnerships in social welfare

All societies are confronted with complex, often difficult to overcome, challenges associated with changing population demographics. These challenges have placed increasing demands on society for social protection. Individual citizens, politicians, and scholars alike all are searching for the ideal configuration of the welfare mix, that is, a combination of various institutions that can offer the best possible combination of essential goods and services for everyone in every society.Key Practitioner Message: ● The organization of the public–private welfare partnership as viewed from a conceptual perspective; ● The unique contextual and contemporary social forces that shape public–private partnerships in modern welfare state practice; ● Contrasts in the origins and nature of public–private partnerships between two of the world's most populous countries whose histories, traditions, values, and norms differ fundamentally from one another. Even so, considerable learning regarding welfare state formation in different societies is possible through the application of the Public–Private Development Mix to the analysis of welfare state formation in these two contrasting societies.

Legitimate Deficit: Competitive Bidding in a Residual and Semi-democratic Welfare Society

Competitive bidding for public subsidy allocation for welfare services has been widely applied in established welfare states since the 1980s. Studies conducted in these countries have inclined to understand competitive bidding as a financing initiative and use an array of “failure theories” to explain its challenges and failures. In contrast to these studies, the present study focuses on Hong Kong, a residual and semi-democratic welfare state, and investigates competitive bidding as a governmental policy instrument designed to increase the legitimacy of subsidy award decisions. Based on an analysis of submissions in a recent policy review and a review of existing policy documents, we suggest that the government may have increased its decision-making power over NGOs, resulting in little advancement, neither regarding welfare mix, nor concerning the legitimacy of resource allocation.