This book examines how national labour market and social welfare policies have been influenced by the European Employment Strategy and the Open Method of Coordination (OMC) processes on Social Protection/Inclusion.

This book presents an original multidisciplinary conceptual framework for the analysis of the processes of construction/transformation of workers' social rights. The framework was developed by taking an analysis of employment and social protection in the Latin European countries as starting-point, and thus offers an innovative alternative to the dominant approaches. It takes account of the institutional forms determining employees' resource flows and associated rights, and introduces a new analytical category of «resource regimes». Four spheres are identified for the observation of recent resource regime changes: employment systems, public policy frameworks, social hierarchies and industrial relations systems. The various chapters explore how each of these spheres participates in the institution of social rights over resources, and identify key vehicles of change such as transformations in forms of employment, labour market policies, pension reforms, the swing to a logic of competencies, social pacts, and the processes involved in the construction of the European Union. The book brings to the fore the dynamic relation between employment, wages and social rights and aims to contribute to current debates on social protection reforms and employment policies implemented at both national and European levels.

The book is the first major study to examine the implications of differences in welfare regimes for the experience of unemployment in Europe. It is concerned with three central questions about the way such regimes affect the experience of unemployment. The first is how far they protect the quality of life of unemployed people with respect to living standards and the experience of financial hardship. The second is their role in mediating the impact of unemployment on the individual's longer-term position in the labour market, addressing the issue of how far they help to prevent progressive marginalization from the employment structure as a result of motivational change, skill loss or the growth of discriminatory barriers. The third is how far such regimes mediate the impact of unemployment on social integration in the community, for instance with respect to the maintenance (or rupture) of social networks and the degree of psychological distress experienced by the unemployed. The book is the product of a major cross-cultural research programme, funded by the European Union (TSER), bringing together teams from eight countries. The emphasis has been on rigorous comparison rather than the all-too-frequent separate country analyses, which usually provide data which differs in format from one country to another. In addition to a systematic comparison of national data sources, it has been able to make use of a new important data source (the European Community Household Panel) produced by Eurostat which provides directly comparable information for all EU countries. The study shows that institutional and cultural differences have vital implications for the experience of unemployment. While welfare policies affect in an important way the pervasiveness of poverty, it is above all the patterns of family structure and the culture of sociability in a society that affect vulnerability to social isolation. The book concludes by developing a new perspective for understanding the risk of social exclusion.

A new contribution to the debate on the evolution of European employment and social models. These models need to adjust to meet new challenges, including globalization, ageing societies, and new governance approaches at national, EU and international level. This book explores these issues through the experiences of nine EU countries.

Changing labour markets, welfare policies and citizenship readdresses the question of how full citizenship may be preserved and developed in the face of enduring labour market pressures. It: clarifies the relationship between changing labour markets, welfare policies and citizenship; discusses possible ways in which the spill-over effect from labour market marginality to loss of citizenship can be prevented; specifies this problem in relation to the young, older people, men and women and immigrants; offers theoretical and conceptual definitions of citizenship as a new, alternative approach to empirical analyses of labour market marginalisation and its consequences; highlights the lessons to be learned from differing approaches in European countries.

As the standard of living has increased, aspirations and financial constraints have required major rethinking. There is considerable disparity between European countries in how they approach the welfare system, with differing concern over aspects such

There have been major shifts in the framework of social policy and welfare across Europe. Adopting a multi-level, comparative and interdisciplinary approach, this book develops a critical analysis of policy change and welfare reform in Europe. The book applies a dynamic and change oriented perspective to shed light on policy changes that are often poorly understood in the welfare literature, and contributes to a further development of the theoretical and conceptual frameworks for understanding social change. Using citizenship as a focus, several dimensions of change are analysed simultaneously: changes in the discipline of social policy itself; the changing character of social problems; changes in social policy and citizenship; and the emergence of new forms of social integration. The book also speculates on how different dimensions of change are interlinked.