Re-addresses the question of how full citizenship may be preserved and developed in the face of enduring labour market pressures. The book discusses possible ways in which the spill-over effect from labour market marginality to loss of citizenship can be prevented.

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.

This work examines the concept of citizenship in relation to social policy, in the context of the rapidly changing European welfare states. Leading academics analyse concrete changes in social rights and citizenship roles, and offer theoretical investigations of citizenship and the welfare state. Issues discussed include: · citizenship versus residence as a basis for social rights · the relationship between rights and obligations · workers rights and non-workers rights · exclusion and inclusion in the labour market and community life · the relationship between social and political citizenship · poverty and social exclusion · new roles for citizens as clients, consumers and participants in the welfare state

It is often argued that European welfare states, with regulated labour markets, relatively generous social protection and relatively high wage equality, have become counter-productive in a globalised and knowledge-intensive economy. Using in-depth, comparative and interdisciplinary analysis of employment, welfare and citizenship in a number of European countries, this book challenges this view. It provides: an overview of employment and unemployment in Europe at the beginning of the 21st century; a comprehensive critique of the idea of globalisation as a challenge to European welfare states; detailed country chapters with new and previously inaccessible information about employment and unemployment policies written by national experts. Europe's new state of welfare is essential reading for students and teachers of social policy, welfare studies, politics and economics.

This book provides a major new examination of the current dilemmas of liberal anti-racist policies in European societies, linking two discourses that are normally quite separate in social science: immigration and ethnic relations research on the one hand, and the political economy of the welfare state on the other. The authors rephrase Gunnar Myrdal's questions in An American Dilemma with reference to Europe's current dual crisis - that of the established welfare state facing a declining capacity to maintain equity, and that of the nation state unable to accommodate incremental ethnic diversity. They compare developments across the European Union with the contemporary US experience of poverty, race, and class. They highlight the major moral-political dilemma emerging across the EU out of the discord between declared ideals of citizenship and actual exclusion from civil, political, and social rights. Pursuing this overall European predicament, the authors provide a critical scrutiny of the EU's growing policy involvement in the fields of international migration, integration, discrimination, and racism. They relate current policy issues to overall processes of economic integration and efforts to develop a European 'social dimension'. Drawing on case-study analysis of migration, the changing welfare state, and labour markets in the UK, Germany, Italy, and Sweden, the book charts the immense variety of Europe's social and political landscape. Trends of divergence and convergence between single countries are related to the European Union's emerging policies for diversity and social inclusion. It is, among other things, the plurality of national histories and contemporary trajectories that makes the European Union's predicament of migration, welfare, and citizenship different from the American experience. These reasons also account in part for why it is exceedingly difficult to advance concerted and consistent approaches to one of the most pressing policy issues of our time. Very few of the existing sociological texts which compare different European societies on specific topics are accessible to a broad range of scholars and students. The European Societies series will help to fill this gap in the literature, and attempt to answer questions such as: Is there really such a thing as a 'European model' of society? Do the economic and political integration processes of the European Union also imply convergence in more general aspects of social life, such a family or religious behaviour? What do the societies of Western Europe have in common with those further to the East? This series will cover the main social institutions, although not every author will cover the full range of European countries. As well as surveying existing knowledge in a manner useful to students, each book will also seek to contribute to our growing knowledge of what remains in many respects a sociologically unknown continent. The series editor is Colin Crouch.

Taking nine European countries as case studies, the contributions to this volume analyze the ways that citizenship has changed in key areas such as social security, labor market policies and social services.