Neoliberalism has transformed work, welfare, and democracy. However, its impacts, and its future, are more complex than we often imagine. Alongside growing inequality, social spending has been rising. Medicare was entrenched alongside privatization. How do we understand this contradictory politics, and what opportunities are there to advance equality? This book takes the three big drivers of inequality – conditionality of benefits, marketisation of services and financialisation of the life course– to explore how inequality has been contested. Alongside the rise of the market, it reveals the building blocks of a more egalitarian order and opportunities for new models of solidarity based on an ethic of care.

Since the 1990s, and increasingly so, European welfare states have been undergoing fundamental change. The analysis presented in this book shows that these changes may be interpreted as a paradigmatic shift of European societies, since fundamental concepts, principles and societal effects of welfare institutions have been redefined, reset and rearranged. Given contemporary institutional, economic, social and cultural changes, current post-industrial forms of welfare states are characterised by a very different logic than that which prevailed some 30 years ago. This logic, while being ambivalent in certain areas, brings about highly modified societies. This book provides an understanding and identification of different facets of this paradigmatic shift, in order to contribute to the bigger picture of welfare state and societal change. Rather than referring to persisting differences in welfare state regimes, which are in parts identified here also, it directs its attention towards new and cross-country and cross-regime developments and tensions. The interpretations of welfare state change found in other studies, thereby, are enhanced in original ways. The theoretically-based empirical analysis of welfare state change departs from the generally accepted insight that mature democratic welfare states depend on social cohesion. The central question of this study, therefore, is how emancipatory past and present welfare state regulations are. The results show that the mechanisms, visibility and lines of social inequality differ significantly after three decades of partly fundamental reforms characterized by marketization, fragmentation and equalisation of welfare provision.

Multidimensional Inequalities is a deep dive into the historical contexts and contemporary realities that negatively influence society and its structures. It is often overlooked that inequality is not just about income and wealth but rather a broad spectrum of intersecting factors. This book focuses on each aspect individually, analysing its effect on welfare systems, and informs about the instruments available to reduce inequality.

This book explores generation as both a reference to family or kinship structures, and a reference to cohorts or age sets. The principal objective is branching out this two-part concept through studies of tensions and solidarity within and between generations of advanced and robust welfare states. Answering key questions using multiple disciplinary approaches, the book considers how generations challenge advanced and robust welfare states; how new and young generations are affected by living in an advanced welfare state with older generations; how tensions or solidarity are understood when facing challenges; and what the key characteristics are of certain generation types. It contributes to the development of a more comprehensive generation approach within social sciences by developing the concept of generation by exploring different challenges to the welfare state such as migration, digitalization, environmental damages, demands for sustainability, and marginalization. Highlighting the escalating tensions and altered versions of solidarity between generations, this book shows how a comprehensive concept of a generation can create new insights into how we collectively coordinate and resolve challenges through the welfare state. It will be of interest to all scholars and students of social policy, sociology, political science, and social anthropology.

The aim of this book is to identify the variation in welfare regimes and the corresponding welfare outcome at the micro level. The research agenda of this report sets out from the tradition of the ‘social indicator movement’, and recent regime research. This volume is of interest to researchers in quality of life research, economists and political scientists interested in welfare regimes and comparative social welfare research, and administrators in social planning and social work.

The volume explores the overlapping inequalities within welfare states considering temporal and spatial dimensions. It does so by examining the institutional and organizational frameworks as well as the social practices that underpin the welfare states. Informed by this perspective, the volume provides a critical reflection on the phenomenon of intersectional inequalities highlighting that inequalities do not only overlap but also have the potential to mask each other. The volume, therefore, adopts a critical and process-focused approach to intersectionality. The contributions discuss the extent to which selective inequality factors have emerged in various institutional fields, organizational settings and society in general. They provide insights into the realms of health, education and social services, focus on the relationship between paid and unpaid care work, examine state practices of criminalization, and analyse various forms of activist positions, social movements and political resistance. The volume demonstrates the potential of intersectional analyses while also reflecting on the methodological challenges and addressing the gaps and limitations of intersectional perspectives. Readers across the social sciences, and particularly those interested in the issues of complex inequalities and welfare, will find this book valuable.