Migrant domestic workers, vulnerability and the law: immigration and employment laws in Cyprus and Spain

The intersection of gender, welfare and immigration regimes has been one of the main focus of a rich scholarship on paid domestic work in Europe. This article brings into the discussion the nexus of employment and immigration law regimes to reflect on the role of legal regulation in structuring and reducing the vulnerability of domestic workers. I analyse this nexus by looking at the cases of Cyprus and Spain, two states falling under the cluster of Southern Mediterranean welfare regimes, that share certain characteristics in terms of immigration regimes, but have substantially different employment law regulation models. The first part sketches the debate on the employment law regulation of domestic work. The second part starts by giving an overview of the immigration regimes of Cyprus and Spain in relation to migrant domestic workers and then proceeds to analyse the two countries’ models and substance of employment law regulation in domestic work. The comparison of these two divergent approaches informs the debate on how the legal regulation of domestic work should be best structured. In Spain there have been recent dynamic legislative changes in the employment law regulation of domestic work. The final part of the article traces these changes and reflects on why such processes have not taken place in Cyprus.

Incertidumbre y actitudes pro-redistributivas: mercados de trabajo y modelos de bienestar en Europa

La articulación entre las políticas de empleo y las políticas sociales condicionan la percepción subjetiva de incertidumbre los individuos. El modelo de mercado laboral tiene un peso determinante en la percepción de incertidumbre. El empleo en sí mismo ya no es suficiente garantía de ingresos seguros. El empleo a tiempo parcial y los contratos temporales generan una creciente demanda de políticas de redistribución de los ingresos en los países del Sur y Este de Europa. En los países escandinavos los mismos tipos de contratos laborales generan menos desigualdad porque el empleo público contribuye a generar un “círculo virtuoso” que favorece las políticas de igualdad y la conciliación entre la vida laboral y familiar. A nivel individual las actitudes pro-redistributivas las impulsan las mujeres, aquellas personas con incertidumbre en sus ingresos económicos y con bajo nivel de estudios. Por el contrario, quienes más confían en el éxito individual y el mérito son los jóvenes con estudios universitarios y aquellos que perciben ingresos económicos altos.

Non-take up i det svenska välfärdssystemet : Om betydelsen av social position för kvinnors beslut kring mammografiscreening

Non-take up in the Swedish welfare system: On the impact of social position on women’s decision-making regarding mammography screening Central to a well-functioning and effective welfare system is that benefits reach the people to whom they are intended. By focusing on an example of so called non-take up – namely women’s decision not to attend mammography screening – this article discusses decision making in relation to living conditions, i.e. social position, and to the public health intentions of the welfare state. The main theoretical basis for the analysis is Rogers’ humanistic/existential theory. Qualitative semi-structured interviews were made with 18 women who had abstained from mammography screening. Their decision was described, analyzed and problematized focused on whether their living conditions, leading to a strong or weak social position, is of relevance to their decision to refrain from this health promoting examination. The women’s own experiences clearly showed how their social position was of great importance for how they explained their decision to abstain. Furthermore, social position affects how women handle different impact from living conditions, society’s expectations and personal experiences of mammography screening. This study makes visible the gap between public health intentions of the society and individual conditions.  

Governing through parents: a genealogical enquiry of education policy and the construction of neoliberal subjectivities in England

In this paper we explore the various spaces and sites through which the figure of the parent is summoned and activated to inhabit and perform market norms and practices in the field of education in England. Since the late 1970s successive governments have called on parents to enact certain duties and obligations in relation to the state. These duties include adopting and internalizing responsibility for all kinds of risks, liabilities and inequities formerly managed by the Keynesian welfare state. Rather than characterize this situation in terms of the ‘hollowing of the state’, we argue that the role of the state includes enabling the functioning of the parent as a neoliberal subject so that they may successfully harness the power of the market to their own advantage and (hopefully) minimize the kinds of risk and inequity generated through a market-based, deregulated education system. In this paper we examine how parents in England are differently, yet similarly, compelled to embody certain market norms and practices as they navigate the field of education. Adopting genealogical enquiry and policy discourse analysis as our methodology, we explore how parents across three policy sites or spaces are constructed as objects and purveyors of utility and ancillaries to marketisation. This includes a focus on how parents are summoned as 1) consumers or choosers of education services; 2) governors and overseers of schools; and 3) producers and founders of schools.

Vain lakiko lasta suojelee?

Tiivistelmä TURUN YLIOPISTO Oikeustieteellinen tiedekunta Perhe-oikeus VALJAKKA EEVA: Vain lakiko lasta suojelee? Väitöskirja, 219 s. Kesäkuu 2016 Tutkimuksessa tarkastellaan suomalaisen lastensuojelulainsäädännön pitkän ai- kavälin kehitystä 1800-luvun lopulta 2010-luvulle. Tavoitteena on selvittää, mil- lä tavoin lasten suojelun tarvetta on lastensuojelulakeja säädettäessä määritelty ja millaisin keinoin julkinen valta on suojellut lapsia. Tutkimuksessa luodaan myös yleisemmin kuvaa siitä, millaista keskustelua lastensuojelun yhteiskunnallisesta tehtävästä, yksityisen ja julkisen hyvinvointivastuun jakautumisesta sekä julkisen vallan perheen yksityisyyteen puuttuvien toimien tarpeellisuudesta ja oikeutukses- ta on eri aikoina käyty. Tutkimuksessa lastensuojelun käsitettä käytetään sekä laa- jemmassa (Child Welfare) että suppeammassa (Child Protection) merkityksessä. Tutkimus on lapsi- ja oikeuspoliittinen puheenvuoro, jossa lastensuojelun institutionaalisia kehityskulkuja tarkastellaan yhteiskunnassa sosioekonomisesti heikoimmassa asemassa olevan lapsiväestön ja lastensuojelun asiakkaiksi valikoi- tuvien lasten näkökulmasta. Tutkimusote on ongelmalähtöinen ja yhteyshakuinen siten, että tutkimuskysymyksiä tarkastellaan monitieteisesti hallinto- ja sosiaalioi- keudellisessa viitekehyksessä. Tutkimus osoittaa, että tarkasteltaessa lastensuojelua käsitteen suppeam- massa merkityksessä lastensuojeluinstituution rakenteet kuten lasten suojelutar- peen määrittely, suojelun keinot ja lastensuojelulain julkilausutut tavoitteet ovat pysyneet lähes samankaltaisina aina ensimmäisen lastensuojelulain (1936) säätä- misestä lukien. Tarkasteltaessa lastensuojelua käsitteen laajemmassa merkityksessä voidaan lastensuojelussa nähdä tapahtuneen muutoksia. Vähitellen hyvinvointivaltion laajentuessa lastensuojelua koskeva ymmärrys muuttui yhä moniulotteisemmak- si. Lastensuojelu merkitsi 1960-luvulle tultaessa laajaa lapsiväestön hyvinvointia turvaavaa yhteiskuntapoliittista ohjelmaa. Myös sosiaalipolitiikan suunnanmuutos 1990-luvulla ja sen myötä julkisen vallan vastuun kaventaminen merkitsivät muu- tosta lastensuojelussa. Monille yhteiskunnan eri osa-aluille ulottuvien perheiden ja lasten hyvinvointia tavoittelevien politiikkaohjelmien ja niiden toteuttamispyrki- mysten sijaan lastensuojelu kaventui niin käsitteenä kuin käytännön toimintanakin tarkoittamaan lähes yksinomaan sosiaalihuollon erityispalvelua eli lapsi- ja perhe- kohtaista lastensuojelua. Asiasanat: Lastensuojelu, lastensuojelulainsäädäntö, historiallinen kehitys, oikeu- dellinen sääntely, hyvinvointivaltio.

Mobilidade urbana sustentável em projetos estruturantes: analise urbanística e ambiental do corredor de transporte da Avenida Bernardo Vieira Natal/RN

The search for a sustainable urban mobility, has recast the public policy of transport and movement for all, in order to contribute to the welfare economic, social and environmental. Within this context, has as its main objective review here in the city of Natal in the state of Rio Grande Norte, the deployment of the new road infrastructure of the transport corridor of Bernardo Vieira Avenue and checking at least with regard to urban areas and environmental chosen here, as will indicators to assess sustainable urban mobility, that the theory has been well constructed, but in practice little way to apply the proposed guidelines for sustainability. To achieve this result, is initially a literature review with the principal investigators of the matter, since the concepts of indicators of sustainable urban mobility. And a second time, participating in to the case study, using the methodology of environmental awareness, through analysis photographs, notes and testimony in the study area ace to reach conclusions

Seeing Turkish state formation processes: Mapping language and education census data

Language provides an interesting lens to look at state-building processes because of its cross-cutting nature. For example, in addition to its symbolic value and appeal, a national language has other roles in the process, including: (a) becoming the primary medium of communication which permits the nation to function efficiently in its political and economic life, (b) promoting social cohesion, allowing the nation to develop a common culture, and (c) forming a primordial basis for self-determination. Moreover, because of its cross-cutting nature, language interventions are rarely isolated activities. Languages are adopted by speakers, taking root in and spreading between communities because they are legitimated by legislation, and then reproduced through institutions like the education and military systems. Pádraig Ó’ Riagáin (1997) makes a case for this observing that “Language policy is formulated, implemented, and accomplishes its results within a complex interrelated set of economic, social, and political processes which include, inter alia, the operation of other non-language state policies” (p. 45). In the Turkish case, its foundational role in the formation of the Turkish nation-state but its linkages to human rights issues raises interesting issues about how socio-cultural practices become reproduced through institutional infrastructure formation. This dissertation is a country-level case study looking at Turkey’s nation-state building process through the lens of its language and education policy development processes with a focus on the early years of the Republic between 1927 and 1970. This project examines how different groups self-identified or were self-identified (as the case may be) in official Turkish statistical publications (e.g., the Turkish annual statistical yearbooks and the population censuses) during that time period when language and ethnicity data was made publicly available. The overarching questions this dissertation explores include: 1.What were the geo-political conditions surrounding the development and influencing the Turkish government’s language and education policies? 2.Are there any observable patterns in the geo-spatial distribution of language, literacy, and education participation rates over time? In what ways, are these traditionally linked variables (language, literacy, education participation) problematic? 3.What do changes in population identifiers, e.g., language and ethnicity, suggest about the government’s approach towards nation-state building through the construction of a civic Turkish identity and institution building? Archival secondary source data was digitized, aggregated by categories relevant to this project at national and provincial levels and over the course of time (primarily between 1927 and 2000). The data was then re-aggregated into values that could be longitudinally compared and then layered on aspatial administrative maps. This dissertation contributes to existing body of social policy literature by taking an interdisciplinary approach in looking at the larger socio-economic contexts in which language and education policies are produced.

Universities and Welfare States Coping with Permanent Financial Austerity: Pressures on (Competing) Public Institutions

A chapter linking universities and welfare states to permanent financial austerity can take a shorter or a longer historical perspective. This chapter looks further back (to the postwar expansion of European welfare states) to better understand future transformations of both public institutions. Their long-term sustainability problems did not start with the financial crisis of 2008 but have been growing since the 1970s (Schäfer and Streeck 2013; Bonoli and Natali 2012; Hay and Wincott 2012). Financial austerity is not a post-crisis phenomenon. As a concept, it was used in welfare state research at least a decade earlier, although it does not seem to have been used in higher education studies until recently. Two quotations bring us to the heart of the matter: welfare states and universities are currently changing under adverse financial conditions caused by an array of interrelating and mutually reinforcing forces and their long-term financial sustainability is at stake across Europe. The welfare state is a “particular trademark of the European social model” (Svallfors 2012: 1), “the jewel in the crown” and a “fundamental part of what Europe stands for” (Giddens 2006: 14), as are tuition-free universities, the cornerstone of intergenerational social mobility in Continental Europe. The past trajectories of major types of welfare states and of universities in Europe tend to go hand in hand: first vastly expanding following the Second World War, and especially in the 1960s and 1970s, and then being in the state of permanent resource-driven and legitimacy-based “crisis” in the last two decades. Welfare states and universities, two critically important public institutions, seem to be under heavy attacks from the public, the media and politicians. Their long-term sustainability is being questioned, and solutions to their (real and perceived) problems are being sought at global, European, and national levels.

Emerging Gender Regimes and Policies for Gender Equality in a Wider Europe

This article addresses some implications for gender equality and gender policy at European and national levels of transformations in family, economy and polity, which challenge gender regimes across Europe. Women’s labour market participation in the west and the collapse of communism in the east have undermined the systems and assumptions of western male breadwinner and dual worker models of central and eastern Europe. Political reworking of the work/welfare relationship into active welfare has individualised responsibility. Individualisation is a key trend west − and in some respects east − and challenges the structures that supported care in state and family. The links that joined men to women, cash to care, incomes to carers have all been fractured. The article will argue that care work and unpaid care workers are both casualties of these developments. Social, political and economic changes have not been matched by the development of new gender models at the national level. And while EU gender policy has been admired as the most innovative aspect of its social policy, gender equality is far from achieved: women’s incomes across Europe are well below men’s; policies for supporting unpaid care work have developed modestly compared with labour market activation policies.Enlargement brings new challenges as it draws together gender regimes with contrasting histories and trajectories. The article will map social policies for gender equality across the key elements of gender regimes – paid work, care work, income, time and voice – and discuss the nature of a model of gender equality that would bring gender equality across these. It analyses ideas about a dual earner–dual carer model, in the Dutch combination scenario and ‘universal caregiver’ models, at household and civil society levels. These offer a starting point for a model in which paid and unpaid work are equally valued and equally shared between men and women, but we argue that a citizenship model, in which paid and unpaid work obligations are underpinned by social rights, is more likely to achieve gender equality.

Mobilidade urbana sustentável em projetos estruturantes: analise urbanística e ambiental do corredor de transporte da Avenida Bernardo Vieira Natal/RN

The search for a sustainable urban mobility, has recast the public policy of transport and movement for all, in order to contribute to the welfare economic, social and environmental. Within this context, has as its main objective review here in the city of Natal in the state of Rio Grande Norte, the deployment of the new road infrastructure of the transport corridor of Bernardo Vieira Avenue and checking at least with regard to urban areas and environmental chosen here, as will indicators to assess sustainable urban mobility, that the theory has been well constructed, but in practice little way to apply the proposed guidelines for sustainability. To achieve this result, is initially a literature review with the principal investigators of the matter, since the concepts of indicators of sustainable urban mobility. And a second time, participating in to the case study, using the methodology of environmental awareness, through analysis photographs, notes and testimony in the study area ace to reach conclusions

Igual consideração e respeito, independência ética e liberdade de expressão em Dworkin : uma reconciliação entre igualdade e liberdade e a possibilidade do discurso do ódio em um ordenamento coerente de princípios

Dissertação (mestrado)—Universidade de Brasília, Faculdade de Direito, Pós-Graduação Stricto Sensu em Direito, 2016.

Intervenção social em parceria – rede social de Silves

Dissertação de Mestrado, Educação Social, Escola Superior de Educação e Comunicação, Universidade do Algarve, 2016

Social Trust and Demand for Redistribution. Is There a Crowding out Effect?

The debate about the relationship between social capital the welfare state has produced contradictory results for a long time. The crowding out hypothesis states that the growth of the welfare state would erode social capital, as the action of the state leave no room for non-regulated spontaneous cooperation. In sharp contrast, the crowding in hypothesis states that there is virtuous circle between the size of the welfare state and the stock of social capital in a particular country, since generous welfare states (specially those relying on universalistic programs) will produce a particular sense of fairness and solidarity toward fellow citizens. Yet, the empirical evidence testing the explanatory power of these theories is mostly inconclusive. To further our knowledge of this puzzle, in this paper I focus specifically on the relationship between social trust and preferences for redistribution at the individual level in a sample of European countries belonging to different welfare state regimes.