In the post-war period, spending on social security, health and education has grown continuously in the leading industrialized countries. The considerable size of this spending as a percentage of GDP together with the ageing population raise doubts on the sustainability of welfare spending. These doubts have been accompanied in recent years by an increasing awareness of the allocational inefficiencies and the distributive inequalities caused by the provision of some social services. The welfare state should therefore be reconstructed not only through readjustment of the social security system but also a change in unemployment benefits and the taxation of workers to avoid the perverse spiral that may be produced in the future by cuts in welfare benefits, growing unemployment and the need to further reduce the social security services.

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aWith this book, Marchevsky and Theoharis make a distinct contribution to the welfare reform debate by addressing a topic that has received less attention in the literature, namely how welfare reforms have impacted immigrant. "Not Working" is particularly timely as immigrants become more visible as they move to less traditional U.S. regions to find work and the immigration debate rages.a
l"Journal of Sociology and Social Welfare"

"Original and insightful. Not Working is a powerful book, connecting theories of the state, citizenship, and globalization with first rate ethnography. It is an instant classic and will remain the definitive book on immigrant women and welfare reform for some time."
--Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo, author of "DomA(c)stica: Immigrant Workers Cleaning and Caring in the Shadows of Affluence"

aThis is a scholarly, professional critique of social science research paradigms generally, and poverty knowledge industry and associated applied policy research in particular: a
-- Choice: Highly recommended.

"A smart, engaging, and groundbreaking study that exposes the racist underpinnings of welfare reform. A model of stellar scholarship and a must read for anyone seeking to understand poverty in relation to the meaning of American citizenship today."
--Arlene Davila, author of "Barrio Dreams: Puerto Ricans, Latinos, and the Neoliberal City"

"This highly significant contribution assures that Latina immigrants will no longer be invisible in scholarly research on welfare reform. This superb ethnography establishes a clear connection to the political, legal, and economic realities that is needed inreassessing the success stories of welfare reform. It should be read by all those concerned with social inequality, poverty, and justice in America."
--Mary Romero, author of "Maid in the U.S.A"

"Not Working is an empirically rich and theoretically sophisticated study of welfare reform's deleterious effects on immigrant Latinas struggling to make a life for themselves and their children. This is an incredibly compelling ethnography."
--Sanford F. Schram, author of "After Welfare: The Culture of Postindustrial Social Policy"

aBy documenting the harsh effects of welfare reform, Not Working exposes the bipartisan rhetoric about apersonal responsibilitya for what it is-- a cover for ten years of attacks on the poor.a
--"International Socialist Review"

Not Working chronicles the devastating effects of the 1996 welfare reform legislation that ended welfare as we know it. For those who now receive public assistance, "work" means pleading with supervisors for full-time hours, juggling ever-changing work schedules, and shuffling between dead-end jobs that leave one physically and psychically exhausted.

Through vivid story-telling and pointed analysis, Not Working profiles the day-to-day struggles of Mexican immigrant women in the Los Angeles area, showing the increased vulnerability they face in the welfare office and labor market. The new "work first" policies now enacted impose time limits and mandate work requirements for those receiving public assistance, yet fail to offer real job training or needed childcare options, ultimately causing many families to fall deeper below the poverty line.

Not Working shows that the new "welfare-to-work" regime has produced tremendousinstability and insecurity for these women and their children. Moreover, the authors argue that the new politics of welfare enable greater infringements of rights and liberty for many of America's most vulnerable and constitute a crucial component of the broader assault on American citizenship. In short, the new welfare is not working.

The capability approach, an increasingly popular conceptual and theoretical framework focused on what individuals are able to do and be, offers a unique evaluative perspective to social policy analysis. This book explores the advantages of this approach and offers a way forward in addressing conceptual and empirical issues as they apply specifically to social policy research and practice. Short conceptual and empirical chapters provide clear examples of how policies shape the capabilities of different groups and individuals, critically assessing the efficacy of different social policies across multiple social policy fields, providing both academic and practitioner viewpoints.

This book presents social welfare functions as a unified multidisciplinary framework for various resource allocation problems. By measuring the impact of local decisions on broader society, social welfare functions enable "socialized" decisions and thereby produce an emergent property that "global" balance and welfare emerge from "local" welfare-maximizing behaviors. Social welfare functions are originally used in economics to quantify income welfare, jointly considering average and inequality to arrive at better measures of welfare than average alone. Wishing the readers to find opportunities for their problems of interest, this book introduces research results of social welfare functions applied in five different engineering applications, defining welfare metrics pertaining to the characteristics of the application. The "energy welfare" in wireless sensor network measures richness of distributed sensors in energy. The "preparedness welfare" in emergency medical services quantifies the preparedness level of an entire service area by aggregating preparedness levels of individual zones. The "preference welfare" in intelligent shared environments represents the opinions of real people for groups. The "resource welfare" in multi-robot task allocation quantifies the efficiency of utilizing distributed resources across robots. The "utility welfare" in complex cyber-physical systems quantifies the impact of local resource sharing decisions on the broader task communities.

This book seeks to understand the politics of deservingness for future Social Security reforms through an interpretive policy analysis of the 2005 Social Security privatization debates. What does it mean for politics and policymaking that Social Security recipients are widely viewed as deserving of the benefits they receive? In the 2005 privatization debates, Congress framed Social Security in exclusively positive terms, often in opposition to welfare, and imagined their own beloved family members as recipients. Advocates for private accounts sought to navigate the politics of deservingness by dividing the "we" of social insurance to a "me" of private investment and a "them" of individual rate of return in order to justify the introduction of private accounts into Social Security. Fiscal stress on the program will likely bring Social Security to the policy agenda soon. Understanding the politics of deservingness will be central to navigating those debates.

The book undertakes a critical examination of health service development in India and provides an explanation of its underdevelopment. It analyzes the trajectory of health services development in India and dissects the roles of various actors which shape that process viz. the State, civil society, and the people. It helps you to arrive at a less ambiguous analytical paradigm regarding a complex scenario discernible in a country like India where diversities across regions and states make it difficult to advance a pan Indian framework, strategy, or theory.

In a period of rapid change for welfare states around the world, this insightful book offers a comparative study of three historically small welfare states: the US, Japan and South Korea. Examining various aspects of welfare states, chapters explore the underlying reasons behind the restraint of social security in these countries. Featuring contributions from international distinguished scholars, this book looks beyond the larger European welfare states to unpack the many common political and institutional characteristics - from labor organization to party politics - that have constrained welfare state development in industrialized democracies. Offering insight into welfare-state development outside of Europe, this book will be crucial reading for scholars of welfare states, especially those working on Asian and American social policy specifically. It will also be of interest to policymakers and social policy experts in government, civil institutions and international organizations, particularly for those working in developing countries. Contributors include: M. Estevez-Abe, C. Faricy, S. Haggard, Y.-R, Jung, D. Kim, S.-w. Kim, Y.-S. Kim, J. Klein, S.-M. Kwon, D. Oude Nijuis, J.-j. Yang

Global and European migration in the post-Cold War world have received much attention. This edited collection is a comprehensive, up-to-date account of the social policies of European welfare states towards refugees and asylum seekers. It also examines the contested boundaries between refugees and asylum seekers and citizenship within European nation states and the European Union. The book is aimed at departments of sociology, politics, European studies; UN; ethnic studies, refugee organizations, and law/migration.

Pink ribbon paraphernalia saturate shopping malls, billboards, magazines, television, and other venues, all in the name of breast cancer awareness. In this compelling and provocative work, Gayle Sulik shows that though this "pink ribbon culture" has brought breast cancer advocacy much attention, it has not had the desired effect of improving women's health. It may, in fact, have done the opposite. Based on eight years of research, analysis of advertisements and breast cancer awareness campaigns, and hundreds of interviews with those affected by the disease, Pink Ribbon Blues highlights the hidden costs of the pink ribbon as an industry, one in which breast cancer has become merely a brand name with a pink logo. Indeed, while survivors and supporters walk, run, and purchase ribbons for a cure, cancer rates rise, the cancer industry thrives, corporations claim responsible citizenship while profiting from the disease, and breast cancer is stigmatized anew for those who reject the pink ribbon model. But Sulik also outlines alternative organizations that make a real difference, highlights what they do differently, and presents a new agenda for the future.

Medicine and the Law in the Middle Ages offers fresh insight into the intersection between these two distinct disciplines. A dozen authors address this intersection within three themes: medical matters in law and administration of law, professionalization and regulation of medicine, and medicine and law in hagiography. The articles include subjects such as medical expertise at law on assault, pregnancy, rape, homicide, and mental health; legal regulation of medicine; roles physicians and surgeons played in the process of professionalization; canon law regulations governing physical health and ecclesiastical leaders; and connections between saints' judgments and the bodies of the penitent. Drawing on primary sources from England, France, Frisia, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Portugal, and Spain, the volume offers a truly international perspective. Contributors are Sara M. Butler, Joanna Carraway Vitiello, Jean Dangler, Carmel Ferragud, Fiona Harris-Stoertz, Maire Johnson, Hiram Kumper, Iona McCleery, Han Nijdam, Kira Robison, Donna Trembinski, Wendy J. Turner, and Katherine D. Watson.

With budgets squeezed at every level of government, cost-benefit analysis (CBA) holds outstanding potential for assessing the efficiency of many programs. In this first book to address the application of CBA to social policy, experts examine ten of the most important policy domains: early childhood development, elementary and secondary schools, health care for the disadvantaged, mental illness, substance abuse and addiction, juvenile crime, prisoner reentry programs, housing assistance, work-incentive programs for the unemployed and employers, and welfare-to-work interventions. Each contributor discusses the applicability of CBA to actual programs, describing both proven and promising examples.

The editors provide an introduction to cost-benefit analysis, assess the programs described, and propose a research agenda for promoting its more widespread application in social policy. "Investing in the Disadvantaged" considers how to face America's most urgent social needs with shrinking resources, showing how CBA can be used to inform policy choices that produce social value.

This Handbook provides a comprehensive overview of local governance in China, and offers original analysis of key factors underpinning trends in this field drawing on the expertise of scholars both inside and outside China. It explores and analyzes the dynamic interaction and collaboration among multiple governmental and non-governmental actors and social sectors with an interest in the conduct of public affairs to address horizontal challenges faced by the local government, society, economy, and civil community and considers key issues such as governance in urban and rural areas, the impact of technology on governance and related issues of education, healthcare, environment and energy. As the result of a global and interdisciplinary collaboration of leading experts, this Handbook offers a cutting-edge insight into the characteristics, challenges and trends of local governance and emphasizes the promotion of good governance and democratic development in China.

This Open Access edited collection seeks to improve collaboration between criminal justice and welfare services in order to help prepare offenders for life after serving a prison sentence. It examines the potential tensions between criminal justice agencies and other organisations which are involved in the rehabilitation and reintegration of offenders, most notably those engaged in mental health care or third sector organisations. It then suggests a variety of different methods and approaches to help to overcome such tensions and promote inter-agency collaboration and co-working, drawing on emerging research and models, with a focus on the practice in European and Scandinavian countries. For academics and practitioners working in prisons and the penal system, this collection will be invaluable.

This book provides important philosophical insights concerning the kind of creatures we are such that we can experience something we understand as well-being, with these insights then being applied to various areas of social policy and welfare practice. The author defends what he calls The Ontology of Well-Being Thesis (TOWT), addressing ontological questions about the human condition, and how these questions are fundamental to issues concerning what we might know about human well-being and how we should promote it. Yet, surprisingly, these ontological questions are often side-lined in academic, political, and policy and practice based debates about well-being. Addressing these questions, head-on, six features of the human condition are identified via TOWT: human embodiment, finiteness, sociability, cognition, evaluation, and agency. The main argument of the thesis is that these features reveal the conflicting character of human experiences, which can, in turn, have a profound bearing on our experience of well-being. Notably, it is our conflicting experiences of time, emotion, and self-consciousness, which can potentially help us experience well-being in complex and multi-dimensional ways. The author then applies these insights to various social policies and welfare practices, concerning, for example, pensions, disability, bereavement counselling, social prescribing within health settings, the promotion of mental health, and co-production practices. This book is of importance to philosophers, social policy analysts, and welfare practitioners and is also relevant to the fields of psychology, sociology, politics, and the health sciences.

The conception of welfare services has changed radically. The focus has shifted from a paternalistic conception of what the state and professionals can do for, or to, needy clients to a post-paternalistic conception of services that respond to and develop self-determining capacities of individual service users or consumers. This book examines the contradictions and complexities of contemporary individualized welfare services, with special reference to service user groups who are deeply dependent in ongoing ways on service delivery for their quality of life.

While the use of imprisonment continues to rise in developed nations, we have little sociological knowledge of the prison's inner world. Based on extensive fieldwork in a medium-security prison in the UK, HMP Wellingborough, The Prisoner Society: Power, Adaptation and Social Life in an EnglishPrison provides an in-depth analysis of the prison's social anatomy. It explains how power is exercised by the institution, individualizing the prisoner community and demanding particular forms of compliance and engagement. Drawing on prisoners' life stories, it shows how different prisoners experience and respond to the new range of penal practices and frustrations. It then explains how the prisoner society - its norms, hierarchy and social relationships - is shaped both by these conditions of confinement and by the different backgrounds, values and identities that prisoners bring into the prison environment.
Individual chapters in the book examine the flow of power, social order and governance, social relations and hierarchy, everyday prison culture, politics and economics, and the effects of imprisonment on prisoners. The book also looks at the recent accounts of transformations in penal management and changes in prison policy, and offers comparative content on the quality of prison life by drawing upon quantitative evaluations based on standard UK prison surveys and visits to three other category C prisons.

This book draws attention to the nonlegal, sociocultural aspects of justice for minorities in China. The primary objectives are threefold. The first is to present a tentative analysis of the lived realities of being 'the other' in China, with the aim of presenting a critical picture of the complex national context and identifying main concerns and key challenges. Six topics are covered - gender roles, health, class, intimacy, ethnicity and religion, and expression. The second objective is to explore the interaction between a wide range of factors and myriad systems that enable or hinder protection and justice for these groups, be they historical, political, social, or cultural, hoping to open up a rich domain of inquiry for those interested in to what extent and in what ways otherness may or may not survive in China. The third objective is to bring attention to new trends and developments, some are easily identifiable whereas others are less detectable, some are interrelated while others are relatively isolated, some are straightforward and others remain easily misinterpreted.

This volume of essays attempts to identify the shared experiences of disabled children and examine the key debates about their care and control. The essays follow a chronological progression while focusing on the practices in a number of different countries.

This book brings together essays on modernity, social integration, social differentiation, and social exclusion by Lockwood, Mouzelis, and other eminent social theorists. At the same time it addresses critical issues facing Western democracies, such as social exclusion, the underclass, unemployment, new inequalities, globalization, and the new competitive environment. Its novelty lies in the imaginative way it uses social theory to critique old and suggest new policies and political practices.

G.K. Chesterton delivers insightful commentary on modern behavior and social practices influenced by big business, gender roles, government and other notable figures throughout his lifetime. The book is inspired by his own personal beliefs regarding faith, family and the working man. What's Wrong with the World is a critical analysis of various topics covered by acclaimed writer G.K. Chesterton. He tackles contemporary ideals that dominate society and dictate culture. This book compiles Chesterton's most prominent beliefs about the dangers of consumerism and a social hierarchy that thrives on oppression. It's an indictment of what he considers the world's most undeniable ills. G.K. Chesterton was a principled man with old fashioned values. His personal views shaped his literary work as well as his opinion of others. His catalog is full of essays offering distinct commentary with an indelible writing style. With an eye-catching new cover, and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of What's Wrong with the World is both modern and readable.

This volume uses new empirical evidence and analytical ideas to study phenomena of fragmentation and exclusion threatening stability and cohesion in Greek society in the aftermath of the crisis. The contributors argue that processes of fragmentation and exclusion provoked by the crisis can be observed on both a material and an ideational level. On a material level, rising levels of unemployment, poverty and inequality have produced new social security "outsiders", while on an ideational level, a discursive-cultural shift is documented, which has led to new understandings and categorizations of new (and old) insiders and outsiders. Moreover, the volume attests to the aspirations, but also the limitations, of spontaneous civil society mobilization to address the social crisis. Finally, the volume offers a discussion of the political management of social fragmentation and exclusion in Greece both before and after the onset of the crisis. The book will be of interest to scholars and students of social policy and phenomena of poverty, social exclusion and economic inequality, civil society studies, and comparative political economy and politics.

Prevention and developmental sciences have many complementary goals and much to gain by collaboration. With random assignment to conditions and long-term multivariate follow-up of individuals across significant years in the life span, fundamental basic and applied research questions can now be addressed using new statistical methods. This special issue includes four empirical papers that used growth modeling techniques (hierarchical linear modeling, latent growth curve analyses) to examine direct and indirect effects of theory-based, longitudinal prevention experiments on developmental trajectories of children's and adolescents' substance use, delinquency, and school bonding.

Young women are a group often neglected even in feminist scholarship. Interrogating conceptual ideas around power, punishment and abandonment with specific reference to the experience of young women, this book examines the particular challenges that young women face within the criminal justice system, and traces their journeys in, out and beyond confinement. Contributing ethnographic insights from multiple sites of incarceration to explore how secure care, prison and closed psychiatric facilities impact on young women's lives, Schliehe's study goes further than individual carceral spaces by delving into the wider context of young women's journeys through different types of institutional spaces and beyond. The exploration of these journeys challenges and re-develops our understanding of extreme mobility, and showcases how this can lead to the abandonment of a group of young people who live on the margins of social and legal norms. Merging theoretical and empirical findings to highlight how age and gender matter in discourses on crime and justice, Schliehe demonstrates how we have to look beyond institutions to understand confinement in our age of prison crisis, austerity and marginalization. Curating findings from across human geography and criminology, this book fills an important gap in the literature, offering up essential reading for practitioners and researchers interested in gender, age and confinement.

This is the first book to examine the views of a number of theorists from ancient times to the 19th century on a range of welfare issues: wealth, poverty and inequality; slavery, gender issues, and the family; child rearing and education; crime and punishment; the role of government in society; and, the strengths and weaknesses of government provision vis a vis market provision. The book also looks at the values of the various theorists as well as their perception of human nature for these tend to underpin their welfare views. The book will make essential reading for students of social policy, gender issues, community care, social work, and sociology.