Women’s mobility and ‘transport-related social exclusion’ in Bishkek

This paper analyses gendered mobilities in Bishkek in the space of the most popular form of public transport: the minibus, or ‘marshrutka’. As the means by which women often access various important sites of daily life, the marshrutka itself is a site of negotiation and interaction. Utilizing theories of mobility and empirical data, we argue that marshrutkas are spaces that can give rise to two dichotomous conditions: positive marshrutka experiences may increase the social mobility of female passengers and subsequently increase social empowerment and influence, while negative ones can provide the grounds for social exclusion and gender inequality.     

Deaf and disabled? (Un)Employment of deaf people in Belgium: a comparison of eighteenth-century and nineteenth-century cohorts

In this article, the employment characteristics of pre-industrial and industrial cohorts of deaf men and women are compared with each other, as well as with a cohort of non-disabled siblings. The aim is to determine the extent to which the employment patterns of deaf persons lined up with those of non-disabled people and to see how nineteenth-century industrialization processes influenced their employment opportunities. This article challenges the widely held assumption that the nineteenth century constituted a definitive break by arguing that the professional lives of deaf people were not necessarily better before industrialization. Moreover, I demonstrate that the development of deaf schools in the course of the nineteenth century opened a new range of career opportunities for deaf individuals.     

Employers' perspectives on benefit conditionality in the UK and Denmark

This article examines the under-explored demand-side of active labour market policies (ALMPs). Based on interview data from a comparative study of the UK and Denmark, the paper analyses employers' perspectives and experiences of ALMPs. In both countries, employers were favourably disposed towards employing unemployed jobseekers but held negative views on conditionality. First, benefit conditionality led to employers receiving large numbers of unsuitable and unfiltered job applications, with associated negative resource impacts. Second, employers perceived this as a product of ‘box ticking' and compliance targets. Finally, employers criticised policy and media rhetoric for focusing solely on the supply-side and for problematizing unemployed candidates. The paper argues that these crucial, but neglected, employer perspectives demonstrate that the current benefit conditionality regime in the UK risks irrevocably ‘tarnishing' candidates, which undermines, rather than enhances, their chances of securing employment through ALMPs. This unique dataset provides further evidence that the current direction of policy requires urgent and radical re-thinking.     

Responsibilisation,social work and inclusive social security in Finland

ABSTRACT

In this article responsibilisation in social work is studied by analysing two Finnish state-level policy documents (called final report and research report) which concern a current activation initiative called inclusive social security (ISS). It is asked how social workers and clients are constructed as responsible subjects in these documents. Responsibilisation refers to the advanced liberal mode of governmentality, which aims to strengthen citizens’ abilities to self-governance through various techniques that include the intertwined elements of surveillance and empowerment. It is demonstrated that the policy documents construct the social workers’ and the clients’ responsibilities partly in different ways. The final report leads activation to be based on shared responsibility and social work to be more community-based, whereas the research report strengthens more individual-based responsibility of clients and social workers. For the clients, the interpretation of ISS based on shared responsibility would probably be less stigmatising and paternalistic than the one based on individual responsibilities, i.e. approaching long-term unemployed citizens as being personally ‘at risk’ and thus a justified target group of individualised techniques for activation. For social workers and clients, future activation appears to be a wide mix of different techniques, moral expectations and possible ways of being a responsible subject.     

Changes in work and care trajectories during the transition to motherhood

In most mid- and high-income countries, there have been significant demographic, structural, and cultural changes in the past decades. However, we know little about how these changes have shaped women's work patterns during a key life stage: the transition to motherhood. Using longitudinal data from Chile, covering over 30 years of employment histories and three periods of first births (1980–2010), I conduct sequence analysis to identify women's work-care trajectories during an eight-year period of the transition to motherhood. Over time, I find that continuous care work at home has declined, for which education plays a key role, while the chances of working continuously have not changed over time. Instead, I find an increasing trend of unsteady paths that combine paid work with either caretaking or unemployment. I discuss how these changes, as well as their association with education, have important implications for both gender and social inequality.     

就业优先:以"公平而有质量"的教育 在民族地区阻断贫困代际传递

“发展教育脱贫一批”是在民族地区实现共同富裕的重要方针。然而在“教育改变命运”的共识之外，布迪厄认为教育一代代地维持着对社会中下阶层的不公平的“文化再生产”理论，被一些学者应用于对我国少数民族教育的研究。如在“三区三州”等民族地区，代际间的贫困传递难以阻断，因家庭文化资本弱势而造成子女求学、求职受阻，看似可用“贫困文化的再生产”予以概括，但笔者不同意直接套用西方理论认定中国存在“教育不公平”的论述。因为我国社会实际与布氏提出“学校教育再生产社会阶层结构”观点之环境不同，有多项教育政策在切实保障着少数民族通过“教育改变命运”——当前在我国民族地区实现教育公平的主要障碍，并非 “文化再生产”的结构性阻力，而在于就业环节的阶段性困难。教育公平可分为起点、过程和结果三个环节，民族地区经多年教育扶贫，“起点”入学机会和“过程”教育质量已明显改善，而作为“结果”的就业环节亟待改善。以“就业优先”方针多渠道扩大少数民族就业，可激发内生动力、促进市场融入、巩固减贫成效和精准防控返贫，是助少数民族自主掌握教育“社会阶梯”和阻断贫困代际传递的有效路径。     

The disembedded digital economy: Social protection for new economy employment in China

This research focuses upon employment in the new economy, exploring labour protection and social protection in the digital age in China. Through an empirical survey conducted in three Chinese cities, social insurance and the labour rights of employees in the digital economic sector, such as gig employment, e-commerce, and various other forms of online employment, have been examined in-depth. This study reveals new regulatory loopholes in the digital labour market, which have substantially eroded the basis of social policy arrangements in China, “softening” participation in social insurance branches and compliance with labour regulations remarkably. Drawing upon the theoretical concepts of Polanyi on embeddedness and disembeddedness, we argue that the digital employment sector in China has been increasingly disembedded from social institutions and social control. The new configuration in the digital field of social policy requires novel conceptual models and institutional settings to cope with increasing social risks in virtual spaces.     

Wage and Non-Wage Compensation Among Young Alcoholic and Heavy Drinking Women: A Preliminary Analysis

The association between drinking and selected job characteristics among women aged 24 to 31 is examined. Using the 1989 NLSY, women are classified as alcohol abusers or dependent based on DSM-III-R criteria or as heavy drinkers based on reported frequency of six or more drinks. Heavy drinking is negatively associated with wage and non-wage compensation. These effects diminish when human capital measures are controlled. Current alcoholism and current and past heavy drinking are strongly negatively associated with years of schooling. The association between alcoholism and job compensation and characteristics is not as strong as that seen for heavy drinking. It is not known if this is a consequence of errors in identifying alcoholic women in population-based surveys.     

Middle School Children's Perceptions on Welfare and Poverty: An Exploratory, Qualitative Study

This study was undertaken to determine how middle school children assess the effects of welfare reform on their daily lives. The study consisted of thirty interviews with children and their mothers recruited from a middle school in a large, metropolitan area. From the children's perspective, multiple jobs and evening/night hours interfered with the child-parent relationship. Other consequences included grades going down and not getting to school on time. All the children stated that mothers should work, but most children felt mothers should only work when their children are in school. Welfare and poverty were issues about which children were teased at school.     

重庆市都市区人中就业现状及变化趋势

都市区作为重庆经济的核心区域,随着经济的快速发展以及城市化进程的加快,正对人口产生巨大的聚集效应,而人口就业将成为一个十分突出的问题。因此,准确把握劳动力供求变动趋势十分重要。为此通过模型运算,对2000-2020年的都市区劳动年龄人口和劳动力的供求变动趋势进行了预测分析。