Assessment of a hybrid reform path: Social and labour policies in Uruguay, 1985–2005

Since Uruguay's return to democracy in 1985, a shift in economic and social policy has radically changed the country. The outcomes have been shaped by adjustment to international circumstances “by default”, stop‐go market reforms and the inconsistent pace and content of reforms. Unlike other countries in the region, Uruguay has not followed a resolutely neo‐liberal course, but rather a hybrid one. The end result has been a liberal labour regime coupled with a three‐dimensional social policy balancing the market, the old corporatist welfare State and the new welfare state targeting specific beneficiaries.     

What Brazil learned from labour flexibilization in the 1990s

The debt crisis of 1981–83 changed the course that Brazil's social and labour policy had followed from the 1930s to the 1970s. The social and labour protection systems built up over those five decades – in conjunction with urbanization, industrialization and the rise of wage employment – were gradually dismantled. The neo‐liberal policies adopted, however, failed to generate sufficient economic growth and brought worsening unemployment and job insecurity instead. Since the end of 2002, Brazil has been turning away from its “neo‐liberal society “project.     

What's Driving Brazil‐Japan Migration? The Making and Remaking of the Brazilian Niche in Japan

Abstract: Since the late 1980s the Brazilian population in Japan has steadily increased, despite the long‐term recession in the late 1990s. In this paper we will examine the mechanism of the constant increase of Brazilians in Japan, focusing on the institutional context of their incorporation into the Japanese labor market. On the demand side, Brazilians solved an acute labor shortage in the economic boom period, but long‐term recession and casualization of the labor market made them compete with other peripheral workers such as Japanese women and the aged. Thus Brazilians have been marginalized within the secondary labor market since the late 1990s. On the supply side, recruiting agencies and labor contractors established a “just‐in‐time” labor delivery system, which enabled “flexible staffing” in a highly fluctuating labor market. As a result, demand and supply for Brazilian workers is still on the increase. Working in Japan is getting less attractive for Japanese Brazilians but is more of a viable option for them, driving further migration from Brazil to Japan.     

Lessons from Latin America's neo‐liberal experiment: An overview of labour and social policies since the 1980s

Introducing the six country studies that follow, this analytical overview shows that the social and labour policies inspired by the Washington Consensus – implemented across much of Latin America in the 1980s and 1990s – consistently failed to deliver the expected improvements. Labour flexibilization, decentralization of collective bargaining, pension privatization and other measures to increase market provision of welfare typically resulted in growing informality, widening inequalities and shrinking social protection coverage, while also failing to stimulate employment growth. But the lessons have been learned: many such policies have recently been reconsidered and there are signs that a more balanced policy approach may be emerging in Latin America.     

A social policy model for the reconciliation of employment and family life from a gender equality perspective

The issue of family–employment reconciliation has rapidly evolved from being ignored to a certain dejá vu perception in public debate, as a result of its media success during the last decade. This is even more the case in Spain, where it was only in the late 1990s, when a law was passed to regulate and extend parental and other leave for workers with close relatives in need of care, that reconciliation policies began to be generally discussed and considered. In a context of quick population aging as a consequence of low fertility, concern on labor force supply in the middle term is high on the agenda. Women are increasingly considered to be necessary both as workers and mothers (of future workers), thus raising awareness of the importance of social policies to make their double presence in both worlds possible. There is now general agreement from the right to the left on the urgency to develop family–employment policies. But what is not generally addressed is the impact of such policies on gender equality, a dimension which tends to be either ignored or taken for granted. Not all reconciliation measures have the same effects on the women and men relationship. Some of them push forward equality, whereas others go backwards. Efficiency in making job and family responsibilities compatible does not always go hand in hand with increasing equality. The paper presents a theoretical model for the reconciliation of work and family life from a gender equality perspective. The three main kinds of instruments available in social policy – services, leave, and cash – are examined in four different cases: care of under-threes, care of sick children, coordination of work and school schedules, and care of children during school holidays. Each case is looked at considering its effects on social and gender equality, as well as child welfare. The model includes as active agents of the system the State (promotes and regulates), families and individuals (those directly implicated), and the market as labor market, on the one hand, and supplier of private services, on the other.     

The ‘African Colonists’ of Montevideo: New Light on the Illegal Slave Trade to Rio de Janeiro and the Río de la Plata (1830–42)

New archival evidence from Montevideo reveals a twofold operation that brought enslaved Africans to Rio de Janeiro in the era of the illegal slave trade. This pattern emerged after the negotiation of the only – and largely unsuccessful – Anglo-Brazilian treaty against this traffic (1826) and the independence of Uruguay from Brazil (1825), which led to the foundation of the Uruguayan state in 1830. This operation also disguised the shipment of African slaves, mainly children, to Montevideo as ‘colonists’ in order to avoid both the constitutional ban on the slave trade as well as the British cruisers patrolling the Atlantic.     

Informality and Contributory and Non‐Contributory Programmes. Recent Reforms of the Social‐Protection System in Uruguay

Several countries in Latin America are expanding their social‐protection systems. There is an on‐going debate about the trade‐offs implied by these expansions, and by the resulting interactions between contributory and non‐contributory programmes with informality in the labour market. This article analyses the potential incentive effects for formal and informal employment from a set of social‐protection reforms implemented in Uruguay in the 1990s and 2000s. It presents empirical evidence of the expansion of health insurance to formal workers' dependants, and finds that this reform significantly increased formal employment. Finally, it discusses possible alternatives to extend social‐protection systems while maintaining incentives for formal work in Latin America's labour markets.     

Making the middle classes on shifting ground? Residential status,performativity and middle‐class subjectivities in contemporary London

This paper argues that shifts in access to housing – both in relation to rental and ownership – disrupt middle‐class reproduction in ways that fundamentally influence class formation. While property ownership has had a long association with middle‐class identities, status and distinction, an increasingly competitive rental market alongside inflated property prices has impacted on expectations and anxieties over housing futures. In this paper, we consider two key questions: (1) What happens to middle‐class identities under the conditions of this wider structural change? (2) How do the middle classes variously manoeuvre within this? Drawing on empirical research conducted in London, we demonstrate that becoming an owner‐occupier may be fractured along lines of class but also along the axes of age, wealth and timing, particularly as this relates to the housing market. It builds on understandings of residential status and place as central to the formation of class, orienting this around the recognition of both people and place as mutable, emphasizing that changing economic and social processes generate new class positionalities and strategies for class reproduction. We argue that these processes are writ large in practices of belonging and claims to place, with wider repercussions within the urban landscape.     

Can welfare and labour market regimes explain cross‐country differences in the unemployment of young people?

No single institution can reduce (long‐term) youth unemployment. Welfare and labour market institutions function as “bundles”, through multiple inter‐institutional synergies. Based on a focused literature review for theory and on cluster analysis for empirics, the author identifies five such regimes across the EU‐27 and estimates their effects on the youth unemployment ratio and on long‐term youth unemployment. The most helpful institutional arrangement for young people in the labour market would be a combination of strong dual apprenticeship embedded in a corporatist labour market regime with high levels of social security, active labour market policy, and spending on education and childcare.     

Coping with the unemployment crisis in Europe

Since the 1970s, Europe has been plagued by a chronic unemployment crisis, which has escalated with the current Great Recession. The author discusses a number of relevant elements in this regard, including the extent to which social dialogue and social pacts have been successful in reforming labour markets and pension systems, the effect of active labour market policies and the characteristics of “resilient” economies. She concludes with the need to rethink social dialogue, social safety nets, the granting of loans – especially to SMEs – and the coordination of macroeconomic policies to increase labour demand.     

Persistence of an exclusionary model: Inequality and segmentation in Mexican society

Beginning in the 1980s, Mexico's social and labour policies took a neoliberal turn which exacerbated inequalities, poverty and social exclusion. The change of policy course that has occurred over the past decade has so far failed to bring about a critical review of the country's economic model and its social consequences. The role of the State has been systematically cut back; social services have been outsourced to the market; and informal family‐based social protection has gained ground. Mexico's social model has thus been reduced to a system that is almost exclusively concerned with protection for those living in extreme poverty.     

From social protection to vulnerability: Argentina's neo‐liberal reforms of the 1990s

This article examines the neo‐liberal reforms introduced in Argentina in the 1990s, focusing on labour policies and their consequences for labour market dynamics and the welfare of households. To put this period in historical context, the authors first provide a brief summary of the strategies applied both during the preceding import‐substitution phase and in the aftermath of the political, economic and social crisis of 2001–02. The latter, in effect, served as the tipping point for the emergence of a new set of social and economic policies aimed at promoting social cohesion and inclusion through employment.     

What Drives Progressive Policy? Institutional Politics,Political Mediation,Policy Feedbacks,and Early U.S. Old‐Age Policy

What drives progressive public policy? Because progressive policy challenges the interests of powerful people and interests that dominate policy making, it is puzzling that progressive policy ever happens. This article addresses this question by modeling and appraising institutional political, political mediation, and policy feedback theories and models of progressive policy making. Institutional political theory focuses on political institutional conditions, bureaucratic development, election results, and public opinion. Political mediation theory holds that social movements can have influence over progressive policy under favorable political conditions. Policy feedback theory holds that programs will be self‐reinforcing under certain conditions. The article goes beyond previous research by including and analyzing public opinion in institutional political and political mediation models and addressing positive policy feedbacks. We appraise five models derived from these three theories through fuzzy set qualitative comparative analyses of the generosity of early old‐age policy across U.S. states at two key moments. We find some support for each theory, and the results suggest that they are complementary. Left regimes or social movements can initiate progressive policy, which can be reinforced for the long term through positive policy feedback mechanisms. We discuss the implications for current U.S. politics and for progressive policy elsewhere.     

Leading a Large‐Scale Distributed Social Enterprise

Distributed social enterprises with national or international footprints face unique management challenges. To cast a lens on these challenges, we analyze the case of the US‐based social enterprise Goodwill Industries, a century‐old, hybrid nonprofit organization with annual business‐related revenue of more than $5.5 billion. The economic benefits that accrue from this business are used to support a social mission that has continued to evolve for more than 100 years. We explore how Goodwill is organized and how its management works to continually balance economic and social objectives to facilitate long‐term success.     

When is the State's Gaze Focused? British Royal Commissions and the Bureaucratization of Conflict

Scholars have long documented changes in knowledge regimes and power relations characteristic of state‐centric drives to pacify conflicts and govern populations. But the mechanisms through which social conflicts are “made legible” in routine policy processes – as well as the reasons why some ongoing conflicts are pacified and others are persistent – have remained less clear. I explore these issues through an analysis of the shifting analytic terrain of national‐level commissions of inquiry, an historically powerful form of government organization designed to combine publicly‐engaged and “objective” explanation with recommendations for concrete policies of governance. Drawing principally on 19^th and early 20^th Century British Royal Commissions, I show how investigations into three fields of social conflict – involving prisoners, the working class, and colonial populations – were characterized by cyclical drives to bureaucratize conflict. Yet strikingly, only two of the three substantive fields – prisons and labor – achieved relative bureaucratic closure. Evidence from commission reports is marshaled to explain why some types of conflict have been resistant to incorporation, while others are more readily absorbed into an apparatus of governance.     

Economic growth,labour flexibilization and employment quality in Colombia, 2002–11

Over the period 2002–11, the Colombian labour market saw a marked improvement in employment opportunities, accompanied by an increase in nonstandard forms of employment. The authors look at how this affected employment quality, using a composite index based on Categorical Principal Components Analysis (CATPCA). They observe a small but widespread improvement in employment quality – mainly for self‐employed women – brought about by higher earnings, increased social protection and less time‐related underemployment. However, a considerable “quality deficit” remains, which calls for policies to strengthen labour market institutions and stimulate productivity and investment.     

Social Change and Social Policy in China: National Adaptation to Global Challenge

As a part of designed human intervention against social problems, social policy has to respond and adapt to social changes. In this article, the author aims to discuss social changes that occurred in the past decade in China (including economic, demographic, and cultural changes) and relate them to relevant social policies formulated by the Chinese government to address the concerned social issues. To interpret the roles of the state, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and the community in tackling social problems in the changing context of the market economy and globalization, the author attempts to provide a theoretical explanation on the emergence of social policy in China in a new era and to further re-assess the concept of the welfare regime in East Asian countries.     

Social Capital and Livelihoods in Johannesburg: Differential Advantages and Unexpected Outcomes among Foreign‐Born Migrants,Internal Migrants,and Long‐Term South African Residents

Foreign‐born migrants – a group rarely compared with both internal migrants and long‐term residents – are often positioned as the most disadvantaged South African urban population. We use data from a 2008 cross‐sectional household survey conducted in Johannesburg to compare a contextually relevant measure of social capital and livelihood advantages between foreign‐born migrants, internal migrants, and long‐term South African residents. Our findings are counterintuitive and emphasize the need to explore the heterogeneity of urban migrant populations, and the mechanisms in which they better their lives, by showing that (1) foreign‐born migrants have better urban livelihood outcomes, and (2) indicators of social capital are not necessarily associated with improved livelihood outcomes.     

What Is Different about the Profile of the Social Entrepreneur?

In recent years, the term social entrepreneur has become increasingly common in academic and business circles. Social entrepreneurs engage in a variety of activities, but always with the intention of solving social problems. Social entrepreneurs are not merely people who perform acts of charity; they have an evident desire to improve social well‐being and develop projects with long‐term vision. The creation of sustainable social value is a key characteristic that differentiates them from well‐meaning individuals who simply engage in charitable works. There are, however, significant gaps in our understanding of social entrepreneurs and few empirical studies on the subject. This present study attempts to identify the characteristics of more socially oriented entrepreneurs, using sociodemographic variables and the theory of universal values toward work. Analysis of a sample of approximately 400 people shows that more than half of entrepreneurial orientation can be explained through the possession of the values of self‐enhancement (with an inverse relationship in this case), self‐transcendence, and conservation. The theory of universal values has proved extraordinarily useful for studying the characteristics of social entrepreneurs.