Welfare State Changes and Outcomes – The Cases of Portugal and Denmark from a Comparative Perspective

It is well known that welfare states ensure a certain level of social protection affecting levels of well‐being and the extent of inequalities in society. Changes within crucial domains of social policy, such as education, health, or social protection, have, therefore, a major effect upon individuals' opportunities. In this article I compare the effects of these changes in two countries from the mid‐1980s to the financial crisis of 2008. Portugal that was a latecomer in welfare state development and Denmark was at the forefront of de‐commodification and universalization of social rights. The conclusion of this article is that income inequality has been steadily increasing in Danish society; while in Portugal, despite improvements in many social domains (healthcare, poverty alleviation, unemployment protection), problems of inequality remain deeply embedded in the country's social and institutional structures.     

The evaluation of citizen participation in policymaking: Insights from Portugal

While citizen participation in policymaking is on the rise worldwide, the scholarly debate centring around its evaluation has not developed to the same extent. The article discusses the methodology and findings of the evaluation of the project “Portugal Participa: Caminhos para a Inovação Societal” which started at the end of 2014, and was implemented in 2015 and 2016, in Portugal. As the project promoted actions at both national and local levels, the evaluation accounted for both layers with a major focus on the analysis of procedures and outputs to examine its success. Through the application of a multi-method approach – data collection and analysis, cost-effectiveness assessment, interviews, pre-post surveys, and counterfactual focus groups – involving a wide array of agents – political representatives, civil servants, NGOs, citizens, national academia, and the funding sponsor – findings have helped retrieve three main insights that aim to contribute to future research on the evaluation of citizen participation in policymaking, which should shed light on: the (re)connection of multiple agents; the role within the governance systems; and the pursuit of social inclusion.     

The inclusion of the other in ourselves: reception and comprehension of refugees in Portugal

Abstract

The intensification of different types of migration movements during the last decades is an expression of growing interconnections at the global level. The so called ‘refugee crisis’ is the most visible sign of this intensification. It currently challenges societies to rethink the processes of integrating those fleeing from humanitarian crises and wars. Portuguese civil society has pioneered the creation of a Refugee Support Platform, aimed to address the challenges associated with the arrival of refugee families. Within this platform, an e-learning course was created to help institutions and host families prepare for this task. In the article we first describe this course, focusing our analysis on the relevance of this initiative for institutions, families, and private citizens that wish to welcome refugees in Portugal. We then briefly reflect on the literature pertaining to intercultural dialogue and social tensions. In the final section we analyse the voices of those who attended the course. We conclude with an analysis of the contents of the course modules and the participation of the trainees as a contribution to their self-transformation.     

Intellectual spaces of practice and hope: power and culture in Portugal from the 1940s to the present

This paper examines configurations of power, authority and culture in Portugal in the twentieth century, and intellectual practices and spaces related to those configurations and in opposition to them. Portuguese national history and essentialized versions of Portugueseness are analysed in the work of such distinguished and influential intellectuals as António Sérgio, António José Saraiva and Eduardo Lourenço, in articulation with the role of high culture in the process of nation building throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. One particular structure of attitude and reference, constructed in the latter half of the nineteenth century, is foregrounded with reference to the History of Portugal by Oliveira Martins, in the context of the persistent contradictions and conflicts between progressive and conservative, modernizing and traditional, ‘historical’, formations and projects. In such a context, moments of oppositional, alternative and independent projects are worth looking into. Two decisive moments of social change in the second half of the twentieth century were the 1940s, and the late 1960s and early 1970s. The paper pays attention to the politics of culture of Neo-Realismo in the 1940s and its consequences for high and popular culture over the following decades, especially in the years leading to the democratic revolution of 25 April 1974. A brief analysis of the 1990s is articulated to the study of the change-producing projects in the 1940s and 1960s as part of the cultural studies practice the paper argues for.     

From Sex to Gender: The Feminisation of Migration and Labour-Market Insertion in Spain and Portugal

The aim of this article is to study the feminisation and masculinisation of migration and the insertion of the migrant population into the labour market in Spain and Portugal from the perspective of gender. Rather than focusing on the appearance of the demand for migrant labour in social reproduction work, we analyse the situation of both men and women in highly feminised and masculinised activities by studying the impact each exerts on the other, and the way in which this conditions the gender breakdown of the migrant population. We provide a historical view of the work of migrants in the care and cleaning sectors, comparing it with male migrant employment—mostly in construction—and analysing the gendered breakdown of migrant communities. We argue that, in contrast to the generally accepted discourse on the international scene, there has not been a steady evolution in the feminisation of migrant labour in Spain and Portugal. Instead, the presence of migrant women on the labour market fluctuates in accordance with a specific set of variables: welfare state and care regimes, immigration policies, historical links influencing the national origin of migrants, the housing situation, labour markets and the respective economic situations in the construction industry and in domestic and care work.     

What affects media commentators’ views of protest actions? Evidence from the Portuguese wave of anti-austerity contention

ABSTRACT

Media attention is crucial for social movements in pursuing their goals. Opinion makers in the press, in particular, can be expected to influence how mass audiences perceive protests. Yet we still have a poor understanding of the factors that explain the level of legitimacy that media commentators award to different protest actions. To address this gap, this paper compares 45 opinion articles written by press commentators in main-interest Portuguese newspapers about two of the prominent anti-austerity demonstrations in the country: the Geração à Rasca demonstration on 12 March 2011, and the Que se Lixe a Troika demonstration on 15 September 2012. Content analysis of this corpus of articles suggests that there were important differences in the level of legitimacy that commentators awarded to each of the protests. An analysis of the way commentators framed each protest suggests the use of a similar set of frames related to the characteristics of the protest events (e.g. claims, strategy), but differential deployment of these frames across the cases. For example, the same frames were sometimes used to legitimize one protest event, and delegitimize the other, and hence could not explain the differences in commentators’ views. It was rather the different context of the protests (e.g. social, economic and political), and the way that media commentators framed that context, that explains the level of legitimacy awarded to the two protests. Because the QSLT demonstration of 15 September 2012 was a protest directed against a measure that commentators framed as unfair and unnecessary (raising the single social tax), they regarded the demonstration as being more legitimate. In turn, because the Geração à Rasca demonstration occurred in a context where austerity was framed as necessary and unavoidable, it was regarded as less legitimate.     

从西葡古典文学看西方霸权的文化先行策略

中西文化交流源远流长。但一般而言,史学界在讨论中西方关系时,大都将注意力集中在宗教及政治经济范畴,顶多由此延伸至科技、美术、建筑等显性领域,对于相对隐形的文学则极少顾及。而事实上,文艺的功用在文艺复兴运动中屡试不爽,西方列强自然深谙文艺在国际交流中的巨大作用。西葡等早期殖民主义国家的对华交往更是彰显了这一点。     

重商主义的早期海外推行

重商主义是资本原始积累时期代表商业资本利益的一种经济学说和经济政策，适应了资本生产发展时期社会发展的需要，为西欧各国封建君主国家和早期工商业资产阶级所称道与推行。在重商主义思想的指引下，西欧诸国进行了早期的殖民掠夺，进而开始资本原始积累。从重商主义的形成、经济思想、以殖民掠夺为载体进行海外推行三个方面进行剖析，以便更好地了解重商主义。     

Becoming working mothers: Reconciling work and family at three particular workplaces in Norway,the UK,and Portugal

This paper investigates how differences in national and organisational welfare policies and in cultural norms on national, organisational, and familial levels influence work–family reconciliation for mothers. Drawing on case study and interview data gathered through a large European study of parenthood and organisations, we compare experiences of transition to motherhood in three organisations in Norway, the UK, and Portugal. The specific question which is considered in this paper is how mothers manage the reconciliation of work and family in the period of time following parental leave. Our case analyses highlight the differences in organisational, national policy, and family support in the three contexts, and show that having a child is still conceptualised as a predominantly ‘private problem’ in the UK and Portugal, while it has come closer to having the status of a ‘public issue’ in Norway.     

Lone mothers and the puzzles of daily life: do care regimes really matter?

Kröger T. Lone mothers and the puzzles of daily life: do care regimes really matter? Int J Soc Welfare 2010: 19: 390–401 © 2009 The Author, Journal compilation © 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd and the International Journal of Social Welfare. This article studies childcare patterns and day‐to‐day strategies of 111 working lone mothers from Finland, France, Italy, Portugal and the UK, and asks whether their arrangements are prescribed by care regimes. Lone mothers' arrangements are grouped into five based on the availability and use of different formal and informal childcare resources. The article argues that, even though lone mothers have a more favourable starting point in Finland and France compared with Britain, Italy and Portugal where formal childcare coverage is patchier, childcare arrangements are not very dissimilar within different care regimes. Instead, similarities across care regimes are highlighted. Formal provisions have their limitations in all the countries studied and in all cases significant expectations are placed on informal childcare. The availability of informal childcare cannot, however, be taken for granted in any country, and working lone mothers whose informal and formal resources do not adequately meet their childcare needs were located in every care regime, facing care poverty.