Reforms of Retirement Policies: Three Common Paths in Aging in Japan and Korea

Faced with an unparalleled rate of population aging, Japan and Korea have been reforming their retirement policies. To date, however, while the age of mandatory retirement has increased, employees continue to face significant decreases in compensation and other working conditions, typically at age 60 in Japan and age 55 in Korea. Three factors have contributed to shaping the path of the policy reforms in both the countries, including (1) the productivist welfare regimes, (2) the structure of the labor market for young workers, and (3) seniority-based wage and compensation systems.     

Vestiges of the medical model: a critical exploration of the Ontario Disability Support Program in Ontario,Canada

Although ample literature exists on workfare in Ontario, Canada, research on the social assistance programme for disabled people, the Ontario Disability Support Program (ODSP), is relatively scant. What we do know points to similar shortcomings. We present a critical disability study considering four policy domains to explore how disabled people are identified and accommodated in Ontario. Discussing the principles of universal design, we argue for policy design that meets the needs of as many individuals as possible, while accounting for significant human variability. We conclude that the ODSP, in failing to adopt a rights-based framework, violates the dignity and rights of disabled people.     

From ‘Employab-ility’ to ‘Entrepreneurial-ity’ in Spain: youth in the spotlight in times of crisis

This paper discusses the processes of individualisation of work and redefinition of the referential category of worker fostered by youth employability schemes in Spain. Employability measures proposed by the recent Spanish Youth Guarantee Implementation Plan and its antithetical youth representations (as a group ‘without qualities’ – the ‘NEETS’– while at the same time as a referential value and cultural model – ‘the young entrepreneur’-) will be analysed. These paradoxes strengthened by employability policies, and further aggravated in the wake of the current economic crisis, do not give rise to political contradictions due to the depolitisation promoted by employability policies: social problems are converted into individual deficits. These processes of psychologisation of work are further discussed on the basis of a recent study on employment counselling and career guidance to help to enhance the employability of jobless people in three Spanish cities, Seville, Madrid and Valencia. These tools are aimed at fostering employability of unemployed people with a high risk of social exclusion and are emblematic concerning the principle of employability (new governance tools, different intervention logics/principles). Some paradoxes concerning employability policies (entrepreneuriality) in the current labour market crisis will be outlined.     

Mobilizing intercultural education for equity and social justice. Time to react against the intolerable: A proposal from Spain

Abstract

Education is suffering from the consequences of strengthening neoliberal policies, which impose an education model that serves the interests of the hegemonic economic system. The market rationale is being implemented in schools, moving the interests from equity to efficiency, from equal opportunities to performance. Starting from setting out a panoramic view of the way in which the intercultural focus in Spain has been used, with an approach to the different educational spheres in which we have carried out our work and research –educational policies, teacher education, school practice and education outside the school – we discuss the paradoxes and ambiguities that remove the transformative capacity of intercultural education and propose the reformulation of interculturality as an ethical and political project to subvert inequality by mobilizing to collectively create and enable images of education that contribute to a sustained way of building an equitable and fair society. Assuming our role as academics, we design a specific collective proposal on who mobilizes, with whom, as well as the attributes of the processes to be generated are discussed as well.     

Re-centring ‘Race’ in Development: Population Policies and Global Capital Accumulation in the Era of the SDGs

Abstract

This article argues that contrary to some recent theorizing of contemporary development interventions, ideologies of race and discursive and material processes of racialization remain central to development and are embedded in the Sustainable Development Goals. This is explored through an examination of current population policies, and in particular the ‘global family planning strategy’ initiated by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in partnership with the British government. Population concerns are now routinely invoked in the context of neo-Malthusian discourses which relate migration, climate change, and conflict. This article argues however that contemporary population policies represent more than a discursive smokescreen for the destructive impacts of global capital accumulation—they are in fact deeply enmeshed in strategies for its expansion. As such, they rely upon embodied coercion and violence which is racialized and gendered, even as they invoke narratives of reproductive rights and choices.     

The morphogenesis of disability policies and the personalisation of social services. A case study from Italy.

Across Europe, and particularly since the 2008 Financial Crisis, new demands for tailor-made services came from different actors and perspectives: user-led organizations, intellectuals, policy makers, social workers, advocacy organizations, which call for a new way of programming, realizing and evaluating social policies. Personalization became a relevant part of the so called ‘welfare innovation narrative’, which concerns – to name but a few – English personalization agenda, Scottish self-directed support, Finnish education system, Norwegian cash-for-care policies. Even the European Commission is addressing new social services, reshaped through users’ capabilities. The aim of this paper is to critically explain, through a case study focused on the Sardinian disability policy, how social policy's morphogenetic cycles influence the governance of personalized disability plans and, consequently, the possibility of their implementation.     

Identifying Priorities for Aging Policies in Two Portuguese Communities

The aging population has an impact on health, social, and economic issues in regard to individuals, communities, and organizations. The challenge for local policies in response to aging is to create sufficient resources to meet the population’s needs, wishes, and rights as people age. Active aging constitutes one of the guiding perspectives on policies. Taking into account the local governance perspective, the Model for Aging Local Policies Analysis (MALPA) was created in order to convert the active aging paradigm into a practical approach, as a technique to evaluate and analyze local aging policies. In this research, the MALPA instrument was applied in two Portuguese communities (Coruche and Oeiras). The objective was to identify the intervention priorities of aging policies in both communities, determining whether the instrument can facilitate the development of proposals for the improvement of local aging policies. It was possible to evaluate the communities and programs, identifying the least appropriate policy actions regarding the intervention priorities. The results allowed us to identify 10 priorities about collaborative governance, involvement of the elderly in the policy-making process, lifelong learning, economic hardship, policies for all ages, isolated vulnerable and fragile groups, intergenerational contacts, safety in all policies, labor opportunities, and conditions and transport network improvement.     

State Policies as a Source of Civil Law*

State policies exert a great influence over Chinese civil justice. Article 6 of the General Principles of Civil Law stipulates that state policies are a source of civil law, but the path by which they enter civil justice is not a rational one and may lead to adjudication difficulties with state policies. State policies are integrated with state law, and the laws and legal interpretations formulated by the National People’s Congress and its Standing Committee, judicial interpretations, administrative regulations, autonomous regulations and special regulations, administrative rules and other regulatory documents are forms of expression of state policies. Different rules for adjudication apply depending on the different vehicles of state policy. The Supreme People’s Court can play a role in making public policy and guiding state policy into civil adjudication through “open” and “unseen” channels.     

Do white voters support welfare policies targeted at ethnic minorities? Experimental evidence from Britain

Academics and policymakers have begun discussing ethnically focussed policies to offset the penalties ethnic minorities suffer due to discrimination, but little is known about how such policies would be received by the public. We employ new survey experiments fielded in Britain to examine public reactions to equal opportunity policies targeted at working class, black or Muslim Britons, and redistributive policies aiming to reduce inequality between the rich and the poor or between whites and ethnic minorities. We find widespread support for class- or income-targeted policies among white British respondents, but much lower support when identical policies are ethnically targeted. We find evidence for two mechanisms which help to explain this drop in support. Firstly, political and ideological values such as egalitarianism and support for an active state strongly predict support for class- and income-targeted policy, but have a much weaker effect on support for ethnically targeted policy. Secondly, hostility to immigrants has a strong negative effect on support for ethnically targeted policy, but no effect on support for class- and income-targeted policy. The combination of intense opposition from anti-immigrant voters and indifference from traditionally pro-welfare left wingers results in very little public support for explicitly ethnically targeted policy.