scholarly journals Software-Sorted Exclusion of Asylum Seekers in Norway and Finland

2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Funda Ustek-Spilda ◽  
Marja Alastalo
Keyword(s):  
Social Life ◽  
Asylum Seekers ◽  
Science And Technology Studies ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
Foreign Born ◽  
Welfare Policies ◽  
Democratic Regimes ◽  
Welfare Systems ◽  
Made In ◽  
The Welfare State

As James Scott writes, to be able to govern, administrative bodies need to make objects of government legible. Yet migrant persons do not fall neatly into the categories of administrative agencies. This categorical ambiguity is illustrated in the tendency to exclude asylum seekers from various population registers and to not provide them with ID numbers, which constitute the backbone of many welfare states in Europe. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in Norway and Finland, and in Eurostat and UNECE, we study how practices of population registration and statistics compilation on foreign-born persons can be beset by differential and at times contradictory outlooks. We show that these outlooks are often presented in the form of seemingly apolitical software infrastructures or decisions made in response to software with limited, if any, discretion available to bureaucrats, statisticians, and policymakers. Our two cases, Norway and Finland, are considered social-democratic regimes within Esping-Andersen’s famous global social policy typology. Using science and technology studies and specifically “double social life of methods,” we seek to trace how software emerges as both a device for administrative bookkeeping and also for enacting the “migrant” categories with particular implications for how the welfare state comes to be established and how welfare policies come to be implemented. We note that even if all statistical production necessarily involves inclusions and exclusions, how the “boundaries” are set for whom to include and exclude directly affects the lives of those implicated by these decisions, and as such, they are onto-political. This means that welfare policies get made at the point of sorting, categorizing, and ordering of data, even before it is fed into software and other administrative devices of government. In view of this, we show that methods enact their subjects—we detail how the methods set to identify and measure refugee statistics in Europe end up enacting the welfare services they have access to. We argue that with increasing automation and datafication, the scope of welfare systems is being curtailed under the label of efficiency, and individual contexts are ignored.

From Welfare States to Planetary Well-Being

2021 ◽  
pp. 900-920
Author(s):  
Ian Gough
Keyword(s):  
Social Policy ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
Global Environmental ◽  
The Social ◽  
Welfare Systems ◽  
Basic Services ◽  
Rich Countries ◽  
The Welfare State

This final chapter concentrates on global environmental challenges to rich-country welfare states: climate breakdown and associated ecological disasters. These common threats add two new raison d’êtres for welfare states: first, that the security and equity they seek should be sustainable through time; second, that their scope is broadened to take account of global equity and well-being. With a few notable exceptions, these fundamental questions have been ignored in the social policy community. I argue here that we need to transform our understanding of social policy in four ways, each more difficult than the previous one. First, we need to develop novel eco-social programmes to tap synergies between well-being and sustainability via transformative investment programmes such as a Green New Deal. Second, we need to recompose consumption in rich countries in two ways: to realize the best principles of the welfare state by extending the range of universal basic services and to work towards a private ‘consumption corridor’ to end waste, meet basic needs, and reduce inequality. Third, we must develop strategies of ‘reduce and redistribute’ to adapt welfare systems for a future of slower, if not negative, economic growth. And finally, we need to develop a global equity framework to meet climatic and ecological threats in a globally just way that recognizes current international inequalities.

6. Problems

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Garland
Keyword(s):  
Problem Solving ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
Labour Market ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
The Real ◽  
Moral Hazards ◽  
The Welfare State

The welfare state is, at its core, a problem-solving apparatus, designed to manage dysfunctions that are endemic to the economic and social life of modern nations. But welfare states also generate problems of their own—such as moral hazards, excessive bureaucracy, soaring costs, and labour market rigidities—that sometimes threaten to bring the whole enterprise into disrepute. ‘Problems’ shows that these issues are troubling and consequential, but in weighing their significance we ought always to ask: ‘what can be done?’ and ‘what are the alternatives?’ That the welfare state has its problems is undeniable. The real question is whether these problems are manageable and how they compare to those of other arrangements.

A nation of bureaucrats or a nation of workers? Welfare benefits as nation-building modernization tools in interwar Romania

2021 ◽  
pp. 095892872110357
Author(s):  
Sergiu Delcea
Keyword(s):  
Ethnic Diversity ◽  
Negative Impact ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
Political Arena ◽  
Welfare Policies ◽  
Economic Problems ◽  
Welfare Benefits ◽  
National Question ◽  
The Welfare State

As one of the most potent hypothesis in political economy, the negative impact of ethnic diversity on the provision of public goods made the welfare state–nation state isomorphism seem a one-way connection. Against the grain of existing studies I argue, through a case-study of interwar Romania, that welfare states are constructed to proactively (re)build the nation, rather than retroactively emanate from it, once established. Rather than an ahistorical ethnolinguistic fractionalization, the article takes nationhood as historically fluid and contested because through institutionalized action, elites can and do proactively revamp the political arena, redistributing coalitions of winners and losers based on exogenously given criteria. The article therefore shows that nation forgers typically internalize the global social question through the topoi of local socio-economic problems construed as a national question. Because elites can pick and choose who becomes part of the national compact, the politicization of the perception of incomplete nationhood provides a sufficient ideational thrust for welfare policymaking, irrespective of pre-existing national solidarities. Consequently, welfare policies are typically layered as remedial or compensatory policies designed to foster a specific social mobility, deemed in a top-down fashion to be completing the nation.

Wedded to Welfare? Working Mothers and the Welfare State in Communist Poland

Slavic Review ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 76 (2) ◽  
pp. 455-480 ◽  
Author(s):  
Piotr Perkowski
Keyword(s):  
Working Mothers ◽  
Maternity Leave ◽  
Institutional Care ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
Equal Opportunities ◽  
Welfare Policies ◽  
East European ◽  
Welfare Benefits ◽  
Post War ◽  
The Welfare State

Using Poland as example, the article explores the operation of east European communist welfare states, with particular attention paid to benefits offered to working mothers. By exploring a number of diverse sources, I analyze the evolution and the meaning of institutional care and maternity leave in the life of professionally-active women. Studying a variety of factors that shaped the welfare policies of the time, including post-war industrialization, consumption, the demographic panic, and the struggling economy of the twilight years of communism, I attach particular importance to the early 1970s, when Poland saw a particular shift in gender-equality discourse. Welfare benefits played a key role in communists states, serving as a guarantee of equal opportunities or, in the case of mothers, as a tool for potentially facilitating employment. In time, however, they became chiefly tools designed to control the population and female fertility.

scholarly journals Governmental Illegitimacy and Incompetency in Canada and Other Liberal Nations: Implications for Health

2018 ◽  
Vol 49 (1) ◽  
pp. 17-36 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dennis Raphael ◽  
Morris Komakech ◽  
Toba Bryant ◽  
Ryan Torrence
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
Relative Role ◽  
Health It ◽  
Role Of The State ◽  
Economic Elites ◽  
Developed Nations ◽  
Made In ◽  
The Welfare State

The welfare state literature on developing nations is concerned with how governmental illegitimacy and incompetency are the sources of inequality, exploitation, exclusion, and domination of significant proportions of their citizenry. These dimensions clearly contribute to the problematic health outcomes in these nations. In contrast, developed nations are assumed to grapple with less contentious issues of stratification, decommodification, and the relative role of the state, market, and family in providing economic and social security, also important pathways to health. There is an explicit assumption that governing authorities in developed nations are legitimate and competent such that their citizens are not systematically subjected to inequality, exploitation, exclusion, and domination by elites. In this article, we argue that these concepts should also be the focus of welfare state analysis in developed liberal welfare states such as Canada. Such an analysis would expose how public policy is increasingly being made in the service of powerful economic elites rather than the majority, thereby threatening health. It would also serve to identify means of responding to these developments.

Welfare capabilities: Evaluating distributional inequalities and welfare policy in advanced democracies

2019 ◽  
Vol 30 (3) ◽  
pp. 293-305
Author(s):  
Adam Hannah ◽  
Jeremiah Thomas Brown ◽  
Andrew Gibbons
Keyword(s):  
Welfare Policy ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
Preliminary Evaluation ◽  
Welfare Policies ◽  
Policy Regimes ◽  
Material Resources ◽  
Better Life Index ◽  
Using Data ◽  
The Capability Approach ◽  
The Welfare State

While the welfare state literature has made great advances in describing and explaining policy, comparatively less time has been spent systematically examining the outcomes of those welfare policies. Prominent debates have largely centred on the extent to which welfare states have been retrenched and whether they can be effectively classified by regime type. This article argues that while such debates have resulted in valuable theoretical and empirical advances, there is both a need and an opportunity to focus more closely on the outcomes of welfare policy. We propose using the ‘capability approach’ as an evaluative framework to consider differences in outcomes across mature welfare states. The approach, as operationalised here, regards the real-world opportunities that individuals hold, rather than only the material resources provided to them, as being essential to understanding their welfare. The article uses a new capabilities-oriented measure of welfare to make a preliminary evaluation of the outcomes associated with different types of welfare policy regimes. The measure emphasises distributional inequalities associated with the domains of health, education and the economic conditions experienced by individuals. We apply it to 18 advanced welfare states using data sourced from the 2016 wave of the OECD’s (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) Better Life Index.

The Nordic welfare state in a European context: dealing with new economic and ideological challenges in the 1990s

2000 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 379-398 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stein Kuhnle
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Basic Structure ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
Common Denominator ◽  
Welfare Systems ◽  
Social Policy Reform ◽  
Welfare State Development ◽  
Nordic Welfare State ◽  
Generous Welfare ◽  
The Welfare State

Within the framework of a general discussion of ‘the state of the welfare state’ in economically advanced West European democracies, this paper offers an account and interpretation of how the Nordic welfare states, often perceived as the most comprehensive and ‘generous’ welfare states, met a number of challenges in the 1990s. Economic problems were most critical in Finland and Sweden in the early 1990s, and social policy reform activities with the aim of modifications of programmes and cutbacks in expenditure have been most pronounced in these countries. A single common denominator for Nordic welfare state development in the 1990s is a somewhat less generous welfare state, but Norway is generally an exception. The basic structure of the welfare systems has been preserved, and social, health and welfare issues are consistently of high priority for governments and voters. The welfare state is highly valued in Scandinavia, but more space for market and other non-governmental welfare solutions is likely to grow in the future.

scholarly journals Assessing Animal Welfare with Behavior: Onward with Caution

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 75-87
Author(s):  
Jason V. Watters ◽  
Bethany L. Krebs ◽  
Caitlin L. Eschmann
Keyword(s):  
Animal Welfare ◽  
Behavioral Assessment ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
Negative Consequences ◽  
Inappropriate Use ◽  
Use Of Resources ◽  
Behavior Based ◽  
Poor Welfare ◽  
Made In ◽  
The Welfare State

An emphasis on ensuring animal welfare is growing in zoo and aquarium associations around the globe. This has led to a focus on measures of welfare outcomes for individual animals. Observations and interpretations of behavior are the most widely used outcome-based measures of animal welfare. They commonly serve as a diagnostic tool from which practitioners make animal welfare decisions and suggest treatments, yet errors in data collection and interpretation can lead to the potential for misdiagnosis. We describe the perils of incorrect welfare diagnoses and common mistakes in applying behavior-based tools. The missteps that can be made in behavioral assessment include mismatches between definitions of animal welfare and collected data, lack of alternative explanations, faulty logic, behavior interpreted out of context, murky assumptions, lack of behavior definitions, and poor justification for assigning a welfare value to a specific behavior. Misdiagnosing the welfare state of an animal has negative consequences. These include continued poor welfare states, inappropriate use of resources, lack of understanding of welfare mechanisms and the perpetuation of the previously mentioned faulty logic throughout the wider scientific community. We provide recommendations for assessing behavior-based welfare tools, and guidance for those developing tools and interpreting data.

Immigration, the Welfare State and Working Life – the Case of Norway

2008 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. 529-536 ◽  
Author(s):  
Grete Brochmann
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
National Economy ◽  
Asylum Seekers ◽  
Family Members ◽  
Working Life ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
Western Countries ◽  
Paradoxical Situation ◽  
European Welfare States ◽  
The Welfare State

Today Western European welfare states find themselves in a paradoxical situation: parts of working life are in need of labour that is difficult to find nationally – and internationally. While this is partly due to inflexible policies, it is also due to competition for labour among Western countries. At the same time, asylum seekers are constantly arriving, often to be joined by family members. The authorities are confronted with a mismatch between the supply of, and demand for, immigrants. The receiving countries do not get the labour they want, while many of those who actually come cannot be incorporated productively for various reasons. This situation illustrates the squeeze facing today’s welfare states – in this article exemplified with the Norwegian case – between the logic of humanitarian responsibilities and the concerns of the national economy.

scholarly journals A Great Desire for Children: The Beginning of Transnational Adoption in Denmark and Norway during the 1960’s

Genealogy ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (4) ◽  
pp. 104
Author(s):  
Kasper Emil Rosbjørn Eriksen
Keyword(s):  
International Adoption ◽  
The United States ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
Transnational Adoption ◽  
Desire For Children ◽  
Child Placement ◽  
Welfare Systems ◽  
Private Actors ◽  
The Welfare State

This article examines the beginning of transnational adoption in Denmark and Norway to illuminate the role of private actors and associations in Scandinavian welfare systems. Utilizing case studies of two prominent private adoption actors, Tytte Botfeldt and Torbjørn Jelstad, the article analyzes how these Nordic welfare states responded to the emergence of transnational adoption in comparison with both each other, neighboring Sweden, and the United States. This study shows that private actors and associations strongly influenced the nascent international adoption systems in these countries, by effectively promoting transnational adoption as a progressive and humanitarian form of global parenthood; while simultaneously emphasizing the responsibility of the welfare state to accommodate and alleviate childless couples’ human rights and need for children. A need that was strong enough that couples were willing to transcend legal, national, and racial borders. Ultimately, Danish and Norwegian authorities not only had to show leniency towards flagrant violations of adoption and child placement rules, but also change these so that families could fulfill their great need for children by legally adopting them from abroad.

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