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Populations around the globe age. For Western countries, this demographic shift is one of the biggest current challenges, challenging individual life plans, family arrangements, market structures, care provisions, and the financial basis of pension schemes. This volume uses the life-course perspective to investigate causes and effects of population ageing. It explains how insight from demography and life-course research can be merged to gain a better understanding of population ageing. It then applies a critical perspective to illustrate social inequalities in life-course effects

The aim of the article is to analyse and problematize care managers' argumentation of individual needs when assessing migrant customers within Swedish public elderly home care services. According to legislation, need for assistance should always be assessed individually. In recent decades of service decline, standardization of needs has been part of the distribution of elderly care services. Simultaneously, the stratum of older people has become more diverse, which means that a wider spectrum of needs is presented to the care managers. Ten interviews with care managers were analysed with a focus on their arguments regarding the care needs of elderly people with migrant backgrounds seeking assistance. The theoretical conceptions of the two perspectives of care and services were used to analyse the understanding of care managers' arguments. Our analysis shows that the service perspective with assistance and support that are standardized for Swedes is poorly suited to people born outside Sweden and socialized into other expectations of family and society. The meaning of individual needs was imprecise and contradictory when confronted with diverse cultural codes. When general standards were used in the arguments by referring to regulations and local guidelines, immigrants' individual needs were not prioritized. Our analysis suggests that the tension between national standards, local guidelines and individual needs has to be discussed further, where theoretical tools related to care and services may be useful in guiding care managers' professional arguments of individual needs and cultural sensitivity in the needs assessment.

This work addresses the two questions of how China can respond to its rapidly aging population and whether China can learn from the experiences of Sweden when establishing a universal pension system. Two different demographic transitions are analysed: the slowly aging Swedish population, and the rapidly aging Chinese population. This work discusses adaptations and dilemmas in the labour market and in family structures in response to balances and imbalances in these demographic structures. Measuring instruments need to be adapted to a changing situation. Family care contributions must be recognized. What is considered a fair distribution of welfare must be further analysed.

This article compares policy and practices for engaging older people in community life in Sweden and Australia. Barriers and support for active engagement through paid work, social activism, volunteering and aged services are compared. Both countries face issues of ageing populations, services for rural areas and people with small needs. Issues for Sweden were the absence of age discrimination legislation, availability of funds and lack of recognition of the growing levels of volunteering. Issues for Australia concerned the new managerialist approach to services, with associated complexities of access and limited social activism.

This article focuses on the gendered dimensions of the contradictions within the welfare state. It argues that there is an inherent dilemma between recognizing women's unpaid caring functions, on the one hand, and in providing for opportunities for women to influence and contribute in the economic and political spheres of life, on the other. The article focuses on the development and the framing of what we call 'the social service state' and 'the social insurance state' in Sweden from a gender perspective. The article asks whether women benefit from a neutral system of rules or whether there should also be formal attention paid to gender inequalities.

Johansson S, Leonard R, Noonan K. Caring and the generation of social capital: two models for a positive relationshipWhen caring is linked to social capital, it is generally assumed that the nature of the relationship is that social capital is a resource that can be used for care work. When there is inadequate funding of aged care services by the state, then social capital may be seen as a substitute for economic and human capital. Caring, therefore, is seen as a drain on capital. However, this does not have to be the case. Aged care services, if thoughtfully designed, can not only consume social capital, but also generate it. Two models of elder care, one Swedish and one Australian, have been identified which specifically address the generation of social capital. In each case, the services and facilities have been developed by third‐sector organisations with a strong community development focus, often in the face of resistance from state‐run or medically oriented services.

This is a collectively written, inter-disciplinary, thematic cross-national study which combines conceptual, theoretical, empirical and policy material in an ambitious and innovative way to explore a key concept in contemporary European political, policy and academic debates. The first part of the book clarifies the various ways that the concept of citizenship has developed historically and is understood today in a range of Western European welfare states. It elaborates on the contemporary framing of debates and struggles around citizenship. This provides a framework for three policy studies, looking at: migration and multiculturalism; the care of young children; and home-based childcare and transnational dynamics. The book is unusual in weaving together the topics of migration and childcare and in studying these issues together within a gendered citizenship framework. It also demonstrates the value of a multi-level conceptualisation of citizenship, stretching from the domestic sphere through the national and European levels to the global. The book is aimed at students of social policy, sociology, European studies, women's studies and politics and at researchers/scholars/policy analysts in the areas of citizenship, gender, welfare states and migration.