I hvilket omfang bakker ikke-vestlige indvandrere og efterkommere op om velfærdsstatens centrale værdier, og gør de det i samme omfang som etniske danskere? Artiklen undersøger dette spørgsmål nærmere med afsæt i surveydata indsamlet i 2014 blandt et repræsentativt udsnit af majoritetsbefolkningen samt de fem største ikke-vestlige indvandrergrupper i Danmark og deres efterkommere. Artiklen finder, at der er udbredt opbakning blandt danskere, ikke-vestlige indvandrere samt efterkommere til velfærdsstatslige værdier som pligten til at arbejde, ligestilling mellem kønnene, opbakning til offentligt finansieret velfærd samt solidaritet med de dårligst stillede i samfundet. Derudover optræder der også nogle interessante forskelle og ligheder grupperne imellem.
To what extent do non-Western immigrants and their descendants support the core principles of the Danish welfare state, and do they support these values to the same extent as ethnic Danes? These questions are examined based on survey data collected in 2014 among the Danish population and the five largest non-Western immigrant groups and their descendants. The article finds that there is overall and strong support for selected core values among the majority in all three groups as regards support for the duty to work, gender equality, state-financed welfare and that the state should increase its efforts for the needy. Within this overall pattern, the results also point out some interesting differences and similarities between non-western immigrants on the one hand and ethnic Danes on the other.
For several decades, the social investment (SI) state has been heralded as the saviour of the welfare state, while at the same time being criticised for being just another instance of neoliberal downsizing of the welfare state. Recently, efforts have been made to provide clearer conceptualisations of how to assess the existence and impact of SI. However, these attempts have hitherto mainly focused on the policy functions and instruments of the SI state. This article contributes to existing research by offering a novel analytical framework on the capacity needed by street-level organisations (SLOs) to implement the central policy functions of the SI state, and by elucidating how administrative reforms influence this capacity. The article applies the framework to the implementation in Denmark of Active Labour Market Policies (ALMPs) in local job centres. This case is considered an SI 'flagship' in terms of formal policies, while also having undergone multiple administrative reforms, which makes it highly illustrative for the central argument of the article – that the success or failure of an SI approach is not only determined by politics and formal policies. The empirical analysis reveals how the capacity to implement SI policies has been enhanced by administrative reforms; this has been done by giving job centres more room for discretion and enhancing their ability to make long-term investments and to promote integrated service provision across different service areas. However, at the same time the local job centres remain closely monitored and controlled through an external accountability performance measurement system.
AbstractDespite widespread support for integrated service delivery (ISD), the challenges of making ISD a sustainable feature of the public sector remain unresolved. This article offers new insights to this persistent challenge by developing a novel theoretical framework, inspired by the perspective of institutional complexity, and applying it to the case of Danish job centers. We demonstrate how the contradictory and layered nature of governance arrangements simultaneously pose demands of service integration and ‐separation on the job centers. Consequently, the job center managers can neither prioritize one of the demands nor blend them into hybrid practices. Instead, their attempts to further ISD remain inherently temporary—as they are continuously forced to reverse back to old organizational boundaries, to oscillate between work processes supporting service integration and service separation, and to rebuild collaborative relations. The managers are thus caught in a "frenetic standstill," which hinders the sustainable organizing of ISD.
In: Breidahl , K N & Larsen , C A 2016 , ' The Myth of Unadaptable Gender Roles : Attitudes towards Women's Paid Work among Immigrants across 30 European countries ' , Journal of European Social Policy , vol. 26 , no. 5 , pp. 387– 401 . https://doi.org/10.1177/0958928716664292 , https://doi.org/https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0958928716664292
It is a predominant assumption in contemporary political and academic debates that gender roles and attitudes supporting women's paid work among immigrants are deep-rooted and stable over time. However the actual work–family orientations among immigrants are rarely studied. The purpose of this article is to study to what extent and at what pace immigrants in general adapt to the attitudes towards women's paid work that prevail in the host countries. A cross-national research strategy is applied using the European Social Survey rounds 2 (2004), 4 (2008) and 5 (2010), allowing us to compare and analyze attitudes towards women's paid work among 13,535 foreign-born individuals resident in 30 European countries. The results indicate that immigrants' attitudes towards women's paid work are highly structured by the institutional and cultural context of the host country. Both male and female immigrants, as well as immigrants with and without children, adapt to host country attitudes at a high pace. ; It is a predominant assumption in contemporary political and academic debates that gender roles and attitudes supporting women's paid work among immigrants are deep-rooted and stable over time. However, the actual work–family orientations among immigrants are rarely studied. The purpose of this article is to study to what extent and at what pace immigrants in general adapt to the attitudes towards women's paid work that prevail in the host countries. A cross-national research strategy is applied using the European Social Survey rounds 2 (2004), 4 (2008) and 5 (2010), allowing us to compare and analyse attitudes towards women's paid work among 13,535 foreign-born individuals resident in 30 European countries. The results indicate that immigrants' attitudes towards women's paid work are highly structured by the institutional and cultural context of the host country. Both male and female immigrants, as well as immigrants with and without children, adapt to host country attitudes at a high pace.
AbstractCountless evaluations of active labour market policy (ALMP) have been conducted in the last decade. The common denominator for most of these evaluations is a focus on employment (self‐sufficiency) as the dependent variable, where the success of ALMP is measured in terms of the number of unemployed finding ordinary employment after (or immediately before) participating in an activation programme. The main argument in this article is that this focus is inadequate. For many long‐term unemployed people, it would be an understatement to describe the road to employment as merely 'bumpy'. Research must take this into consideration. This article therefore deals with the Danish activation policy from a new perspective by analyzing the impact on different aspects of social marginalization, focusing on long‐term social assistance recipients. Using data from a comprehensive, representative quantitative survey of Danish unemployed conducted in 2007, the first analysis convincingly reveals that we fail to find any systematic correlation between participation in ALMP and any of the social marginalization indicators. The second analysis presents a more mixed picture of the participant's own assessment of the impact of ALMP on their self‐esteem; some are quite positive, while others are more neutral or even rather negative. Taking the existing research into account, these results leave us with conceptual and methodological questions for further research.
In: Breidahl , K N , Holtug , N & Kongshøj , K 2018 , ' Do Shared Values Promote Social Cohesion? If so, Which? Evidence from Denmark ' , European Political Science Review , vol. 10 , no. 1 , pp. 97-118 . https://doi.org/10.1017/S1755773916000266
Social scientists and political theorists often claim that shared values are conducive to social cohesion, and trust and solidarity in particular. Furthermore, this idea is at the heart of what has been labeled the 'national identity argument', according to which religious and/or cultural diversity is a threat to the shared (national) values underpinning social cohesion and redistributive justice. However, there is no consensus among political theorists about what values we need to share to foster social cohesion and indeed, for example, nationalists, liberals, and multiculturalists provide different answers to this question. On the basis of a survey conducted in Denmark in 2014, this study empirically investigates the relation between, on the one hand, commitments to the community values of respectively conservative nationalism, liberal nationalism, liberal citizenship, and multiculturalism, and on the other, trust and solidarity. First, we investigate in what ways commitments to these four sets of values are correlated to trust and solidarity at the individual level and, then, whether the belief that others share one's values is correlated to these aspects of social cohesion for individuals committed to these four sets of values. We find that conservative and liberal nationalism are negatively correlated to our different measures of trust and solidarity, whereas liberal citizenship and (in particular) multiculturalism are positively correlated. In broad terms, this picture remains when we control for a number of socio-economic factors and ideology (on a left-right scale). Finally, individuals who believe that others share their values do not, in general, have higher levels of trust and solidarity. Rather, this belief works in different ways when associated with different sets of community values.
This edition of Social Policy Review marks the 40th anniversary of a publication from the UK Social Policy Association devoted to presenting an up-to-date and diverse review of the best in social policy scholarship. It includes a special Anniversary Preface celebrating the publication's evolution and distinctive contributions. Continuing its reputation as a cutting edge, international publication in social policy, Part One of this edition analyses current developments under the UK's Coalition Government across a range of key policy areas. Part Two includes an examination of social policy in 'developing' countries, including in Africa and the Arab nations. Part Three considers the fate of social welfare in countries among the worst hit by the 'economic crisis', including: Ireland, Greece, Spain, Portugal and Iceland. Social Policy Review is essential reading for social policy academics and students and for anyone who is interested in the implications of government policy
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