Suchergebnisse

AbstractIn this article, we aim to understand the development dynamics of a specific area of social investment (SI), that is, childcare policies, in the context of postcommunist politics and the recent right‐wing turn that took place in the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland. This article identifies varieties of channels for promoting SI. First, in taking the perspective of the "mixed economy of welfare," we argue that attempts made to introduce elements of SI to the childcare policies involved various leading roles available for either the private sector or state/public domain. Second, it is important to distinguish between implicit/unintended and explicit/intended projects both in relation to cases in which SI strategy is applied via marketization/privatization and when it involves a government‐led project. Third, we take into account the politics of SI implementation that might involve applying certain principles central to policy concepts (such as "investment") in justifying policy instruments incompatible with original ideas. Although arguments about SI have been extensively used by Eastern European leaders, their goal has been to justify welfare reforms that were implicitly or explicitly directed towards the middle class while excluding the "nondeserving" often based on ethnic identity. We characterize Poland as a case of "implicit marketization," the Czech Republic as a case of "explicit privatization," and the Hungarian version of SI as a case of "explicit public dualization." In this, we show that in some cases, the implementation of SI approaches by right‐wing populist parties might rear its "ugly" head.

This article deals with migration flows from and to Poland from a skills perspective. It argues that Poland's economy is skewed towards lower to medium skills and, confronted with an 'education boom' in higher education, is not able to absorb its supply of highly qualified workers. As a result, a strong push factor to emigration has been created, which should be seen as a brain overflow rather than a brain drain. On the other hand, the sectors requiring relatively low skills and offering the lowest wages are facing labour shortages. Immigrants from the former Soviet Union are filling this gap. We argue that Poland represents a specific place in the migration chain, as there is no clear substitution of migrating workers with immigrants; rather, the nature of emigration and immigration reinforces the socio-economic model in Poland.