This article interrogates the impact of EU employment policy on the UK both during and after EU Membership. To do so, it adopts insights from both historical institutionalism and discursive ...institutionalism. The argument made is that integration in the area of employment policy resulted in a process of 'layering' whereby EU policy ultimately tamed some of the more liberal elements of the UK's employment model. Such layering, however, failed to generate a more fundamental change within the UK's path dependency owing to the emergence of a powerful discourse within British politics. This discourse portrayed EU legislation as a threat to the UK's ability to generate growth and jobs. As an 'independent' country, however, overtime UK employment policy is likely to experience policy drift from the EU, albeit the extent of such remains unclear.
Materialist theories of disability link disability and labor, hypothesizing that under neoliberalism, disability stigma contributes to labor market precarity. These claims have not been evaluated ...empirically and the mediating role of the state remains underspecified. Ethnographic fieldwork in a job training program for people with psychiatric disabilities reveals two contradictions in the welfare state treatment of disability. First, disability benefits are set at low levels, yet means-testing limits earnings, channeling people with disabilities into low-wage jobs. Second, contradictory imperatives attached to state funding incentivize placement in temporary jobs. These welfare state contradictions produce disabled workers as a precarious labor force.
This paper evaluates the impact of the European Structural Funds on the performance of employment policy in Greece. The employment policy in Greece, is a policy funded by EU and characterized by ...centralization, increased red tape, administrative overlaps and fragmentation pitfalls, factors' contributing to policy's ineffectiveness. Based on the comparative analysis of the implementation and performance of ESIF Operational Programs in Greece and by focusing on the case of the Greek Public Employment Service (OAED), this article evaluates European Union Policies actual impact on employment policy effectiveness and new jobs creation in Greece during the 2012-2020 period.
This contribution analyses how EU social objectives and policy co-ordination have been integrated into the Union's post-crisis governance architecture. It argues that between 2011 and 2016, there was ...a partial but progressive 'socialization' of the 'European Semester' of policy co-ordination, in terms of increasing emphasis on social objectives in its priorities and key messages, including the Country-Specific Recommendations; intensified social monitoring and review of national reforms; and an enhanced decision-making role for EU social and employment actors. In explaining these developments, the contribution highlights the contribution of strategic agency, reflexive learning and creative adaptation by social and employment actors to the new institutional conditions of the Semester, building on recent theoretical work on 'actor-centred constructivism' and the 'usages of Europe'.
Abstract This article examines the contested impact of financial sanctions on Australian employment services, with government evaluation relying on job‐search theory to justify sanctions while ...research from sociological and psychological perspectives suggests they exacerbate labour market disadvantages and poverty. The division in perspectives reflects both methodological differences and ethical stances within scholarship. Welfare conditionality scholars propose value pluralism as an approach to reach consensus on shared policy goals across disciplines. This article engages in a simulation of the value plural approach to identify evidence gaps in the research and evaluation of sanctions and conditionality in employment services. The article identifies a research and evaluation agenda for conditionality policy, emphasising the importance of reaching a consensus to advance ethically robust policy.
The main challenge in creating dignified living conditions for older women is employment. If the employment process of older women is not properly regulated, they will lose the opportunity to ...maintain their health and well-being. Unpaid domestic work and discriminatory stigmas have a major impact on employment. Social security, which appears in the form of a post-employment (funded or state) pension, determines the economic status of older/eldest women. Based on the above, the research on the issue of employment should include an analysis of the issue of stigmas, gender perspective and employment issues, hence proposing legislative changes to the state for favourable conditions for older women. In order to develop effective state policy, the article aims to analyse the international documents and the practice of the State of Israel to discuss the employment of elderly women in the central core of the state policy.
Abstract This article examines the digitalisation of employment services in the UK and Australia, countries that have been on similar policy trajectories with respect to the development of ...quasi‐markets and increased digitalisation. The article deploys comparative mixed methods comprising surveys of employment service providers and interviews with providers and technology developers in both countries to analyse the extent of, forms and challenges around digitalisation across both countries. The survey data analysis suggested considerable similarities in the UK and Australia regarding the drivers of digitalisation and the tasks which were digitalised. However, the interview data highlighted some differences between the two countries, including the persistence of face‐to‐face delivery in the UK compared with accelerated digitalisation in Australia. In both countries, there were clear differing motivations between stakeholder communities (policymakers and developers), which providers had to negotiate.
The growth of precarious work since the 1970s has emerged as a core contemporary concern within politics, in the media, and among researchers. Uncertain and unpredictable work contrasts with the ...relative security that characterized the three decades following World War II. Precarious work constitutes a global challenge that has a wide range of consequences cutting across many areas of concern to sociologists. Hence, it is increasingly important to understand the new workplace arrangements that generate precarious work and worker insecurity. A focus on employment relations forms the foundation of theories of the institutions and structures that generate precarious work and the cultural and individual factors that influence people's responses to uncertainty. Sociologists are well-positioned to explain, offer insight, and provide input into public policy about such changes and the state of contemporary employment relations.
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