David Etherington

Welfare to work and the inclusive labour market: a comparative study of activation policies for disability and long-term sickness benefit claimants in the UK and Denmark:

The increasing number of recipients of disability and long-term sickness benefits has resulted in the introduction of specific employability programmes in Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries. In the UK Pathways to Work involved enabling and support measures for benefit recipients with long-term health conditions. In Denmark ‘flex-jobs’ are an integral occupational health intervention for both employed and unemployed people with reduced working capacity. Through a comparative analysis primarily based on stakeholder interviews in both countries, this paper argues that the concept of an inclusive labour market strategy is crucial to assisting these groups into work, underpinned by governance and a politics of representation. In Denmark both the role of the social partners and subsidized employment are significant. In the UK governance has been constrained and insufficient attention has been paid to income security. Comparing these two models highlights policy learning for the UK from the successes of and challenges to the Danish model.

Managing Local Labour Markets and Making up New Spaces of Welfare

The dissolution of the old mechanisms of state welfare has not yet led to the generation of a new welfare settlement, although the rise of neoliberalism and of what Jessop has called the Schumpeterian Competition State have highlighted some key directions of change. The importance of geographical inequality and unevenness to the process of reshaping welfare has been widely recognised, and the fragmentation and decentralisation of employment and social policies are giving rise to the production of new welfare spaces, which institutionalise the new arrangements, helping to make up neoliberalism in practice. These issues are discussed with the help of case studies of two contrasting areas: Sheffield, a city recently experiencing economic restructuring and high levels of labour-market adjustment and employment deprivation; and Milton Keynes, a city which has been a growth area within the South East since the 1960s and which is earmarked for further employment and the location of planned population and employment growth. The ways in which new welfare spaces are being produced is explored through a consideration of the configuration of partnerships around the governance of workfare, welfare, and competitiveness within these cities.

Work, welfare and gender inequalities: an analysis of activation strategies for partnered women in the UK, Australia and Denmark

In industrialized countries women have increasingly become a target group for active labour market policies, or ‘activation’. However, to date, the burgeoning literature on activation has tended to overlook its link with the highly gendered nature of welfare. This article presents the first comparative analysis of activation approaches for partnered women in the UK, Australia and Denmark. Three core arguments are put forward that emphasize how the ideas (causal claims, beliefs and assumptions) articulated by key policy actors were crucial to both the construction and delivery of activation policies. First, women’s differentiated access to benefits directly conflicted with the focus on the individual within activation policies. Second, activation was premised upon paid labour, embodying ideational assumptions about the meaning of (paid) work, in turn devaluing caring labour. Third, the ‘problematization’ of women outside the labour market resulted in their gendered ‘processing’ through the social security and activation systems.

Tackling Concentrated Worklessness: Integrating Governance and Policy across and within Spatial Scales

Spatial concentrations of worklessness remained a key characteristic of labour markets in advanced industrial economies, even during the period of decline in aggregate levels of unemployment and economic inactivity evident from the late 1990s to the economic downturn in 2008. The failure of certain localities to benefit from wider improvements in regional and national labour markets points to a lack of effectiveness in adopted policy approaches, not least in relation to the governance arrangements and policy delivery mechanisms that seek to integrate residents of deprived areas into wider local labour markets. Through analysis of practice in the British context, we explore the difficulties of integrating economic and social policy agendas within and across spatial scales to tackle problems of concentrated worklessness. We present analysis of a number of selected case studies aimed at reducing localised worklessness and identify the possibilities and constraints for effective action given existing governance arrangements and policy priorities to promote economic competitiveness and inclusion.

Neighbourhood Renewal Policy and Spatial Differentiation in Housing Markets: Recent Trends in England and Denmark

ABSTRACT This paper assesses recent policies and initiatives to promote neighbourhood renewal in the context of housing market change in two different policy environments – those of Denmark and England. The authors suggest that surface similarities in the recent urban policy discourses of the two countries tend to conceal deeper differences in the capacity of community-led neighbourhood-based initiatives to improve housing opportunities for local residents. The paper also suggests that comparative analysis of neighbourhood renewal policy has often been too firmly lodged at the national level, neglecting the complexities of ‘multi-level’ governance and uneven spatial development which are increasingly important in urban policy formation and delivery. The authors examine the diverse motivations for the recent policy focus on the ‘neighbourhood’ as an arena for intervention. They suggest that in England the impact of ever starker regional and sub-regional inequalities, problems associated with uneven economic growth, patterns of household migration and mobility, empty housing and cultural segregation extend well beyond the reach of the New Labour governments original urban policy agenda, in its concerns with ‘capacity building’, ‘partnership working’ and ‘joined up governance’. There are now signs of a realignment in approach to impose a more strategic emphasis at a regional level of governance, although this remains underdeveloped in England. While Danish urban policy also has contradictory elements, there is a smaller gap between national government rhetoric and the strategy to improve specific localities, and the central role accorded to local government, which stands in contrast to recent English policy, has been a key aspect underpinning this process.

Welfare-through-Work and the Re-Regulation of Labour Markets in Denmark

This paper is positioned within theoretical perspectives that focus on welfare states as systems of power and negotiation between key social forces acting in and through the state apparatus. Despite an emerging consensus that UK welfare-state restructuring is deeply problematic, there appears to be reluctance, within the debate, to discuss viable alternatives to neoliberalism. In contrast to UK and North American strategies, Denmark has adopted a ‘welfare-through-work’ model, built around a more inclusive system of welfare reform. This article discusses its emergence, and focuses on the importance of Job Rotation as its leading-edge socio-economic strategy. It highlights recent conflicts and tensions within Job Rotation and, lastly, suggests lessons for the UK.

Re-stating the post-political: depoliticization, social inequalities, and city-region growth

This paper argues that city-region building debates and relatedly “post-political” literatures are missing critical perspectives on the state, particularly the state’s continued existence as a social relation and an arena for politics, its role in the regulation of uneven development and the conflicts and struggles that arise from this. The paper brings the state centrally into “post-political” debates via a critical analysis of the interrelationships between depoliticization and neoliberalism. Focusing on Sheffield (South Yorkshire, England) in the context of devolution and deal-making public policy, the paper explores the seemingly consensual vision-making dynamics of this city region and dissects the tensions around economic governance, welfare austerity and social inequalities to get a handle on the “post-political” depoliticized state in, and of, contemporary capitalism.

Governing the skills agenda: insights from the Sheffield city-region.

Skills are currently riding high on the political agenda and major changes are underway with respect to regulation and governance. We explore developments taking place in the Sheffield city-region, particularly the ‘skills strategy for Sheffield’ and its governance. We suggest that city-regions reinforce, and have the potential to increase, rather than resolve, the uneven development of labour markets and interlinked socio-spatial inequalities.

Hollowing out national agreements in the NHS? The case of “Improving Working Lives” under a “Turnaround” plan

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to consider the resilience of a national-level initiative (Improving Working Lives (IWL)) in the face of local-level initiative (Turnaround) in an NHS hospital and compare to Bach and Kessler’s (2012) model of public service employment relations. Design/methodology/approach Case study research consisting of 23 in-depth semi-structured interviews from a range of participants. Findings The principles behind IWL were almost entirely sacrificed in order to meet the financial objectives of Turnaround. This indicates the primacy of localised upstream performance management initiatives over the national-level downstream employee relations initiatives that form the basis of the NHS’ claim to model employer aspiration. Research limitations/implications The case study was conducted between 2007 and 2009. While the case study falls under previous government regime, the dualised system of national-level agreements combined with localised performance management – and the continued existence of both Turnaround and IWL – makes the results relevant at the time of writing. Originality/value Some studies (e.g. Skinner et al., 2004) indicated a perception that IWL was not trusted by NHS staff. The present study offers reasons as to why this may be the case.

Local economic strategies and area based initiatives—another view of improvement areas

In this continuing discussion on the role of industrial improvement areas the author extends the arguments to suggest how IIAs could be a progressive planning tool linking economic, property and land-use strategies.