Franca van Hooren

Varieties of migrant care work: Comparing patterns of migrant labour in social care:

Throughout Europe migrant workers are increasingly employed to provide elderly care services. This article presents a comparative analysis of the role of migrant workers in elderly care in Italy, the Netherlands and England. It incorporates both private and agency-based employment. Based on the analysis of survey data and expert interviews it is found that in all cases migrant workers work longer hours and do more night shifts than their native peers. Between-country differences in the importance of migrant workers in social care can be explained primarily by differences in social care policies and care regimes, while the impact of immigration policies is more ambiguous. It is argued that a familialistic care regime induces a ‘migrant in the family’ model of care, while a liberal care regime leads to a ‘migrant in the market’ model of employment and a social democratic care regime creates no particular demand for migrant workers.Throughout Europe migrant workers are increasingly employed to provide elderly care services. This article presents a comparative analysis of the role of migrant workers in elderly care in Italy, the Netherlands and England. It incorporates both private and agency-based employment. Based on the analysis of survey data and expert interviews it is found that in all cases migrant workers work longer hours and do more night shifts than their native peers. Between-country differences in the importance of migrant workers in social care can be explained primarily by differences in social care policies and care regimes, while the impact of immigration policies is more ambiguous. It is argued that a familialistic care regime induces a ‘migrant in the family’ model of care, while a liberal care regime leads to a ‘migrant in the market’ model of employment and a social democratic care regime creates no particular demand for migrant workers.

The shock routine: economic crisis and the nature of social policy responses

ABSTRACT The idea that moments of crisis form opportunities for fundamental policy change is widespread in political science and public policy. It is usually associated with historical institutionalism and the notion of ‘critical junctures’. On the basis of an in-depth analysis of social policy responses in Australia, Belgium, the Netherlands and Sweden over the course of four global economic shocks, we ask whether the notion of critical junctures is useful in understanding the nature of change triggered by crisis. The main empirical finding is that fundamental change in the aftermath of an exogenous shock is the exception rather than the rule. Instead, incremental ‘crisis routines’ based on existing policy instruments are overwhelmingly used to deal with economic hardship. We discuss these findings in the light of the psychological ‘threat-rigidity’ effect and reflect on their consequences for theories of comparative policy analysis and institutional change.

Political Parties and Social Policy Responses to Global Economic Crises: Constrained Partisanship in Mature Welfare States

Based on empirical findings from a comparative study on welfare state responses to the four major economic shocks (the 1970s oil shocks, the early 1990s recession, the 2008 financial crisis) in four OECD countries, this article demonstrates that, in contrast to conventional wisdom, policy responses to global economic crises vary significantly across countries. What explains the cross-national and within-case variation in responses to crises? We discuss several potential causes of this pattern and argue that political parties and the party composition of governments can play a key role in shaping crisis responses, albeit in ways that go beyond traditional partisan theory. We show that the partisan conflict and the impact of parties are conditioned by existing welfare state configurations. In less generous welfare states, the party composition of governments plays a decisive role in shaping the direction of social policy change. By contrast, in more generous welfare states, i.e., those with highly developed automatic stabilisers, the overall direction of policy change is regularly not subject to debate. Political conflict in these welfare states rather concerns the extent to which expansion or retrenchment is necessary. Therefore, a clear-cut partisan impact can often not be shown.

Responding to free movement: quarantining mobile union citizens in European welfare states

ABSTRACT It is often held that free movement within the European Union and the expansion of social rights of mobile citizens by the European Court of Justice place national welfare states under pressure, potentially leading to welfare retrenchment. Yet thorough empirical investigation of this claim has been surprisingly limited. In this article, we distinguish three possible responses to such pressures: ‘embedding’, the inclusion of Union citizens in the welfare system; ‘quarantining’, restrictive measures excluding mobile Union citizens; and ‘retrenchment’, general cutbacks in benefit programmes. Through a longitudinal comparative case study of generous non-contributory welfare benefits in Denmark and the Netherlands, we find general welfare retrenchment in response to Europeanisation strikingly limited. Instead, welfare states remain resilient by creatively quarantining mobile Union citizens from the coverage of social benefits. Legal cultures and degrees of politicization are important factors, shaping the pathways towards these creative but exclusionary responses.

Migrant Care Work in Europe: Variety and Institutional Determinants

Throughout Europe, immigrants are becoming increasingly important as employees in the care sector. Migrants from many different origins, ranging from the Philippines to Zimbabwe, and from Peru to Poland and Romania, work in Western European countries to provide care services. Some work for care providing agencies and others are directly employed by families. Some work on an hourly base, others live in with the family for which they work. Some have completely formal employment relations, while others work irregularly, and everything in between.

The Governmentalization of the Trade Union and the Potential of Union-Based Resistance. The Case of Undocumented Migrant Domestic Workers in the Netherlands Making Rights Claims

Ambivalence about rights is well known: rights may both challenge existing injustices while simultaneously re-enforcing sovereign regulatory control over citizens. In this article, we focus on the paradox that potentially radical and transformative claims to rights are made at a site – civil society – that under liberal governmentality has increasingly become a site of government. By exploring the unionization of undocumented migrant domestic workers (MDWs) in the Netherlands, we aim to show how rights claims are shaped and controlled by civil society. Using the analytical category of (in)visibility, the case study discloses the dualistic role of the union. On the one hand, the union operated as a site of resistance supporting undocumented MDWs to make their rights claims. On the other hand, it operated as a site of government of the same undocumented MDWs by selectively promoting work-related rights claims and excluding more radical claims for the right to come and go.

Recession in the 1990s: The Resistible Rise of Neoliberalism

Throughout the 1980s, international financial markets expanded markedly due to improvements in information technology and deregulation. Financial liberalisation was primarily inspired by the United States and the United Kingdom — where it was pushed by the Reagan and Thatcher governments. Yet small open OECD economies readily took part in this trend by liberalising their markets and, as a consequence, grew more vulnerable to external shocks (Kurzer, 1993; Quinn and Inclan, 1997; Simmons et al., 2006). Financial market growth fuelled a credit boom once OECD economies had recovered from the crisis of the 1970s. Low oil prices in the mid-1980s gave an additional positive impetus to the global economy. Global economic growth peaked in 1989–1990 (Allen, 1999; Jonung, 2009).

How the Countries Compare

This chapter introduces the four countries under consideration, and provides important background information for readers when later examining these same states’ social policy reactions during times of crisis. The focus is on small, open economies of roughly similar size in terms of population and GDP — namely Australia, Belgium, the Netherlands and Sweden.1 We employ a ‘diverse cases’ research design (Seawright and Gerring, 2008) that aims at a high degree of representativeness of the cases while, at the same time, using the variation on several theoretically relevant variables for multiple comparisons between cases. The countries chosen vary regarding the institutional characteristics of their political systems, their systems of interest intermediation, and their welfare state regimes. In this chapter, some central quantitative indicators are used to embed the cases within the larger group of OECD countries.

The Politics of Crisis Response

This chapter explores the politics of social policy responses to economic crisis from a theoretical perspective. After explaining why the welfare state is relevant as an object of research in the context of crisis, a typology of social policy responses is presented. Subsequently, we elaborate on some theoretical approaches that may help to explain the diversity of crisis responses. More specifically, we develop working hypotheses to explain the variation on the two dimensions of the dependent variable, namely the direction of change and the quality of change, that is, whether changes are merely incremental or fundamental. Explanations provided here build on insights garnered from political science, economics and sociology. The chapter closes with a section on the research design and methods used in this book.

Managing the Global Financial Crisis of 2008 and Its Aftermath: The Role of Social Policy

The financial crisis of 2008 consists of a succession of four crisis phases that started with the housing crisis in the United States and was followed by the worldwide credit crisis, the recession of 2009 and the European sovereign debt crisis from 2010 onwards. At the time of writing (spring 2012), it is still unclear when and how the recovery will take hold across the OECD, or whether current developments will lead to yet another phase of crisis or not. A number of countries have turned the corner, but may still be affected by the problems of massive indebtedness and the structural weakness of some countries, given the high degree of interdependence of the world economy.