Karen Nielsen Breidahl

Social security provision targeted at immigrants: A forerunner for the general change of Scandinavian equal citizenship?A Danish case study

As in many other EU countries, economic sanctions and incentives particularly targeting immigrants have become substantially more important in Denmark during recent years. In many cases, the reduction of social rights has particularly affected immigrants and has encroached upon their specific status of social citizenship (for example, Morissens and Sainsbury, 2005; Sainsbury, 2006).

The Myth of Unadaptable Gender Roles: Attitudes towards Women’s Paid Work among Immigrants across 30 European countries

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.

Do Shared Values Promote Social Cohesion? If so, Which? Evidence from Denmark

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.

Eight attention points when evaluating large-scale public sector reforms

This chapter analyses the challenges related to evaluations of large-scale public sector reforms. It is based on a meta-evaluation of the evaluation of the reform of the Norwegian Labour Market and Welfare Administration (the NAV-reform) in Norway, which entailed both a significant reorganization of the central, regional and local government and a social policy reform. Meta-evaluations assess the usefulness of one or more evaluations and should not be confused with meta-analyses. The purpose of this meta-evaluation was to identify general principles for organizing the evaluations of large-scale public sector reforms. Based on the analysis, eight crucial points of attention when evaluating large-scale public sector reforms are elaborated. We discuss their reasons and argue that other countries will face the same challenges and thus can learn from the experiences of Norway. Preprint version – to be included in Handbook of Social Policy Evaluation: Hansen, M. B., Breidahl, K. N., Furubo, J.-E., & Halvorsen, A. 2017. Eight attention points when evaluating large-scale public sector reforms. In B. Greve (Ed.), Handbook of Social Policy Evaluation. London: Edward Elgar Publishing.

Bringing Different States in: How Welfare State Institutions can possibly influence socio-cultural dimensions of migrant incorporation

Abstract Migration scholars have long been concerned with understanding what influences the incorporation of migrants into their host societies. The theoretical development in this field has been dominated for several years by North American migration scholars who have not been much interested in the influence of welfare state institutions. In recent years, European migration scholars have, however, contributed to important insights on the impact of the national integration context on the socioeconomic incorporation of migrants. The aim of this article is to contribute to this burgeoning research field by drawing on insights from comparative welfare state research and thereby “bringing the state in”. Thus, the article proposes a theoretical framework for studying how the institutions of contemporary welfare states can possibly influence sociocultural dimensions of migrant incorporation. In the last part of the article, it is exemplified how these insights can be applied when studying the Danish welfare state in a comparative perspective, drawing on examples on the influence of family policies on migrants’ attitudes towards women’s paid work.

Building, breaking, overriding...?: Migrants and institutional trust in the Danish welfare state

Purpose Migrants constitute an interesting case concerning the question of how trust in welfare state institutions can emerge, as one can study their newly built relationships with such institutions in a distinct way. The Danish welfare state can be considered a “high trust” context. Against this background, the purpose of this paper is to provide an analysis of qualitative interviews with migrants on how institutional trust in the welfare state can emerge with migrants in Denmark as a case. Design/methodology/approach With the help of a multi-dimensional theoretical concept, this paper provides an analysis of qualitative interviews with migrants on how institutional trust in the welfare state can emerge. Findings A perceived experience of distributive justice appears to be of crucial importance for building trust. Furthermore, strong trust in the systemic checks and balances of the welfare state can “override” negative experiences at its access points, that is, welfare state professionals. Research limitations/implications Taking into account the relatively limited number of interviews, the presented claims drawn from the empirical material are limited. The aim is to reveal some (new) tendencies that can be investigated in future research. Originality/value The paper contributes to a deeper understanding of the complexity of trust-generating mechanisms.

Scandinavian exceptionalism? Civic integration and labour market activation for newly arrived immigrants

Since the late 1990s, a wide range of so-called new civic integration policies aimed at civilizing or disciplining newcomers have been introduced. Consequently, migration scholars have discussed whether a converging restrictive ‘civic turn’ has taken place in Western Europe or whether national models have been resilient: Based on an in-depth historical and comparative analysis of labour market activation policies targeting newly arrived immigrants in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark since the early 1990s, the article contributes to the overall question: To what extent do the institutional pathways of the Scandinavian welfare states prevail when confronted with newcomers? Activation policies targeting newly arrived immigrants exemplifies how the ambition of states to promote functional, individual autonomy is also an important, ongoing process in diverse policy areas of the welfare state and not restricted to early integration instruments.While the Scandinavian welfare states differ on a number of counts with respect to immigration control, national integration philosophies and citizenship policies, the article outlines how activation policies aimed at newly arrived immigrants share several features. One of the key factors in this turn involves path dependency from, among others, a lengthy tradition for strong state involvement and norms about employment. Another factor in this turn involves transnational policy learning. On some points, national versions of these policies are also found due to country-specific citizenship traditions, integration philosophies and party political constellations.

Evaluation of Large-Scale Public-Sector Reforms: A Comparative Analysis

Research on the evaluation of large-scale public-sector reforms is rare. This article sets out to fill that gap in the evaluation literature and argues that it is of vital importance since the impact of such reforms is considerable and they change the context in which evaluations of other and more delimited policy areas take place. In our analysis, we apply four governance perspectives (rational-instrumental perspective, rational interest–based perspective, institutional-cultural perspective, and chaos perspective) in a comparative analysis of the evaluations of two large-scale public-sector reforms in Denmark and Norway. We compare the evaluation process (focus and purpose), the evaluators, and the organization of the evaluation, as well as the utilization of the evaluation results. The analysis uncovers several significant findings including how the initial organization of the evaluation shows strong impact on the utilization of the evaluation and how evaluators can approach the challenges of evaluating large-scale reforms.

Work and Family Orientations Among Natives and Migrants: Deep Cultural Orientations or Flexible Adaption?

Whether women should be oriented towards the family or towards the labour market is one of the crucial questions individuals, families and societies face. Previous cross-national data indicate large cross-national variations even within the European countries. In some societies, especially in Southern Europe, women are oriented towards the family and undertake most of the domestic duties. In other societies, especially in the Nordic countries, women are oriented toward the labour market and many previously domestic duties are undertaken by the state. The article discusses whether these work-family orientations reflect deep cultural values about good child- and motherhood or flexible adaptions to current contexts. The former line of reasoning suggests that e.g. southern European family orientations and Nordic work orientations are embedded in stable cultural values, which are unlikely to change. The latter suggests that work-family orientations are flexible adaptions that change easily over time. The article investigates these two prepositions by analyzing to what extent and at what pace the work-family orientations of migrants adapts to new national contexts. The findings, based on European Social Survey, support the thesis of flexible adaption.