Marjo Kuronen

The motivation, professional development and identity of social work students in four European countries

Four European Universities (University of Durham, UK; University of Jyväskylä, Finland; University of Ljubljana, Slovenia; and Magdeburg-Stendal University of Applied Sciences, Germany) have been collaborating on an EC-funded Erasmus Curriculum Development Project (2001–03) in order to enhance the European dimension in their programmes of social work education. As part of this co-operation, a comparative study of the student groups in each country has been undertaken. The aim of the study is to examine and analyse students’ beliefs about social work as a profession, as well as their personal motivations for training as social workers and their aspirations for their subsequent careers upon completion of their studies. A questionnaire was developed in order to gather data from all students at the outset of their university-based social work education in each of the four countries. In this article, the authors present and analyse findings from this questionnaire. In identifying and comparing the concerns of social work students from diverse cultural contexts at the beginning of their professional education, it is possible to identify some key themes within, and test the concept of, European social work.

Comparing local strategies and practices: recollections from two qualitative cross-national research projects

The article is based on methodological reflections and recollections from two qualitative cross-national research projects, one of them comparing Finland and Scotland, and the other one Scotland and Spain. One of them was a case-oriented study of local regeneration strategies in two cities, while the other one used an ethnographic approach for the study of local practices on maternity and child healthcare services. The article is based on the authors’ dialogue and it contributes to the discussion about the value of a qualitative approach in cross-national comparisons and its place in the field of comparative research. It points at its advantages in enabling the analysis of societies and their specific features from inside to recognize cultural and social contexts, but it also draws attention to some specific problems and challenges concerning qualitative cross-national research by providing concrete examples from the two pieces of research.

Vertical Governance, National Regulation and Autonomy of Local Policy Making

This chapter introduces a categorization of the 11 European countries according to their general vertical governance structures between national, regional and local levels in welfare policy making. It investigates the extent to which, and how, local policies and service provision are regulated and controlled from the national state level, and how much space this leaves for local policy actors in welfare policy formation. The analysis takes into account that local welfare policies are formulated in the context of national and to some extent international policies. The 11 countries can be divided into three groups, having a centralized (England, Ireland), multi-level (Italy, Spain, France, Germany) or decentralized (Denmark, Finland, Estonia, Hungary, the Czech Republic) vertical governance system. More detailed analysis of different policy fields shows that vertical governance between territorial levels differs from one sector to another.

The Relationships Between Local and National Childcare Policies – A Comparison of Nordic and Southern European Cities

We start by comparing the childcare systems in the 11 European cities, looking particularly at whether the childcare provision in these cities follows national provision levels or not. We then focus on analyzing the relationships between local and national childcare policies in four European cities: Bologna (Italy) and Terrassa (Spain) from Southern Europe, and Jyvaskyla (Finland) and Aalborg (Denmark) from the Nordic countries. The availability and use of childcare services are analyzed, as are other factors influencing the possibilities and obstacles of labour market participation for mothers with young children. The aim of this analysis is to demonstrate the significance of local welfare systems in their socio-cultural context and to understand the scope that local authorities have to draft local policies and thus to divert from national policy definitions. Local policy making also brings rigid welfare regime categories into question.

The contested concept of vulnerability – a literature review

ABSTRACT The concept of vulnerability is widely used in the social sciences as well as in policy making, health and social care services and in social work, referring to a variety of groups or individuals, but it has rarely been theoretically defined or analysed. This article provides a literature review on how vulnerability has been used and defined in academic, peer-reviewed articles published in international social science journals between 2000 and 2016. The aim is to analyse and clarify critically the concept for social work research. The article analyses themes and topics connected to vulnerability, how gender is related to vulnerability and how vulnerability is conceptualised in these articles. The analysis showed that there is an important critical commentary on the concept, but only a few efforts to specify, theoretically analyse, reconceptualise or use the concept in an innovative way. The authors suggest that in social work research, instead of vulnerable groups or individuals we should focus on vulnerable life situations, and the role of the welfare services in reducing but possibly also (re)producing vulnerability. It is also important to recognise the temporal, situational, relational, and structural nature of vulnerability.