Readers will be aware that one of the Journal of Social Policy's regular features, the Social Policy Digest, is being relaunched as a web-based publication.

This paper reports findings from research into the possibility that mobility-related social exclusion could be affected by an increase in access to virtual mobility – access to opportunities, services and social networks, via the Internet – amongst populations that experience exclusion. Transport is starting to be recognised as a key component of social policy, particularly in light of a number of recent studies, which have highlighted the link between transport and social exclusion, suggesting that low access to mobility can reduce the opportunity to participate in society – a finding with which this research concurs. Following the identification of this causal link, the majority of studies suggest that an increase in access to adequate physical mobility can provide a viable solution to mobility-related aspects of social exclusion.

This paper questions the likelihood that increased physical mobility can, by itself, provide a fully viable or sustainable solution to mobility-related aspects of social exclusion. Findings from both a desk study and public consultation suggest that virtual mobility is already fulfilling an accessibility role, both substituting for and supplementing physical mobility, working to alleviate some aspects of mobility-related social exclusion in some sectors of society. The paper incorporates an analysis of the barriers to and problems with an increase in virtual mobility in society, and concludes that virtual mobility could be a valuable tool in both social and transport policy.

Developing the equality agenda has been a major preoccupation of policy intervention in Northern Ireland since Direct Rule from London was instituted in 1972. This paper examines how policy has developed and its effectiveness. The paper highlights new developments since the Belfast Agreement of 1998 and examines in particular new attempts to mainstream equality in the policy process. The paper concludes by suggesting that the Northern Ireland experience has much to offer students of social policy elsewhere.

Standard accounts of unemployment protection and labour market policy reform tend to put France and the UK at opposing ends of the spectrum of values and policy directions in Europe. British efforts in the 1990s of switching emphasis from ‘passive’ benefit payment towards promoting participation in ‘active’ programmes of labour market integration are widely understood as a product of liberalism, individualism and increasing labour market flexibility, introducing a degree of workfare into the overall structure of unemployment support. By contrast, in France the resistance of traditional values and a ‘social treatment of unemployment’ are often portrayed as having put a brake on labour market reform and retrenchment of unemployment protection. After a reflection on the respective national discourses, the article challenges this view and points to a more complex reality that includes not only acknowledgement of labour market differences but also trends of convergence and counterintuitive developments. Secondly, it claims that in the 1990s Britain and France have both moved increasingly towards an unemployment policy based on activation, but in forms which reflect, to a great extent, different political incentive structures. The political implications of differentially institutionalised interests have in this way driven unemployment policy in different, but not opposing, directions. Recognition of this more nuanced reality should enable a better theoretical understanding of the social and political conditions for successful activation policies.

A convincing argument can be made that US income maintenance policy would be better housed under the Secretary of Labour than with the Secretary of Health and Human Services. Begun almost 30 years ago, the transformation of public assistance policy into labour policy reached fruition with the passage of the groundbreaking Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (PRWORA), a bill that would dramatically transform the face of the American welfare state. Despite the inclusion of important welfare policies, the PRWORA was essentially labour policy clothed in welfare terminology. This article examines the metamorphosis of public assistance policy into labour policy and proposes alternatives to promote durable labour force attachment as well as ways to ease former recipients into the workforce through equity-based labour policies.

The article critically examines the assumption implicit in the research on social solidarity and popular attitudes that institutional solidarity equates with mutual care in society. Following a review of a selection of recent empirical research on social solidarity and popular attitudes to welfare it is concluded that the evidence points to general support for welfare based on self-interest and the principle of mutual insurance rather than social altruism. The analysis proceeds by arguing that social and economic changes which have resulted in social polarisation have weakened ‘functional democracy’ (the reciprocal dependency of one social group or class on another) leading to possible ‘decivilising tendencies’ and a decline in mutual empathy. The article argues that post-emotionalism may be the result of these processes: the breakdown in mutual knowledge across the class divide; the intellectualisation of feelings; interaction based on false ‘niceness’; the manipulation of emotions. The paper concludes by suggesting that post-emotional attitudes are the by-product of government social steering towards amoral familism in social policy through the provision of a ‘vocabulary of motives’ which are negative to state welfare.

‘Feminist’ social policy has done an important job in developing new concepts for studying welfare state variation. But just like ‘mainstream’ social policy, gender-sensitive analyses have their blind spots. This article argues that differences in policies towards children remain an understudied area, and that developing concepts for varying policy approaches to children can increase our understanding of social political differences. Two countries – the UK and Norway – are juxtaposed in the empirical analysis, which centres on policies towards children living with one parent and the development of universal child benefits. The empirical discussion suggests that the UK traditionally has been closer to an ‘organic’ view of the family, while Norway has been closer to an ‘individual’ view. Two dimensions are highlighted: the separation of parenting and partnering for the purposes of social benefits, and the extent to which the ‘worthiness’ of the parents determine transfers to children. Both these dimensions have the potential to influence strongly distribution between families with children, as well as the legitimacy of the benefits. They should therefore be of crucial importance in comparative studies of family policy and social policy.

One of the acknowledged limitations of British welfare-to-work policies has been that they do not necessarily succeed in assisting people with multiple problems and needs. This article will first examine conflicting aspects of welfare-to-work policies and the conflict between welfare-to-work and the concept of work–life balance, particularly as this may apply to people whose lives are especially difficult. Secondly, the article reports on the general findings of a small-scale qualitative study of the labour market experiences of people with multiple problems and needs and, more particularly, an analysis of the discursive strategies used by participants in the study. The article concludes with some observations about how welfare-to-work might be re-conceptualised to accommodate ontological as well as practical life needs.