In policy and research, migration and the welfare state are often seen as being at odds. When ‘strangers’ enter the welfare state, the financial and social foundations of solidarity are said to crumble. A prominent question, therefore, is whether immigrants should have the same rights as the autochthonous population. Within this frame, migrants are often ‘objects’. This paper reports on qualitative research exploring what different types of labour migrants themselves think about the Dutch welfare state in general, and about giving social rights to immigrants, in particular. The differences in national backgrounds and levels of education in labour migrants’ views are striking: lower-educated Turkish and Polish migrants show little interest in the welfare state, whereas higher-educated Western Europeans seek welfare state security. Higher-educated Indian migrants find the welfare state a totally new concept, although after a while some come to appreciate it. A significant proportion of the questioned migrants, moreover, believe that people should not be entitled to welfare state rights immediately upon arrival. They favour ‘earned citizenship’, with the welfare state being a ‘contribution state’, but stress that migrants should not have to wait too long before being entitled to such rights. The paper also suggests new topics for further research in the increasingly important field of migration, diversity and the welfare state.

The paper aims to contribute to the normative debate concerning work enforcement in liberal democracies. In the late 1980s, OECD countries began to revert to the pre-welfare-state tradition of attributing unemployment to personal failure. The new welfare-to-work policies emphasised individual responsibility for securing employment. Stepping up job search requirements and sanctions for failure to meet them was presented as a public intervention that helps unemployed individuals return from dependency to autonomy. Jobseekers have been made to believe that success in obtaining employment depends on how doggedly they search for work and how adaptable they become to employer needs. These presumptions are challenged in the paper. Contracts that jobseekers are forced to sign with providers of employment services curtail their autonomy not only to the extent that they cannot avoid unproductive activity tests imposed on them, but also from a lifetime perspective in cases where they are forced into inferior jobs. In job-short economies, employers are also certain to discriminate against disadvantaged jobseekers notwithstanding the intensity of their effort or openness to occupational change.

The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) formulates the rights of children in terms of provision, protection and participation. CRC implies a multi-dimensional view of children's welfare, including agency. This enables us to rethink the way we research and design policies aimed at promoting child welfare. In the past, Sweden has been seen as a forerunner when it comes to children's rights. However, the weak imprint of CRC on Swedish legislation and CRC implementation is not only a puzzle but also this apparent lack of impact makes it an interesting test case for exploring post-CRC policy developments. The purpose of the study is to identify what has prevented the evolution of Swedish social policy in this domain. We propose a framework for analysing policies aimed at promoting children's welfare (child policy) that goes beyond ‘family policy’. This, we argue, is critical for identifying obstacles to such a policy evolution. The framework is normatively anchored in CRC and theoretically inspired by the notion of participatory rights. By examining the legal reform work in Sweden over the past three decades with regard to how children's right to voice is treated in three areas of social service delivery, we observe that the lawmaker recognises parents’ rather than children's participatory rights. The lack of recognition of children's agency implies that a reconceptualisation of child welfare is necessary in order to unlock the stalemate in child policy development in Sweden, as well as to dissolve the tension between children as ‘beings’ and ‘becomings’.

This paper provides new empirical evidence about English and Welsh charities operating internationally. It answers basic questions unaddressed in existing work: how many charities work overseas, and how has this number changed over time? In which countries do they operate, and what underlies these geographical patterns? It makes use of a unique administrative dataset which records every country in which each charity operates. The results show a sizeable increase in the number of charities working overseas since the mid-1990s. They show that charities are much more likely to work in countries with colonial and linguistic ties to the UK, and less likely to work in countries with high levels of instability or corruption. This considerable geographical unevenness, even after controlling for countries’ population size and poverty, illustrates the importance of supply-side theories and of institutional factors to an understanding of international voluntary activity. The paper also serves to provide a new perspective on international charitable operation: while it is the large development charities that are household names, the results reveal the extent of small-scale ‘grassroots’ registered charitable activity that links people and places internationally, and the extent of activity in ‘developed’ as well as ‘developing’ country contexts.

This paper examines processes of adaptive governance and authoritarian resilience through the lens of community governance, bringing together hitherto unrelated fields of study. It argues first that adaptation has unintended consequences that can threaten stability but do not necessarily cause regime crisis. Second, it contends that the structural fault-lines of institutionalised categorical inequality, marketisation, and professionalization, along with the pathologies of Leninist authoritarianism, undermine adaptive community governance. The paper draws on qualitative research in two neighbourhoods of Shanghai.

Long-term unemployment can negatively impact health and well-being, and is a central focus of governments seeking to address poverty and social exclusion. Little is known about how individuals experience programmes aimed at addressing long-term unemployment and consequently the client-centred indicators of ‘success’. In-depth interviews were carried out with 31 long-term unemployed individuals engaged in a ‘life-first’ programme integrating vocational assistance with intensive personal strengths-based support. The participants in this programme faced multiple disadvantages including employment and educational barriers as well as a range of significant personal issues. They equated successful outcomes in the programme with receiving a wealth of psychosocial and practical assistance in addition to vocational support, and having a case manager who approached these issues as a whole. Findings suggest that, in order to provide the best chance of gaining and maintaining employment, programmes should address, in tandem, personal and vocational barriers facing those who are long-term unemployed.

Concern about the increasing use of payday lending led the UK's Financial Conduct Authority to introduce landmark reforms in 2014/15. While these reforms have generally been welcomed as a way of curbing ‘extortionate’ and ‘predatory’ lending, this paper presents a more nuanced picture based on a theoretically-informed analysis of the growth and nature of payday lending combined with original and rigorous qualitative interviews with customers. We argue that payday lending has grown as a result of three major and inter-related trends: growing income insecurity for people both in and out of work; cuts in state welfare provision; and increasing financialisation. Recent reforms of payday lending do nothing to tackle these root causes. Our research also makes a major contribution to debates about the ‘everyday life’ of financialisation by focusing on the ‘lived experience’ of borrowers. We show that, contrary to the rather simplistic picture presented by the media and many campaigners, various aspects of payday lending are actually welcomed by customers, given the situations they are in. Tighter regulation may therefore have negative consequences for some. More generally, we argue that the regul(aris)ation of payday lending reinforces the shift in the role of the state from provider/redistributor to regulator/enabler.

Evidence on social determinants of health and health equity (SDH/HE) is abundant but often not translated into effective policy action by governments. Governments’ health policies have continued to privilege medical care and individualised behaviour-change strategies. In the light of these limitations, the 2008 Commission on the Social Determinants of Health called on health agencies to adopt a stewardship role; to take action themselves and engage other government sectors in addressing SDH/HE. This article reports on research using analysis of health policy documents – published by nine Australian national or regional governments – to examine the extent to which the Australian health sector has taken up such a role.

We found policies across all jurisdictions commonly recognised evidence on SDH/HE and expressed goals to improve health equity. However, these goals were predominantly operationalised in health care and other individualised strategies. Relatively few strategies addressed SDH/HE outside of access to health care, and often they were limited in scope. National policies on Aboriginal health did most to systemically address SDH/HE.

We used Kingdon's (2011) multiple streams theory to examine how problems, policies and politics combine to enable, partially allow, or prevent action on SDH/HE in Australian health policy.