МУЛЬТИКУЛЬТУРАЛИЗМ В ЕВРОПЕ

Multiculturalism in Europe.Мультикультурализм в Европе

Migrants’ decision-process shaping work destination choice: the case of long-term care work in the United Kingdom and Norway

Escalating demands for formal long-term care (LTC) result in the reliance on migrant workers in many developed countries. Within Europe, this is currently framed by progressive European immigration policies favouring inter-European mobility. Using the UK and Norway as case studies, this article has two main aims: (1) to document changes in the contribution of European Union (EU) migrants to the LTC sectors in Western Europe, and (2) to gain further understanding of migrants’ decision-processes relating to destination and work choices. The UK and Norway provide examples of two European countries with different immigration histories, welfare regimes, labour market characteristics and cultural values, offering a rich comparison platform. The analysis utilizes national workforce datasets and data obtained from migrants working in the LTC sector in the UK and Norway (n = 248) and other stakeholders (n = 136). The analysis establishes a significant increase in the contribution of EU migrants (particularly from Eastern Europe) to the LTC sector in both the UK and Norway despite their different welfare regimes. The findings also highlight how migrant care workers develop rational decision-processes influenced by subjective perspectives of investments and returns within a context of wider structural migration barriers. The latter includes welfare and social care policies framing the conditions for migrants’ individual actions

Comfort in Numbers? Social Integration and Political Participation among Disability Benefit Recipients in Norway

There are growing concerns both in academic and political debates that the provision of cash transfers to people in economically active age groups does not support and might even undermine active social citizenship. In this article we study the social integration and political participation of disability benefit recipients in Norway. We anticipate that disability benefit recipients are less likely than others to participate in social and political arenas, but postulate that the degree of their social and political marginalisation depends on contextual factors. In particular we expect that the presence of a large proportion of disability benefit recipients in the local area where the individual disability benefit recipient lives will make it less likely that they will be marginalised in terms of social networks; we anticipate that this positive network effect will also spill over into participation in voluntary organisations and the propensity to vote in national elections. Analysing Norwegian survey-data, we find that disability benefit recipients are somewhat marginalised both socially and in terms of participation in voluntary organisations. In municipalities with a high proportion of disability benefit recipients, individuals belonging to this group are more likely to have close friends, but this beneficial contextual effect is not found to spill over into increased organisational and political participation.submittedVersionacceptedVersio

The New Politics of the Welfare State? A Case Study of Extra-Parliamentary Party Politics in Norway

According to the literature on the ‘new politics of the welfare state’, party politics plays a minor role in welfare policy outputs today. In this article, we ask what the degree of politicisation is below the level of government. Focusing on two specific policy areas –pension reform and anti-poverty policy – and both substantive and procedural aspects of politicisation in the case of Norway, we identify party policies and map intra-party decision-making prior to the 2005 general election. We first conclude that neither policy area seemed to be strongly politicised, but nonetheless, there were limits to the ‘depoliticisation’ of welfare policy even in a consensual state like Norway. Hence, we show – or confirm – that counter-forces might exist between and within political parties in advanced industrial societies, yet to varying degrees across welfare policy fields.acceptedVersio

STUDYING INEQUALITY IN INCOME DISTRIBUTION OF SINGLE-PERSON HOUSEHOLDS IN FOUR DEVELOPED COUNTRIES

The increasing frequency of single-person households has become a major economic phenomenon, and is likely to become an important political force. This paper focuses on differences related to inequality of income distribution among single-person households in Europe's four largest economies, i.e. France, Germany, Italy and the U.K. Income distribution was modeled in terms of individual characteristics using a parametric model with heterogeneous model parameters. Poverty differences were also broken down using the results of Biewen and Jenkins (2005 ) in order to understand the relationship between poverty and individual characteristics among countries. Copyright � 2006 The Authors; Journal compilation � International Association for Research in Income and Wealth 2006.