Welfare regimes and welfare use: social assistance patterns an an outcome of minimum income support policies in German and Italian cities

"This working paper focuses on one hand on the aspects of the social assistance programmes directed to combat poverty and social exclusion, on the other hand it focuses on the risks of dependency associated with longterm recipiency of social assistance basic income support in Germany and Italy. The aim is to describe the institutional background in both countries and then re-explain relative differences in the risk of remaining on social assistance benefits in selected local contexts (Bremen, Bozen, Milan, Turin). In the multivariate models of social assistance receipt, we relate the risk of social assistance recipiency to the institutional settings and demographic characteristics of recipients, e.g., gender, age, nationality, household type, number of children and seasonal effects of terminating.

Housing Vienna: The Socio-Spatial Effects of Inclusionary and Exclusionary Mechanisms of Housing Provision

The provision of housing plays a decisive role in segregation processes. In a European context increasingly influenced by variegated neo-liberal housing policies, Vienna’s approach is characterised by generous access to social housing. This inclusive strategy aims at actively preventing segregation and the isolation of certain groups. Over the last 30 years, however, reconfigured multi-level arrangements and wider contextual changes have transformed Vienna’s housing governance. This article explores how. In particular, it aims at disentangling the relationship between housing policy reforms at multiple policy levels and the changes of the mechanisms shaping the access to tenure segments and residential segregation in Vienna. Through the use of process tracing, we identify critical junctures of housing governance and relate them to housing segmentation and segregation measures over a period of approximately 30 years. Our findings show that reforms on multiple levels produce an increasingly deregulated private rental market and an increasingly fragmented access to a diversified provision of social housing. From a spatial point of view, persistent patterns of segregation blend with new ones, leading to decreasing segregation characterised by a more even spatial distribution of low and high-status groups. At the same time, both groups show very low, but slightly increased levels of isolation. Tenant profiles in social housing are, however, generally still very mixed. Balancing the trade-off between a social mix and social targeting without excluding residents in need will remain the main challenge for Vienna’s social housing model

Territorial Configurations of School‐To‐Work Outcomes in Europe

Comparative research on school-to-work transitions mainly focused on country differences, examining the variation in institutional design and its impact on shaping youth labour market outcomes. The field has been dominated by a sort of methodological nationalism assuming nation states as homogeneous objects of comparison, while the territorial variations in youth transitions among sub-national territories have been less explored, notwithstanding their potential impact on life chances. In this article, we look at the outcomes of transitions in EU regions, comparing regional configurations of school-to-work transitions and their change over time. Is it possible to identify differences among groups of regions? To what extent do these patterns change over time? In order to answer these questions, we construct and analyse a longitudinal and systematic set of indicators that combine regional aggregated outcomes of transitions from education to work and regional contextual traits at the Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics level 2 for the period 2007-2019. We perform two cluster analyses to describe regional differences and trends over time. The findings provide novel insights into the characteristics and patterns of an unequal geography of youth opportunities in Europe

Youth Labor Market Integration in European Regions

Countries' institutional configurations and structural characteristics play an important role in shaping transitions from school to work. Recent empirical evidence shows significant regional and territorial differences in youth unemployment and labor market participation. Along this research strand, we argue in favor of a place-sensitive approach to youth labor market integration in order to address the regional disparities of young people’s opportunities. In order to investigate the synergic effect of different contextual configurations, we construct a composite measure, namely, the youth labor market integration (YLMI) index. This considers a wide range of indicators of the access, exclusion, and duration of the transition into employment at the regional level. The YLMI index allows cross-regional and longitudinal comparisons of the European Union (EU) local labor markets and youth employment opportunities

Drivers of youth labour market integration across european regions

Territorial disparities and youth labour markets have been often considered as separated themes, due to challenges indata availability. Comparative regional or sub-regional research on youth labour market integration have been therefore scarse. In this article, we address this gap by presenting a composite measure of Youth Labour Market Integration (YLMI) that covers a wide range of indicators and shedslight on the EU territorial divide of young peoples ́opportunitiesat regional level. In order to build the YLMI index, we use benefit-of-the-doubt-weighting, a seminal methodology on composite indicators (CI) that combines sequence with conditional weights based on the range of each sub-indicator. To proof the usefulness of YLMI, we analyze the evolution of regional youth labour market integration in the EU before and after the economic crisis; andthe trends of homogenization or differentiation across EU territories. Furthermore, we investigate to what extent employment conditions, skills supply and technological resourcesexplain cross-regional variations in youth labour market integration

How Context Matters: Challenges of Localizing Participatory Budgeting for Climate Change Adaptation in Vienna

Participatory budgeting originally aimed to promote greater political representation and resource distribution for vulnerable populations. As it globally circulates, however, existing literature points out that its local interpretations and implementations often fall short of proper tools and mechanisms to advance its emancipatory potential. So far, the roles of different actors, objectives, and toolkits that contribute to diverging local experiences and outcomes have been widely studied. In contrast, extant research has rarely addressed the implications of different spatial contexts and their challenges—and the implicit potential—considering the distinctive institutional arrangements and opportunity structures at the urban scale. This article investigates how the policy idea of participatory budgeting landed in Vienna at the district level in 2017 (Partizipatives BürgerInnen-Budget), its outcomes, and how it evolved into a city-level project for climate change adaptation (Wiener Klimateam). It explores how the local institutional and structural conditions—including the political backing for such initiatives—influence the motivations, expectations, and experiences among different governmental stakeholders at multiple governance levels, shaping place-specific outcomes of participatory budgeting. It unpacks the specific opportunities and constraints of the deployed participatory tools in budgeting processes, according to three core values of democratic governance (legitimacy, justice, and effectiveness). The conclusion discusses the potential trade-offs between these three dimensions and argues that the current form of participatory budgeting in Vienna may increase legitimacy in the process but have less of an impact on the effectiveness of the delivery and the empowerment of vulnerable populations in the outcome

Exploring urban and regional infrastructure from a spatial perspective

Urban and regional infrastructures regain interdisciplinary interest in course of the ‘infrastructural turn’. Contemporary questions exceed beyond engineering and technology but reach into social, political, economic, and ecological spheres. Therefore, the ARL:Univie International Summer School 2021 “Urban and Regional Infrastructures” invited international young researchers to Vienna to discuss the state-of-the-art of infrastructure-related research. This special issue compiles the contributions and opens up the discussion on the present role, effects and future challenges of urban and regional infrastructures to an interdisciplinary planning-oriented scientific community

Urban poverty patterns in Italy: the case of Milan

After an overall view on urban poverty in italy, this article considers two main questions: 1. Health and Social Services, in Milano (and their institutional segmentation, main characteristics of the Italian Social Services, particularly the expected measures in favour of the poors; 2. the appliers for certain measures, their main characteristics, the features of their needs... These two views on poverty permit to analyse the spatial repartitioin of poverty in Milano on the basis of an empirical research carried by the author. Spatial models are identified even if they do not allow to find a concentration of poverty and segregation as we can see in the great cities of other industrialized countries, particularly of United States and Great Britain. In Milano it is rather further mention to a micro-spatial concentration of poverty than to a ghettoization of the poors.Les types de pauvreté urbaine en Italie. Le cas de Milan. Après un aperçu général de la pauvreté urbaine en Italie, l'auteur étudie plus particulièrement deux questions qu'il estime essentielles : L'assistance sociale à Milan (et sa fragmentation institutionnelle, principale caractéristique des services sociaux italiens), en particulier les mesures prises en faveur des personnes nécessiteuses ; 2. les demandeurs d'aide, leurs caractéristiques majeures, l'état des besoins... Ces deux questions servent de base à une analyse de la distribution spatiale de la pauvreté à Milan, à partir de recherches empiriques menées par l'auteur. Des modèles spatiaux sont identifiés même s'ils ne permettent pas de faire apparaître la concentration de pauvreté et de ségrégation rencontrée dans d'autres pays industrialisés, notamment les Etats-Unis et la Grande-Bretagne. A Milan, il est plutôt question d'une concentration micro-spatiale de la pauvreté que d'une ghettoïsation des pauvres.Kazepov Yuri. Urban poverty patterns in Italy: the case of Milan . In: Espace, populations, sociétés, 1995-3. Les marginalités urbaines. pp. 329-340