Title:	Combating Poverty in Local Welfare Systems
Authors:	Håkan Johansson Alexandru Panican
Keywords:	Welfare Systems
Issue Date:	2016
Publisher:	Palgrave Macmillan
Description:	Fighting poverty and promoting social inclusion is a major challenge for most European welfare states, especially in the light of the 2008 fi nancial crisis. Th e European Union (EU) has been extraordinarily intervention- ist in debates and has made the fi ght against poverty one of its fi ve main EU 2020 headline targets. Under the banner of an ‘active inclusion strat- egy’, member states are encouraged to provide suffi cient income support, inclusive labour markets and quality services, pursuing such policies in a coordinated manner at local, regional, national and European level, between policy areas (minimum income support, activation and social services) and among actors (public and non-public), as a means of fi ght- ing poverty and social exclusion. Th e request for a multi-pillar approach and coordinated actions and actors is put forward as the best way of combating ‘the persistence of poverty and joblessness and the growing complexities of multiple disadvantages’ (EC 2008 /867, 2008; see also Küntzel 2012 ; Frazer and Marlier 2013 ; Clegg 2013 ). Th e EU’s active inclusion strategy resembles other EU strategies, as a form of a social investment approach to the challenges European welfare states are facing (EC 2013 ; Morel et al. 2013 ). Despite a growing political and academic interest into these issues, and despite the fact that it is at local level that most welfare policies are put into practice, except for research into social services, previous welfare studies have, to a large extent, focused on national policies, national reforms and national schemes and neglected to explore the relevance of a local dimension for comparative welfare research (Andreotti and Mingione 2014 ). We argue that the relevance of the local dimension is particularly pertinent in the light of three diff erent, but inter- related trends that encourage us to rethink much of welfare research: state rescaling, a shift from contributory to non-contributory schemes and greater involvement of civil society actors in fulfi lling welfare needs.
URI:	http://10.6.20.12:80/handle/123456789/54126
ISBN:	978-1-137-53190-2
Appears in Collections:	Population Studies

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