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From Public Assistance to Social Protection: Welfare State-building in European Nations

Maurizio Ferrara

in The Boundaries of Welfare: European Integration and the New Spatial Politics of Social Protection

This chapter traces the historical origins and early developments of European welfare states up to the Second World War in terms of external and internal boundary building. It highlights the role of ... More

This chapter traces the historical origins and early developments of European welfare states up to the Second World War in terms of external and internal boundary building. It highlights the role of cleavage and centre periphery structures in moulding institutional choices, in particular, the choice between a universal and an occupational approach to social insurance — the former prevailing in the Anglo-Saxon and Nordic countries, and the latter prevailing in Continental and South European countries.Less

Equal Opportunities or Social Closure in the Netherlands?

PAUL TESSER and JAAP DRONKERS

in Unequal Chances: Ethnic Minorities in Western Labour Markets

There are four major ethnic-minority groups in the Netherlands: labour migrants from Turkey and Morocco, together with migrants from former Dutch colonies in the Caribbean, namely, Antilles and ... More

There are four major ethnic-minority groups in the Netherlands: labour migrants from Turkey and Morocco, together with migrants from former Dutch colonies in the Caribbean, namely, Antilles and Surinam. Men from all four groups have lower labour-market participation and higher unemployment than the indigenous Dutch, and this holds for the second generation as well as for the first. First-generation Turkish and Moroccan women participate at considerably lower levels than indigenous women, whereas Surinamese and Antillean women participate at higher levels than their indigenous peers. Among second-generation women, however, these differences in participation have largely disappeared. The distribution of ethnic minorities across occupational classes also reveals a major change between generations. Overall, processes of social closure appear to continue to operate within Dutch society. Equal opportunities have not yet been achieved.Less

Conflict and Consensus

Andreas Wimmer

in Ethnic Boundary Making: Institutions, Power, Networks

Primordialist and constructivist authors have debated the nature of ethnicity “as such” and therefore failed to explain why its characteristics vary so dramatically across cases, displaying different ... More

Primordialist and constructivist authors have debated the nature of ethnicity “as such” and therefore failed to explain why its characteristics vary so dramatically across cases, displaying different degrees of social closure, political salience, cultural distinctiveness and historical stability. This chapter introduces a multi-level process theory to understand how these characteristics are generated and transformed over time. The theory assumes that ethnic boundaries are the outcome of the classificatory struggles and negotiations between actors situated in a social field. Three characteristics of a field—the institutional order, distribution of power and political networks—determine which actors will adopt which strategy of ethnic boundary making. The chapter then discusses under which conditions a shared understanding of the location and meaning of these boundaries will emerge. The nature of this consensus explains degrees of closure, salience, cultural differentiation and stability of an ethnic boundary. A final section identifies endogenous and exogenous mechanisms of change.Less

Conclusions

Andreas Wimmer

in Ethnic Boundary Making: Institutions, Power, Networks

This final chapter summarizes the major propositions and findings of the book. It reviews the units and strategies of analysis employed throughout the empirical chapters (non-ethnic units; ... More

This final chapter summarizes the major propositions and findings of the book. It reviews the units and strategies of analysis employed throughout the empirical chapters (non-ethnic units; disentangling ethnic from non-ethnic processes); recapitulates that the boundary making approach assumes a principally open outcome of group formation processes, including the emergence of non-ethnic and non-racialized forms of categorization and association; and it reviews the major hypotheses explored empirically: that inequality along ethnic lines leads to social closure and cultural difference; that a consensus on the location and meaning of boundaries enhances their politicization and social closure along these divides. The chapter concludes by pointing out future areas of research: to understand long-term boundary dynamics from a truly comparative point of view; to investigate how inequality along ethnic lines emerges and disappears; and how precisely ethnic and other forms of boundary making relate to each other beyond the acknowledgment of their co-existence, as in the “intersectionality” approach.Less

Social Closure

Donald Tomaskovic-Devey and Dustin Avent-Holt

in Relational Inequalities: An Organizational Approach

Social closure is a process through which some groups, implicitly or explicitly, draw categorical boundaries around themselves and others to monopolize resources. Social closure has two faces: ... More

Social closure is a process through which some groups, implicitly or explicitly, draw categorical boundaries around themselves and others to monopolize resources. Social closure has two faces: opportunity-hoarding for actors’ categorical in-group and exclusion of the out-group. We explore closure case studies around criminal records, occupational licensing, education, non-compete employment contracts, job segregation, sexual harassment, access to science and technology jobs, and discrimination based on race, gender, sexual orientation, and religion. The case studies also highlight the important role of organizational and institutional variation in the degree and incidence of closure processes. We conclude that closure processes can be challenged by usurpationary movements, institutional regulation, and interactional resistance.Less

Prestige, at Last: The Social Closure of the Stock Exchange

Alex Preda

in Framing Finance: The Boundaries of Markets and Modern Capitalism

This chapter deals with a neglected feature of financial markets: the role of status groups and prestige. It shows how in the eighteenth century, stock brokers lacked prestige and legitimacy. At the ... More

This chapter deals with a neglected feature of financial markets: the role of status groups and prestige. It shows how in the eighteenth century, stock brokers lacked prestige and legitimacy. At the turn of the nineteenth century, a process of socio-institutional enclosure began, which restricts access to brokerage activities and to transactions. Against the lack of a legal frame reinforcing financial transactions, prestige appeared as a means of building trust and legitimacy for stock exchange activities. Along with transaction rituals, rules of good social behavior, the dynastic transmission of brokerage privileges, social hierarchies, and the restricted access of outsiders to brokerage activities, another feature of social prestige emerged now on both sides of the Atlantic: the transformation of some brokers into “serious” authors, keen to straighten the public image of stock exchanges and of investment activities. Social closure should not be understood exclusively as professionalization, since it includes the opposite of the former: namely reaching out into society at large through inventing new activities such as writing.Less

You Can’t Shoot Everyone

Louis Corsino

in The Neighborhood Outfit: Organized Crime in Chicago Heights

This chapter turns more directly toward organized crime. It identifies the Chicago Heights boys and the mix of social capital processes, specifically the social closure and brokerage opportunities, ... More

This chapter turns more directly toward organized crime. It identifies the Chicago Heights boys and the mix of social capital processes, specifically the social closure and brokerage opportunities, that allowed this segment of the Chicago Outfit a near half century run as a highly profitable, successful criminal operation. Illegal activities associated with organized crime provided an avenue for social mobility. While these illegal operations existed from the beginning of Chicago Heights' incorporation as a city in the early 1900s, the 1920s saw a dramatic increase in the size and scope of these operations as Prohibition created a tremendous black market opportunity for illegal liquor. Exhibiting a strong entrepreneurial sense and a willingness to use violence to accomplish their goals, a select group of Italian residents in Chicago Heights allied themselves with Al Capone to gain control of the illegal liquor, gambling, and prostitution trades in the Heights.Less

Gypsies, Travellers and gorjers: conflict and cooperation

David M. Smith and Margaret Greenfields

in Gypsies and Travellers in housing: The decline of Nomadism

The structure and nature of social relations between housed Gypsies and Travellers and their non Gypsy neighbours is examined in this chapter. The function of mutual stereotypes and prejudice in ... More

The structure and nature of social relations between housed Gypsies and Travellers and their non Gypsy neighbours is examined in this chapter. The function of mutual stereotypes and prejudice in generating hostility and suspicion between different co-resident groups is examined and respondents’ experiences of verbal and physical attacks. The material then turns to the varied responses of housed Gypsies and Travellers to prejudice and hostility from the wider society and the range of culturally grounded strategies which may range from avoidance, conscious residential segregation and aggressively violent strategies. Through close observation and qualitative data the study is able to delineate the role of social relations that transcend their own kin and community networks to encompass relations with non Gypsy neighbours. These intergroup relations are based on processes of categorization between ‘locals’ on one hand and ‘newcomers’ on the other. Such distinctions recognise the similar structural location and social status of the former compared to the latter groups and a tacit awareness of parallel values and orientations to life in addition to length of attachment to locality.Less

Complementary and alternative medicine as an invisible health support workforce

Joana Almeida and Nelson Barros

in Support Workers and the Health Professions: The Invisible Providers of Health Care

In ageing Western societies where chronic conditions have become more prevalent, complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) practices and practitioners have performed an important role in areas ... More

In ageing Western societies where chronic conditions have become more prevalent, complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) practices and practitioners have performed an important role in areas such as health promotion, rehabilitation, and compassionate, preventive and palliative care. Yet collaborative partnership between CAM practitioners, other professionally qualified health care workers, and the state, has rarely materialised. By using a neo-Weberian social closure theory of the professions, this chapter examines the extent to which CAM practitioners have come to form part of an invisible and undervalued health support workforce, focusing on the interlinked societies of Brazil and Portugal. It will be suggested that CAM practitioners have resembled health support workers, especially in their statutorily unregulated status and/or subordinated role to the medical profession. In Brazil, CAM practices, but not CAM practitioners, are statutorily regulated; in Portugal, CAM practitioners, despite being statutorily regulated, remain marginalised. In this respect, CAM practitioners have been a largely invisible health support workforce, despite increasing public sympathy for their services and legitimation from the World Health Organization.Less

Perspectives on Ethnic Formation

in Shifting Ethnic Boundaries and Inequality in Israel: Or, How the Polish Peddler Became a German Intellectual

This chapter concludes the book by describing the Israeli ethnic formation from an individual point of view and from the point of view of students of race/ethnicity. The most important general ... More

This chapter concludes the book by describing the Israeli ethnic formation from an individual point of view and from the point of view of students of race/ethnicity. The most important general contribution of the study is to show that identity can drive social closure in addition to material interest, and to show one way in which the formation of ethnic groups can be linked to the emergence of ethnic closure. This chapter also offers three point of note. First, the book joins those arguing that race/ethnicity should be treated as mutable rather than stable categories. Second, this study is an example of how ethnicity can be treated as “relational,” that is, as a set of macrolevel social contrasts that give each other meaning. Third, with regards to cultural capital, this book may suggest new ways of operationalizing ethnicity.Less

Space, surveillance and modernity

David M. Smith and Margaret Greenfields

in Gypsies and Travellers in housing: The decline of Nomadism

This chapter sketches the broad context of increasing settlement by outlining the policy regime towards Gypsies and Travellers in the post war period. Its key argument is that the overall aims of ... More

This chapter sketches the broad context of increasing settlement by outlining the policy regime towards Gypsies and Travellers in the post war period. Its key argument is that the overall aims of postwar have been to halt nomadism and enforce assimilation into the general population. The first part of the chapter delineates the cumulative impact of progressive waves of legislation on the ability to live a nomadic life or to reside on caravan sites. The remainder of the chapter sets out three important theoretical accounts for explaining these policy trends and the position and status of Gypsies and Travellers in contemporary societies. These theoretical insights form the underlying assumptions and framework within which the empirical data in later chapters is situated.Less

Introduction: professional health regulation in the public interest

John Martyn Chamberlain

in Professional Health Regulation in the Public Interest: International Perspectives

This chapter provides a commentary on, and introduces, the collection of papers in this volume. It begins by outlining how professional forms of health care expertise have become increasingly subject ... More

This chapter provides a commentary on, and introduces, the collection of papers in this volume. It begins by outlining how professional forms of health care expertise have become increasingly subject over the last four decades to third-party scrutiny, as well as how we have witnessed greater public involvement in the monitoring and quality assurance of healthcare work, particularly in Western neo-liberal societies. It then discusses how these changes have led the ‘social closure’ model of professional work to become revised, and in doing so how this raises concerns regarding academic engagement with members of the public as part of a broader patient advocacy and policy reform agenda focused on the promotion of the public interest. This discussion helps set the scene for subsequent chapters, which together seek to unpack the complex relationships that exist between health care practitioners, civil society, the state and professional groups in a variety of different international borders and regulatory jurisdictions. In doing so, each author seeks to explore critically how calls for increased efficiency and cost effectiveness in healthcare are balanced with the need to promote the public interest through providing citizens with essential health services.Less