This volume represents the outcome of two years of intensive debate about the future of Europe. It aims to provide the European Union with a vision: one that will unite all of its citizens and help to create the democratic legitimacy that the EU currently lacks. It builds on the first book on social quality, The Social Quality of Europe, which introduced the concept and which has been enthusiastically received by both the scientific and policy communities. The book develops three crucial elements of social quality: the theoretical validity of the concept, its practical application, and its identity or `genetic code'. It establishes an independent identity for social quality, with a unique focus on the quality of the social, which enables it to act as the rationale for economic, social, and cultural policies and, therefore, an escape route from the dominance of narrow economic thinking in policy making.

Social quality thinking emerged from a critique of one-sided policies by breaking through the limitations previously set by purely economistic paradigms. By tracing its expansion and presenting different aspects of social quality theory, this volume provides an overview of a more nuanced approach, which assesses societal progress and introduces proposals that are relevant for policy making. Crucially, important components emerge with research by scholars from Asia, particularly China, eastern Europe, and other regions beyond western Europe, the theory’s place of origin. As this volume shows, this rich diversity of approaches and their cross-national comparisons reveal the increasingly important role of social quality theory for informing political debates on development and sustainability.

This book looks at subjective and objective individual well-being and family, community and social life, relating quality of life to other contemporary concepts such as social capital, social inclusion and health inequality and sets them in an international and global perspective.

This volume presents a compilation of composite indicators created in order to measure important aspects of the quality of European societies. It examines three main questions: do Europeans live in good societies and enjoy good lives; are European societies becoming better as time passes, or is their quality slowly deteriorating; is the quality of life of Europe’s citizens improving over time or is it gradually and irrecoverably getting worse. The volume uses a precise and rigorous system of information to answer these questions and to assess the current situation and monitor the quality of European societies. It describes and discusses fourteen key domains, and per chapter, presents five rankings of EU countries based on composite indicators, which are used as one of the best instruments social science has to synthesize a large amount of information, and they are especially well suited to measure multidimensional social phenomena. The new System of Indices on the Quality of European Societies (SIQES) presented in this volume offers a very broad and rich empirical overview of more than 70 social composite indicators and their nearly 300 dimensions. One of the key findings coming out from the SIQES is that, according to the societal quality of European countries, there exist five different “Europes” inside Europe.

At a time of significant transformations in Chinese society, this book addresses the key issue of social welfare and the reform of the welfare system in 21st century China. Considering both the theory and policy making across a variety of welfare issues which directly impact on the country’s economic development, it examines the development of civil society, changes in social stratification and in social class structure. It notably considers the key questions of welfare in both urban and rural settings, for different population groups such as children, the elderly and the disabled, addressing topical issues of housing, education, public health, poverty and the restructuring of related welfare policy system to tackle China’s key issues. It also considers the impact of migrant workers in China and their social integration, including within the welfare system. Providing a unique insight into how economic globalization and financial crisis affects Chinese social welfare policies, this book is a key read for scholars worldwide interested in social transformation in Chinese society at a time of significant social and economic transition.

This handbook presents an overview of studies on the relationship of active ageing and quality of life. It addresses the new challenges of ageing from the paradigm of positive ageing (active, healthy and successful) for a better quality of life. It provides theoretical perspectives and empirical studies, including scientific knowledge as well as practical experiences about the good ageing and the quality of later life around the world, in order to respond to the challenges of an aged population. The handbook is structured in 4 sections covering theoretical and conceptual perspectives, social policy issues and research agenda, methods, measurement instrument-scales and evaluations, and lastly application studies including domains and geographical contexts. Chapter 5 is available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com./div

There have been major shifts in the framework of social policy and welfare across Europe. Adopting a multi-level, comparative and interdisciplinary approach, this book develops a critical analysis of policy change and welfare reform in Europe. The book applies a dynamic and change oriented perspective to shed light on policy changes that are often poorly understood in the welfare literature, and contributes to a further development of the theoretical and conceptual frameworks for understanding social change. Using citizenship as a focus, several dimensions of change are analysed simultaneously: changes in the discipline of social policy itself; the changing character of social problems; changes in social policy and citizenship; and the emergence of new forms of social integration. The book also speculates on how different dimensions of change are interlinked.

In recent years, major social forces such as: ageing populations, social trends, migration patterns, and the globalization of economies, have reshaped social welfare policies and practices across the globe. Multinational corporations, NGOs, and other international organizations have begun to influence social policy at a national and local level. Among the many ramifications of these changes is that globalizing influences may hinder the ability of individual nation-states to effect policies that are beneficial to them on a local level. With contributions from thirteen countries worldwide, this collected work represents the first major comparative analysis on the effect of globalization on the international welfare state. The Welfare State in Post-Industrial Society is divided into two major sections: the first draws from a number of leading social welfare researchers from diverse countries who point to the nation-state as case studies; highlighting how it goes about establishing and revising social welfare provisions. The second portion of the volume then moves to a more global perspective in its analysis and questioning of the impact of globalization on citizenship, ageing and marketization. The Welfare State in Post-Industrial Society seeks to encourage debate about the implications of the most pressing social welfare issues in nation-states, and integrate analyses of policy and practice in particular countries struggling to provide social welfare support for their needy populations.

In the realm of European employment law, tension exists between the concepts of 'economic policy' and 'social policy.' During recent years, a growing tendency to emphasize the 'economic' at the expense of the 'social' can be discerned. What this trend gives us'in the views of the leading figures in the field of European labour law and social policy whose considered analyses are presented in this volume'is a regime of 'grand declarations' about workers' rights, but with extremely limited enforcement potential. ,i>The Changing Face of European Labour Law and Social Policy presents some of the papers given at a series of colloquia sponsored by the Employment Law Research Unit at the University of Warwick in early 2002. In its assessment of the forces at work in European employment law today, these commentaries examine significant initiatives and issues, including:problems arising in the context of the Nice Charter;delivering 'equality' at the workplace under the new EU legal framework;the crisis facing workers' participation in practice;the prospects for trans-national collective bargaining;employment-related aspects of human rights under the ECHR; and,attempts to establish effective protections in relation to the working environment. Invaluable appendices include a report, as presented by the late Marco Biagi, of a high level group on reform of the European labour market; the text of the Social Policy Agenda, as approved at the Nice Summit of 2000; and the Commission's 'scoreboard' on the implementation of the Social Agenda as of 2002.With its down-to-earth analysis of the current status of the 'floor of rights' in the European work environment, The Changing Face of European Labour Law and Social Policy will be of inestimable value to all practitioners and scholars seeking to improve the quality of life for Europe's working population and the quality of regulation at the disposal of those charged with confronting the new challenges to social policy resulting from the radical transformation of Europe's economy and society.

The twelve remarkable essays in this book explore this vital issue from a number of enlightening perspectives. European Social Security and Global Politics represents a partial gleaning of the September 2001 conference-held in Bergen, Norway-of the European Institute of Social Security, a leading multidisciplinary research group and the vanguard of the debate on social security in Europe. Fifteen highly committed researchers and administrators from all over Europe offer in-depth analysis and conclusions in such crucial areas as: how globalisation increases inequality and hinders redistribution of wealth how certain social security policies hamper the free movement of workers the elusive promise of regional social security in Europe essential elements of any proposed global social security policy various reform initiatives for the fair administration of pension schemes In addition to the invaluable individual insights advanced in each paper, two notable trends seem to pervade the entire conference. One is the growing divergence of social security policy within European countries, coexisting uneasily with EU measures against social exclusion; the other is the sudden clarity of principle and design in the European welfare state when seen against the virtual anarchy of the globalisation model. Where these trends may lead us is only beginning to come into focus, and this book is among the first to sharpen the images of the possible futures in European social security that are likely to emerge in the next decade. All professionals in any aspect of social security policy or study will benefit enormously from this provocative book, not only in Europe but throughout the world.