This book looks at a remarkable trend in contemporary social policy: the localization of welfare. In many of the modern welfare states, governments have started to shift responsibilities for welfare policy and governance to the local level, giving way to a transformation 'from welfare states to welfare cities.' Today, welfare policies have 'preparing' objectives rather than 'repairing' objectives. Strong institutional presence in the daily living environment of citizens seems a prerequisite for activating welfare policy. The main objective of this study is to understand how welfare cities operate. What has been observed are national efforts to create an open institutional space for local actors to develop 'localized' trajectories for social policy and governance. Drawing on two crucial Dutch cases, this appeared not a political process in the first place. Politics is not fully absent, but center stage stands a multitude of professional groups (e.g. service providers, managers), and institutional stakeholders (e.g. client groups, interest organizations). Policy goals, policy content, and modes of governance are gradually emerging in what is labeled 'crafting practices.' The book particularly elaborates on crafting challenges: which are the problems that actors have to solve when crafting responses to national policy pressures, searching for viable pathways into local welfare? The study concludes that truly local landscapes are not flowering yet. It can be argued, though, that welfare localization has bred a remarkable and important phenomenon, the rise of the local crafting community.

As the recession plays out, unemployment rises, and public and private sector resources become increasingly in-demand, geographic poverty scholars have a unique opportunity to challenge the poverty logic of late capitalism and rigorously examine the role of race, gender and place in poverty processes. This research extends beyond an analysis of TANF as a policy fixed in time and place. Rather, it examines TANF and public assistance broadly as part of larger political, economic, and cultural processes that shape popular discourses on poverty and the experiences of those living in poverty. This paper analyzes public assistance in three interconnected ways: First, through a structural analysis of the neoliberalization of welfare and poverty, this research explores the ways in which past and current histories of economic restructuring intersect with localized discourses of race, gender and deservingness. Second, the research focuses on popular and political discourses about welfare in order to better understand the ways in which recipients and those in poverty are positioned in American society. I argue that under the terms of neoliberal capitalism the focus on welfare dependency has eclipsed alternative analyses of what drives and shapes poverty. Popular and political rhetoric overwhelming defines poverty as a crisis of dependency on welfare. Though this limited lens, the reasons for poverty are understood largely as behavioral or pathological and therefore mainstream policy solutions have focused on the scales of the home and the body. Third, through in-depth interviews in King County, WA and Jackson County, MO, this research examines the role of the political economy, class, race, gender, and place in shaping the identities and feelings of citizenship of those on public assistance. This dissertation highlights the complicated and sometimes contradictory ways in which those on TANF respond to poverty, popular discourse, and economic restructuring.

Associating social justice with landscape is not new, yet the twenty-first century's heightened threats to landscape and their impact on both human and, more generally, nature's habitats necessitate novel intellectual tools to address such challenges. This book offers that innovative critical thinking framework. The establishment of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) in 1948, in the aftermath of Second World War atrocities, was an aspiration to guarantee both concrete necessities for survival and the spiritual/emotional/psychological needs that are quintessential to the human experience. While landscape is place, nature and culture specific, the idea transcends nation-state boundaries and as such can be understood as a universal theoretical concept similar to the way in which human rights are perceived. The first step towards the intellectual interface between landscape and human rights is a dynamic and layered understanding of landscape. Accordingly, the 'Right to Landscape' is conceived as the place where the expansive definition of landscape, with its tangible and intangible dimensions, overlaps with the rights that support both life and human dignity, as defined by the UDHR. By expanding on the concept of human rights in the context of landscape this book presents a new model for addressing human rights - alternative scenarios for constructing conflict-reduced approaches to landscape-use and human welfare are generated. This book introduces a rich new discourse on landscape and human rights, serving as a platform to inspire a diversity of ideas and conceptual interpretations. The case studies discussed are wide in their geographical distribution and interdisciplinary in the theoretical situation of their authors, breaking fresh ground for an emerging critical dialogue on the convergence of landscape and human rights.

Given the increasing shift of care from state residential services to community-based support, this book examines the complex geographies of family caregiving for young adults with intellectual disabilities. It traces how family ’carers’ are directly and indirectly affected by a broad array of law and policy, including family policy, disability legislation, and health and community care restructuring policy. Each of these has material and institutional effects and is premised on the discourses, ideologies, and interactions in the state over time. Focusing on the welfare models of England, the US and Ireland, this book compares the welfare ideologies in each country and examines how the specific historical, cultural, and political contexts give rise to different landscapes of care and disability. Further, the book explores the unique lifeworlds of family carers of young adults with intellectual disability within the broader landscape of care in which they are situated.

As a key staffer on the House Ways and Means Committee, Haskins was one of the architects of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act of 1996. Here, he portrays the political battles that produced the most dramatic overhaul of the welfare system, since its creation as part of the New Deal.

The appeal of voluntary action as a solution to growing welfare needs in advanced capitalist countries raises important questions about the social impacts and spatial equity of such provision. This book addresses these issues and explores the complex relationship between voluntary action, society and space.

Taking nine European countries as case studies, the contributions to this volume analyze the ways that citizenship has changed in key areas such as social security, labor market policies and social services.

The Oxford Handbook of the Welfare State is the authoritative and definitive guide to the contemporary welfare state. In a volume consisting of nearly fifty newly-written chapters, a broad range of the world's leading scholars offer a comprehensive account of everything one needs to know about the modern welfare state. The book is divided into eight sections. It opens with three chapters that evaluate the philosophical case for (and against) the welfare state. Surveys of the welfare state 's history and of the approaches taken to its study are followed by four extended sections, running to some thirty-five chapters in all, which offer a comprehensive and in-depth survey of our current state of knowledge across the whole range of issues that the welfare state embraces. The first of these sections looks at inputs and actors (including the roles of parties, unions, and employers), the impact of gender and religion, patterns of migration and a changing public opinion, the role of international organisations and the impact of globalisation. The next two sections cover policy inputs (in areas such as pensions, health care, disability, care of the elderly, unemployment, and labour market activation) and their outcomes (in terms of inequality and poverty, macroeconomic performance, and retrenchment). The seventh section consists of seven chapters which survey welfare state experience around the globe (and not just within the OECD). Two final chapters consider questions about the global future of the welfare state. The individual chapters of the Handbook are written in an informed but accessible way by leading researchers in their respective fields giving the reader an excellent and truly up-to-date knowledge of the area under discussion. Taken together, they constitute a comprehensive compendium of all that is best in contemporary welfare state research and a unique guide to what is happening now in this most crucial and contested area of social and political development.

This Very Short Introduction discusses the necessity of welfare states in modern capitalist societies. Situating social policy in an historical, sociological, and comparative perspective, David Garland brings a new understanding to familiar debates, policies, and institutions.