"Reconciling work and welfare, new data, new research"
presentation by Bruno Palier and Wim van Oorschot:
OECD, June 26th, 2009, 10:00-12:00
In October 2006, an European Network of excellence RECWOWE (for reconciling work and welfare) has been launched. Its objective is to create a European research network capable of overcoming the fragmentation of existing research on questions of work and welfare in Europe. RECWOWE integrates existing research activities on the various tensions that characterize the relationships between work and welfare: tensions between flexibility and security, between work and family life, between quantity and quality of work, between industrial welfare systems and post-industrial labour markets and societies.
On the 26th of June, Bruno Palier and Wim Van Oorschot will present some of the most important activities of the network of excellence. In order to allow the OECD staff to get access to Recwowe's main ongoing research, Bruno Palier will present the main topics of the new research launched within RECWOWE (such as research on labour market inactivity and the role of welfare state programmes; on the politics of “flexicurity”, on flexible working times and productivity; on individual values and claims to create a worklife balance; on carework in the private household in the context of ageing; on Who is affected by low quality employment; on how do labour market and social policies contribute to the dualisation of European societies? on The role of the social partners in employment-friendly welfare reforms).
Wim Van Oorshot will come and present the content and functioning to the European Data center on Work and Welfare that has been created within Recwowe. EDACWOWE is an open-to-all, service oriented, integrated Data, where existing quantitative and qualitative data relevant for the analysis of tensions between work and welfare are organised into meta-data shells. It includes an Indicators Bank, which covers macro-statistical, aggregate level social indicators regarding work and welfare at trans-national, national and regional level; a Values Bank, which covers individual level data of work and welfare values, attitudes and preferences from a series of European opinion surveys, and a Policy Bank, which covers systematized, qualitative data on work and welfare policies and policy reforms in European countries.
Presentation of the speakers :
Bruno Palier is CNRS Researcher at Sciences Po Paris. He is studying welfare reforms in Europe, and is currently conducting a comparative project on the politics of welfare reforms in Continental Europe. He was Visiting Scholar at Northwestern University (Spring quarter 2007), at Center for European Studies from Harvard University in 2001 and Jean Monnet Fellow in the European University Institute in Florence in 1998-1999. He is currently invited Professor at Stockholm University. He is the scientific coordinator of an European Network of excellence RECWOWE . He has published numerous articles on welfare reforms in France and in Europe, and various books: in 2007, he co-edited a special issue of Social Policy and Administration, on “Comparing welfare reforms in Continental Europe”;, in 2006, Changing France, Co-edited with Pepper Culpepper et Peter Hall, Palgrave ; 2009, La réforme des systèmes de santé, Paris, PUF, Collection Que sais-je ? (4th edition) ; 2004, La réforme des retraites, Paris PUF, Collection Que sais-je ? (2nd edition) ; 2002, Gouverner la Sécurité sociale, Paris, PUF, coll . le lien social (second updated edition in 2005) ; 2001, Globalization and European Welfare states : challenges and changes, co-edited with Rob S. Sykes and Pauline Prior, London : Palgrave.
Wim van Oorschot is Professor of Sociology at Tilburg University, The Netherlands, Honorary Professor of Social Policy at the Center for Comparative Welfare Studies at Aalborg University, Honorary President of the Network for European Social Policy Analysis ESPAnet, and coordinator oftheEuropeanDataCenterfor Work and Welfare EDACwowe. His research interests regard the comparative study of institutions and outcomes of social policy, notably of social security benefits, as well as public attitudes towards welfare solidarity,justice and deservingness. Recent publications are:Oorschot, W. van, M.Opielka and B. Pfau-Effinger (eds.) (2008) Culture and welfare state: Values and social policy in comparative perspective. London: Edward Elgar;Oorschot, W. van (2007), 'Solidarity towards immigrants in European welfare states', in: International Journal of Social Welfare;Oorschot, W. van and P. Jensen (2009), 'Early Retirement Differences between Denmark and the Netherlands. A cross-national comparison of push and pull factors in two small European welfare states.', in: Journal of Aging Studies.