Introduction: Social policies and public action: What is the ‘social’?
Public action
Dimensions of analysis
What is the ‘social’ in social policies?
The structure
Part I: The framework
1. Concepts and issues
The ideas
The institutions
Agency and capabilities
2. What is social in Europe?
A common heritage
The European social model
Facing the crisis
Part II: Public action and social policies: Dynamics
3. The Changing Architecture
A scenario
Institutional changes: New public management and governance
Territorialization
Problems and opportunities in changing public action
4. The social investment
Common but not shared perspectives
Individualization
What sort of agency? Problems
What sort of agency? Opportunities
Conclusions
5. Participation
The context
A few distinctions
Dimensions, questions, factors
Voice and capacity to aspire
Conclusions
6. Public-Private
Contractualization
Social market
Public
Public administration
Conclusions
Part III: Public action and social policies: a changing social domain
7. Young school-to-work transitions
Problems and solutions
The informational bases of justice: Merit
Beyond employability: The Workable research
Young people’s transitions and capacitations
Conclusions
8. Care and choice: The position of the recipients
Freedom of choice and its instruments
Instruments in action
Conclusions
9. Inclusion and the city
The agenda of the inclusive city in Europe
Diversity, participation, social innovation
Part IV: Conclusions
10. Back to the ‘social’?
Individualization
Between market and the self-organized community
Depoliticization
Possibilities of the ‘social’
References
Index
Biography
Lavinia Bifulco is Professor of Sociology at the University of Milan-Bicocca in Italy.
‘Lavinia Bifulco presents a rich and subtle analysis of the changing fortunes of the social dimensions of Europe. She combines attention to the complex trajectories of social welfare, in their variations across place and time, with a clear grasp of the forces that have been subordinating the social to the economic.’ - John Clarke, The Open University, UK
