The purpose of the study is to explore the relationship between forms of labour market marginalisation, understood here in terms of labour market status and job quality on the one hand, and income disadvantage, material deprivation and social exclusion on the other hand. Public policies that aim to improve labour market position and the income level of people disadvantaged in the labour market are also assessed. The authors draw on data from a survey on social exclusion in the Czech Republic focusing on people who were welfare benefits recipients in 2004 or considered their situation to be comparable to that of welfare recipients. The authors show that labour market marginalisation is transparent not only during unemployment spells (often repeated and longterm) but also in the case of temporary, low paid and poor quality jobs. The income levels of people employed in the lowest segment of the labour market and of the unemployed are similar, while the deprivation of the unemployed is greater with regard to the possibilities open to them to influence the life course and opportunities of them and especially their families. The authors point out the under-use of welfare benefits and identify measures that could improve the standard of living and human capital of people who are disadvantaged. While some disadvantaged people continue to be active in the labour market and perceive work incentives, the authors also identify the poverty traps that emerge for the fraction of them who become discouraged and welfare-dependent.
This interdisciplinary work explores current controversy over the collective identity of Romani and reasons for their social predicament. The first position, associated with Romani studies and identity politics, sees all Romani as a part of an ‘ethnic group’, and connects their plight to ‘racial’ discrimination and intolerance. Some anthropologists and social policy-makers call this ‘primordialism’ and deconstruct the notion of a unitary and natural ‘Romani nation’, maintaining most ghetto inhabitants are only classified as ‘Romani’ and their identity derives from their ‘sociál exclusion’. Matching policies are advocated. The author combines contemporary anthropological approaches to the identity construction with theories of discourse to conceptualize the debate, completing the framework with self-reflection of social science. The method of Critical Discourse Analysis is applied in examining corpora of academic and specialized writing, policy papers and media texts for the discourse construction of identity. Arguing that both discourses are differentiated instantiations of the same diagram of power normalizing ‘troublesome’ subjectivities, the author touches upon the ethical responsibility of scientists deconstructing essentialist representations of identities and circulating their ovm constructs instead.
The article focuses on changes in availability and use of childcare and pre-school facilities after the Second World War in the Czech society during different periods of communist regime and during the post-1989 era. It studies how they are embedded in context of women's participation on the labour market, gender roles, social policies, fertility rates, public debates on care and fears of population decline. Several discourses influencing the availability and use of childcare and pre-school facilities are identified in the history, e.g. ''the women's issue'' discourse supporting construction of nurseries since 1950s, ''the children's issue'' and ''the population'' discourses contributing to several prolongations of paid childcare leave since 1960s, etc. In history based institutional settings are identified as the main factors leading in a new labour market context to a current drop in availability of nurseries and an increase in care of pre-kindergarten children by mothers at home.
This article deals with empirical research on poverty in Czechoslovakia from the interwar period to the present in terms of three distinct phases. First, between 1918 and 1948, considerable attention was devoted to poverty, but research possibilities modest, so that a complex mapping of the problem was not feasible. Second, during the 1948 to 1989 period, the communist regime allowed "examinations" of poverty for the purpose of depicting pre-war capitalist Czechoslovakia as an impoverished, class-divided society. A similar approach was applied to studies of Western countries during the Cold War period. Research on poverty within the socialist regime was not allowed, even after the rehabilitation of sociology as a social science. Detailed analysis of household surveys was either forbidden or the results were embargoed; only simple cross-tabulations were ever published. Third, after 1989, the opportunities for undertaking research on poverty increased dramatically due to stimulus in both the national and international arenas. Important projects were fielded leading to many studies and published articles. Statistical surveys were used to map poverty primarily in terms of income; while sociological, ethnographic and anthropological approaches were used to examine key groups affected by poverty in Czech society. Within the literature there has been to date no synthesis of the study of the nature and origins of poverty in the Czech Republic., Jiří Večerník., and Obsahuje bibliografii a bibliografické odkazy
This article deals with empirical research on poverty in Czechoslovakia from the interwar period to the present in terms of three distinct phases. First, between 1918 and 1948, considerable attention was devoted to poverty, but research possibilities modest, so that a complex mapping of the problem was not feasible. Second, during the 1948 to 1989 period, the communist regime allowed “examinations” of poverty for the purpose of depicting pre-war capitalist Czechoslovakia as an impoverished, class-divided society. A similar approach was applied to studies of Western countries during the Cold War period. Research on poverty within the socialist regime was not allowed, even after the rehabilitation of sociology as a social science. Detailed analysis of household surveys was either forbidden or the results were embargoed; only simple cross-tabulations were ever published. Third, after 1989, the opportunities for undertaking research on poverty increased dramatically due to stimulus in both the national and international arenas. Important projects were fielded leading to many studies and published articles. Statistical surveys were used to map poverty primarily in terms of income; while sociological, ethnographic and anthropological approaches were used to examine key groups affected by poverty in Czech society. Within the literature there has been to date no synthesis of the study of the nature and origins of poverty in the Czech Republic.
Sborník, který vzešel z konference uspořádané v březnu 2007 v Berlíně tamním Italským kulturním institutem a Svobodnou univerzitou, je podle recenzenta příkladem různorodého a podnětného přemýšlení o historii, současnosti a perspektivách Evropské unie a integrace. Ve čtyřech problémových okruzích se příspěvky věnují společenským důsledkům politické integrace, vztahu evropské a mimoevropské migrace, působení politické integrace na konzumní společnost, sociální politiku a stát blahobytu a konečně evropské politice a jejím kulurním reprezentacím. Pro šíři témat, množství kladených otázek a rozmanitý způsob interpretace může publikace podle recenzenta posloužit jako velmi dobrý úvod do evropských studií., This volume comes out of a conference organized by the Italian Cultural Institute, Berlin, and the Freie Universität, Berlin. It is, according to the reviewer, an example of diverse and inspired ways of thinking about the past, the present, and the prospects of the European Union and integration in it. In four topic groups, the contributions discuss the social consequences of political integration, the relationship between European and non-European migration, the effect of political integration on consumer society, social policy, and the welfare state, and, lastly, European politics and its representation in the arts and sciences. Thanks to the wide range of topics, the great number of questions raised, and the varied approaches to interpretation, the publication can, the reviewer argues, serve as a very good introduction to European Studies., [autor recenze] Zdeněk Nebřenský., and Obsahuje bibliografii
The article deals with the idea of social policy in the interwar Czechoslovak Social Democratic Party on the example of two
significant personalities (Evžen Štern, Jiří Pleskot). The author relies on the less well-known assumption of power-resources approach that the welfare state as an extension of social policy represents for social democrats a first step towards the socialism. The basic question of the study is whether social democrats really did understood social policy as an instrument or part of transition from capitalism to socialism in this period. The author concludes that such idea was present in the Czechoslovak Social Democratic Party, but not all intraparty streams shared it and it was not expressed in the official programmatic documents. and Článek zahrnuje poznámkový aparát pod čarou
This paper reflects on the different faces of asset-based welfare from both a theoretical and an empirical perspective. It shows that asset-based welfare can be perceived as a lever for welfare state restructuring but also as an instrument for poverty eradication. In most countries, asset-based welfare policies focus on stimulating home-ownership. The general idea is that by becoming a homeowner, households build up equity that can be released for care and pension purposes in old age. However, there are signs that such policies increase inequality between homeowners (depending on the location of the dwelling and/or the period in which it was bought), but particularly so between homeowners and tenants. We therefore contend that home-ownership based welfare policies need a clear and fundamental specification of the role of the government: how to deal with housing market risks and how to prevent politically unacceptable levels of inequality and exclusion?