News about Global Dynamics of Social Policy

The Collaborative Research Centre "Global Dynamics of Social Policy" is represented on X as well as on Mastodon. On these channels you will always find the latest news about the CRC 1342.

Furthermore, we also recommend the blog Social Policy Worldwide of the SOCIUM Research Center Inequality and Social Policy at the University of Bremen.

Contact:
Dr. Maximilian Hohmann
CRC 1342: Global Dynamics of Social Policy
Mary-Somerville-Straße 3
28359 Bremen
Phone: +49 421 218-57058
E-Mail: hohmann@uni-bremen.de

"State, Society & Citizen - Cross-Disciplinary and Global Perspectives on Welfare State Development"

The 14th NordWel Summer School "State, Society & Citizen - Cross-Disciplinary and Global Perspectives on Welfare State Development" takes place at the University of Southern Denmark in Odense from 18 to 22 August 2025. [Here] you will find the Call for Papers and further information about the Summer School.

Contact:
Prof. Dr. Herbert Obinger
CRC 1342: Global Dynamics of Social Policy
Mary-Somerville-Straße 5
28359 Bremen
Phone: +49 421 218-58567
E-Mail: herbert.obinger@uni-bremen.de

The project “Global Developments in Health Care Systems” is looking for new student assistants (up to 37 hours/month)

At the University of Bremen, the following positions are available in the Collaborative Research Centre 1342's project "Global developments in health care systems": 

2 Student Assistants with up to 37 hrs/month

Start date: 01.04.2025 / as soon as possible. The position is intended until September 2025.

The project is a part of the DFG-funded Collaborative Research Centre 1342 "Global Dynamics of Social Policy" and is directed by Prof. Dr. Sebastian Haunss and Dr. Lorraine Frisina Doetter.

The project consists of a quantitative and a qualitative subproject. One student assistant will work exclusively on the quantitative part of the project, the second will work on both the qualitative and quantitative parts.

The aim of the quantitative project is to map the historical development of the inclusiveness and scope of benefits of health care systems worldwide. In doing so, we analyse and annotate documents of health care legislation. Based on qualitative content analysis we are creating a training data set to fine-tune AI language models to support data collection in this field on different levels of text classification.

The qualitative project is undertaking two case studies on the colonial legacy of healthcare policy in Kenya and Nigeria. The research is based on archival documents, secondary literature and expert interviews, and employs process tracing to uncover the historical pathways and causal mechanisms that underlie the colonial legacy.

 

Tasks (refers to both advertised positions, unless otherwise described): 

• Database and literature research
• Annotating of legal documents
• Support with qualitative analyses of archival documents (qualitative part)

 

Requirements (refers to both advertised positions, unless otherwise described):

• Enrolled in a German University during the employment period
• Excellent command of English
• Experience in qualitative text analysis
• Independent, reliable and organised working style
• Interest in global social policy / health policy legislation
• Interest in colonialism and its legacies (qualitative part)

 

Desirable:

• Experience with reference management software
• Experience in coding of text documents
• Basic knowledge about colonialism (qualitative part)

 

Deadline for application: 21.02.2025 (afterwards, rolling basis until positions are filled.)

Please send applications with CV and short letter of motivation stating expected graduation date, and the statement whether the application applies to both open positions or just one of them, to Mai Mahmoud (abdoumai@uni-bremen.de) and Julian Götsch (goetschj@uni-bremen.de).

Contact:
Julian Götsch
CRC 1342: Global Dynamics of Social Policy
Mary-Somerville-Straße 5
28359 Bremen
Phone: +49 421 218-58540
E-Mail: goetschj@uni-bremen.de

Mai Mahmoud
CRC 1342: Global Dynamics of Social Policy
Mary-Somerville-Straße 5
28359 Bremen
Phone: +49 421 218-57079
E-Mail: abdoumai@uni-bremen.de

Jour Fixe with Prof. Krisztina Kis-Katos on 29.01.2025

As the last event of the Jour Fixe lecture series in the winter semester 2024/25, Prof. Krisztina Kis-Katos from the University of Göttingen was our guest at the CRC 1342 on 29.01.2025. In her talk "Cash Transfers and Violent Crime in Indonesia", she presented the effects of the "Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT)" programme and discussed the interpretations of the extensive data with the participants not only from an economic but also from a social science perspective.

Abstract:

This study investigates the impact of Indonesia’s flagship conditional cash transfer (CCT) program—PKH—on violent crime. Exploiting data from a randomized controlled trial and administrative data from the staggered nationwide program roll-out in combination with different causal identification strategies, we show that communities receiving access to the CCT experienced an increase in violent crime. Examining possible mechanisms, our analysis reveals that the program resulted in an increase in idleness among non-targeted male youth within beneficiary households, which we believe contributed to the rise in violent crime. In contrast, we show that the surge in violent crime is neither related to PKH increasing the (monetary and non-monetary) rewards for committing crime nor to alternative reductions in the (material, psychic, punishment-related) costs of engaging in crimes.

Krisztina Kis-Katos is Professor for International Economic Policy at the University of Göttingen. She studied Economics in Szeged and Konstanz, attended the Swiss Doctoral Program at the Study Center Gerzensee, and received her doctoral degree in Economics in 2010 at the University of Freiburg in Germany. Her research interests lie in the fields of applied development economics and political economy. Her recent research projects focus on the effects of (de-)globalization and more generally of macro-economic processes or related public policies on a range of social and economic outcomes, including labor market and firm outcomes, land use change and deforestation, or conflict.

Contact:
Prof. Dr. Sebastian Fehrler

B05 project "Inclusion and Benefit Dynamics in the Chinese Welfare Regime"

The B05 project "Inclusion and Benefit Dynamics in the Chinese Welfare Regime" successfully completed another round of field research in China, furthering collaboration with Chinese colleagues on future social policy research.

Dr. Zhe Yan conducted extensive field research from October to December 2024. The purpose of the research trip was to explore how social policies on old-age care and unemployment are affected by demographic change and economic downturn in China. The research is timely as China is experiencing rapid population ageing and rising unemployment.

Dr. Yan visited several rural villages in Jiangxi Province, a less industrialized region in southern China, to understand the process of eldercare service delivery and to meet local actors responsible for policy implementation. One novel aspect is that China is now integrating eldercare and childcare by reallocating local resources in rural areas. Social policy in rural China remains an understudied area and deserves more research attention.

In a pilot for future research, Dr. Yan interviewed local officials involved in mitigating unemployment and had informal conversations with delivery drivers in urban areas, including university graduates and migrant workers, who have recently experienced unemployment and downward mobility. The B05 team aims to identify the outcomes of social policy in this area, and to examine public attitudes toward welfare provision and the function of social policy in maintaining regime stability. 

While in China, Dr. Yan was hosted by Duke Kunshan University as a Scholar in Residence at the Center for the Study of Contemporary China. To support the field research and to meet our main collaboration partner Prof. Yuegen Xiong, B05 project leader Prof. Tobias ten Brink visited Peking University in December.

Contact:
Dr. Zhe Yan
CRC 1342: Global Dynamics of Social Policy, Research IV and China Global Center
Campus Ring 1
28759 Bremen
Phone: +49 421 200-3474
E-Mail: zyan@constructor.university

American Journal of Political Science

Dr. Nils Düpont from INF-project has published a new article together with co-authors Nina Wiesehomeier and Saskia Ruth-Lovell on the diffusion of populism in the American Journal of Political Science.

Analyzing diffusion effects among 923 parties in 67 countries from 1970 to 2018 they find that similar levels of political and economic exclusion foster learning from and emulating other parties abroad. Moreover, they also uncover conditional effects for learning from other parties facing similar levels of income inequality or public sector corruption that hinge on a cultural prescreening. For the latter they adapt the idea of "cultural spheres" introduced by CRC project A05, already applied for successfully analyzing the introduction of social policies (e.g., Windzio et al. 2022). With their focus on party-to-party diffusion they complement the CRC’s analysis of possible pathways how ideas and public policies diffuse across borders.

Contact:
Dr. Nils Düpont
CRC 1342: Global Dynamics of Social Policy
Mary-Somerville-Straße 7
28359 Bremen
Phone: +49 421 218-57060
E-Mail: duepont@uni-bremen.de

Inequality, social policy, the welfare state

As one of the five key scientific areas that largely define the research profile of the University of Bremen, the social science high-profile area "Social Change, Social Policy and the State" has set up its own new website with the start of 2025. The CRC 1342 "Global Dynamics of Social Policy" is part of this alliance.

In addition to the social science profile and the central research initiatives, the homepage https://www.uni-bremen.de/en/high-profile-area-social-sciences also contains the latest news from the participating institutions. Among these are the Collaborative Research Centre 1342, the SOCIUM Research Center on Inequality and Social Policy and the Institute of Intercultural and International Studies (InIIS).

Inequality, social policy, the welfare state – these are the focal topics of the high-profile area. The researchers analyze societal developments and welfare state dynamics amid contemporary tensions: globalization and liberalization on one side, and geopolitical competition and economic decoupling on the other.

If you have any questions, information or suggestions about the high-profile area social sciences, please contact the spokespersons or the coordination. [Contact]

Contact:
Dr. Maximilian Hohmann
CRC 1342: Global Dynamics of Social Policy
Mary-Somerville-Straße 3
28359 Bremen
Phone: +49 421 218-57058
E-Mail: hohmann@uni-bremen.de

18.12.2024

Dr. Gulnaz Isabekova-Landau, a postdoctoral researcher in the Collaborative Research Centre project B06, which explores social policies in Eastern Europe, the South Caucasus, and Central Asia, is on her secondment with the Centre for Women's Research (CENWOR) in Sri Lanka.

International migration is a complex phenomenon, driven by social, economic, political, and climatic issues, and it affects the lives of persons who decide to migrate as well as their families. Acknowledging broader roots and implications of migration, the United Nations General Assembly adopted the “International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families” in 1990. The date of its adoption, December 18, later became International Migrants Day.

Sri Lanka has a long-term history of labor migration, particularly in terms of migrant domestic workers (MDWs), the majority of whom are female. MDWs account for about one-quarter of foreign employment on average (Henderson, 2024, p. 259). Gulf Cooperation Council countries (Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates) remain the top-five destinations for MDWs (Ministry of Labour and Foreign Employment of Sri Lanka, 2023). The work of MDWs in these countries is characterized by multiple challenges, including limited access to social protection and a number of cases of human rights violations.

CENWOR has a long-term history of conducting research on labor migration and migrant domestic workers, returnee migrant women and their health status, and more recently – the COVID-19 repercussions on labor migration in Sri Lanka. Building on this expertise, Dr. Isabekova-Landau is researching the access of returnee migrant domestic workers from Sri Lanka to health and social protection services. Her secondment is supported by a Marie Curie Staff Exchange within the Horizon Europe Programme (PRELAB, grant agreement no: 101129940). The study has only commenced, and more results will be reported at later stages.

Sources:

Henderson, S. (2024). The realities of return migration: Reintegrating women migrant domestic workers in Sri Lanka. Asian and Pacific Migration Journal, 33(2), 258–278. https://doi.org/10.1177/01171968241263363

Ministry of Labour and Foreign Employment of Sri Lanka. (2023). National Policy and National Action Plan on Migration for Employment Sri Lanka 2023-2027. https://labourmin.gov.lk/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/National-Policy-and-National-Action-Plan-on-Migration-for-Employment-Sri-Lanka-2023-2027-English-Ver._compressed.pdf

Contact:
Dr. Gulnaz Isabekova-Landau
CRC 1342: Global Dynamics of Social Policy, Research Centre for East European Studies
Klagenfurter Straße 8
28359 Bremen
Phone: +49 421 218-57073
E-Mail: gulnaz@uni-bremen.de

Research stay in October and November 2024

Dominik Gall, doctoral researcher in project B11 of the CRC 1342 and research assistant at the Department of Latin American History at the Institute of History at the University of Bremen, is working on the history of Argentine social policy from 1880-1949 and its links to the sugar industry in Jujuy from a global historical perspective. The main focus are the interactions and relationships between protectionism and social policy as well as their multidimensional economic, economic and social interdependencies. Examples include economic shocks and crises, immigration and transnational knowledge transfers. This global perspective in conjunction with the regional focus on the province of Jujuy, which at first glance appears to be far removed from the political and economic centre of Argentina - Buenos Aires - generates new research impulses by abandoning the national framework as a spatial limitation of the research subject. Furthermore, the dissertation project enables intellectual-historical research into the link between the ‘social question’ and the ‘indigenous question’ against the background of the consolidation of the still young nation state. In this context, the repressive dimension of social policy is to be examined with special consideration of globalised knowledge production.

To pursue this research interest, Dominik Gall travelled to Argentina in October and November 2024. There he not only visited the capital Buenos Aires for research purposes, but also travelled to Jujuy, the northernmost province of Argentina. The aim of the trip was to identify, localise and retrieve relevant sources that shed light on the nexus of social policy, protectionism and nation-state consolidation.

In Buenos Aires, Dominik Gall was able to visit various sections of the National Archives, the Congress Archives and relevant libraries such as the Biblioteca Nacional Mariano Moreno (Argentinian National Library). In the archives in the capital, he primarily found sources that provide information about communication between the national government and the individual provinces, as well as assessments of the political and social situation. Global historical and intellectual-historical analysis should provide insights into the concepts and discourses of the relevant actors regarding trade and social policy and thus their scope for action. In San Salvador de Jujuy, Dominik Gall was able to access the Archivo de Tribunales (Court Archive), the Archivo historico de la Provincia (Provincial Historical Archive), the Archivo historico del poder legislativo and the newspaper archive. The corpus of sources researched includes amongst others correspondence between the sugar industrialists and the local government, minutes of proposed legislation and parliamentary consultations, annual speeches by the provincial government and case files on work accidents, from which Dominik Gall hopes to gain insights into the marginalised view on socio-political projects of the various indigenous groups living in Jujuy.

The trip made it clear once again that the sugar industry in Jujuy is a suitable subject for pursuing the research interests of sub-project B11 for several reasons. The massive boom that the local industry experienced at the turn of the century, the competitive advantage offered by protectionist measures, its integration into the world market, the exploitation of indigenous labour and the extensive political influence of the ingenios (sugar mills) make it a focal point from which the global interdependencies of Argentinian social policy can be observed.

Contact:
Dominik Gall
CRC 1342: Global Dynamics of Social Policy
Universitäts-Boulevard 13
28359 Bremen
Phone: +49 421 218-67203
E-Mail: dgall@uni-bremen.de

Jour Fixe with Dorottya Szikra on 11.12.2024

As the last event of our Jour Fixe series in 2024, Prof. Dorottya Szikra from the Institute for Sociology, Centre for Social Sciences (Budapest, Hungary) held a lecture on "Social Policy in Autocratizing Context. Inclusionary and Exclusionary Processes" on December 11. Her presentation and the subsequent discussion with over 20 colleagues focussed on social policy reforms in Russia, Turkey, Hungary, Poland, and India.

Abstract: Illiberal parties’ grasp on power has relied on economic and social policy as much as on the demise of checks and balances and the distortion of electoral rules. Research has so far overlooked the ways in which these parties attract formerly neglected social groups with their welfarist approach. This lack of attention is not only important in scientific terms but has political consequences. Democratic forces are often blind to realize what illiberal and autocratic leaders offer in material terms to masses. This presentation summarizes a decade of comparative research into the social policies of populist, illiberal and autocratizing rulers. Utilizing examples from the procedures, content and discourses of welfare reforms in Russia, Turkey, Hungary, Poland, and India, we show how illiberal and authoritarian incumbents shape their welfare states in different geopolitical settings, and build up popularity through social policy programs.

Literature:

• Tomasz Inglot, Dorottya Szikra, Cristina Raț (2022): Mothers, Families or Children? Family Policy in Poland, Hungary, and Romania, 1945-2020. University of Pittsburgh Press. [Link]
• Dorottya Szikra, Kerem Gabriel Öktem (2023): An illiberal welfare state emerging? Welfare efforts and trajectories under democratic backsliding in Hungary and Turkey. In: Journal of European Social Policy. Sage. [Link]
• Dorota Szelewa, Dorottya Szikra (2024): Fighting Gender Equality under the Pandemic. The Case of Polish and Hungarian Anti-Gender Equality and Anti-LGBTQ+ Policies under the COVID-19 Crisis. In: PArtecipazione e COnflitto. [Link]

 

Dorottya Szikra is Research Professor and Head of Department at the Centre for Social Sciences, Budapest, and Visiting Professor at the Department of Gender Studies, CEU Vienna. She is teaching Welfare State and Gender under Undemocratic Rule and Critical Theory on Policy and Practice in 2023/2024. She is the country-lead of the ERC project WelfareExperiences analyzing how different welfare systems can affect people's mental health and chances of returning to work.

Szikra is also associated with CEU Democracy Institute where she led a CIVICA reseach project entitled Welfare, Democracy, and Populism under the COVID-19 Crisis (WELDECO). Szikra's main research field is welfare state and family policy development in Central and Eastern Europe. Between 2016 and 2020 she acted as the co-chair of the European Social Policy Analysis Network (ESPAnet). She has acted as a member of the editorial boards of various journals, including the European Journal of Social Security, the Hungarian on-line journal socio.hu and since 2020 the Journal of European Social Policy. Since 2021 she has served as a member of the EC commissioned High-Level Group on the future of social protection and of the welfare state in the EU.

Contact:
Dr. Kerem Gabriel Öktem
CRC 1342: Global Dynamics of Social Policy
Mary-Somerville-Straße 7
28359 Bremen
E-Mail: oektem@uni-bremen.de