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

The future of social protection in Africa

Anna Wolkenhauer from project B09 "Social Policy and Rural Development in Africa" took part in a discussion for the Development Pathways podcast. The debate, which included also Jeremy Seekings and Hangala Siachiwena from the University of Cape Town, addressed the future of social protection in Africa.

Development Pathways: What Comes After Social Cash Transfers? (Soundcloud)

In Sub Saharan Africa, the last twenty years saw a proliferation of programmes that aim to provide a basic income security to marginalised segments of the population; especially Social Cash Transfers have become a prominent social assistance intervention. These are often targeted at selected groups who are deemed the "poorest". The discussion with Development Pathways, a global think tank that promotes the realisation of social and economic rights worldwide, centred around assessing the current and future challenges and opportunities of social protection in Africa.

After an overall positive analysis, based especially on the observation that governments and other actors are increasingly turning towards groups who have long fallen by the wayside of exclusive growth processes, Anna made a plea for interlinking social policy with economic reforms. The underlying causes for poverty and marginalisation are economic, and cannot be addressed by social cash transfers alone – despite being very important and arguably effective. Instead, greater efforts are needed for economic diversification and the creation of more and better jobs. The momentum that the global attention to social protection and cash transfers, especially among donor organisations, has created, though, should be seized to push for more transformative change.

Contact:
Prof. Dr. Anna Wolkenhauer
CRC 1342: Global Dynamics of Social Policy, Institute for Intercultural and International Studies
Mary-Somerville-Straße 9
28359 Bremen
Phone: +49 421 218-57099
E-Mail: anna.wolkenhauer@uni-bremen.de

Project INF is looking for two student assistants

The Collaborative Research Centre 1342 analyses the global dynamics of public social policy. The CRC 1342 works as an umbrella for a total of 15 projects. One of them is the Information Management Project (INF project) where the research data from all CRC projects are accumulated in an information management system "Advancing the Global Welfare State Information System (WeSIS), eScience Services and Research Data Management". We are looking for 2 student assistants for further development of WeSIS (up to 74 hours/month) starting from 2025 with a focus on frontend and backend development capabilities. The salary is in accordance with the current collective agreement of the state of Bremen. Send your CV and/or portfolio to: tany@uni-bremen.de

 

Job description:

• Gathering and preparing user requirements in collaboration with our social scientists for our existing data repository. Conduct design adjustments based on user feedback.
• Backend relevant: Experience with Ruby on Rails, PostgreSQL, JavaScript and/similar libraries. Knowledge of data visualization will be a plus
• Frontend relevant: Designing graphic user interface elements using Figma and/or other necessary tools. Experience with Ruby on Rails, Material UI, React, JavaScript and/similar libraries would be necessary.

 

Your profile:

• Ongoing studies in Computer Science, Digital Media, Interface design, or other similar subjects are welcome. In exceptional cases, a portfolio of previous work experiences is also welcome when the study programs do not match directly
• Very good knowledge and skills frontend development, design tools and programs.
• Good knowledge of English is a must as we are an English-speaking team
• Knowledge of web programming languages like Ruby on Rails, JavaScript and React among others
• Strong knowledge of responsive and interactive designs with attention to details

 

Our offer:

• Flexible working hours with the possibility of home-office
• Connection to the team and related activities (including the opportunity to participate in team events, retreats, etc.)
• Opportunity to work with the end users to polish and tailor an existing system to their needs
• Initially with 3 months contract and later extendable based on the performance

 

Deadline for application:

31 October, 2024

Contact:
Nadera Sultana Tany
CRC 1342: Global Dynamics of Social Policy
Mary-Somerville-Straße 7
28359 Bremen
Phone: +49 421 218-58600
E-Mail: tany@uni-bremen.de

As part of the research for her dissertation, Josefine Dehn travelled to Peru to visit various archives and libraries.

Josefine Dehn is a doctoral fellow in the sub-project B10 of the CRC, Armed Conflict and Dynamics of Social Policy, and studies the influences of internal wars on state social policy based on the case of Peru. The civil war there (1980-2000) between the Peruvian state and various guerrilla groups is considered one of the bloodiest in Latin America in the 20th century. In her dissertation, Josefine looks at the period from 1990 to 2000, during which several key events of the conflict took place. In general, the influence of warfare on the development of social policy has been rarely investigated to date, this is particularly true of intrastate wars and despite their worldwide occurrence. With her dissertation, Josefine wants to address this research gap from a political science perspective.

Josefine recently returned from a research trip to Peru, where she spent three weeks collecting data for her dissertation and the CRC sub-project in various archives and libraries. It was her second trip and Josefine spent a total of almost seven weeks in Lima, the capital of Peru. During this time, she researched several times in the National Archives and the archives and library of the Peruvian Congress, which are located in the historical centre of Lima. She also visited several locations of the National Library of Peru and the library of the Institute of Peruvian Studies, a prestigious interdisciplinary and non-governmental social science research institute focussing on Peru and Latin America.

During her research, Josefine was able to collect a wide range of empirical material for her dissertation and sub-project B10, on the one hand on the civil war and on the other on social policy developments in Peru between 1990 and 2000. This include various government documents, e.g. reports and yearbooks, detailed social expenditure data, parliamentary documents from legislative processes on social policy, collections of laws on social security for certain groups affected by the civil war, detailed reports and analyses on the internal conflict by the Commission of Truth and Reconciliation, as well as secondary literature.

One of the challenges Josefine faced during her trip was that primary sources in particular at times were difficult or impossible to access. The reasons for this are, for one thing, that even more than 20 years after its official end, the civil war is still a sensitive topic in Peru. Due to this, Josefine was sometimes only able to address it indirectly when consulting archive and library staff. For another, the institutional responsibility for the storage of certain documents was sometimes unclear even to the responsible staff of the archives and could not be determined. Despite these difficulties, however, Josefine was able to find sufficient promising primary and secondary sources, which she will now analyse as part of her dissertation. In the coming months, she will investigate which of a series of influences previously derived theoretically for the case of Peru can actually be identified empirically and, in particular, whether certain groups of particular importance to the state were favoured in the public social policy development during the civil war. These findings can then serve as an initial point of reference for further research.

For Josefine, the research trips offered an exciting but also challenging experience, plenty of food for thought and even more motivation for her research project. Peru is a fascinating country, but there are still major differences in access to and the scope of public social policy. The extent to which the Peruvian civil war has influenced these developments is therefore a step towards better understanding and combating this persistent inequality.

Contact:
Josefine Dehn
Feldkirchenstraße 21
96045 Bamberg
E-Mail: josefine.dehn@uni-bamberg.de

12-14 September 2024, Bilbao

Meika Sternkopf, Dr. Johanna Fischer, Migyeong Yun and Davide Viero from the A07 Project "Global Dynamics of Long-term Care Policy" recently presented their research at the 7th International Conference on Evidence-based Policy in Long-term Care. Bringing together academics, policymakers, and experts, the conference is organised every two years by the International Long-term Care Policy Network (ILPN). This year, it was co-hosted by the Government of the Spanish province Biscay and took place in its capital Bilbao from 12-14 September 2024.

Meika Sternkopf and Migyeong Yun presented two of the A07 project’s case studies focusing on the development of long-term care systems in different contexts and regions. In a panel on care fragmentation challenges, Meika introduced her research on Uruguay with a presentation titled "Towards an integrated system of care? The introduction of the National Care System in Uruguay". Her research on the case highlighting the role of international organisations within advocacy coalitions has also been recently published in Policy Sciences. Another international interdependency was highlighted in Migyeong’s presentation "Developing a public long-term care system in the context of a pre-existing market for live-in migrant care work: The case of Taiwan" within a panel on migration and long-term care. This research conducted together with Simone Leiber and Li-fang Liang highlights how the existing migrant care market may influence the subsequent development of the public long-term care system using the case of failure to adopt long-term care insurance in Taiwan.

Within the panel "Easy to compare? Generating and using comparative data on long-term care" Davide Viero and Johanna Fischer presented their work on generating global comparative datasets. Drawing on earlier CRC research and her dissertation, Johanna presented the Historical Long-Term Care Systems Dataset outlining which countries worldwide have established different forms of long-term care systems. Davide continued to outline the current data collection on the generosity of long-term care systems, presenting a preliminary analysis of inclusiveness and scope of benefits across 40 countries worldwide. The datasets received great interest from the audience and yielded a lively discussion on possibilities and limitations of international comparative research in a complex field like long-term care.

The sessions on comparative data and care fragmentation were also co-organised and moderated by Johanna as a member of the Steering Committee of the Global Observatory of Long-Term Care Interest Group on Long-Term Care Policy. The novel Global Observatory of Long-Term Care is a new network initiative aimed at facilitate cross-national learning to improve and strengthen care systems and research. It was officially launched at the conference in Bilbao and welcomes any members with relevant experience and interest in the field of long-term care.

Contact:
Dr. Johanna Fischer
CRC 1342: Global Dynamics of Social Policy
Mary-Somerville-Straße 3
28359 Bremen
Phone: +49 421 218-57074
E-Mail: johanna.fischer@uni-bremen.de

Crossroads Central Asia, an independent non-profit research institute based in Bishkek, interviewed Gulnaz Isabekova-Landau.

Dr. Gulnaz Isabekova-Landau, a postdoctoral researcher in the Collaborative Research Center project B06, which explores social policies in Eastern Europe, the South Caucasus, and Central Asia, was interviewed by Crossroads Central Asia. The topic was her book, which was published in the Collaborative Research Center’s "Global Dynamics of Social Policy" book series.

Crossroads Central Asia is an independent, non-profit research institute. It specializes in analyzing political, economic, and security dynamics in Central Asia within a broader Eurasian context. By amalgamating the expertise of regional and international scholars, Crossroads Central Asia aims to offer a more nuanced, balanced, and intersectoral understanding of the region. An interview with Dr. Gulnaz Isabekova-Landau presents significant insights from her book, "Stakeholder Relationships and Sustainability: The Case of Health Aid to the Kyrgyz Republic". She deliberates on the empowerment of civil society and establishes a causal link between stakeholder relationships and the sustainability of aid. This discussion provides a deeper insight into the policy-related implications of her book particularly about the challenges and prospects of health aid and its sustainability not only in the Kyrgyz Republic but also in the broader context.

Launched by CRC 1342 and Palgrave Macmillan, the "Global Dynamics of Social Policy" book series disseminates the research findings of the research consortium. By taking a global perspective on social policy and its developments, this book series focuses on the expansion, retrenchment, austerity, and overall transformation of welfare systems. It provides an in-depth look into specific policy areas and discusses the roles of national and international actors in these transformation processes.

Dr. Gulnaz Isabekova-Landau is a postdoctoral research fellow in the Collaborative Research Center 1342 "Global Dynamics of Social Policy" at the University of Bremen, and also at the Research Center for East European Studies at the University of Bremen. Her research focuses on healthcare systems, access to healthcare, social policy, and labor migration. In the past, she has studied water issues in Central Asia and the accessibility of state-guaranteed social services for survivors of human trafficking in Kazakhstan. Currently, Gulnaz is participating in research within the framework of the "Health in the Mountains Agenda". This initiative is a joint effort by the Government of the Kyrgyz Republic and the World Health Organization.

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

Fabienne Müller visits various archives in the US during research for her dissertation

Fabienne Müller, a doctoral researcher in project B11, which deals with the historical perspective of protectionism and social policy in Argentina and the US, is currently researching the questions of her dissertation in various cities in the United States. Her work focuses on the first half of the 1990s and the policies of President Bill Clinton.

In order to be able to classify the influence of neoliberal ideas on social and trade policy at the beginning of the first term of the 42nd President, Fabienne is working in various archives and libraries during her archive trip, which lasts a total of almost three months until September 18th of this year. Last year she already had the chance as a short-term fellow at the German Historical Institute Washington D.C. to view documents and correspondence in the National Archives in Washington D.C./College Park, Maryland and in the Hagley Library in Wilmington, Delaware.

This summer, more research days followed at the National Archives and the Manuscript Reading Room at the Library of Congress. A special experience were the two weeks in July that Fabienne spent in Little Rock, Arkansas. Since the Bill Clinton Presidential Library here holds documents from his terms as president, she had the opportunity to view files from those years that had just been released. These included the files of Rahm Emanuel, a close advisor to Bill Clinton on various topics, such as the NAFTA agreement and health policy. The material in this collection includes publications, reports, memoranda, draft speeches, surveys, newspaper articles, press releases, brochures, emails, talking points and correspondence, which Fabienne was able to view.

With this material and other documents from her two archival trips, Fabienne Müller hopes to get closer to answering the question of how much neoliberalism during this period affected the two policy areas that project B11 focuses on: social and trade policy. Her current stay also allows her to get to know individual parts of the US in a unique way and people from different groups, with whom she gets to talk in her host family, in the student dormitory, at the German Historical Institute, in various hotels, museums, archives and libraries and on long train journeys. They share with her parts of everyday life in a country which is currently shaped again by tough election campaigns, and give her very personal insights into the effects of the processes that project B11 is historically investigating. This learning process is not only valuable for Fabienne's dissertation within the project, but like every trip, it is an invaluable personal experience.

Contact:
Fabienne Müller
CRC 1342: Global Dynamics of Social Policy, Institut für Geschichtswissenschaft / FB 08
Universitäts-Boulevard 13
28359 Bremen
Phone: +49 421 218-58628
E-Mail: famuelle@uni-bremen.de

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

The 13th NordWel Summer School "State, Society & Citizen - Cross-Disciplinary Perspectives on Welfare State Development" took place at the Haus der Wissenschaft in Bremen from 19 to 23 August 2024. On this website you will find the programme and further information about the Summer School.

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

Dr. Irina Wiegand
CRC 1342: Global Dynamics of Social Policy
Mary-Somerville-Straße 5
28359 Bremen
Phone: +49 421 218-58508
E-Mail: irina.wiegand@uni-bremen.de

Article in "WirtschaftsWoche"

Dr. Armin Müller from project B05 "Inclusion and Benefit Dynamics in the Chinese Welfare Regime" was interviewed by WirtschaftsWoche. In the article "Altersvorsorge: Chinas Renten-Zeitbombe tickt" (paywall), he gives his expert opinion of how to deal with the ageing of Chinese society.

The article examines the financial sustainability of the Chinese pension system, which is precarious according to recent Chinese studies. In the People's Republic, similar to Western countries, there are debates about demographic change and an increase in the retirement age. The interview helped to contextualize the debate and shed light on important background information. For example, the retirement age is particularly low for women at 50 or 55. However, retired women often continue to play important social roles, such as looking after children, which enables the next generation of women to work full-time. Although raising the retirement age reduces the costs of contribution-financed pension insurance, it increases the need for childcare elsewhere. In addition, the system under discussion primarily covers employees in the formal urban sector. The vast majority of Chinese people do not benefit from a pension, which represents an independent livelihood, and is hardly considered in the discussion.

Contact:
Dr. Armin Müller
CRC 1342: Global Dynamics of Social Policy, Research IV and China Global Center
Campus Ring 1
28759 Bremen
Phone: +49 421 200-3473
E-Mail: armmueller@constructor.university

Interview with Samantha Grunow

Samantha Grunow worked as a Student Assistant in project A04 "Global Developments in Health Care Systems" from July 2022 until May 2024. She studied International Relations at the University of Bremen from 2021 until 2024 and focused her studies on the role of humanitarian organizations and aid amidst crisis and instability. In this interview, she describes her work experience and gives tips to students who are interested in a SHK position.

What were your tasks in project A04?

My tasks mainly included identifying and downloading relevant health care legislation and then supporting the development and implementation of a codebook to annotate this legislation to create a plane of comparability concerning inclusivity and generosity of health care systems on an international level. Towards the end of my time with A04, my tasks were centralized in implementing the codebook as much as possible, so we could make use of my experience in the development phases.

Were there synergy effects between your studies and your work at the CRC 1342?

I studied International Relations with a focus on the role of humanitarian actors. I wrote my final thesis on health care accessibility and the efficacy of humanitarian aid in Somalia, a country that has lacked a functioning central government for over 40 years now. Because of the overlap between my research's concern for the lack of a health care system and the project's concern for the assessment of existing systems, I was grateful for the team’s input on my research, especially early on as I had never focused on health care accessibility or health care systems before.

The project's insight to existing systems and the situation in Somalia was beneficial to guide some of my decision-making about how to approach the situation and support my conclusions by offering comparisons. Simultaneously, as I worked with white papers and other documentation from Somalia, this also informed my opinions and suggestions through the implementation of project’s codebook. Now, despite my absence, I hope some of my conclusions may help the team navigate obstacles they encounter when trying to assess health care systems which have been influenced by the involvement of humanitarian aid over time.

What career step followed and what do you take with you from your time as a student assistant into your professional life?

I finished my thesis in the middle of May and am now eager to find a full time position which is impactful and fulfilling. Working with the A04 project has given me valuable research skills, but what I value the most is that, even as a student assistant, I was given meaningful tasks which played a large role in the trajectory of the project. I joined the group a bit nervous that I would not be able to offer a lot due to my lack of experience, but I am thankful for this experience and take from it a reminder that everyone has skills and strengths that can be highlighted to optimize the productivity and success of any team.

What advice would you like to give future student assistants?

I encourage you to not only get your hours in but voice your opinion and do not be afraid to make mistakes. Listen to everyone's stories and advice and you will learn a lot more from your experience than how to collect and analyze data. The A04 project gave me a place to truly grow. I learned more than I ever anticipated about project management, especially regarding methodology and analysis, but this is mostly because the team gave me and my opinions a place in conversation. I was not the assistant that did the busy work, but a team member who supported decision making and planning. Take advantage of this position and make the most of it, you will appreciate all of it later.

Contact:
Alexander Polte
CRC 1342: Global Dynamics of Social Policy
Mary-Somerville-Straße 7
28359 Bremen
Phone: +49 421 218-57063
E-Mail: alexander.polte@uni-bremen.de