International Journal of Social Welfare最新文献

Work-induced stress poses significant mental health risks in high-stress professions, such as social workers. This study, grounded in the Job Demands-Control-Support model and Conservation of Resources theory, explores how job stressors affect social workers' depressive symptoms, focusing on job demands, job control, and their combinations, alongside the moderating role of job support. Analyzing data from the 2019 China Social Work Longitudinal Study through a city-level fixed-effects model, we find that job demands (role ambiguity and role conflict) and job control influence depressive symptoms both independently and interactively. Specifically, high job demands increase depressive symptoms, while greater job control reduces them. When looking at the combination of job demands and control, social workers facing low job demands with high job control report the lowest levels of depressive symptoms, followed by those with low demands and low job control. Moreover, coworker support emerges as crucial in reducing depression, especially for those grappling with high-role ambiguity and job control. Additionally, in high role conflict with low job control scenarios, support from leaders and supervisors is essential for lessening depressive symptoms. These findings highlight the essential role of job support in mitigating the impact of job stressors on social workers' mental health in China.

One of the most contentious facets of universal basic income (UBI) debates revolves around its impact on labor supply. Against this backdrop, this study aims to replicate how labor supply responds to changes in net income caused by the implementation of UBI. Using data from the 15th wave of the National Survey of Taxes and Benefits (N = 9342) and a discrete choice simulation model, this study estimated labor supply outcomes under two specific UBI models. The results suggest that UBI exerts minimal negative effects on labor supply among full-time and part-time workers and appears to encourage labor force entry among unemployed individuals. These findings offer empirical evidence on UBI's effects, suggesting it may support labor participation without substantial disincentives for employment.

This study examined the regulator's perspective on service user participation in social care. To date, empirical research has focused on the participatory methods themselves rather than on regulators' motivations for using them. Drawing on case studies of social care regulators in England (Care Quality Commission), Australia (Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission), and Sweden (Health and Social Care Inspectorate), we identified three distinct rationales for promoting service user participation: gaining public trust and legitimacy, improving regulatory processes, and empowering service users. Each rationale embeds different underlying assumptions about the contribution of service users to the regulatory process and the regulator's role to promote it. Furthermore, these distinct assumptions are associated with participatory methods that reflect different participatory approaches: democratic or consumerist, collective, or individual.

Social care is a pressing policy issue in the UK, where it is widely acknowledged that the status quo—including who pays, profits, and receives/delivers care—is unsustainable. Yet we know relatively little about the factors shaping satisfaction with the current system, as most prior research has been either descriptive in nature or focused on assessing funding priorities. This study investigates determinants of social care satisfaction for the UK general population, paying particular attention to the potentially interactive effect of age and ideology. Using 2012–2019 BSA Survey data, we find that middle-aged respondents are particularly dissatisfied with social care, but that ideology complicates this dynamic: while conservatives were broadly more satisfied with social care than progressives, this ideology effect disappears among older respondents. This result is largely driven by a modest increase in satisfaction among older progressives—though satisfaction remains low even among comparatively more satisfied groups.

This article analyses the impact of the volunteer guardian role, as stipulated in Italy's Law no. 47/2017, on the reception of unaccompanied minors. The research, spanning 50 months from March 2018 to May 2019, focused on the metropolitan area of Rome. A combination of methodological tools, including participant observation, questionnaires, qualitative interviews, and focus groups, was employed to ensure comprehensive data collection. The research findings delineate the responsibilities of volunteer guardians, encompassing legal representation, educational support, and networking within the established system. Furthermore, the results integrate the perspectives of social workers and minors regarding the guardian's evolving role and elucidate the nature of relationships formed between these stakeholders. The involvement of multiple decision-makers in the child's life, including voluntary guardians, social workers, foster care professionals, and juvenile judges, results in a diverse allocation of responsibilities and roles. These are continuously negotiated as part of a shared responsibility with a variable geometry.

This study employs the two-stage difference-in-differences (2sDiD) estimator to investigate the causal effect of economic sanctions on political stability. It contributes to existing research by (1) re-evaluating sanctions' impacts on political stability using newly introduced causal inference methods, and (2) distinguishing the effects of sanctions across various political regimes and economic globalisation levels. The article argues that economic sanctions create economic hardships for the target population, leading to public frustration toward their governments, which stimulates political mobilisation and thereby decreases the country's political stability. However, sanctions hurt democracies more than autocracies because autocratic regimes can suppress public dissent through repression and citizens face higher costs for opposition. Moreover, economic globalisation offers targets alternatives to sanctioned products and services, potentially weakening sanctions thus damaging political stability more in low-globalised than in high-globalised countries. Empirical findings from 9230 country-year observations between 1949 and 2022 largely align with the theoretical predictions, showing that economic sanctions undermine the target's political stability, with these destabilising effects contingent upon its political regime and economic globalisation levels.

The growth of non-standard employment has emerged as a crucial factor that contributes to delays and difficulties in young people's transitions to adulthood. Previous studies have demonstrated the importance of multidimensional measures of precariousness. This paper aims to investigate the phenomenon of precariousness holistically, using an original database of respondents in Spain from 20 to 34 years of age. Using a mixed-methods approach, we explore young people's understandings of precariousness and examine its key determinants and consequences. The findings illustrate the multidimensional nature of feelings of precariousness, with economic insecurity and work conditions being core elements. Our results point to precarity stemming from a combination of inextricably intertwined objective and subjective components, as well as work and economic dimensions.

The recent literature on platform work and the welfare state has stressed that, despite being affected by high-income insecurity, platform workers cannot easily access social protection. However, it is unclear why platform workers encounter such barriers. This article offers an inductive and empirically based theoretical framework to investigate the obstacles faced by platform workers. It shows that the barriers experienced by platform workers depend on the eligibility criteria, the assessment criteria and the trade-off between taxation and social protection. The article substantiates these claims by offering both a policy analysis of formal arrangements and a qualitative analysis of the lived experiences of welfare of 101 platform workers in Italy, Sweden and the UK during COVID-19. The research found that, while many platform workers attempted to access social protection during COVID-19, platform workers' access to social protection was affected by their positionality as outsiders, which clashes with the eligibility criteria (in Sweden and Italy); by the irregular nature of platform work, which contrasts with the rigidity of the assessment criteria (in the UK, Italy and Sweden); and by the implicit trade-off experienced by platform workers between minimising taxation and accessing to social protection (in the UK and Italy).

Legislation governs both the admittance and treatment of forced migrants in the United States. Increasingly, many forced migrants are offered few welfare benefits, temporary protection, and no pathway to permanent residency. This paper explores forced migrants' legal categories and access to social welfare, focusing on five humanitarian protection statuses: Temporary Protected Status, Humanitarian Parole, Asylum Seeker, Refugee, and Asylee. Based on the concepts of welfare nationalism and the Protestant Work Ethic, our historical analysis examines the Welfare Reform Act of 1996 to see how this landmark legislation shaped access to welfare for noncitizens. We then focus on the emergence of humanitarian statuses since the 1950s and the legislation that constructed them. We conclude that immigration legislation governing forced migrants underlies an ideology of deserving, where some are treated as more meritorious than others. Thus, we call for welfare scholars to elevate immigration status as a key category in their research.