SOCLIMATE: Social risks and climate change: How do welfare states respond? (OsloMet/Nova)
Project background
Since the 1970s European societies have undergone significant transformation. Labour markets and family structures have become more instable. International economic competition associated with globalisation have intensified, and the consequences of expected demographic trends have put welfare institutions, like social protection systems and eldercare, under pressure. These developments have underpinned the emergence of new kinds of social risks. Therefore, in the 1990s and the 2000s much of the comparative welfare state literature was concerned with how welfare states could and should respond to these changes. How could governments ensure the economic and social sustainability of advanced welfare states?
A quarter of a century into the new millennium the challenges of population ageing, instable labour markets and family structures have not disappeared, but they take place in a context of geopolitical tensions and strong political polarisation. Importantly, policy responses are further conditioned by the need to respond to the twin green and digital transition as new sources of social risks. Thus, in the 21st century an important strand of social policy scholarship looks also at the ecological dimension when assessing how public policy manages social risks – one of the core tasks of modern welfare states. This is done in recognition of the fact that across the planet climate change and biodiversity loss increasingly threaten social well-being.
About the project
We offer thesis supervision to MA students who would like to study the welfare state-climate change nexus theoretically and/or empirically.
Examples of questions and themes that could be further developed in a thesis include (but are not limited to):
- More knowledge is needed about the implications of climate change and climate mitigation policy for the social risks which welfare states are designed to prevent or mitigate, such as poverty, unemployment or care needs. Put differently, how do climate change and associated public policies give rise to a new generation of social risks and to what extent does vulnerability to such risks vary across welfare regimes?
- Are the ‘old’ tools and institutions of social protection and welfare/social services sufficient to meet the social challenges linked to climate change/climate policy? What kind of new policy tools do welfare states need in response to climate change? These are questions relevant to the fields of social and labour market policy as well as social work.
- What implications does climate change have for the way welfare programmes are funded?
- The politics of eco-social policy: What social, ecological and economic interests and associated actor constellations and political institutions are mobilised in the political struggles over ecologically driven social risks and the ‘green’ transition at national and/or European level? How and why do these differ across countries or welfare regimes and with what consequences for policy output?
- What is the political potential for reforms that push welfare states in an ecologically ‘sustainable’ direction? This may involve a study of popular attitudes, political party/electoral manifestos or elite discourses.
- Are some welfare models or varieties of capitalism better at balancing long-term ecological and contemporary social concerns. If so, what are the mechanisms driving differential policy performances?
- How have hegemonic perspectives shaped imaginaries concerning the “sustainable Norwegian welfare state” historically and currently? In the face of climate change, how may welfare policy ideologies, policy development and policy “solutions” regarding welfare state sustainability reinforce such perspectives? How may we need to re-orient such perspectives in addressing climate change in a globally equitable way?
- We need further research on the normative and empirical dilemmas facing the Norwegian welfare state in the context of climate change and global social justice and how citizens perceive these. This kind of knowledge serves to understand better the implications of different choices when it comes to future institutional reforms in the fields of social and labour market policy.
Methods and data sources
We invite you to employ suitable qualitative and/or quantitative methods depending on the chosen thematic focus and available data.
Examples of methods include single or (small-n) comparative case study approaches, using for instance, historical process tracing. By contrast, some research questions will be suited to quantitative techniques.
Data sources may include official policy documents, media statements, a small number of expert interviews, official statistics or individual attitude surveys.
Relevant for
This project is especially relevant for students in study options Social Work, Nordic Social Policy and Global Sustainable Development, and MIS.
Potential supervisors
Mi Ah Schoyen, NOVA
Therese Dokken, NOVA
Erika Gubrium, Department of Social Work, Child Welfare and Social Policy
Contact person
We encourage potentially interested students to contact Mi Ah Schoyen (miah.schoyen@oslomet.no) as soon as possible and to submit a short outline (1-2 pages) of preliminary interests and ideas along with a brief CV by 15 March 2024. You can write in either English or Norwegian.