Investing in Our Future? The Influence of Social Investment Ideas on Family Policy Discourses in Finland, Germany, and the UK

Abstract

The basic premises of European welfare politics have been transformed during the last decades. This has taken place, on the one hand, through the transformation of the structures of society, experienced through new social risks, such as “reconciling work and family life, lone parenthood, long-term unemployment, being among the working poor, or having insufficient social security coverage” (Bonoli 2005, 431). As an outcome, European countries now have a greater number of economically vulnerable households (Wehner and Abrahamson 2006). On the other hand, the capacity of national welfare states to counteract economic vulnerability and promote well-being among families has become hampered by recurring crises, sluggish growth, and competitiveness imperatives in an increasingly globalized world. This has not only put European welfare states under pressure and brought along waves of austerity measures, it has also made politicians more susceptible to supranational ideas and policy recommendations on how to reform the welfare state (Hemerijck 2013; Hulme 2005). Hence, the transformation that we witness is not only of a purely structural nature. The core ideas at the heart of welfare policy have also gone through a transformation. Since the 1980s, welfare politics has been influenced by a double shift, where more responsibility has been assigned from states to markets, families, and the voluntary sector. At the same time, the role of the welfare state has gone from being essentially about providing services and benefits in a here-and-now sense into being essentially about “social investment” (Jenson and Saint-Martin 2003, 81).