Documents Knijn, Trudie 9 results

"In spite of active labour market policies, a considerable number of welfare recipients in the Netherlands are long-term unemployed. In order to investigate the job search behaviour of this group, we developed a model of job search behaviour, inspired by the theory of planned behaviour, expectancy value theory and self-determination theory. Survey data relating to 193 individuals receiving welfare benefits for at least one year were collected. A model, consisting of six social-demographic and eight social and psychosocial variables, was tested with hierarchical multiple regression. Seven factors were found to be positively related to job search behaviour: being a non-Western immigrant, having recently started receiving welfare benefits, receiving encouragement in searching for work from an intimate social network, having a job search requirement imposed, having an expectation of finding a job, individual work valence and job search attitudes. Of these, duration of welfare assistance, the encouragement of an intimate social network, work valence and job search attitude appeared to be mediating factors. The article concludes that activation policy might benefit from a combination of improving job searching attitudes, for instance by discussing ideas about the valence of employment and expectations of success or by considering potential barriers to finding employment within social networks, and introducing a clear requirement to search for jobs, in particular for native Dutch, single mothers and people who have been in receipt of benefits for a long period of time. Such policies have been absent in the Netherlands for a long time, priority being given to those with better chances in the labour market."

"In 2006 new social policy legislation was introduced in the Netherlands, under which employees with chronic health problems may be allocated a ‘double identity', being assessed simultaneously as partly sick and partly able to work. Employees in this situation receive a proportion of disability benefit according to their assessed loss of earning capacity and are required to engage in paid work in order to earn an income over and above this. Our central research question is: Which factors elicit the labour market participation of these partially disabled employees? This article reports results from a survey of 772 partially disabled employees. We analyse our data using structural equation modelling and find that labour market participation of partially disabled employees is particularly strongly associated with perceptions of their capability to work and of their chances of returning to work. The results are considered in relation to Parsons' (1951) classical theory of the sick role and are elaborated on the basis of Sen's (1993, 1999) conceptualisation of capability."

"Work/family reconciliation policies have increasingly become part of employment-led social policy at both EU and Member State levels. Given this trend, we expected to see more attention to policies that unequivocally promote women's employment: childcare provision and the promotion of flexible working, together with reform of leaves that permit labour market exit in order to care for children. Our examination of the nature of change in policy goals and instruments finds that developments have not been this straightforward, and that they can be related to existing (and differing) patterns of labour market behaviour and attitudes towards parental involvement in work and care."

"After decades of promoting work–family reconciliation with the aim of advancing gender equality, European Union (EU) discourses around work and family have been reframed. This article distinguishes three currently paramount discourses: The social investment approach, the transitional labor market model, and the individual life-course model. Respectively, they propose investing in, facilitating, and individualizing the new social risks, including the resolution of tensions in the relationship between work and family life. Each has particular assumptions about risk-sharing, public and private responsibility, and the position of the individual vis-à-vis the state and the community. These paradigms have been analyzed in relation to EU policies on the reconciliation of work and family life. We find some traces of these paradigms in the Lisbon agreements, its amendments, and in the National Action Plans that are regularly submitted by the member-states. We conclude that the gender-equality agenda has been subordinated to the focus on creating competitive knowledge-based economies in the EU. Social investment is the most prominent of the three paradigms in this new agenda, yet because it is mixed up with elements from the other paradigms, current policy agendas lack coherence."

"European pension reforms are dominated by the principles of privatization and individualization. Privatizing and individualizing pension entitlements call for a redefinition of the responsibilities of states and individuals. Moreover, statutorily introducing individualization calls for equal opportunities to be guaranteed. However, the implementation of equal opportunities is a long way off because pension-determining factors are still subject to gender distinctions, among other things. Gender distinction is inherent in life courses as well as in welfare arrangements. Welfare arrangements determine the legitimate reasons for gaining pension rights, how the measures of different entitlements are interrelated and which factors hamper a person's ability to fulfil the pension norm. This article analyses the link between welfare arrangements and women's life courses for a better understanding of the gendered norms of pension entitlements by focusing on gendered wages and life expectancies, gendered working patterns, and the connection between care and pensions."

"This article comparatively analyses how the responsibilities towards childcare needs have been framed and addressed in Italy and the Netherlands following the increase in women's labour market participation. According to the authors, the differing developments in these two countries partly disconfirm the thesis according to which facilitating family/work conciliation is at the heart of the new social policy paradigms in all Bismarckian welfare states. This concern has indeed been an explicit driver of social policy changes in the Netherlands, but not in Italy. The authors argue instead that these two countries offer evidence for the thesis that timing matters. Italy has been an ‘early bird' in changing family law and in putting in place childcare policies, but has not been able to innovate these policies when the economic and social context has changed and, in particular, has not reframed them fully as work-family conciliating policies. The Netherlands, on the other hand, was comparatively late in changing family law and developing parental leaves and childcare policies, the latter being framed largely as work-family conciliation strategies. Following the liberal cultural and political developments of the 1990s, which favoured individualisation and freedom of choice, the changes in the Netherlands systematically introduced an increasing mix of individual, family and market responsibility via both commodification supported by tax expenditure and the underpinning of the one-and-a-half breadwinner model offered by the regulation of protected part-time labour contracts. "

"After decades of promoting the reconciliation of work and family life from a gender-equality perspective, to date discourses and related social policy paradigms replace and reframe the once European agenda on gender-equality and put the gender issue in a much broader policy agenda of new social risks. This working paper first states that a gender-neutral social policy on reconciliation of work and family life stagnates because of four crucial dilemmas. New social policy paradigms have developed since the 1990s, each having particular assumptions on risk-sharing, public and private responsibility and the position of the individual vis-à-vis the state and the community. These paradigms will be analysed in relation to the European Union policies regarding reconciliation of work and family life. We will detect some traces of these paradigms in the Lisbon agreements and its amendments. We will conclude that indeed the gender-equality agenda, as well as family life, has been submitted to the new convention of the competitive knowledge based economy; The social investment paradigm is the most prominent of the three paradigms in this new agenda, however it is mixed up with elements from the other paradigms and therefore current policies agendas lack coherence."