TY - JOUR

T1 - Nordic Relief Packages and Non-standard Workers

T2 - Towards Expanded Universalism and Institutional Inequalities

AU - Larsen, Trine Pernille

AU - Ilsøe, Anna

PY - 2023

Y1 - 2023

N2 - Has the Corona crisis triggered changes to Nordic social protection? We address this question by examining how Denmark, Finland, Norway, Finland, Iceland, and Sweden reacted to the crisis, which in many ways resembles a Litmus-test for Nordic social protection. Analytically, we draw on historical institutionalism, welfare, and segmentation literature. We find that although the Nordic relief packages aim to create an encompassing safety net, the reforms expose and sometimes reinforce institutionally embedded cracks in the Nordic systems around the nexus of standard and non-standard work, leading to potential layers of institutionally embedded inequalities. The Nordic countries have expanded and adjusted their existing social protection, portraying strong elements of path dependency, but with examples of novel initiatives. Their mix of universal and targeted measures appears to reflect so-called ‘expanded universalism’, where targeted measures supplement the ‘ordinary’ Nordic social protection to cover the most crisis ridden, but not necessarily the poorest, groups

AB - Has the Corona crisis triggered changes to Nordic social protection? We address this question by examining how Denmark, Finland, Norway, Finland, Iceland, and Sweden reacted to the crisis, which in many ways resembles a Litmus-test for Nordic social protection. Analytically, we draw on historical institutionalism, welfare, and segmentation literature. We find that although the Nordic relief packages aim to create an encompassing safety net, the reforms expose and sometimes reinforce institutionally embedded cracks in the Nordic systems around the nexus of standard and non-standard work, leading to potential layers of institutionally embedded inequalities. The Nordic countries have expanded and adjusted their existing social protection, portraying strong elements of path dependency, but with examples of novel initiatives. Their mix of universal and targeted measures appears to reflect so-called ‘expanded universalism’, where targeted measures supplement the ‘ordinary’ Nordic social protection to cover the most crisis ridden, but not necessarily the poorest, groups

KW - Det Samfundsvidenskabelige Fakultet

KW - Employment

KW - Wages

KW - Unemployment & Rehabilitation

KW - Innovation & Productivity

KW - Gender

KW - Ethnicity

KW - Age and Diversity

KW - Labor market Institutions & Social Partners

U2 - 10.18291/njwls.135099

DO - 10.18291/njwls.135099

M3 - Tidsskriftartikel

VL - 13

SP - 7

EP - 29

JO - Nordic Journal of Working Life Studies

JF - Nordic Journal of Working Life Studies

SN - 2245-0157

IS - S10

ER -