Research
You will find a complete range of our monographs, muti-authored and edited works including peer-reviewed, original scholarly research across the social sciences and aligned disciplines. We publish long and short form research and you can browse the complete Bristol University Press and Policy Press archive.
Policy Press also publishes policy reviews and polemic work which aim to challenge policy and practice in certain fields. These books have a practitioner in mind and are practical, accessible in style, as well as being academically sound and referenced.
Books: Research
The analysis of the introduction of fiscal welfare in two non-liberal welfare states, France and Sweden, confirms many of the findings or intuitions found in the existing literature regarding the uses and effects of the tax benefit instrument, which validates the idea that there are specific properties attached to this instrument.
The introduction lays out the main themes addressed, the originality of the approach (using fiscal welfare as an analytical lens and tying together a discussion of the social division of welfare and the social division of labour that the use of fiscal welfare entails) and the main contributions of the book. It highlights that, besides developing an original framework based on an understudied policy instrument, the analysis covers both the politics of fiscal welfare and its consequences. In doing so, it engages with the literature on welfare reform and transformation, notably in the field of care provision. It also engages with the literature on labour market polarisation and dualisation. In highlighting the multiple forms of inequalities that are produced through the policies studied, careful attention is given to the gendered, class and ethnic dimensions of these inequalities.
Fiscal welfare (or social tax expenditures) is a policy instrument associated with Liberal welfare states that has been on the rise across many European welfare states.
This book sheds light on the use and effects of fiscal welfare in France and Sweden. Focusing on the introduction of a 50% tax deduction on domiciliary care and household services, it explores the politics behind this scheme, its effects on care provision as well as on labour market dualisation, highlighting how fiscal welfare contributes to structuring both a social division of welfare and a social division of labour.
This ground-breaking book opens a new field of research by exploring fiscal welfare, the political uses of this policy instrument, the patterns of inequalities it gives rise to and its policy feedback effects.
This chapter focuses on the politics of fiscal welfare. The 50 per cent tax reduction on domiciliary care and household services was introduced in 1991 in France and in 2007 in Sweden, though the first debates regarding the introduction of such a tax benefit in Sweden had begun in the early 1990s. The chapter analyses the different stages of adoption and reform of this policy over time, the motivations put forward and the framing of these motivations, the actors that have mobilised and the partisan politics behind this policy scheme. It also looks at the evolution in cost and visibility of this tax instrument and the political and public debates it has sparked. It highlights that a similar temporality has emerged across France and Sweden, in terms of the periods when the choice of instrument was considered and/or implemented and expanded and the type of accompanying discourse. The motivations put forward in both countries also share strong similarities, not least that the schemes were intended to respond to a multiplicity of objectives, of which job creation and addressing of eldercare needs have been the most important.
This chapter examines the impact of the tax benefit instrument on labour market transformation. In particular, it shows how this policy scheme has contributed to the specific patterns of polarisation of the occupational structure that have been observed in both France and Sweden, but also to the dualisation of the labour market, by fostering the development of atypical and precarious working conditions in this sector. Crucial to understanding this process of dualisation are: the rationale for choosing this policy instrument – which subsidises the demand (private households) rather than the supply (care and household workers); the political and normative discourse framing both this tax benefit scheme and the care and household services sector; and the link between this scheme and the activation turn in social and labour market policy. This chapter thus shows how this fiscal welfare scheme actively contributes to fostering a social division of labour, which also intersects with the social division of welfare, and to the sharpening of social inequalities along gender, class and ethnic lines.
This chapter looks at the role of fiscal welfare in the process of transformation and quiet privatisation of care provision, showing how the tax instrument has been justified and legitimised in France and Sweden in the name of promoting ‘free choice’, which modifies the norms for public action with a shift towards a more individual rather than a collective response to care needs. The tax benefit scheme has also accompanied an opening up of care provision to the market and the development of an increasingly powerful private sector with a vested interest in maintaining and expanding this tax scheme. The chapter also examines the distributive consequences of the introduction of this fiscal welfare benefit, showing how it contributes to the co-existence of different forms of access to care and inequalities in access to care, thus leading to a social division of welfare.
This book uses the lens of fiscal welfare to analyse the transformation and development of inequalities in welfare provision and in the social division of labour. In order to better understand the relevance of this lens and to highlight some of the specificities of the instrument, this chapter provides a state of the art of the (essentially Anglo-American) literature on fiscal welfare and social tax expenditures. The chapter also identifies the main research questions addressed in the book and presents an analytical framework, the originality of which is to tie together the analysis of intersecting sources of inequalities and forms of polarisation, showing not only how fiscal welfare has an impact on the social division of welfare – which has been the focus of the fiscal welfare literature – but also how it underpins a social division of labour.
This chapter questions the uses and policy feedback effects of the policy instrument. While the analysis in previous chapters points to some of the negative consequences of this tax benefit scheme, in terms of inequalities in access to care and household services and the effects on public care provision, or in terms of the development of a precarious labour market segment, the scheme could still be considered efficient from a public policy perspective if it achieves some of the aims officially pursued. However, policy evaluations by public agencies and other scholars cast doubt on this while pointing also to the high cost of these schemes for public finances and to the targeting inefficiencies. Such critiques are not entirely new, but have been raised by different public reports at various stages of the introduction and development of the tax benefit scheme in both France and Sweden. This raises the question of the choice to use this policy instrument and why these policy schemes have not only remained in place but have even been extended over the years. This, in turn, helps address the question of the specific properties of the tax benefit instrument and the specific feedback effects of this instrument.
This book set out to explore flexible working in a more critical way, asking the question whether flexible working actually provides positive outcomes for workers in terms of work-life balance, workers’ well-being and gender equality as many expect it to. The results of the previous chapters show that paradoxically rather than improving workers’ work-life balance, flexible working increased feelings of conflict between work and family. The reason behind this phenomenon was explained through the flexibility paradox, that flexible working can lead to further exploitation of workers’ labour. This exploitation pattern is gendered. Men expanded their employment hours, namely overtime hours, to fulfil their ideal worker and breadwinner masculine image. Women expanded their unpaid working hours, namely increased time spent on housework and childcare adhering to the social norms around their roles as caregivers. What is more, due to these gendered patterns of flexible working or more so the assumptions behind such patterns, women end up being penalised further when working flexibly despite the fact that they are also likely to work longer and harder on their paid work when working flexibly.
However, I have also shown that the take-up and outcomes of flexible working largely depends on the contexts in which it is used. The way we think about work, work-life balance, and gender roles, workers’ bargaining power and insecurity all help shape the outcomes of flexible working. The book also showed that as flexible working becomes more widely used, we see a shift in the attitudes towards flexible working – namely through the decline in flexibility stigma.
One of the key findings drawn from the previous chapter was that as flexible working becomes more widespread, people are less likely to hold stigmatised views against flexible workers, and it is less likely to lead to negative outcomes in terms of work-life balance. The results were based on cross-national studies which meant that although we do see strong associations we cannot guarantee the direction of the relationship (for example, which came first, stigma or prevalence of flexible working?). We also cannot be certain if the more widespread use of flexible working or changes in contexts are the real causes or if it has to do with something else we failed to observe.1 In other words, the question arises whether we would see positive changes to flexible working practices in countries like the UK and the US if we were to change some of the contexts. These are difficult questions to answer given that cultures, policies and the take-up of flexible working do not usually change rapidly enough for us to properly answer them.
Then the COVID-19 pandemic happened and provided us with a very unique experimental opportunity to answer some of these difficult questions: What happens if a large group of workers starts working from home? How would this sudden rise of flexible working change stigmatised views towards flexible workers? How would this change the flexibility paradox patterns we have observed previously? How would this change the gender dynamics of the outcomes of flexible working?
