Lara Maestripieri – författare

Since the early 2000s, social innovation has become increasingly relevant in the political and research debates on welfare state transformations. Although most social innovations are citizen-led, some new institution-led initiatives have also emerged. But what are the implications of social innovation for equity and welfare? How does policy learning from social innovation take place in different welfare regime contexts? How can policy be simultaneously responsive to the diversification of needs and to equity and universalisation?

Social Innovation and Welfare State Retrenchment examines these questions by focusing on early childhood education and care (ECEC), where the welfare state has not managed to consolidate universal coverage, where social investment is considered crucial for equal opportunities, and where intersectional influences across different dimensions of inequality, such as education and gender-related issues, are central.

Offering an original research design for studying the institutionalisation process of social innovation in ECEC across a variety of contexts in Europe and beyond, this collection provides evidence of how the interplay between social innovation and policy deeply affects equity and citizens’ welfare in advanced capitalist economies.

Since the early 2000s, social innovation has become increasingly relevant in the political and research debates on welfare state transformations. Although most social innovations are citizen-led, some new institution-led initiatives have also emerged. But what are the implications of social innovation for equity and welfare? How does policy learning from social innovation take place in different welfare regime contexts? How can policy be simultaneously responsive to the diversification of needs and to equity and universalisation?

Social Innovation and Welfare State Retrenchment examines these questions by focusing on early childhood education and care (ECEC), where the welfare state has not managed to consolidate universal coverage, where social investment is considered crucial for equal opportunities, and where intersectional influences across different dimensions of inequality, such as education and gender-related issues, are central.

Offering an original research design for studying the institutionalisation process of social innovation in ECEC across a variety of contexts in Europe and beyond, this collection provides evidence of how the interplay between social innovation and policy deeply affects equity and citizens’ welfare in advanced capitalist economies.

This book guides the reader in discovering contemporary professions and the critical changes they have lived through after the post-industrial transformation of advanced capitalist societies. Two interrelated concepts are used to interpret what is happening in professional work: differentiation, namely the set of processes by which professions and professionalism have become more diverse, and heterogeneity, the outcomes of such processes.

A novel analytical framework  delves into differentiation and understands heterogeneity based on three dimensions: within (how professions are structured internally), between (how professions distinguish themselves from other occupations and from each other), and beyond (how professions govern societal changes and influence differentiation processes). The book presents a collection of studies covering different countries and professions to demonstrate the analytical potential of the within-between-beyond model. The conclusions show how “neo-liberal” professionalism is putting the very idea of collegiate professions at stake while exposing emerging professions to market risks.

Chapters 1 and 10 are available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.