Theme of conference

Accounting for Inequalities and Reframing Social Policies

Department of Social Sciences, University of Naples, September 4-6, 2024

No doubt, social inequality is increasing everywhere, regaining center stage as major scholar and policy concerns. The European welfare state faces a context of increasing social risks because of climate changes, pandemics, the sharp slowdown in economic growth, and population ageing that generates considerable fiscal stress.

Major global crises, have all effectively reversed progress in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and further exacerbated interrelated challenges relating to poverty, inequality, education, health, economic growth, and finance. The increasing likelihood of Agenda 2030 objectives not being met within the expected timeframe calls (ASVIS Report 2022).

The inequality challenge is global, and intimately connected to other pressing issues of our times that are also restructuring social institutions and their relationship: not only rapid technological change, but also the climate crisis, urbanization, and international migration. In many places, the growing tide of inequality could further swell under the force of these megatrends. They are reshaping the configuration of social inequality: as the traditional forms of inequality are dominating even in contemporary configurations, new forms of multi-dimensional inequalities are emerging. Consider, for example, the types of access to digital technology, i.e. the diversity in access to devices and peripherals, device-related opportunities, as well as existing inequalities related to Internet skills, uses, and outcomes (Ragnedda et al., 2022; Kreckel 2004) especially for elderly individuals, persons with a low level of education, literacy, and knowledge (Norris 2001), vulnerable people (Deursen 2020; Litchfield et al. 2021) or spatial areas characterized by endogenous weaknesses, in different conditions and opportunities in market and welfare.

Such complexity points to a renewed challenge in understanding the degree and forms of social inequality and in reframing the policy actions that aim to reduce them. Recent contributions insist on the need of a fundamental reorientation of social policies, that require considering broader analytical approaches both to address the higher level of complexity of the issues at stake and to include the environment in the equation (Matthies and Närhi 2017).

Against this backdrop, the conference aims to promote reflection around the reframing of the debate on inequalities and how it is connected, on one hand, with the prospects for social innovation, on the digital front and beyond; and on the other hand, with the need to reframe social policies addressing both the emergence and consolidation of old and new social risks.

We seek both theoretical and empirical session proposals expanding the debate on these issues, by analysing the following topics:

• Territorial inequalities, differentiated autonomy and its consequences.
• Emerging features of digital inequalities and new digital divides
• Co-programming of policies and services
• Data mining and algorithmic models in the planning, management and implementation of services and performance
• Health inequalities and restructuring of the National Health Service
• Inequalities in work and new forms of corporate protection
• Inequalities in gender relations and equal opportunities policies
• Eco-welfare: policies and practices of socio-environmental sustainability
• Intergenerational equity and sustainability
• New social economy actors and their impact on financial instruments
• The crisis of penal institutions and innovations in alternative measures
• Europe: convergence or polarization?
• The digitization of Public Administration: actors and processes
• Monitoring and evaluation of services and policies
• Non-self-sufficiency and disability
• Pensions and inequalities: concepts, dimensions, policy implications
• Performance and inequalities in education systems
• National recovery and resilience plan: actors, processes, and first evidences
• Employment policies, job-training and employability
• Social assistance policies and the role of social workers
• Policies against poverty and educational poverty
• Housing policies
• Migration and asylum policies
• Policies for the family and policies for conciliation at work
• Process of demographic ageing and new perspectives of active ageing
• Sport and social integration
• Entrepreneurial third sector, social enterprise and social innovation

The session proposal (between 250 and 300 words) will be submitted by March 29, 2024 to the following e-mail address: Questo indirizzo email è protetto dagli spambots. È necessario abilitare JavaScript per vederlo.

The acceptance of proposals will be communicated by April 7, 2024.