Abstract
Solidarity and social justice underlying the welfare state are shifting. Post-war welfare states, built on Rawl’s conception of social justice, effectively mitigated the social risks of industrial economies. Today, ‘new social risks’ display themselves in unequal opportunities to successfully manage life course transitions (e.g., in health, labour market access, work-family balance). In response, the social investment perspective took root around the millennium, marked by a relative shift from compensatory social security to ‘capacitating’ welfare provisions. This social investment model can be grounded in a conception of ‘stepping-stone’ solidarity that summons a more contextualized conception of social justice in terms of capabilities. This subsequently contributes to a rethinking of the welfare state that builds on and supports its classic distributive and insurance functions.
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Hemerijck, A., Bagadirov, A., Puertas Roig, P. (2022). The Philosophy of Social Justice and Welfare Provision: Towards Capacitating Solidarity. In: Yerkes, M.A., Bal, M. (eds) Solidarity and Social Justice in Contemporary Societies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-93795-9_5
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