Social protection floors as a knowledge object: examining their place within the Decent Work and Sustainable Development Agenda

John Berten and Alexandra Kaasch

Chapter 47 in The Elgar Companion to Decent Work and the Sustainable Development Goals, 2025, pp 604-614 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: In 2012, the International Labour Organization (ILO) adopted Recommendation 202 on Social Protection Floors (SPFs). This chapter explores the role of SPFs in today’s world, which is characterised by a widespread lack of social protection. Conceiving of policy concepts as knowledge objects, the chapter describes how SPFs became official ILO policy in the early 2000s, despite internal resistance due to their poverty focus. The reorientation towards a socio-economic minimum was accompanied by shifts in the meaning of the concept of SPFs and in the core priorities of the ILO, which has traditionally been wedded to ideas of formal employment, workers’ rights and social insurance. Whereas most scholarship on the history of the SPFs agenda focuses on the phase leading up to its translation into a recommendation, the chapter also sheds light on the relationship of SPFs to Decent Work and the concept’s evolution after it was adopted by the SDGs.

Keywords: Business and Management; Development Studies; Economics and Finance; Sociology and Social Policy; Sustainable Development Goals (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
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