The financialization of social policy

La financiarisation de la politique sociale

Lena Lavinas, Lucas Bressan, Pedro Rubin and Ana Carolina Cordilha
Additional contact information
Lena Lavinas: UFRJ - Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro [Brasil] = Federal University of Rio de Janeiro [Brazil] = Université fédérale de Rio de Janeiro [Brésil]
Lucas Bressan: UFRJ - Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro [Brasil] = Federal University of Rio de Janeiro [Brazil] = Université fédérale de Rio de Janeiro [Brésil]
Pedro Rubin: UFRJ - Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro [Brasil] = Federal University of Rio de Janeiro [Brazil] = Université fédérale de Rio de Janeiro [Brésil]

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Abstract: The authors argue that the concept of financialization is central to understanding current transformations in social policies. The chapter maps some of the ways in which these transformations are occurring across key sectors of social provision, such as pensions, education, and health care. The authors show how the advance of this new paradigm of social policy in financialized capitalism is connected to a growing dependence of households on financial markets, especially through mounting levels of debts. They point to the corrosion of social ownership and collective identities that sustained the development of a wide variety of welfare systems in central and peripheral economies, which now engenders an accelerated process of recommodification and re-individualization. Rather than promoting socioeconomic security over the course of individuals' life cycle, social policy now regulates access to financial markets while it is simultaneously regulated and reconfigured by them. The result of the financialization of social policy is therefore the production of families' growing dependence on deregulated financial markets. The discussion carried out throughout the chapter aims to critically examine how this paradigm undermines the fundamental goals of social policy by deepening different forms of inequalities and exclusions among individuals, while feeding financial accumulation.

Keywords: social protection; social policy; financialization; protection sociale; politique sociale; financiarisation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hme and nep-pke
Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://hal.science/hal-04579780
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Published in Christoph Scherrer; Ana Garcia; Joscha Wullweber. Handbook on Critical Economy and Public Policy, Edward Elgar, pp.461-475, 2023, Political Science and Public Policy, 9781800373785. ⟨10.4337/9781800373785.00046⟩

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:hal-04579780

DOI: 10.4337/9781800373785.00046

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