Description
What will citizenship mean to the peoples of a new, wider Europe? Welfare State retrenchment and technological change in the work place are undermining social citizenship rights and bring up the West European concept itself for critical assessment. In the light of these changes, what models can the democratic, industrialized states of the West offer the traditional economies of the East? This collection of papers, by an international group of social scientists, provides historical analysis and empirical description, and theoretical and political assessments of work and citizenship in Europe. After a review of labour rights and obligations in the former socialist countries, this text examines the Welfare State, the underclass, and the rights and duties connected with social citizenship. Later essays assess the state of industrial citizenship and ask why the technological transformations of work in Western Europe tends to create segmentation and exclusion. The study concludes with theoretical and political arguments in favour of specific social policies on work and citizenship, examining such issues as labour participation, minimum income standards and basic income guarantees.
