2024-07-25, Nadai, Eva, Böhme, Marcus

Consumption practices represent a central mode of social integration. Yet, due to the lack of material resources poor households cannot meet the expectations of dominant consumer culture, thus facing limited choices and feelings of shame. Based on a qualitative long-term study of the welfare production of 40 poor Swiss households, this article sheds light on consumption patterns and experiences in different distribution systems, namely the primary market, the charity system, and redistribution systems for used goods. It shows that feelings of shame and processes of exclusion differ between distribution systems according to institutional features conducive to the (in)visibility of poverty.

2019, Nadai, Eva, Canonica, Alan, Gonon, Anna, Rotzetter, Fabienne, Lengwiler, Martin

Der Wohlfahrtstaat kann die Arbeitsmarktinklusion von Menschen mit Behinderungen fördern, aber die Entscheidung über die Beschäftigung liegt bei der Wirtschaft. Diese Studie untersucht die Koordination von Arbeitgebern und Invalidenversicherung in der Schweiz und fragt, wie die Wertbestimmung von Arbeitskraft in politischen und betrieblichen Arenen verhandelt wird. Sie rekonstruiert historisch und ethnografisch die Strukturen und widersprüchlichen Rechtfertigungen der beruflichen Eingliederung, die im Konzept der begrenzten freiwilligen sozialen Verantwortung von Arbeitgebern zum Ausdruck kommen.

2022, Nadai, Eva

2015-09-27, Nadai, Eva

Over the past 15 years inter-institutional cooperation has become a prominent topic in social policy in Switzerland, especially with respect to the labour market integration of the unemployed. In all cantons concrete collaboration projects have been established. However, while these projects may improve inter-organizational collaboration within the welfare system they fall short of addressing the missing link of occupational integration, namely including employers into respective networks. After all, the success of welfare state efforts to reintegrate the unemployed hinges on the decisions of business enterprises to actually employ these people. Especially in the disability insurance (IV) the collaboration with employers has become a pressing issue. Following a marked increase in pensions and costs during the 1990s and influenced by OECD recommendations the IV has undergone several major reforms aimed at strengthening the focus on occupational integration. Employers are here seen as key players. The paper argues that bridging the gulf between welfare and economy poses the twofold problem of establishing organizational networks and of reframing the cultural conventions of social and economic action. On the organizational level the cantonal IV-offices are “translating” cooperation models developed earlier for collaboration within the welfare system to cooperation with employers and other insurers, while at the same time establishing one-to-one contacts with individual business enterprises. Regarding cultural reframing, they have to invoke a complex array of social and economic rationales to persuade businesses to employ workers with “limited productivity”.

2021-05, Nadai, Eva, Gonon, Anna, Hübscher, Robin, John, Anna

Wer keine Berufsausbildung hat, hat schlechte Chancen auf dem Arbeitsmarkt, und selbst in sogenannt einfachen Jobs steigen die Anforderungen an die Arbeitskräfte. Allerdings zählen in der Arbeitswelt nicht nur formale Qualifikationen. Wie erwerben "unqualifizierte" Personen arbeitsmarktrelevante Fähigkeiten und unter welchen Bedingungen werden sie als "beschäftigungsfähig" bewertet?

2015-09-03, Nadai, Eva

Social scientists describe the radical transformation of welfare states in the past decades as a neoliberal economization of the political and the social. The economic logic of the market has become the dominant regulatory principle of all societal spheres with respect to both means and ends. Most often these processes are portrayed as unidirectional: it is the economic logic that colonises the social, political and personal spheres. In this paper the perspective is reversed. Drawing on Ronen Shamir’s thesis of “market-embedded morality” and on the theoretical framework of the sociology of conventions the occupational integration of people with disabilities is analysed as an example of the shifting responsibilities for the social. The focus is on the interactions of the Swiss invalidity insurance (IV) and businesses with respect to the employment of the disabled. The recent revisions of the invalidity insurance in Switzerland have introduced more financial incentives and support for employers, without establishing corresponding legal obligations. In this context the cantonal IV offices resort to moral and normative means instead, while at the same time still ‘arguing the business case’ for the social commitment of employers.