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Final call for papers for special issue of the Journal of Contemporary European Studies (Vol. 22/2, June 2014)Guest Editors: Dr Adam Whitworth &#38; Prof Jan Windebank, University of Sheffield, UK. Even before 2008, social welfare systems across Europe were facing a considerable number and range of challenges: shifts in production and employment patterns following globalisation, new labour market risks, long-term unemployment and labour market inactivity; changing household formations; and an ageing population.  These issues remain and have been brought into sharp focus by the financial meltdown of 2008. The sovereign debt crisis and ensuing economic slowdown witnessed across Europe since 2008 have required governments to seek ways to reduce the public debt through changes to tax regimes, to welfare expenditure and more broadly to the nature of welfare provision. However, the balance across these various response options to the crisis has varied between countries, producing divergent impacts as far as welfare is concerned. This special issue will therefore not only ask what has been the range of policy responses to the ‘welfare crisis’ across Europe, but will seek to understand the policy choices underlying these responses in terms of the ideologies and notions of social justice and equality which inform them.Given that five years have now passed since the financial crisis and that its longer-term effects are playing out quite differently across European countries it is an appropriate time to reflect on the ethics of the different welfare policy choices that have manifested themselves across Europe over this period. This special issue will therefore ask in what ways policy responses to the ‘welfare crisis’ have been informed by, and in turn influenced, alternative constructions of social justice; in what ways policy discourses have sought to frame and justify particular reform strategies; what the ideological forces are that are driving change in social welfare as well as those that are opposing it; what is the distribution and equity of the responses across different European countries; and what has been the differential impacts of policy change on various groups in society in particular national contexts? (...)Lire la suite : http://explore.tandfonline.com/cfp/pgas/jces-call-for-papers.phpDeadline: 22nd April 2013