Nordic Relief Packages and Non-standard Workers: Towards Expanded Universalism and Institutional Inequalities 1

Has the Corona crisis triggered changes to Nordic social protection? We address this question by examining how Denmark, Finland, Norway, Finland, Iceland, and Sweden reacted to the crisis, which in many ways resembles a Litmus-test for Nordic social protection. Analytically, we draw on historical in...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inNordic journal of working life studies Vol. 13; pp. 7 - 29
Main Authors Larsen, Trine P, Ilsøe, Anna
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Roskilde Nordic Journal of Working Life Studies 01.07.2023
Subjects
Crises
Inequality
Institutionalism
Labor market
Layoffs
Low income groups
Packages
Protection
Self employment
Social protection
Universalism
Welfare state
Workers
Working hours
Sweden
Norway
Finland
Denmark
Iceland
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Summary:Has the Corona crisis triggered changes to Nordic social protection? We address this question by examining how Denmark, Finland, Norway, Finland, Iceland, and Sweden reacted to the crisis, which in many ways resembles a Litmus-test for Nordic social protection. Analytically, we draw on historical institutionalism, welfare, and segmentation literature. We find that although the Nordic relief packages aim to create an encompassing safety net, the reforms expose and sometimes reinforce institutionally embedded cracks in the Nordic systems around the nexus of standard and non-standard work, leading to potential layers of institutionally embedded inequalities. The Nordic countries have expanded and adjusted their existing social protection, portraying strong elements of path dependency, but with examples of novel initiatives. Their mix of universal and targeted measures appears to reflect so-called 'expanded universalism', where targeted measures supplement the 'ordinary' Nordic social protection to cover the most crisis ridden, but not necessarily the poorest, groups.
ISSN:2245-0157