Social Protection Group

WORKSHOP ANNOUNCEMENT

The DSA Study Group on Social Protection and the Oxford Centre for the Analysis of South African Social Policies (CASASP)

 will be holding a one-day workshop on

‘Social Protection and Ideologies of Welfare in Southern Africa’

 On 6^th December 2007, at Green College, University of Oxford

CALL FOR PAPERS

Southern Africa incorporates some of the poorest countries in the world, with the proportion of those living on less than US $1 a day averaging about 40% overall. Inequality in the region is manifested through rising unemployment and levels of impoverishment, worsening mortality and morbidity and the inability of the majority of people to access sources of livelihood or basic services. Accordingly, social protection has risen rapidly to the top of the policy agenda for many governments, donors and NGOs in southern Africa, where cash transfers in particular are emerging as a preferred mechanism for delivering social protection to poor and vulnerable people. The policy debates however are moving fast as major social forces - many of a global nature - impact and reshape social welfare policies and practices. Moreover the policy choices and design of social protection programmes - whether to apply conditions, to transfer cash, food or vouchers, to implement social insurance rather than social assistance, and who to target – are driven by ideological principles as much as empirical evidence and technical issues.  In the context of these debates this workshop examines the various sources of vulnerability, social protection responses, and the different conceptual and normative frameworks underlying them. 

AIMS AND OBJECTIVES

The workshop will examine the pressures and challenges facing social protection systems in Southern Africa, and will assess current strategies addressing poverty and inequality in the region. The organisers particularly welcome papers which examine income transfer schemes as a mechanism for realising social protection; consider these schemes in the context of the evolution of social policy in the region; and assess their contribution to developing sustainable, and long-term, social protection institutions in the region. The workshop’s comparative and interdisciplinary approach will promote examination of the emerging results and trends across regions and policy sectors and strengthen collaboration and learning among the different applied social science fields involved in social protection research and analysis.

Completed papers or extended abstracts should be submitted to the organisers electronically by November 5^th, 2007: Armando Barrientos (a.barrientos@manchester.ac.uk) or Rebecca Surender (rebecca.surender@socres.ox.ac.uk).  

Coffee and Registration 9.30-10am. Worskhop starts at 10am and finishes at 5pm. 

Previous Meeting
Learning from Latin American Social Policy Reforms

Over the last two decades, social policy reforms in Latin America have provided new perspectives, models and paradigms on how to meet the challenges of reducing poverty and vulnerability in developing countries. New approaches include conditional cash transfers and integrated poverty eradication programmes. These have many features which set them apart from traditional social policy. A workshop organised by the DSA Social Protection Group will bring together an interdisciplinary group of researchers working on these issues. What are the main lessons from recent social policy reforms in Latin America? To what extent is the explicit attention to gender issues leading to ‘empowering social policy’ or a ‘new maternalism’?

Date and Venue:

10th May 2006, at Birkbeck College, University of London, Mallet Street, London WC1E 7HX. Contact: Jasmine Gideon at j.gideon@bbk.ac.uk or Armando Barrientos at a.barrientos@ids.ac.uk

Page last updated: 3rd October 2007