8th ESPANET Italy Conference "Italian and global welfare: comparing models, experiences, development trajectories"
University of Salerno, 17-19 September, 2015.
Conference website: http://www.espanet-italia.net/conferenza2015.html

*SESSION: "Changing Welfare in Latin America and Europe: Moving Forward or Backward?"
COORDINATORS: Matteo Jessoula, Francesco Maria Chiodi, Paolo Graziano, Lluis Peris Cancio

*KEYNOTE SPEAKERS:
Paolo Graziano, Bocconi University
Francesco Maria Chiodi - Italo-Latin American Institute

*SESSION DESCRIPTION
Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) have experienced fast economic growth in the last decade, even during the global economic crisis. Economic and employment growth have favored a remarkable expansion of social protection, with a growing role for public welfare schemes. Especially in the field of anti-poverty policies, “conditional cash transfer” schemes were established in 18 countries, and later developed into more comprehensive programs combining benefits and services. These programs have contributed to reducing poverty, though the region still ranks among the most unequal in the world. By contrast, in the “Old Continent” the European social model is questioned in both words – i.e. in political discourse - and deeds – the recent austerity driven reforms (Blyth 2013). Welfare state arrangements are considered unsustainable, or even undesirable, while the state provision of welfare services and benefits seems under attack with social programs becoming increasingly targeted, segmented, and outsourced. New paradigms such social investment and social innovation, which currently rank high on EU’s and member states’ agenda, do not only challenge the architecture of European welfare states but also risk jeopardizing established relationships between the three “sources of wellbeing” – the market, the state and the family (Esping-Andersen et al., 2002). It has also been argued that the new EU-social policy approaches even promote a fourth source of wellbeing which has been underestimated so far: the community (Jenson, 2014; Evers/Guillemard, 2012). The latter actually constitutes an important source of wellbeing in LAC countries mostly due to (still) high informality of employment (Barrientos, 2004; Wood, 2004; Shark/Gough, 2010) – though the community is only one (and possibly becoming less relevant) of the distinguished features of welfare arrangements in the region (cf. Filgueira, 1998; Barrientos, 2004; Martinez Franzoni, 2008).
Despite increasing scholarly attention to social security in different world regions, there is still a lack of studies which analyze the theoretical and empirical insights from the LAC region against the backdrop of the challenges for social security research entailed by current welfare state developments in Europe.

The overarching questions to be addressed are thus the following:
* What are the main challenges in LAC and EU countries?
* Which are the main drivers (demographic transformation, external/international pressures, domestic politics, etc…) of social security developments in the two regions?
* What are similarities and differences of welfare policy patterns in the two regions? Can we observe convergence, and in case towards which model(s)?
* Can we observe a “diffusion of ideas” between the two regions? Which ideas, through which channels?
* What are the outcomes, in terms of protection and social cohesion, of recently adopted welfare reforms in the two areas?

The session – which is to be held in English, Italian, Spanish and/or Portuguese – welcomes theoretical and empirical papers dealing with social security developments, social cohesion and attitudes toward social policies in the LAC region and Europe.

The session presents 2 PANELS:

1. Combating Poverty and Inequality in LAC
It is an interdisciplinary panel focused on recent developments in the field of policies aimed at fighting poverty and reducing inequality in the LAC region. Both single country studies and comparisons of LAC countries are welcome.

2. LAC and Europe Compared
This panel is broader in scope. It encourages paper presenting both within and cross-region comparisons in the field of welfare policies, or addressing how European trends influence social policy and social cohesion architectures and ultimately welfare regimes in LAC countries – and vice versa. We will prioritize papers drawing links between the LAC region and Europe but case studies are of interest as well.

*CALL for ABSTRACTS:
Submit your abstract here: http://www.espanet-italia.net/call-for-paper-2015/send-the-abstract.html
Abstracts should be between 500 and 800 words:
* synthesizing the main issue or research question the paper will deal with;
* indicating the major working hypotheses underlying the research, including adopted methodology and related sources of information; and
* illustrating the most relevant findings as well as the research contribution to current literature.
DEADLINE to submit an abstract: May 25th, 2015.

*NOTIFICATION:
Authors will be notified about the acceptance of their abstracts via email by June 5th, 2015.

*PAPER SUBMISSION by August 24th, 2015
Authors of accepted abstracts will send their full papers to session coordinators (Cc to espanet2015@unisa.it )

*CONTACT:
Matteo Jessoula
Department of Social and Political Studies, University of Milan
E-mail: matteo.jessoula@unimi.it

Francesco Maria Chiodi
Istituto Italo-Latino Americano / European Regional Programme for social cohesion in Latin America -EUROsociAL
E-mail: fm.chiodi@iila.org