ABSTRACT
Never, since it first came into being, has social Europe so keenly experienced the iron grip of increasing social problems. According to Eurostat, in 2014 almost 122 million people – about 24 per cent of the EU-28 population – were at risk of poverty or social exclusion, 8 million more compared to 2009 (EU-27). Those most affected are women, children, people living in single-parent households, young people, the less-educated and migrants. This book starts out from the conviction that we need adequate con-
ceptual and interpretative keys for dealing with the present context of the crisis. The fact is that the crisis takes shape not only in the form of a dramatic increase in social problems, but also as a need for reflection on the categories, values and schemes of significance that have constituted the basis of European systems of social protection. In other words, we have to bring into focus the normative and cognitive dimensions of social policies, and gain an understanding of the cracks, the fault lines and the evolutionary directions in them. Public action is the key tool I use to gain access to these dimensions. The
main question I ask myself can be summed up as follows: ‘What is the ‘social’ in social policies today?’
