Social Justice Initiative

Professor Hilary Silver

Brown University

Biographical Details:

Hilary Silver (Ph.D. Columbia University) is Associate Professor of Sociology and Urban Studies at Brown University, Editor of the journal "City & Community," and an Affiliate of the Center for European Studies at Harvard University.  She writes about social exclusion in a variety of contexts, comparing the experience of Europe to the United States, Latin America, and the Middle East.  She has served as a consultant on social exclusion to the International Labour Office, the World Bank, Inter-American Development Bank, and the Brookings Institution.  Recent work examines the social exclusion of youth, the mentally ill, the homeless, and residents of low-income ethnic minority neighborhoods.

Her feature-length film, "Southside: The Fall and Rise of an Inner-City Neighborhood," was broadcast on Public Television in early 2009.

Abstract: 
Critically Introducing Social Inclusion

Eric Marlier

Biographical Details:
Eric Marlier is Senior Scientific Advisor at the CEPS/INSTEAD Research Institute (Luxembourg), where he is supervising international issues and coordinating international projects . He is regularly called on as an international policy advisor, particularly on the EU cooperation in social protection and social inclusion. His main research activities include social indicators and social monitoring (incl. “targeting”), comparative socio-economic analysis (esp. on income, poverty and social exclusion), the EU Social Protection and Social Inclusion Process (the so-called Social Open Method of Coordination), as well as the implementation of international social surveys and attitudinal surveys.

He has written two reference books together with Sir AB Atkinson, Bea Cantillon and Brian Nolan: “Social Indicators: The EU and Social Inclusion” (OUP, 2002 ) and “The EU and social inclusion: Facing the challenges” (The Policy Press, 2007 ).
He chaired the EU Task-Force on Child poverty and Child well-being, whose report was endorsed in January 2008 by the European Commission and all 27 EU countries .
On behalf of the European Commission, he manages the EU Network of independent experts on social inclusion which now covers 31 countries: the 27 EU Member States as well as Croatia, FYROM, Serbia and Turkey .

Abstract:
Social inclusion: the international experience
Learning from EU policy cooperation in the field of poverty and social exclusion: policy and monitoring issues

The intervention will be on the so-called Social “Open Method of Coordination” (OMC), a transnational cooperation process in the field of social protection and social inclusion policies that involves the European Commission and all 27 European Union Member States. The main focus will be on a critical examination of the actual operation of the method, which was launched in 2001 and which can be described as a “mutual feedback process of planning, monitoring, examination, comparison and adjustment of national (and sub-national) social policies, all of this on the basis of common objectives agreed for the EU as a whole” (Marlier et al, 2007). In this context, particular attention will be paid to the policy monitoring and assessment framework built around a set of commonly agreed EU social indicators. The intervention will also discuss some of the key challenges facing the Social OMC.
Atkinson, Bea Cantillon and Brian Nolan: “Social Indicators: The EU and Social Inclusion” (OUP, 2002) and “The EU and social inclusion: Facing the challenges” (The Policy Press, 2007).

He chaired the EU Task-Force on Child poverty and Child well-being, whose report was endorsed in January 2008 by the European Commission and all 27 EU countries.
On behalf of the European Commission, he manages the EU Network of independent experts on social inclusion which now covers 31 countries: the 27 EU Member States as well as Croatia, FYROM, Serbia and Turkey.

Associate Professor Scott Baum

Griffith University

Biographical Details:
Scott Baum has had a long standing interest in understanding the social conditions that shape local communities and the lives of their residents. He is Associate Professor in the Urban Research Program at Griffith University. His work has appeared in international journals including Urban Studies, Papers in Regional Science, Accident Analysis and Prevention and The Journal of Sociology. Scott Baum is on the editorial board of Urban Policy and Research and is the secretary of the Asia Pacific Sociological Association.

Abstract:

Geographic disadvantage: the demographics of social exclusion in Australia

The question of disadvantage, deprivation and social exclusion cuts across many layers of society. It clearly impacts on individuals and this is where policy is often directed.  However, space and place are also important. Many suburbs bare the negative outcomes of transitional periods of social and economic change.  These transitions, that impact on individuals and families, are also reflected in the geographic patterns of disadvantage because of where people live and their interactions within the wider metropolitan systems. Using output an index of relative disadvantage this paper considers how these patterns of disadvantage are a feature of Australian cities and how the spatial patterns of disadvantage might be shifting as a result of the current global economic crisis.

Dr John Buchanan

University of Sydney

Biographical Details:
John Buchanan is the Director of the Workplace Research Centre at The University of Sydney. He first joined the centre in 1991 and has been its Director since 2005. Until recently his major research interest has been the demise of the classical wage earner model of employment and the role of the state in nurturing new forms of mult-employer co-ordination to promote both efficiency and fairness in the labour market. Building on this research, his primary interests are now the evolution of the labour contract, working life transitions and the dynamics of workforce development. He was one of the authors of Australia at Work: Just Managing? (1999) and Fragmented Futures: New Challenges in Working Life (2003). 

Abstract: 

Joanne Hillerman

Developing a performance and reporting framework for social inclusion in Australia: work and developments to date

Kirrily Jordan

University of Sydney

Biographical Details:

Kirrily Jordan is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research. Her current research projects include Indigenous notions of wellbeing and Indigenous employment policy. She is co-author (with Prof Frank Stilwell) of Who Gets What? Analysing Economic Inequality in Australia (Cambridge University Press, 2007).

Abstract: 
Indigenous Australians and social inclusion: explaining ‘exclusion’ and contemplating ‘inclusion’
The concept of social exclusion emerged because of dissatisfaction with the concept of poverty (defined in terms of income, consumption or expenditure), with particular concerns that the notion of poverty was both too static (ignoring the evolution of disadvantage over time) and inadequate to capture multiple disadvantages. In practice, though, the operationalisation of social exclusion has tended to focus on indicators of economic engagement. Directing attention towards social inclusion has, in a sense, been an attempt to re-assert the rationale of social exclusion by re-focusing debate on the processes that reinforce the lack of access to resources. However, attempting to ‘define’ social inclusion raises a number of significant conceptual challenges, not least in reference to Indigenous Australia. In particular, the term social inclusion begs the question of what people are being included in. While a similar point can be made for social exclusion (that is, what are people being excluded from), the issue is arguably sharper for social inclusion as there is an implicit assumption that an active process of inclusion is entailed. This paper explores what social inclusion might mean in the context of Indigenous Australia, drawing on debates about justice, rights and diversity and examining possible tensions between cultural difference and the federal government’s social inclusion agenda. It argues for a process of ‘citizen-centred design’ in which diverse Indigenous aspirations can be better accommodated in addressing Indigenous disadvantage.

Alison McClelland

Biographical Details:
Alison McClelland is Executive Director, Strategic Policy, Research and Forecasting at the Department for Planning and Community Development.  Previous positions have included:

1. Associate Professor and Head of School, Social Work and Social Policy, La Trobe University.
2. Director of the Brotherhood of St Laurence (BSL), responsible for Social Action and Research

Her main work has been directed to examining the impact of social and economic policies on the distribution of material well being in Australia. This has included work on taxation, income security, unemployment, health, welfare and economic reform. Alison has also edited a book on social policy in Australia.

She held several positions with the Australian Council of Social Service (ACOSS) over the past 20 years including honorary policy advisor on economics and tax, board member and Deputy President. She was invited as the Australian representative to the United Nation’s Meeting of Experts on Social Services for Underserved Populations, Bangkok (Nov 2-6 1998) and was awarded the Centenary Medal for her contribution to social policy and social research in Australia.

Abstract: 
Facilitating an Interdepartmental Approach:
Identifying Complementarities and Integrating Policy

This paper examines the Victorian Government’s approach to social inclusion and its A Fairer Victoria (AFV) model. It outlines the role of a state government in promoting social inclusion, Victoria’s definition of social inclusion, its implications for integrated policy and service delivery alongside the challenges of integration. Three key principles for social inclusion are identified - building the capacity of people and place, intervention at key life course events and overcoming excluding processes – with a discussion of their implications for policy action and an example of integrated action through the development and implementation of Victoria’s early year’s policy. The paper draws out some lessons for integrated action concluding with a discussion of the challenges and benefits of working across levels of government, particularly with the Commonwealth.

Professor Ian McDonald

Biographical Details:

Ian McDonald graduated with a PhD from Simon Fraser University in 1974. His fields of study are Behavioural Economics and Macroeconomics. Ian was promoted to Senior Lecturer in 1981, Reader in 1986 and Professor in 1990. He has held visiting positions at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Monash University, Nanyang University, Oxford University and Queen’s University. Ian has held a number of administrative positions including Head of the Department of Economics, University of Melbourne 1993 to 1996, Chair of the Teaching and Learning Quality Assurance Committee, University of Melbourne, 1999 to 2000 and Deputy Dean, Faculty of Economics and Commerce, University of Melbourne, 1999-2002 and 2005.

Ian is an Editor of the Australian Economic Review and a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences, Australia.

Abstract: 
Economic explanations of social exclusion and choice versus responsibility: how early childhood development, ‘present bias’ and concern for social status, as external influences upon individual lives, are responsible for social exclusion.

In this paper some economic perspectives on social exclusion are presented. The perspectives come from traditional areas of economics, especially human capital theory, and from the new area of behavioural economics, especially present bias and the status externality. They show that happiness, human capital and individual choice can yield insights for the study of social exclusion. The economic perspectives discussed in this paper can help respond to the suggestion by Mary Daly and Hilary Silver to move beyond the concept of social exclusion to a “fully-articulated theory” of social exclusion. Furthermore they support the judgement of Ruth Levitas that in the public debate there is inadequate pressure for redistribution, excessive moral blame placed on the socially excluded, and an excessive concern for labour force participation at the expense of non-market activity, as expressed in her development and discussion of the RED-MUD-SID framework of discourses.

Dr Helen Masterman-Smith

Biographical Details:

Helen has recently returned to her old Riverina stomping ground after 20 years working in academic and non-academic jobs around Australia. Over the last 15 years she has studied and worked in the fields of sociology, political economy and labour studies. Helen worked at the University of Western Sydney for 8 years across a range of social science/humanities/health disciplines and with the UWS Australian Institute for Gambling Research, while completing her PhD on the political economy of working class women in Campbelltown (NSW).  In 2005 she moved to Adelaide (Adelaide Uni and UniSA) to coordinate an ARC project on low paid employment, the findings of which will be published as Living Low Paid: the Dark Side of a Prosperous Land by Allen and Unwin in late 2008.
At CSU Helen has returned to teaching sociology and social research. Her research continues to focus on the relationship between labour and capital, particularly as it pertains to working class women. She also maintains a research interest in democracy and capitalism, environmental political economy, labour studies, low pay and health politics and inequalities.

Abstract: 
Labour force participation: when employment doesn’t lead to inclusion.
Is the SIA likely to improve the current situation or simply perpetuate it?The notion that employment is a precondition for personal wellbeing and social inclusion is almost sacrosanct in Australian culture. A careful examination of the working and living conditions of Australia’s low paid workers tells a different story. Labour market participation is a cornerstone of the whole-of-government approach that the Commonwealth is developing to improve social inclusion. However, its Social Inclusion Agenda recognizes that low pay and poor job quality often derail this key objective. Indeed the difficulties of ‘making work pay’ at the bottom end of the labour market is a social inclusion challenge that has yet to receive the policy or public attention that it warrants. This paper overviews some whole-of-community strategies to address low pay and the social exclusion it engenders and compares them to what the Federal Government’s Social Inclusion Agenda has to offer the low paid and working poor. It concludes with some initial comments on the future prospects of addressing low pay in a carbon constrained economy.

Dr Greg Marston

Biographical Details:

Abstract: 

Contradictions and tensions in the social inclusion agenda: work and welfare for people with a disability.

The Rudd Government has embraced the social inclusion policy mantra. In its first term of office the Rudd Government has been busy establishing a Social Inclusion Board, commissioning discussion papers and identifying priority groups. In this paper I assess what all this symbolic policy activity might mean for those identified by the Federal Government as groups in the community who may ‘face challenges to social inclusion’. Employment for people living with a mental illness or a disability has been identified as one of the priority goals in the government’s social inclusion agenda. In the paper I assess whether the government’s policy direction is likely to improve the well-being of people with a disability. In particular I focus on questions of agency, identity and citizenship as they are being constructed in the social inclusion agenda and I draw on some empirical research that has involved interviewing 80 Australians living with a disability and who have sought employment assistance in the context of welfare-to-work policies. I conclude by suggesting that there are many mixed messages in the social inclusion agenda, which in part reflects the legacy of the former government, but it also reflects the slipperiness of the social inclusion term.

Daniel Perkins

Biographical Details:
Daniel Perkins worked as a Research and Policy Manager in the Research and Policy Centre at Brotherhood of St Laurence for seven years before recently moving to the Social Policy Branch of the Victorian Department of Human Services, where he is currently employed as a Senior Policy Advisor.

His work has been published in Brotherhood of St Laurence reports as well as book chapters and refereed articles. His work has focused on Australian and international employment programs to assist job seekers facing personal barriers. He is currently finalising a PhD on this topic at the University of Melbourne. Other main areas of work include the conceptual underpinnings of activation and social inclusion policies and their relation to welfare to work initiatives, the social impacts of labour market regulation and low-paid work.

He has been involved with a number of ARC Linkage projects relating to disadvantaged job seekers; recently completed a 2 year evaluation of the DEEWR funded Personal Support Programme; and a pilot project testing a new model of assistance with job seekers facing mental health and other personal barriers in the Australian Personal Support Programme.

Abstract: 

Welfare to work and social inclusion: challenges and possibilities

Participation in paid employment has an important place within the social inclusion approach. Increasing participation in employment is seen to have the potential to support economic growth as well as assisting disadvantaged people to achieve inclusion. To support these objectives ‘activating’ welfare to work polices are used to move disadvantaged unemployed people into work. However, the extent to which such activation policies are compatible with broader social inclusion goals and actually increase inclusion or exclusion is unclear. While some versions of activation focus simply on increasing participation in employment, other versions have broader equity goals based on re-integration of the most disadvantaged and development of capabilities to participate in the labour market and society more broadly. This paper will explore the intersection of the social inclusion and activation discourses and the extent to which welfare to work programs are likely to increase social inclusion amongst disadvantaged groups.

Dr Rosanna Scutella

Biographical Details:
Rosanna Scutella currently holds the position of Ronald Henderson Senior Research Fellow at the Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research at the University of Melbourne. Prior to that she worked as an economist at the Brotherhood of St Laurence since January 2005 and as a Research Fellow at the Melbourne Institute.

Rosanna’s research has a focus on inequality, poverty and social welfare with a particular interest on issues of taxation and the labour market. Her work at the BSL focuses on addressing the interdependence of social and economic factors when developing policy. She is currently involved in a number of collaborative projects between the Brotherhood and the Melbourne Institute: on developing new measures of poverty and social exclusion, on improving longer term employment outcomes of the disadvantaged. She is also assisting the Brotherhood in its research informing the Australian government’s review of the tax and social security system.
Rosanna completed her PhD in Economics in early 2005.  Rosanna’s PhD analysed the impact of hypothetical and actual changes to indirect and direct taxes to the Australian economy and Australian households.

Abstract: 
Developing an overall framework/principles for a SIA: can an Index of Social Inclusion/Exclusion be developed to aid this process?

Dr Scutella will not be presenting a full paper at the Social Inclusion Research Forum, but will be talking to the Forum about work in progress in developing measures of poverty and social exclusion. 

A recent paper co-authored by Dr Scutella together with Roger Wilkins and Michael Horn, ‘Measuring Poverty and Social Exclusion in Australia: A Proposed Multidimensional Framework for Identifying Socio-Economic Disadvantage’ is work that Dr Scutella will be building upon at this form.

That paper is available online from the Melbourne Institute of Economic and Social Research.  The abstract for that paper is as follows: 

We propose a framework for measuring social exclusion in Australia and discuss a number of issues that need to be resolved in order to arrive at valid and useful indicators or measures. To do this we first provide a general overview of international developments in the measurement of poverty and social disadvantage, examine the meaning of the concept of social exclusion and summarise the various approaches taken by international and Australian studies to measuring social exclusion and identifying the socially excluded. We then outline our proposed framework for the measurement of social exclusion in Australia, identifying and discussing some of the issues that arise in moving from this framework to actual measures, including discussing the limitations imposed by the data currently available in Australia.

Dr Brigid can Wanrooy
Presenting with Dr John Buchanan

Biographical Details:
Brigid van Wanrooy is a Leading Research Analyst at the Workplace Research Centre. She currently holds an ARC postdoctoral fellowship and is the lead researcher for the Australia at Work study. This project is tracking 8,000 people over five years to examine the dynamics of working life and the impact of industrial relations policy on employees’ experiences of work. Brigid’s training is in the social research methods and policy, which she has applied working for the Federal Government and in the private sector. Her particular research interest is Australians’ working hours and preferences.

Abstract: 
Employment law reform and the Social Inclusion Agenda: how the Agenda could be fitted into the Fair Work Act

Professor Peter Whiteford

Biographical Details:
Peter Whiteford returned to the Social Policy Research Centre in July 2008, having previously worked here between 1985 and 1990 and in 1994.  Peter has had extensive experience in the field of social security policy and research, in a range of different national contexts and at the international level, having worked as a Adviser in the Office of the Minister for Social Security in 1995-96 and previously as a Consultant to the Social Security Review, and in the then Department of Social Security in Australia. In addition to his earlier periods at the SPRC, he has worked at the Social Policy Research Unit at the University of York in the United Kingdom.  He worked for the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development in Paris between 2000 and 2008. 

His work has encompassed many areas of social policy, including pensions and retirement income provisions, family assistance, social assistance, income support and labour market issues, and income distribution and poverty analysis.  In the United Kingdom, he was part of the team at producing an internationally-known study of Social Assistance Schemes in the OECD Countries.  While at the OECD he also worked on social protection and social safety nets in developing countries, social security policies for older workers in the United Kingdom and the United States, and prepared a report for the World Bank on social assistance policies in Latvia.

He was a member of a working group for the Lund Committee  discussing reforms to assistance for families for the South African Department of Social Welfare.  He has contributed to study trips and training courses for members of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and the Chinese State Planning Commission, as well as for the Ministry of Labour and Social Security, both in Australia and China.  At the OECD, he worked on social policy issues in South East Asia, China, the Russian Federation and the transition economies of Central and Eastern Europe.
He also has had a wide range of experience with social policy issues in middle income and developing countries. He taught on training courses for officials of the Romanian Ministry for Social Protection and the Department of Labour and Social Protection of the Slovak Republic, and contributed to Asian Development Bank conferences and training courses in Mexico, Manila, Tokyo and Cambodia, and to a World Bank conference on pension reform in India.  Between 2000 and 2008, he taught regularly on training courses for officials from Former Soviet Union and Asian transition countries at the Joint Vienna Institute. Following his return to the SPRC in July 2008, he was appointed by the Australian government to the Reference Group for the Review of the Australian pension system.
Abstract: 
Tax and transfer policy: socially inclusive income tax reform