Generational Tensions and Solidarity Within Advanced Welfare States

This book explores generation as both a reference to family or kinship structures, and a reference to cohorts or age sets. The principal objective is branching out this two-part concept through studies of tensions and solidarity within and between generations of advanced and robust welfare states. Answering key questions using multiple disciplinary approaches, the book considers how generations challenge advanced and robust welfare states; how new and young generations are affected by living in an advanced welfare state with older generations; how tensions or solidarity are understood when facing challenges; and what the key characteristics are of certain generation types. It contributes to the development of a more comprehensive generation approach within social sciences by developing the concept of generation by exploring different challenges to the welfare state such as migration, digitalization, environmental damages, demands for sustainability, and marginalization. Highlighting the escalating tensions and altered versions of solidarity between generations, this book shows how a comprehensive concept of a generation can create new insights into how we collectively coordinate and resolve challenges through the welfare state. It will be of interest to all scholars and students of social policy, sociology, political science, and social anthropology.

Asgeir Falch-Eriksen is a senior researcher at Department of Health and Welfare Studies at Norwegian Social Research. He has a PhD in political science. His research interests is especially aimed at democratic theory, trust and legitimacy. He is also a lecturer in social work and in rights-based child protection. Marianne Takle is research professor at the Department of Health and Welfare Studies at Norwegian Social Research (NOVA), Oslo Metropolitan University. Her research includes studies of migration and solidarity at the European, national and local levels. She has studied sustainable European welfare societies by analysing linkages between social and environmental policy in selected European countries. In recent years, she has conducted research on solidarity with future generations. Britt Slagsvold is a research professor at Norwegian Social Research Health and Welfare Studies (NOVA), Oslo Metropolitan University (OsloMet). She is Dr. Philos in psychology, has worked as research director for Ageing Research, and director for research for many years, and is now partly retired. She initiated and headed the Norwegian study of life-course, aging, and generation (NorLAG) until 2018, and has published widely within social gerontology and the psychology of aging.

1. Generational Tensions and Solidarity Within Advanced Welfare States. Part 1. The Politics of Generations. 2. The welfare state and economic redistribution between overlapping generations - normative theories applied to two contemporary debates. 3. The age-profile of European welfare states: a source of intergenerational conflict? 4. Solidarity with Future Generations? - Protection clauses in constitutions. Part 2. Generations Within Families. 5. Thinking through generation: On parenting and belonging among adult children of immigrants in Norway. 6. The Welfare state and family: Intergenerational tensions and solidarity within the housing sector. 7. Will more education work? Economic marginalization and educational inequalities across birth cohorts 1955 - 1980. Part 3. Historical and Ascriptive Generations. 8. The Digital Generation. Representations of a generational digital divide. 9. The Baby-boomer generation: Another breed of elderly people? 10. Social generations in popular culture. 11. Solidarity and Tension Across Generations in Welfare Democracies. 12. Generational Analysis of the Advanced Welfare State.