A person’s status of ‘preparing for the labour market’ (PPLM) is a new instrument applied by the Employment Service to support individuals facing barriers to labour market participation, with the provision of integrated case management support. Older unemployed people are particularly disproportionately assigned to the status. By employing the semi-structured interviews with older PPLM status holders alongside an analysis of Public Employment Service (PES) statistical data, this paper examines changes in the situation of older (55+) jobseekers following the introduction of the PPLM status. The analysis of normative documents, institutional data, and PES jobseekers’ responses indicates that the meaning and purpose of the status is often misunderstood by its holders, while the limited number of case managers restricts the effective implementation of the intended support model. The availability of PES services and measures for PPLM jobseekers is lower compared to those applicable to the PES jobseekers with the ‘usual’ unemployed status. Thus, the PPLM status can create a risk of further alienation from the labour market for older people.
Demographic changes such as aging and fertility portend many things. They include impacts for labor and employment, pensions, and schooling. But do demographic changes implicate political change? A generation ago, American scholars examined racial demographic changes in the US and forecasted an ‘emerging Democratic majority’. This did not occur. But, since that prediction, the US as well as the rest of the world has experienced generational shifts, seeing the exiting of the pre-WWII and now the post-WWII or Baby Boomer generations and their replacement with the Millennials and Gen Z. Using the US as a case study, this paper examines the political impact which the shift in generations has had upon American politics, along with predictions regarding what this shift will mean for the immediate future. The thesis is that much of the conflict in US politics in the last twenty years has been driven in part by generation differences. Moreover, while there are generally significant generation differences in political attitudes in the US, such differences are not uniform, and they are mediated by race, class, and gender such that while there are possibilities for significant political change in terms of party composition and public policy, there is no guarantee regarding the exact direction.
The goal of this article is aimed at the identification of the behaviour, attitudes and beliefs of the Lithuanian population towards several key events at the start of adult life course, i.e., when it is the most appropriate to initiate the first events of cohabitation with partner, marriage union, and becoming a parent, and when these events have been completed. Conceptually, the article assesses the extent to which these attitudes are influenced by normative cultural attitudes, and how the so-called 'standard' sequence of family life events (partnership, marriage, childbearing) is accessible to maintain. Furthermore, it has been examined to what extent the family life scenarios identified in the Lithuanian population are close to the scenarios in other European countries. The empirical part of the paper is based on analysis from the European Social Survey (ESS) Round 9 data. The research was conducted by using various methods - from descriptive sequencing data to regression analysis. The results show that only a minor proportion of the respondents consider that their family life has been started in a timely manner, while the sequence of the life course for most Lithuanians does not coincide with their expectation and perception of the most appropriate time to start those events. These discrepancies provide evidence to the general assumption about the uneven development of modern Lithuanian society and the different experiences of structural changes between generations which have conditioned the different implementation of important demographic events (e.g., delaying marriage) across generations.
This special issue grew out of the interdisciplinary conversations started at the conference “Thinking Through Motherhood: Images, Experiences and Narratives Across Time”, held at Vilnius University in January 2024. Organised by the MotherNet project – an EU-funded research network – the conference focused on how motherhood is defined, represented and experienced across history and into the future. The panels created a trace coined ‘a temporality of motherhood’ that took account of the fluctuating and also pluralistic nature of mothering experiences, in contrast to more rigid definitions that tend to essentialise motherhood and posit it as homogenous, static and innate. The scope of the conference was interdisciplinary, inviting colleagues from all disciplines to consider how their work interconnects with narratives of and about motherhood and how these narratives inform the practical and policy dimensions of personal and social issues.
Technologies of governance, surveillance, and control have evolved over the course of human history and are transforming social work as they are deployed across a plurality of government, private sector organisations, and social media networks. In this article, we explore key issues associated with automated algorithmic governance in relation to social work education and practice, with particular attention to the implications for professional and institutional resilience. Focusing on the datafication of welfare governance, we trace its historical antecedents and applications, and provide a brief overview of digital automation and data-driven governance in Lithuania, Italy, the UK, and Spain. The aim is to identify issues that warrant further attention in social work curriculum design, particularly regarding the governance of state-financed social support services, and to argue that strengthening resilience requires social work to become more aware, technologically literate, and politically engaged in order to advocate for and support service users within increasingly digitally enabled and networked systems of control.
