The Global Human Rights Agenda and European Welfare Reform

The paper will argue that the ascendancy of human rights discourse, in both its global and domestic political contexts, has ambiguous consequences for the development of social policy. Recent instances of that ascendancy may be found on the one hand in the UNDP's 'World Development Report 2000', and on the other in the 'Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union', proclaimed in December 2000. There is a danger, it will be argued, that the apparent colonisation of human rights discourse by managerialist doctrine may subvert its capacity effectively to promote or defend social or welfare rights, particularly in the developing world. At the same time, however, the abstract nature and ideological underpinnings of human rights discourse are already implicated in a global process that is diluting rather than strengthening the substantive scope of social protection within developed European welfare states. Within the 'workfare' regimes that are to varying degrees emerging across Europe, rights to welfare may too easily be distanced from local understandings of need, while individual obligations in relation to labour market participation are enforced in ways that marginalise strictly ethical conceptions of social responsibility. The argument will be illustrated with reference to recent empirical accounts. Drawing on critiques of Westernliberal conceptions of human rights and on feminist debates about the 'ethic of care', the paper will conclude with a call for a closer assessment of the conceptualisation of rights in relation to processes of welfare reform. * c/o Department of Applied Social Studies, University of Luton, Park Square, Luton, LU1 3JU, United Kingdom. (Tel: +44 1582 743063)