Sara Araújo
Sara Araújo é investigadora do Centro de Estudos Sociais da Universidade de Coimbra e membro do Núcleo de Estudos sobre Democracia, Cidadania e Direito. É co-coordenadora do Projeto "ALICE, Espelhos Estranhos, Lições Imprevistas: Definindo para a Europa uma nova forma de partilhar as experiências do mundo", onde vem sendo desenvolvida reflexão e investigação a partir das propostas das Epistemologias do Sul. Doutorou-se em "Direito, Justiça e Cidadania no século XXI" da Universidade de Coimbra, com a tese "Ecologia de Justiças a Sul e a Norte. Cartografias comparadas das justiças comunitárias em Maputo e em Lisboa". Defendeu uma tese de Mestrado em Sociologia com o título "Pluralismo Jurídico e acesso à Justiça. O papel das instâncias comunitárias de resolução de conflitos em Moçambique", distinguida com o Prémio Agostinho da Silva, atribuído pela Academia de Ciências de Lisboa. Fez parte do Observatório Permanente da Justiça Portuguesa e do Centro de Formação Jurídica e Judiciária de Moçambique. Os seus interesses de investigação centram-se nos seguintes temas: pluralismo jurídico, acesso à justiça, justiça comunitária/resolução alternativa de conflitos/justiça informal, administração da justiça em África, direitos humanos e interculturalidade, ecologia de saberes e de justiças.
Sara Araújo is a researcher at the Centre for Social Studies and a member of the Research Group on Democracy, Citizenship and Law. She is co-coordinator of the project "ALICE - Strange Mirrors, Unsuspected Lessons: Leading Europe to a new way of sharing the world experience", in which thinking and research is being developed from the proposal of the Epistemologies of the South. Sara Araújo holds a PhD in "Law, Justice, and Citizenship in the Twenty First Century" from the University of Coimbra. Her master dissertation was awarded with the Prize Agostinho da Silva by the Lisbon Academy of Sciences. She was part of the Permanent Observatory for the Portuguese Justice and has been a member of the bi-national research team for the Revision of the Judicial Organization of Mozambique. Her main research interests are on issues related to legal pluralism, access to justice, community justice/Alternative Dispute Resolution/Informal Justice, Justice Administration in Africa, human rights and interculturality, ecology of knowledges and ecology of justices.
Sara Araújo is a researcher at the Centre for Social Studies and a member of the Research Group on Democracy, Citizenship and Law. She is co-coordinator of the project "ALICE - Strange Mirrors, Unsuspected Lessons: Leading Europe to a new way of sharing the world experience", in which thinking and research is being developed from the proposal of the Epistemologies of the South. Sara Araújo holds a PhD in "Law, Justice, and Citizenship in the Twenty First Century" from the University of Coimbra. Her master dissertation was awarded with the Prize Agostinho da Silva by the Lisbon Academy of Sciences. She was part of the Permanent Observatory for the Portuguese Justice and has been a member of the bi-national research team for the Revision of the Judicial Organization of Mozambique. Her main research interests are on issues related to legal pluralism, access to justice, community justice/Alternative Dispute Resolution/Informal Justice, Justice Administration in Africa, human rights and interculturality, ecology of knowledges and ecology of justices.
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Papers in scientific journals by Sara Araújo
do governo indirecto, ou se é uma realidade legítima, que tende a contribuir para a
promoção do acesso à justiça.
in post-war settings has strictly followed liberal
assumptions and practices. Efforts to build and
shape the media in the aftermath of armed conflict
are no exception. In setting the foundations for
the rule of law, liberal democracy and free market,
external actors have (re)defined what constitutes
the mediascape – that is, the various spheres of
communication within public discourse – and how to
(re)construct it. Imprinted with modernity’s tenets
and western assumptions about the public space, this
approach has understood the mediascape narrowly
as limited to traditional, established, liberal media,
serving to validate particular actors and processes
whilst obscuring, neglecting and shutting off global
diversity. Law and technology, this paper argues, are
the two main axes through which legitimation and
exclusion are effected. A myopic focus on legal and
technological aspects of the media reduces a rich
space of local discourses, norms and practices to
western-like media legislation, training and outlets,
narrowing in turn the sites for addressing violence
and building peace.
Book Chapters by Sara Araújo
Thesis by Sara Araújo
As justiças comunitárias são instâncias de resolução de litígios que recorrem a uma terceira parte imparcial, não pertencente ao poder judicial, para promover a resolução dos casos que lhes são apresentados. Apesar de afinar a definição ao longo da tese, os limites são traçados sobretudo pela negativa, por oposição aos tribunais judiciais. Se esta opção pode ser entendida como fraqueza, é a flexibilidade de fronteiras decorrente dessa condição que torna o conceito de justiças comunitárias um instrumento epistemológico relevante. O conceito funciona como categoria de partida, uma ferramenta intermédia para elaborar cartografias jurídicas que vão além da leitura por oposição.
A sociologia das ausências visa conhecer e credibilizar a diversidade das práticas sociais existentes no mundo face às práticas hegemónicas. A sua operacionalização é feita pela substituição das monoculturas do conhecimento, que o contraem, por ecologias, que o dilatam. A ecologia de saberes é o seu instrumento mais forte. Partindo do conceito de ecologia de saberes, procuro promover uma ecologia de justiças, confrontando a conceção liberal do direito e da justiça e as hierarquias impostas pelo cânone do direito moderno com a diversidade de direitos e de justiças que existem no mundo, contribuindo para o conhecimento e a valorização da diversidade que cabe no interior da ideia de pluralismo jurídico. Daí que o conceito de justiças comunitárias seja necessariamente flexível. Para poder usá-lo como ferramenta no combate ao desperdício da experiência, procurei uma categoria e uma definição amplas com o objetivo de chegar ao terreno mais resistente à influência de preconceitos, evitar a exclusão de instâncias apenas por não encaixarem numa definição fechada, e ter a possibilidade de dar conta de uma realidade móvel e diversificada, tantas vezes não previsível. Não procurei o “exótico”, o “tradicional” ou o “informal” e não privilegiei ou exclui as estruturas criadas, incentivadas ou reconhecidas pelo Estado, arrumadas ou não na gaveta das “alternativas”. Na categoria de justiças comunitárias cabem novas e velhas formas de direito e de justiça, bem como instâncias híbridas criadas em zonas de contacto entre o Estado e a comunidade que não se acomodam nas variáveis modernas dicotómicas (formal/informal; tradicional/moderno; oficial/não oficial).
A concretização da ecologia de justiças foi dividida em dois momentos de investigação empírica: a abordagem macro e a abordagem micro. O primeiro teve como objetivo conhecer a diversidade e partiu da delimitação prévia de zonas geográficas e não de objetos de investigação concretos. Definidos os centros urbanos de Maputo (Distrito de KaMfumo) e Lisboa (Município de Lisboa), dei início a um processo cartográfico que resultou em mapas das justiças comunitárias que operam nas zonas identificadas. As justiças comunitárias passaram a assumir nomes e a caber em categorias concretas. Em Maputo, destacam-se as instâncias híbridas nascidas em zonas de contacto e em resultado da heterogeneidade do Estado. Em Portugal, são protagonistas as justiças comunitárias que decorrem dos processos de desjudicialização e informalização controlados pelo Estado.
O segundo momento da ecologia de justiças assentou numa análise micro das rotinas com base numa grelha com seis grupos de variáveis (instância, conflitualidade, proximidade, processo de resolução, resultados e presença). Partindo dos mapas e de critérios preestabelecidos, selecionei cinco instâncias para esta fase: a 7º Esquadra da Cidade de Maputo, o Gabinete Modelo de Atendimento à Mulher e Criança Vítimas de Violência e a Associação Nós por Exemplo (Maputo); o Julgado de Paz de Lisboa e o Sistema de Mediação Familiar (Lisboa). Estas instâncias tendem a funcionar como plataformas de acesso ao direito e à justiça, ainda que as variáveis exibam diferenças substanciais. Como palcos de transformação social assumem papéis heterogéneos e revelam limitações, mas observando os indicadores com as lentes da sociologia das emergências, isto é, numa lógica de ampliação simbólica dos saberes e práticas, é identificada a presença de potencial para desafiar o patriarcado e a colonialidade.
Scientific Reports by Sara Araújo
In a context of a high unemployment rate, the dismantling of the welfare state and attacks on collective bargaining – as addressed in the previous deliverables - this report questions whether national individual ADR mechanisms are useful tools for claiming labour rights and accessing labour justice. Six national teams were asked to write a report based on a two phases’ research methodology: a) desk research aiming to describe the main ADR mechanisms available; b) empirical work that involved interviews to key informants in order to produce a critical analysis of ADR mechanisms concerning access to justice. The present comparative report relies partially on national reports and unfolds in three parts. The first examines the rise of ADR in Western societies and the lively discussion around it; the second focuses on labour justice and ADR in Europe; and the third involves a descriptive and a critical analysis of labour ADR in the six countries on a national level.
In order to assess the effectiveness of ADR in claiming labour rights and accessing labour justice, we have identified five dimensions of the variable of proximity justice: geography, costs, time, culture and visibility. Geography appears to be a less relevant variable in order to compare ADR and courts’ accessibility. Contrastingly, empirical data show that costs and time are two dimensions of proximity in which ADRs tend to present clear cross-country advantages when compared to courts. Cultural or human proximity is an important proximity dimension in this report. The creation and development of dispute resolution forums that use common sense language and familiar routines, being at the same time trusted by citizens, may reduce the distance between litigants and justice institutions.
The European landscape of labour justice also reveals a less optimistic side of labour ADR reality. The national realities illustrate that ADRs need more visibility and publicity so that citizens acknowledge them as an option to litigate. Solving this issue by making them compulsory is a contested decision as the volunteer character is a crucial feature, at least for mediation. Other ADR risks underlined in this report include the following: the creation of a dual justice system, with courts serving first class citizens, and ADR serving second class citizens that cannot afford or understand courts procedures; the inexistence of mechanisms to balance power relations and the reproduction of societies’ power asymmetries. Concerning labour ADRs in particular, two main concerns are raised: a) the possibility of reproducing the power imbalance between the employer and the employee; and b) the weakening of collective struggles as a result of an investment on individual litigation.
Despite remaining challenges, this report illustrates that ADR can contribute to the promotion of access to justice, making it possible to remedy situations in which individual rights are threatened. A process in which citizens think of a solution to their conflicts and speak for themselves, potentially promotes legal empowerment.
In light of the foregoing, this deliverable has identified policy recommendations that emerge from the study of labour ADR mechanisms in Europe. Below we shortly present some of them.
• Countries must invest on promoting the visibility of ADR. Information must not be only available online or on the phone to citizens who search for it. There must be campaigns.
• Organisations must be informed about the possibility of including clauses, incorporating references to mediation and conciliation, in their key policies and employment documentation, including employment contracts.
• Parties need to be clearly informed in detail about the substantive ADR procedures before accepting its use.
• In labour disputes in particular, it is crucial that workers are well informed about their labour rights. Legal information must be available before the beginning of a mediation, conciliation or arbitration.
4
• Strong ethical ADR codes, continuous adequate training for ADR professionals and regular evaluation of these mechanisms performance must be part of a global strategy of investment in this field.
• In countries where individual alternative labour dispute settlement is lacking, it would be necessary either to establish out-of-court dispute resolution bodies specialised on individual labour law cases or to expand the competence of existing collective labour dispute agencies to cover individual cases.
• Decisions making the ADR in individual labour conflicts obligatory should be revisited
• ADR must not be viewed as a second-class justice, but citizens’ own choice when they recognize there are a better option. In case of being mandatory there must be, as in a first instance court, the possibility of appeal.
• The investment of labour ADR must be complementary to the investment in other forms of ensuring labour justice: social dialogue structures, labour rights and other forms of social protection that define Europe as a common political project based on people and not simply legal engineering compatible with a neoliberal world based on markets.
The report is twofold. The first part, based on desk research, provides the background of EU strategies and ILO orientations in the last decades. It starts by using a global lens to observe the shift from the Spirit of Philadelphia to neoliberalism. It then moves to the European scale focusing on the role of social dialogue under the ESM and the austerity paradigm. The second part is empirically grounded and uses a comparative approach to address national social dialogue systems. The comparison covers 5 EU member states (Austria, Hungary, Netherlands, Portugal and UK) and Turkey. Research was conducted by national teams in 3 research steps: (1) literature review and documental analysis; (2) legal analysis; and (3) documental analysis and interviews to key informants.
Social dialogue is one of the main pillars of the European Social Model, the unifying and protective umbrella in which social justice and good economic performance are compatible goals. Social dialogue national structures are present and alive in all of the countries covered by this research. Austria and the Netherlands are the two countries where social dialogue is currently more effective. In both cases, it is embedded in long democratic tradition of reaching decisions. Both countries developed social dialogue structures in the context of the golden age of post war prosperity and under the influence of the Spirit of Philadelphia. In UK, the economic policies started moving away from the labour rights ideals even before the Washington consensus started spreading the neoliberal ideal all around the world. In 1974, when Austria and the Netherlands were years ahead in the development of the social dialogue structures and UK was already giving steps back in collective regulation, Portugal was trying to move on after four decades of a fascist dictatorship and still had everything to do. It was more than a decade later, in 1998, under the course of the democratization process, that Hungary created its first national forum for tripartite cooperation between workers’ and employers' representatives and the government. Turkish report identifies the first attempt of social dialogue back in the Ottoman Empire (1908), but it was only in the 1990s, with the impact of closer relations between Turkey and the European Union and revitalizing democratic politics, that Turkey experienced a relative democratization process and bipartite social dialogue started to flourish.
Before the crisis, social dialogue structures were already under pressure even in countries where they were deeply rooted. However, the stronger social models, based on trust between social partners, were better equipped to come up with solutions to protect workers and economies. In Austria and Netherlands, the long and strong tradition of welfare state and social dialogue allows them to better cope with a worldwide crisis, protecting citizens and economy. The UK social dialogue and welfare self-destruction or the attacks on the already fragile social dialogue systems in Portugal, Hungary and Turkey were not part of the solution, but of the problem.
To learn from successful cases is different from creating one-size-fits-all-receipts. It means considering them in historical context and using the good practices to frame particular solutions. Learning from the examples of Austria and Netherlands is not about importing legislation, but understanding that success results from decades of trust building between the partners. It means precisely that institutional solutions must be defined according to realities and nurtured to avoid transforming the European social pillars into empty shells.
do governo indirecto, ou se é uma realidade legítima, que tende a contribuir para a
promoção do acesso à justiça.
in post-war settings has strictly followed liberal
assumptions and practices. Efforts to build and
shape the media in the aftermath of armed conflict
are no exception. In setting the foundations for
the rule of law, liberal democracy and free market,
external actors have (re)defined what constitutes
the mediascape – that is, the various spheres of
communication within public discourse – and how to
(re)construct it. Imprinted with modernity’s tenets
and western assumptions about the public space, this
approach has understood the mediascape narrowly
as limited to traditional, established, liberal media,
serving to validate particular actors and processes
whilst obscuring, neglecting and shutting off global
diversity. Law and technology, this paper argues, are
the two main axes through which legitimation and
exclusion are effected. A myopic focus on legal and
technological aspects of the media reduces a rich
space of local discourses, norms and practices to
western-like media legislation, training and outlets,
narrowing in turn the sites for addressing violence
and building peace.
As justiças comunitárias são instâncias de resolução de litígios que recorrem a uma terceira parte imparcial, não pertencente ao poder judicial, para promover a resolução dos casos que lhes são apresentados. Apesar de afinar a definição ao longo da tese, os limites são traçados sobretudo pela negativa, por oposição aos tribunais judiciais. Se esta opção pode ser entendida como fraqueza, é a flexibilidade de fronteiras decorrente dessa condição que torna o conceito de justiças comunitárias um instrumento epistemológico relevante. O conceito funciona como categoria de partida, uma ferramenta intermédia para elaborar cartografias jurídicas que vão além da leitura por oposição.
A sociologia das ausências visa conhecer e credibilizar a diversidade das práticas sociais existentes no mundo face às práticas hegemónicas. A sua operacionalização é feita pela substituição das monoculturas do conhecimento, que o contraem, por ecologias, que o dilatam. A ecologia de saberes é o seu instrumento mais forte. Partindo do conceito de ecologia de saberes, procuro promover uma ecologia de justiças, confrontando a conceção liberal do direito e da justiça e as hierarquias impostas pelo cânone do direito moderno com a diversidade de direitos e de justiças que existem no mundo, contribuindo para o conhecimento e a valorização da diversidade que cabe no interior da ideia de pluralismo jurídico. Daí que o conceito de justiças comunitárias seja necessariamente flexível. Para poder usá-lo como ferramenta no combate ao desperdício da experiência, procurei uma categoria e uma definição amplas com o objetivo de chegar ao terreno mais resistente à influência de preconceitos, evitar a exclusão de instâncias apenas por não encaixarem numa definição fechada, e ter a possibilidade de dar conta de uma realidade móvel e diversificada, tantas vezes não previsível. Não procurei o “exótico”, o “tradicional” ou o “informal” e não privilegiei ou exclui as estruturas criadas, incentivadas ou reconhecidas pelo Estado, arrumadas ou não na gaveta das “alternativas”. Na categoria de justiças comunitárias cabem novas e velhas formas de direito e de justiça, bem como instâncias híbridas criadas em zonas de contacto entre o Estado e a comunidade que não se acomodam nas variáveis modernas dicotómicas (formal/informal; tradicional/moderno; oficial/não oficial).
A concretização da ecologia de justiças foi dividida em dois momentos de investigação empírica: a abordagem macro e a abordagem micro. O primeiro teve como objetivo conhecer a diversidade e partiu da delimitação prévia de zonas geográficas e não de objetos de investigação concretos. Definidos os centros urbanos de Maputo (Distrito de KaMfumo) e Lisboa (Município de Lisboa), dei início a um processo cartográfico que resultou em mapas das justiças comunitárias que operam nas zonas identificadas. As justiças comunitárias passaram a assumir nomes e a caber em categorias concretas. Em Maputo, destacam-se as instâncias híbridas nascidas em zonas de contacto e em resultado da heterogeneidade do Estado. Em Portugal, são protagonistas as justiças comunitárias que decorrem dos processos de desjudicialização e informalização controlados pelo Estado.
O segundo momento da ecologia de justiças assentou numa análise micro das rotinas com base numa grelha com seis grupos de variáveis (instância, conflitualidade, proximidade, processo de resolução, resultados e presença). Partindo dos mapas e de critérios preestabelecidos, selecionei cinco instâncias para esta fase: a 7º Esquadra da Cidade de Maputo, o Gabinete Modelo de Atendimento à Mulher e Criança Vítimas de Violência e a Associação Nós por Exemplo (Maputo); o Julgado de Paz de Lisboa e o Sistema de Mediação Familiar (Lisboa). Estas instâncias tendem a funcionar como plataformas de acesso ao direito e à justiça, ainda que as variáveis exibam diferenças substanciais. Como palcos de transformação social assumem papéis heterogéneos e revelam limitações, mas observando os indicadores com as lentes da sociologia das emergências, isto é, numa lógica de ampliação simbólica dos saberes e práticas, é identificada a presença de potencial para desafiar o patriarcado e a colonialidade.
In a context of a high unemployment rate, the dismantling of the welfare state and attacks on collective bargaining – as addressed in the previous deliverables - this report questions whether national individual ADR mechanisms are useful tools for claiming labour rights and accessing labour justice. Six national teams were asked to write a report based on a two phases’ research methodology: a) desk research aiming to describe the main ADR mechanisms available; b) empirical work that involved interviews to key informants in order to produce a critical analysis of ADR mechanisms concerning access to justice. The present comparative report relies partially on national reports and unfolds in three parts. The first examines the rise of ADR in Western societies and the lively discussion around it; the second focuses on labour justice and ADR in Europe; and the third involves a descriptive and a critical analysis of labour ADR in the six countries on a national level.
In order to assess the effectiveness of ADR in claiming labour rights and accessing labour justice, we have identified five dimensions of the variable of proximity justice: geography, costs, time, culture and visibility. Geography appears to be a less relevant variable in order to compare ADR and courts’ accessibility. Contrastingly, empirical data show that costs and time are two dimensions of proximity in which ADRs tend to present clear cross-country advantages when compared to courts. Cultural or human proximity is an important proximity dimension in this report. The creation and development of dispute resolution forums that use common sense language and familiar routines, being at the same time trusted by citizens, may reduce the distance between litigants and justice institutions.
The European landscape of labour justice also reveals a less optimistic side of labour ADR reality. The national realities illustrate that ADRs need more visibility and publicity so that citizens acknowledge them as an option to litigate. Solving this issue by making them compulsory is a contested decision as the volunteer character is a crucial feature, at least for mediation. Other ADR risks underlined in this report include the following: the creation of a dual justice system, with courts serving first class citizens, and ADR serving second class citizens that cannot afford or understand courts procedures; the inexistence of mechanisms to balance power relations and the reproduction of societies’ power asymmetries. Concerning labour ADRs in particular, two main concerns are raised: a) the possibility of reproducing the power imbalance between the employer and the employee; and b) the weakening of collective struggles as a result of an investment on individual litigation.
Despite remaining challenges, this report illustrates that ADR can contribute to the promotion of access to justice, making it possible to remedy situations in which individual rights are threatened. A process in which citizens think of a solution to their conflicts and speak for themselves, potentially promotes legal empowerment.
In light of the foregoing, this deliverable has identified policy recommendations that emerge from the study of labour ADR mechanisms in Europe. Below we shortly present some of them.
• Countries must invest on promoting the visibility of ADR. Information must not be only available online or on the phone to citizens who search for it. There must be campaigns.
• Organisations must be informed about the possibility of including clauses, incorporating references to mediation and conciliation, in their key policies and employment documentation, including employment contracts.
• Parties need to be clearly informed in detail about the substantive ADR procedures before accepting its use.
• In labour disputes in particular, it is crucial that workers are well informed about their labour rights. Legal information must be available before the beginning of a mediation, conciliation or arbitration.
4
• Strong ethical ADR codes, continuous adequate training for ADR professionals and regular evaluation of these mechanisms performance must be part of a global strategy of investment in this field.
• In countries where individual alternative labour dispute settlement is lacking, it would be necessary either to establish out-of-court dispute resolution bodies specialised on individual labour law cases or to expand the competence of existing collective labour dispute agencies to cover individual cases.
• Decisions making the ADR in individual labour conflicts obligatory should be revisited
• ADR must not be viewed as a second-class justice, but citizens’ own choice when they recognize there are a better option. In case of being mandatory there must be, as in a first instance court, the possibility of appeal.
• The investment of labour ADR must be complementary to the investment in other forms of ensuring labour justice: social dialogue structures, labour rights and other forms of social protection that define Europe as a common political project based on people and not simply legal engineering compatible with a neoliberal world based on markets.
The report is twofold. The first part, based on desk research, provides the background of EU strategies and ILO orientations in the last decades. It starts by using a global lens to observe the shift from the Spirit of Philadelphia to neoliberalism. It then moves to the European scale focusing on the role of social dialogue under the ESM and the austerity paradigm. The second part is empirically grounded and uses a comparative approach to address national social dialogue systems. The comparison covers 5 EU member states (Austria, Hungary, Netherlands, Portugal and UK) and Turkey. Research was conducted by national teams in 3 research steps: (1) literature review and documental analysis; (2) legal analysis; and (3) documental analysis and interviews to key informants.
Social dialogue is one of the main pillars of the European Social Model, the unifying and protective umbrella in which social justice and good economic performance are compatible goals. Social dialogue national structures are present and alive in all of the countries covered by this research. Austria and the Netherlands are the two countries where social dialogue is currently more effective. In both cases, it is embedded in long democratic tradition of reaching decisions. Both countries developed social dialogue structures in the context of the golden age of post war prosperity and under the influence of the Spirit of Philadelphia. In UK, the economic policies started moving away from the labour rights ideals even before the Washington consensus started spreading the neoliberal ideal all around the world. In 1974, when Austria and the Netherlands were years ahead in the development of the social dialogue structures and UK was already giving steps back in collective regulation, Portugal was trying to move on after four decades of a fascist dictatorship and still had everything to do. It was more than a decade later, in 1998, under the course of the democratization process, that Hungary created its first national forum for tripartite cooperation between workers’ and employers' representatives and the government. Turkish report identifies the first attempt of social dialogue back in the Ottoman Empire (1908), but it was only in the 1990s, with the impact of closer relations between Turkey and the European Union and revitalizing democratic politics, that Turkey experienced a relative democratization process and bipartite social dialogue started to flourish.
Before the crisis, social dialogue structures were already under pressure even in countries where they were deeply rooted. However, the stronger social models, based on trust between social partners, were better equipped to come up with solutions to protect workers and economies. In Austria and Netherlands, the long and strong tradition of welfare state and social dialogue allows them to better cope with a worldwide crisis, protecting citizens and economy. The UK social dialogue and welfare self-destruction or the attacks on the already fragile social dialogue systems in Portugal, Hungary and Turkey were not part of the solution, but of the problem.
To learn from successful cases is different from creating one-size-fits-all-receipts. It means considering them in historical context and using the good practices to frame particular solutions. Learning from the examples of Austria and Netherlands is not about importing legislation, but understanding that success results from decades of trust building between the partners. It means precisely that institutional solutions must be defined according to realities and nurtured to avoid transforming the European social pillars into empty shells.
Based upon the challenges brought up by Castro Caldas (2017) and framed on D6.1, the core question that leaded this (D6.2) research was: how did the austerity discourses, translated into policies and laws in the context of the recent crises, affected EU and Turkey democracies and citizens’ rights? In order to understand the justice or injustice experienced by marginalized groups in society we opted to include grassroots movements and their non-institutionalized discourses. A central goal was to learn about their specific conditions and obstacles, but also to listen to their views about European policies and the European future in the context of redistributive justice.
The main challenge of this deliverable was to unveil the voices of the vulnerable groups included in the study. Research and policies meant to be “about” people and groups frequently fail to include them, i.e., citizens’ real claims and experiences expressed in their own voices and discourses are frequently erased from the public sphere. This report brings together different and sometimes contradictory discourses: a) official discourses translated into national and international policies and law (hard law and soft law); b) citizens’ discourses about the consequences of EU and national policies and law on their lives, theirs claims and alternative proposals.
The study covered research in five EU member states (Austria, Hungary, Netherlands, Portugal and UK) and in Turkey. It has a national comparative dimension, for which we opted to give special attention to a common vulnerable group (young women). Research also focused on a second specific group that varied for each country according to a preliminary analysis of national reality (persons with disabilities, Roma people, younger and older people, women, migrants - including non-Western migrants -, and third-country nationals ).
In a first moment, the work was based on desk research (bibliography review and legal, statistical and documental analysis). Following a broad picture of the European situation, in a second moment the research moved into an empirical approach with a smaller scale view (semi-structured interviews to key informants).
As the analysis show, European welfare and employment regimes, as well as the European Social Model are experiencing a convergence towards neoliberalism and that is jeopardizing citizens’ rights and democracy. The consequences include devastating effects in employment, increased insecurity with loss of jobs, precariousness and in-work poverty, threats to human dignity. Despite a general policy trend, the intensity and effects of austerity vary between countries and social groups.
In addition to the obvious economic and financial aspects of the austerity model, the post-crisis reaction resulted in a social model of naturalization of inequalities of an “austerity society”. Legitimacy by fear, prompted by predictions of catastrophic scenarios, asserts itself as a mechanism for converting the narrative of austerity into a dominant political-social model, assuring the absolute priority of the moral values of economic and labour neoliberalism (Ferreira, 2011).
Although fear is many times paralyzing and leaves citizens vulnerable to populist discourses, the perception of injustice also led to public protests. A young and well-educated European generation that became adult to realize that the European promises of democracy, rights and opportunities were losing their meaning occupied the public space in order to get their voices heard. European institutions and their leaders claimed that austerity was the only possible path, but protesters were discussing something different. They were not looking for solutions for the crisis inside of the current model, they wanted to discuss a new model of democracy that is open to the voices of citizens and takes seriously the values inscribed in European treaties and national constitutions.
The European project is, in its essence, a political project and not legal engineering, even though the legal institutions have played a crucial role in its development. Restoring the European project of citizenship, equality and solidarity cannot be achieved without the democratization of its political institutions. Europe’s problems are not temporary crises, nor are they ordinary issues. Rather, they are warning signs of a structural reality that, at this rate of degradation, can very well reach a peak in which the values of freedom, democracy, equality and rule of law - that are the cornerstones for the Treaty of Lisbon or the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union -, lose their meaning, and Europe becomes a caricature of itself - discredited within its borders and abroad.
If there is something that resistance and protest movements have shown during the crisis or even the copying mechanisms of social groups to overcome hardship or test alternative solutions is that the possibilities for the future are broader than the idea that austerity is the only way.
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