The theme of this anthology is the so-called new social risks related to the socio-economic transformations that have brought post-industrial societies into existence. The stage is set by Chapter 2 (Harsløf et al.). Based on a comparative analysis it is suggested that the Nordic welfare states – more than elsewhere in Europe – exhibit the structural features associated in the literature with the emergence of new social risks. Young people, immigrants and single parents appear to be relatively exposed to employment problems and to the risk of poverty in the Nordic countries.

The book mirrors a critical narrative describing the Nordic welfare state as strongly influenced by neoliberal governance strategies, with widening gaps in employment, income and health, and characterised by processes of individualisation, segregation and polarisation. This view is not unfamiliar to a Nordic reader, but taking into account the frequent stressing in the international literature of the Nordic countries as ‘heaven on earth’ it is praiseworthy that the anthology gives weight to changes that are often missed in the shadow of international comparison.

Chapter 3 (Hakovirta et al.) is concerned with single parents and shared parenting in relation to social protection, child custody and child maintenance regulations. One acknowledges that the four Nordic countries differ with respect to their family policy legislation – the welfare policies of Denmark and Finland being less flexible than the Swedish and Norwegian counterparts that to a greater extent seem to recognise the diversity of family models and to provide for the special needs of families practising shared parenthood. This confirms the old idea of ‘Norden’ as a welfare state model of five exceptions.

Enoksen (Chapter 4) shows that work time reductions have disappeared from the political agenda, because goals have been posited in an economic discourse stressing working time as an economic instrument to achieve growth and fiscal sustainability.

The case study on the changes of the Swedish educational system involving increased market orientation and deregulation is hypothesised by Panican (Chapter 5) as counterproductive to the emphasis otherwise given to social rights to education, because it generates new social risks of social exclusion. The thesis is that social citizenship – an ideological construct – and the right to education actually reinforce the risks that they were meant to alleviate. Based on interviews with representatives from education, social services and employment agencies Panican suggests two paradoxes. First, despite efforts to develop and expand social citizenship, for citizens who are not willing or able to align with the norms and attitudes underpinning sociocultural citizenship, social risks may in fact be reproduced or even amplified. Second, because of beliefs and moralising attitudes about ‘the good citizen’, officials working in the field of secondary education and the transition from school to work may administer social rights to prevent and ameliorate the impact of social risks while actually creating new ones like school-drop-out, youth unemployment and social exclusion.

These paradoxes seem to follow from the reduced weight given to social security, to the advantage of developing ‘the potential’ of the single individual. The competition state is designed to help create wider opportunity structures upon which an efficient economy ultimately depends, i.e. a skills revolution and the creation of a highly trained knowledge-based work force.

A critical discussion of the idea of structural unemployment calling for new ‘active’ policies with emphasis given to motivations and qualifications of the unemployed is presented in Chapter 6 (Albrekt Larsen) based on Danish experiences of the late 1990’s as an illustrative case. Larsen finds the structural perspective less convincing partly by a study of the unemployment rate at the macro level, partly by a micro level analysis showing that education and previous unemployment had a modest impact on the labour market integration of the long-term unemployed compared to age as the dominant explanation.

It is emphasised that the analysis does not imply that supply-side problems do not exist, and that we do not have to acknowledge new social risks in the wake of developing post-industrial societies, but that such problems do not account for sudden rises in unemployment. It is also stressed that the data analysed originated from a booming period, whereas a similar analysis studying marginalisation during a recession certainly would show that lower education and long previous unemployment definitely imply problems vis-à-vis the labour market, but the perspective applied (a structural vs. a business cycle/selection perspective) would be decisive with respect to the question of whether the welfare state is to be seen as a part of the problem or a part of the solution. The chapter is interesting in itself, but the contribution to thinking on new social risks is less obvious.

Ulmestig (Chapter 7) discusses the tension between the time honoured measures to protect citizens against ‘old’ social risks, the weaknesses characterising welfare state policies with respect to the self-employed, and the new political goal of developing self-employment among say young unemployed, immigrants and females – an objective most fervent in Sweden and least in Denmark. The problem is that the self-employed are not protected to the same extent as other groups in the population, meaning that they – unless they are able to buy appropriate market based solutions – will be referred to inferior public solutions. Whereas people are given incentives to develop their own businesses, they are placed in an exposed position – which in particular is problematic for people entering self-employment as a result of ‘push factors’. The chapter studies the position of the self-employed in case of parenting, sickness, old age and unemployment.

The ‘new health risks’ – mainly associated with abundance compared to the ‘old risks’ related to scarcity – are studied in Chapter 8 (Larsen et al.). The authors adopt a Bourdieuian view that they consider relevant to reflections on current social changes. The chapter stresses that individual investment strategies in health capital mirror a mechanism for social differentiation in terms of risk exposure and that people unable to make such investments are more exposed to new health risks contrary to the core of values in the Nordic welfare states. The contribution is interesting in its own right, but the approach deviates from most other approaches of the anthology.

Ethnicity is the subject of Fernandes’ contribution (Chapter 9), concerned with programmes for newly arrived refugees and immigrants. Their potential risk of exclusion from the labour market and even from society is an obvious new social risk. Based on a study of introductory programmes designed to facilitate integration of these vulnerable groups Fernandes concludes that they mirror a rhetoric distinguishing between dominant and subordinate groups – a ‘we’ and ‘them’, ‘us’ and ‘the others’. This is related to the general trend of developing behaviour-altering programmes for recipients of cash benefits, unemployed and otherwise marginalised groups in society, a trend characterising the movement from the classical welfare state towards the competition state. Immigrants and refugees (as well as other marginalised groups) are portrayed as more passive than the majority population. This view means that discrimination and structural factors in the labour market are not given sufficient consideration. At a more general level Fernandes notes that programme justifications relying on stereotypical understandings of a target group – ethnic or not – do not address the actual needs of the group in question. This is a very readable chapter.

With emphasis given to Sweden and Finland, Scarpa (Chapter 10) unfolds the classical welfare state as a spatial Keynesian project aiming at alleviating uneven geographical developments and notes that this strategy to a growing extent has been called into question – accompanied by a trend towards increased autonomy of local authorities. The objective of the contribution is to study the tension between acceptance of territorial inequalities and an understanding of the changes as new means to promote full employment.

The chapter demonstrates the development of new geographically differentiated configurations of employment-related social risks enhanced by increased local government autonomy and a withdrawal of central governments’ time-honoured steering interventions.

Using Denmark as a case Hornemann Møller (Chapter 11) discusses whether new social risks are handled in a manner consistent with the welfare state as a concept of institutional solidarity or rather as endeavours complying with neoliberalism. It is an important question concerned with the possible journey from the classical welfare state with the competition state as destination.

It is – as the study concludes – correct that the core Danish welfare state institutions are upheld and that retrenchments and genuine reorientations have focused in particular on immigrants, refugees, recipients of cash benefits and long-term unemployed in compliance with neoliberal thinking. At the same time many groups of vulnerable people have been exposed to what Hornemann Møller calls a paternalistic approach demanding that they – as a condition for receiving benefits – have to fulfil a number of conditions mirroring the new principle of duties and rights going hand in hand – or rather that duties have priority compared to rights. This means that the time-honoured idea of de-commodification is replaced by re-commodification and that a moral philosophical reasoning is replaced by a market confirming ethos. Social solidarity and collective responsibility are toned down to the advantage of individual responsibility. The view of man is changed from seeing him as a societal creature to a view similar to the Homo Economicus.

The chapter is very interesting and well argued, but it is a pity that the subject of the competitive state is not put into a frame comparing the development of the Nordic countries in this very respect and placed not as the last but as the first of the studies included in the anthology.

The issue is implicitly covered by Ulmestig and Harsløf in their concluding chapter highlighting critical changes in the Nordic countries. Outer and inner forces have made it difficult to combat social polarisation. The welfare state itself has imposed or allowed developing new, potentially risk-inducing structures. The handling of new social risks has been accompanied by incentive structures and sanctions tending to marginalise those unwilling or unable to comply with them. Even though the chapters’ quality and relevance vary, the anthology is an important and highly recommendable book, because it intrudes the idealisation of the Nordic welfare states ‘as somehow best in class’ (p.3). Undoubtedly, the Nordic welfare states have much to their advantage, but it is important to acknowledge that they also possess inner self-destructive mechanisms. Some of these are highlighted by this book, but there are others deserving closer scrutiny.