Secure, Dignified and Just? A paradigm shift in the comparative study of social protection

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This project will achieve a paradigm shift in comparative social protection research. Previous research has focused almost exclusively on income or work, but this ignores broader, crucially important claimant experiences: some systems may provide dignity, a sense of security, and feel fair; others may leave people stigmatised, insecure, and feeling unjustly treated. These experiences are important in themselves and crucial for understanding the impact of social protection on health and work.I will study experiences across five welfare regimes (Norway, UK, Spain, Hungary and Estonia), to meet four objectives.1. Creating a new interdisciplinary framework for understanding what 'claimant experiences' are, working with claimants themselves, to provide a platform for the project.2. Conducting comparisons of claimant experiences across countries. This uses mixed-methods, including innovative qualitative methods (see below) and the first-ever quantitative comparisons of experiences. Surveying claimants is extremely challenging, so I innovatively combine (i) a telephone survey of 1,150 claimants to get robust comparisons, capturing people who are digitally excluded; and (ii) a larger, cheaper, online longitudinal survey of 7,000 claimants, to investigate inequalities between claimants.3 & 4. Building and testing new theories on (3) how policies influence experiences (4) and the impact of these experiences on health and work. This uses the longitudinal survey above and also innovative, in-depth qualitative research with 75-90 claimants over 6mths. This allows me to explore mechanisms in detail via (i) conventional interviews; (ii) digital methods that allow respondents to log every interaction they have with the system; and (iii) conducting rapid follow-up interviews after key interactions. This research will take academic research on social protection in new directions, providing vital evidence on how social protection can deliver dignity, security and justice.