Looking through the lens of gender, this article engages with the opportunities, dilemmas and challenges posed by Sen's framework to sociological research. Sen's capability approach offers sociological research a dynamic framework through its concept of agency and its multidimensional approach. It also poses dilemmas, revealed in the tensions within agency and choice and the challenges in operationalizing Sen's framework: adapting it to sociological models and applying it to empirically grounded research. Through conversion factors and processes, a central component in the capabilities approach, I reveal the potential of Sen's approach for developing more dynamic frameworks in sociological research, with respect to (1) changes in gendered norms (how new norms are seeded); (2) how entitlements are converted into a sense of entitlement to make claims; and (3) how the capabilities approach can lead toward a more dynamic institutional analysis of welfare states. My contribution to Sen's framework involves elaborating two mechanisms in the conversion of capabilities to agency freedoms and achievements: the sense of entitlement to make claims and the perceived scope of alternatives in exercising rights.

This article compares Spain and Sweden, dissimilar in their welfare/care, migration and employment regimes; however, both have experienced expansions of private markets for personal household services where migrants are over-represented. Using Sen's capabilities framework as a point of departure, we explore the extent to which regime differences shaping the dynamics of personal household service markets are reflected in the capabilities and well-being of migrants employed in them. Despite variations in employment regimes and market structures, we found more similarities than differences in capabilities and well-being. Institutional contexts mattered for the access to entitlements and capabilities for alternative choices in employment, discernible in the more positive perceptions of future possibilities and potential agency to leave the sector among migrants in Sweden than in Spain. The analysis is based on 90 semi-structured interviews, as well as findings from two national migrant surveys and interviews with stakeholders.

This article revisits the recognition and redistribution debates emerging from Nancy Fraser's 1995 agenda article underscoring the dangers in the rise of identity politics and displacement of economic justice in postsocialist age. Julia Szalai has been a crucial actor in reshaping the research on recognition struggles, and I will focus on the important contribution of her research on the Roma. Looking beyond dichotomy in recognition and redistribution, Szalai's research has highlighted the interplay and overlapping configurations in recognition struggles: their institutional and historical embeddedness and their emphasis on political agency and voice. Her analysis of the multiple and interacting processes of exclusion of the Roma in Central Europe, including the spatial, educational and employment dimensions and the lack of political representation, reflect a near congruence in misrecognition and malredistribution. Her research highlights shifts in the discourse from the cultural wars to the redistributional wars in neo-liberal market economies between those who have lost status and income in the dominant population and the most vulnerable (minority and migrant populations). Finally, Szalai's research and writings have extended the theoretical and empirical borders on recognition struggles, engaging with the frameworks of intersectionalities and capabilities both of which offer lenses for revealing complex inequalities and the tensions within the paradigms for social justice that have inspired my own research.

This working paper summarizes the main results produced in the large scale collaborative research project FamiliesAndSocieties, financed in the EU Seventh Framework Programme during the period February 2013 – January 2017. Addressing first the growing diversity of family life courses and their main mechanisms of change, the research then focuses on linked lives and interdependencies through the lens of changing gender and intergenerational dependencies. Societal contexts and policies are addressed in highlighting vulnerable groups, issues of recognition and social inclusion, and family-relevant EU and national level policies. A brief discussion on future social risks and policy challenges, and on the implications of the project findings for policy frameworks concludes this report.

This article introduces the theme of the special issue on Outsourcing Domestic (Care) Work. We conceptualize outsourcing of domestic work as a process by which both the state and family increase their reliance on private markets to carry out both care and non-care domestic services. We argue that this outsourcing is happening in response to three deficits that many wealthy European countries face- care deficit, time deficit, and job deficit.

Across European societies there is an increasing number of precarious workers. In this study we focus on migrant care/domestic workers, an archetypical case to study the precariat in a sector characterized by informality, lack of access to employment rights and protections and where workers may face exploitation and abuse. We compare migrant care workers in two institutional contexts, Spain and Sweden, representing different welfare/care and migration regimes. Analyzing the effects of precarious work within the framework of capabilities, we consider whether there are similarities and differences in our two cases regarding wellbeing and quality of life of migrants working in the sector and their scope of alternatives for making change. The analysis is based on semi-structured interviews of migrants working in the care/domestic sector conducted in Madrid, Barcelona and Stockholm. We find less of a divergence than one would have expected, given our cases with different regimes and employment practices, though in Spain migrant care/domestic workers fare worse, which partly can be attributed to the recession.