European social citizenship means creating a feeling that people, especially groups at risk of maginalisation and social exclusion, have something to gain from being members of the EU.
Strengthening social citizenship is the central aims of EUROSHIP a three-years project funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme and implemented by a group 10 academic partners in seven countries: Estonia, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Norway, Spain, and the United Kingdom. One of the two Italian partners is the University of Florence which is represented by Mario Biggeri, Caterina Arciprete and Federico Ciani.
The seven countries represent highly diverse contexts for realizing social citizenship across Europe. Acknowledging the current social, economic and political conditions across European countries, the project will assess the available EU level policy instruments to promote upward social convergence, social resilience and social cohesion across Europe.
EUROSHIP has the tasks of identifying factors that currently prevent women and men with low education and income from exercising social citizenship, and more positively, to identify means that enable them to mitigate risks of poverty and social exclusion over the life-course. The project will support the development of evidence-based and innovative policy that may help the EU and national governments boost social citizenship. The active involvement of key national and European stakeholders will ensure that project results reach relevant policymakers.
It will put into sharp focus the opportunities, challenges and responses that people encounter in the face of rapid policy transformations of social protection systems in different institutional and societal contexts. To understand how these challenges are unfolding the research team will:
- Examine the social protection systems (including the role of minimum income schemes);
- Focus on the experiences of three vulnerable population groups (youth at risk of in-work poverty, prime age precarious workers with care obligations, and low-income persons with disabilities, including the elderly with long-term care needs);
- Interrogate the implications of introducing digital technologies to deliver social protection systems and address some of the problems arising from this broader social and economic transformation;
- Analyse how the EU may contribute to close current gaps in social citizenship in a multilevel and territorially diverse Europe.
The project will add to the knowledge base for further implementation of the European Pillar of Social Rights and the Agenda 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs 1, 8, 10).
