The criticality of housing and its impacts on human health and well-being have been noted for decades. Indeed, the United Nations (UN) Declaration of Universal Human Rights, adopted by the General Assembly in 1948, states unequivocally that:

Written in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War, this declaration was shaped by that monumental global event and the fragility of everyday people within it. It is a vision for a better world. Yet, in the current global setting, as economies recover from the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and face new challenges, including ongoing instability from the Israel-Gaza conflict and war in Ukraine, the effects of increasing climate crisis-induced severe weather events and the stuttering global economic situation, a severe housing crisis remains. Indeed, across both the Global North and South, and irrespective of national economic status, we see how this promise to provide a minimum standard of housing for every global citizen has not been kept.

Introduction

Housing and sociocultural practices are critical influences on human health globally. Yet, the World Health Organization's Housing and Health Guidelines (WHO, 2018) have identified that low-income groups, including Indigenous peoples, are more likely to live in housing that is unsuitable. In turn, this raises their exposure to health impacts from housing and crowding, such as mental stress and infectious disease transmission (WHO, 2018).

For Australian Indigenous communities experiencing relatively high levels of socio-economic vulnerabilities, sufficient, well-maintained housing infrastructure can support healthy living practices (Healthabitat, 2019). However, if there is insufficient housing stock to meet community need, as is the case in much of Aboriginal Australia, crowded social housing can adversely impact occupants’ health through recurring transmission of infectious diseases between residents in regular close bodily contact (Lowell et al, 2018). This can manifest as high-frequency of upper respiratory tract (URT) and otitis media (OM) infections. These infections are problematic on their own but can be lethal because key organisms involved in these diseases, such as Streptococcus pneumoniae, may cause meningitis and pneumonia (Subramanian et al, 2019). Moreover, the risks of infection with Streptococcus pneumoniae are greater in individuals who are immune-compromised, elderly or young (Subramanian et al, 2019). There is also a relationship between recurrent infections and chronic diseases. Damaged skin after scabies and pyoderma disorders can attract infections by group A Streptococcal (GAS) infections. Recurrent infections by this bacterium can lead to acute rheumatic fever (ARF) and post-streptococcal glomerulonephritis (PSGN). These associations are significant, as PSGN can lead to chronic kidney disease (CKD) (White et al, 2010; Garcia-Garcia et al, 2017) and ARF to rheumatic heart disease (RHD) (Kerdemelidis et al, 2010).

Proceeding from the hypothesis that the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) can be studied as a testing ground for China's ambition to increase its normative power and shape the normative framework of international relations, two dimensions of norms that are related but not congruent must be considered. On the one hand, there is the construction and recognition of a normative code that is supposed to be observed in interstate relations (norms ‘on paper’); on the other, there is the actual behaviour of states (norms ‘in action’), which does not necessarily conform to the codified norms. The questions of whether China uses the SCO as an arena to showcase its vision of international relations and what factors impede or facilitate its ambitions to spread its norms on the global level must, therefore, include both dimensions.

This chapter and the next one will analyse what kind of international order the official documents of the SCO conceptualize and scrutinize China's influence on the codification of crucial concepts. Although many of these concepts remain vague and ambiguous, the in-depth analysis allows for discerning a conception of international relations that presents itself as an alternative to the prevailing system dominated by the norms and values of the liberal international society. However, to see how the codified normative principles work out in practice, one must explore the actual behaviour of the SCO.

In their chapter examining comparative experiences of informal housing residents in Caracas and Sydney, Quintana Vigiola (2022) makes three key propositions: first, despite the often discussed/highlighted negative impacts, informal housing can very well have positive impacts on residents’ well-being; second, informal housing residents make use of various psychosocial and physical strategies to improve their housing experience, which, in turn, leads to improvement of their perception of overall well-being; and, third, meaningful commonalities can be identified in terms of informal housing residents’ perceptions of housing and well-being across cities in the Global South and North. In this reply to Quintana Vigiola (2022), I will engage with these three propositions, drawing on my own research in informal housing settlements in a Southern context.

I begin with Quintana Vigiola's (2022) first proposition on the positive impacts of informal housing on residents’ well-being. Indeed, the literature on informal housing often tends to focus on the negative effects of such housing arrangements and the precarity associated with them. In comparison, there have been many fewer studies and much less written on how particular modes of informal dwellings can also have positive effects on residents’ well-being. I would like to expand on this by reflecting on my research in two informal settlements in Dhaka, one being Korail – a very large slum – and the other being Town Hall Camp – a former refugee camp – where I carried out ethnographic fieldwork. I found that not all people in these settlements lived there because of an inability to move out due to a lack of economic means.

The preceding chapters have shown that China has been able to institutionalize core views, norms, and concepts underlying its vision of international relations within the regional international society of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). The SCO has codified these principles in its official documents, and its member states, at least in their internal relations within the organization, act in conformity with them (for a discussion of how the SCO deals with individual member states’ unilateral violations of its formal norms – such as Russia's 2008 invasion of Georgia and its ongoing war on Ukraine – see Chapter 7). As a unified body, the SCO also in its external policy does not violate its declared principles and attempts to present itself as a champion of the New International Order advocated by China. Assuming that China's ambition of increasing its normative power goes beyond this regional international society and includes shaping international relations globally, this chapter turns to how the SCO extends its ‘circle of friends’ to disseminate its normative views within global international society. It will inquire into the expansion of the SCO to include and attract more and more states that, at least on paper, subscribe to the norms and rules of the regional international society. From the Chinese perspective, an ideal future scenario would be expanding the SCO's normative system to global international society, comparable to the expansion of the liberal international society (LIS) discussed in Chapter 2.

For China under Xi Jinping, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) is used as a model for the Community of Common Destiny for Mankind. Therefore, the organization can be considered not only a framework for a regional international society but also a Chinese blueprint for global international society. The realization of this vision would be a long-term undertaking that demands more than designing and proclaiming a set of well-sounding but ambiguous principles. The credibility of a norm entrepreneur largely depends on how far the declared norms are observed in practice. Since China presents the SCO as a model for a new type of international relations, scrutinizing the SCO's behaviour in international crises provides clues to how such a new type of international relations functions in action. Therefore, in this chapter, I will explore the SCO's reactions to three regional security crises to clarify to what extent its actual policies adhere to the norms endorsed in the organization's official documents. In other words, using the thin/thick framework of international societies, this chapter will examine whether the SCO is only a relatively thin international society ‘on paper’ or a thicker international society both ‘on paper’ and ‘in action’ (moving from the lower right to the upper right arrow in Figure 2.1). The following chapter will then consider the SCO's response to three security crises outside the region.

To understand how the state shapes the regulation of work, we need to be clear about the role of the state in general. We also need to understand work or, more particularly, the nature of the employment relationship because that is the target of regulation of one form or another. This is not simply a matter of definition. Rather, both the state and the employment relationship are understood in different ways in different schools of thought with different (and competing) implications for what policy should try to achieve. This chapter explains these approaches, shows how understandings of the state and employment are related to each other, provides a framework for assessing policy goals themselves and, finally, explains how policy is made.

Before we can engage with arguments about policy or what states do or are urged to do in industrial relations policy, we need to explore different explanations for the employment relationship itself. All policy making is defined, too often implicitly as Befort and Budd (2009) say, by some understanding of ‘how work works’. Many policy makers – and those trying to influence them – might see themselves simply as problem solvers concerned with practical matters but it is impossible to argue for or against any policy without a set of assumptions about the connections between problem, remedy and outcome. This calls to mind the warning of Keynes (1936: 383– 4) that people ‘who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence are usually the slaves of some defunct economist …

Introduction

In this chapter, I revisit the stepmother in research and examine how my research reimagines her. By retelling stepfamilies from the perspectives of fellow stepmothers, I explore how these new perspectives on the institution and practices of step/mothering challenge and enrich the theorization of step/family practices and benefit practitioners like social workers, lawyers, teachers, psychologists and psychotherapists, as well as the stepmothers themselves. I emphasize the value of historical and auto/biographical approaches in social research for uncovering the links between individual experiences and broader social structures. Building on this foundation, I highlight how feminist research can disrupt conventional notions of ‘the family’ by emphasizing empathy, flexibility and respect for diverse stepfamily constellations and practices. This approach brings to light contradictions in feminist research praxis, revealing the transgressive possibilities that redefine and expand our understanding of stepmothers.

Socio-historical context of stepmothering in patriarchal structures

I think it is impossible to reimagine stepmothers without acknowledging and accounting for the socio-historical structure that has shaped our existence – namely, patriarchy. This system of gender hierarchy has meticulously constructed and reproduced our public and private spheres, including the notion of ‘the family’, embedding this specific social framework as the default. However, it is critical to understand that there is nothing natural or neutral about this default, that it is social in origin and, therefore, potentially changeable (Jackson, 1999).

Introduction

Without a doubt, participatory budgeting (PB) is the most frequently used democratic innovation and the most popular tool for directly involving citizens in the process of public funds distribution. According to the PB World Atlas, there were roughly 11,690– 11,825 PBs worldwide in 2019, though the actual number is certainly much higher (Dias et al, 2019). Though PBs are something of a calling card for democratic innovation and radical democracy, they are a double-edged sword. Over the last 30 years, they have undergone dramatic evolution. In their infancy in Brazil, they were strongly leftist and even class-centric in orientation. The ambition of their initiators was to shake up the local political landscape, radically democratize it, change the rules of the political game, and empower the lower classes. PB aimed to break up the system in which the political elite, surrounded by a wreath of interest groups, made up the decision-making core (Baiocchi, 2005; Avritzer, 2006, pp 623– 37; Wampler, 2007; Baiocchi et al, 2011). Brazilian PBs were successful in pushing through the process of power redistribution and democratization. There, the leading example was Porto Alegre. A participatory revolution such as that had to meet a number of criteria. Firstly, it had to be holistic, not partial. The key to success was making public funds acquisition impossible outside of PB (Baiocchi, 2005). If not for that, it would have been impossible to eliminate the behind-the-scenes games of interests and political corruption.

Introduction

Russia's war against Ukraine since 24 February 2022 calls for a re-evaluation of the European Union's (EU) policies and concepts in different fields.1 On the political level, the EU's long-standing self-image as primarily a normative and soft power projecting its norms in post-Cold War Europe and beyond has been shaken (Manners, 2002). All efforts to integrate the Russian Federation in a common European space of peace and security seem to have failed in the face of Moscow's imperial turn, which defines post-Soviet states as a zone of special Russian interest. In its so-called Near Abroad (blizhnee zarubezh’e), states would have only limited sovereignty in various policy fields ranging from membership in transnational organizations such as NATO and the EU to domestic policies such as the citizenship regime.

The Russian rationale for the necessity of the war against Ukraine and its war aims call imperatively for revisiting some scholarly concepts as well. Vladimir Putin and other leading politicians and ideologues from the Russian Federation posit two main reasons for the war. The first is to safeguard the Russian population in the self-declared republics in eastern and southern Ukraine, in Crimea, and in the whole of Ukraine from acts of genocide perpetrated by Ukrainian Nazis. The second line of argumentation is more far-reaching, calling the very existence of the Ukrainian nation and state into question: once the Ukrainian regime is removed from power, the Ukrainian nation is destined to return to the common Russian cradle, and the state is doomed to be dissolved territorially and politically and to be incorporated into the Russian Federation.

This book sets out to explain industrial relations policy, that is, the institutions that shape the regulation of work and labour markets. We examine how policy is made, exploring the origins, objectives and outcomes of policy. Each aspect of the policy process can be contested and divisive, because policies and institutions are all vital matters to workers and employers and to the relationship between them. Many countries across the globe have recently seen changes in the nature of work and the workforce, forms of regulation, living standards and profit levels – in other words, the real world of working life and industrial relations.

Paid labour is central to people's identity and social purpose. Most fundamentally, paid work is a means to ‘earn a living’ and thus to make our way in the world. Earnings are central to people's expectations and outcomes of work but so too are working conditions, workplace relationships, dignity and safety (Budd, 2011). As work changes, so do these expectations and outcomes, and so does the nature of the workforce and the organizations that employ those people.

While these changes generate a lot of discussion in themselves, there is typically less attention to how work is regulated. Today's conversations about the future of work also ignore this. Work will never be a matter of technology alone. Governments, regulators and public institutions establish the terms under which work is performed.

In the first two chapters we examined definitional and conceptual answers to the question of how the state shapes the regulation of work. That question has also been answered in actual practice in different ways in different places at different times. In the Australian case, the related question of how the state should shape the regulation of work was asked as the new nation, the Commonwealth of Australia, emerged at the start of the twentieth century. It was, and remains, a central question in the process of ‘nation building’.

This chapter explains the making of the first national policy in 1904. Competing explanations for how the employment relationship ‘works’ and what roles states should play explicitly shaped what employers, workers and policy makers did in this period. After using this first policy as a kind of case study, we examine changes that bring us to the eve of the remaking of policy from 2007. As the chapter demonstrates, Australian history offers archetypal examples of policies driven by the theories discussed in Chapter 2, that is, unitarist assumptions in the nineteenth century and pluralism for most of the twentieth century. This illustrates some of the very different ways state actors have enacted policies to reflect their understanding of their role, and the foundations of a fair society shaped, in each case, by dynamics of geography, trade, gender, race and the imperatives of accumulation.

Introduction

For most citizens in Europe, including young people up to the age of 30, voting is the predominant and most effective form of political participation. It is thus a central practice of citizenship. However, the aggregate turnout in European Parliament (EP) elections has repeatedly been low, with only half of citizens using their right to vote. In post-socialist countries that joined the European Union (EU) in 2004 or later, participation is even lower. Here, turnout has consistently been around 20 percentage points below the EU-15 average (see Table 4.1). Moreover, a high vote share for Eurosceptic parties in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) has raised concerns (Hobolt and de Vries, 2016; Hloušek and Kaniok 2020a).

In the 2019 EP elections, turnout rose for the first time since 1979, and participation in the post-socialist member states was significantly higher than in any previous election. At the same time, Eurosceptic parties across the continent were able to consolidate their results (Treib 2021), and there is a burgeoning body of research on the regional patterns of turnout and Euroscepticism (Schoene, 2019; Dijkstra et al, 2020).

Against this background, this chapter analyses regional patterns of (non-)participation and Eurosceptic voting in the 2019 EP elections in five post-socialist countries, namely the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania, and Slovakia. These member states were selected because they share similarities in terms of history (including a socialist past outside the Soviet Union), regional location, economic structure, and culture, and because they all experienced democratization, economic liberalization, and EU accession after 1989.