Barnaby Pepin

My research takes a qualitative, critical-theoretical approach to the Scandinavian context of Welfare-Chauvinism to answer the question: how have Neoliberal pressures shaped exclusionary welfare reform? Grounding our understanding of the form of the capitalist state in the social relations which it reflects, my research seeks to explore the ways in which the shifting of European market relations since the 1980’s has endorsed a crisis of the Social Democratic state-form, thus resulting in exclusionary and marginalising policy solutions. My work therefore operationalises interdisciplinary methods such as to holistically grasp the complex interdependencies of state, market and individual, and the ways in which social and economic antagonisms are mediated in-and-through social policy.