We are glad to announce that our rEUsilience joint research coordinators Mary Daly and Rense Nieuwenhuis will be chairing a research stream at the upcoming Network for European Social Policy Analysis conference. The ESPAnet conference, a key annual event for scholars involved or interested in the analysis of social policy in Europe, will be held from the 27th- 29th of August in Milan. This 23rd edition is centred around the theme: “The Welfare State in the 21st Century. On the Edge of a New Era or Back to Basics?”
Daly and Nieuwenhuis will lead the stream “Resilience as a concept and source of inequality: A critical examination”. This year’s stream is already the third consecutive stream on resilience, allowing us to build, year by year, a greater understanding of the implications of resilience for social policy development. In this stream, Daly and Nieuwenhuis will dive deeper into the argument that “resilience” should take into account that individuals and families do not face equal exposure to risks – nor the same risks – and that, additionally, disparities exist in the resources available and the constraints faced by different individuals and families, which affect their ability to cope with those risks. Central to addressing these differences is the role of the welfare state, which plays a vital part in both risk prevention and in enhancing the ability of individuals and families to respond effectively to challenges.
The call for paper abstracts is open now until the 24th of April. In the resilience stream, a mix of conceptual and empirical papers are welcomed, both quantitative and qualitative contributions as well as either single-country or cross-national works.
We look forward to connecting with the European social policy research community in Milan to advance the conversation on building more adequate and adaptive social policies for greater resilience for all types of families in Europe.
For more information on the specific stream and to submit an abstract, visit the ESPAnet Milano 2025 website.