The General Theme of the 137th Annual Meeting （September 16, 2018） was “Consider ‘Half Welfare, Half Employment’”. In this paper, I discuss the background of the four reports and introduce their outlines. In doing so, I will point out the current conditions of ‘Half Welfare, Half Employment’ and I will frame the issues to advance discussion and debate on new initiatives to improve the provision of welfare and employment assistance to the persons who have difficulty finding jobs.I would like to emphasize three important points as a premise. First, there are three lines of thought on how to conceptualize ‘Half Welfare, Half Employment’. Second, because there are many cases where recipients of living assistance face diverse and complex difficulties, it is important to provide support that matches their individual issues and needs. And third, I would like to mention that recent years have seen an increase in new support measures devised by regional governments around Japan.

The reports of the General Session seek to deepen the discussion about how Japan should develop an activation policy that links welfare assistance to work support. This will be a challenging new area in social policy research.

“Half Welfare, Half Employment” has attracted attention because of the increasing number of blue-collar workers and white-collar employees who, despite having jobs, cannot secure healthy, socially integrated lives by means of their wages alone because of the increasing instability of employment. Non-regular jobs now account for 40 percent of all employment, and real wages have stagnated as a result. For these workers and employees, in conjunction with labor-related policy measures such as increasing the minimum wage, it is important to provide employment support in tandem with measures for ensuring a minimum standard of living through “Half Welfare, Half Employment.”

On the basis of discussions by bodies such as the Social Security Advisory Council on means of providing living allowances and support for independent living, as well as public assistance, to the disadvantaged, this report argues that to advance “Half Welfare, Half Employment,” it is necessary to ease and expand the eligibility requirements by, for example, widening the scope of both systems while operating them in an integrated manner and providing seamless support.

This paper examines the significance and problems of “employment support policies” from the perspective of the quality of employment and activities set as a goal of such support programs. In the first half of the paper, the following characteristics of Japanese policies are critically analyzed : 1） they are not designed as packages of （cash） benefits and activities for getting jobs （e. g., training programs）, 2） the policies focus mainly on “self-reliance through employment,” and 3） those citizens seen as lacking the motivation to work are excluded from the support programs. In the latter half of the paper, the author suggests several revisions of these policies, based on a case study conducted in Toyonaka City （Osaka）. The main conclusions are as follows : 1） social benefits such as education and training allowances should be provided during the period of support for seeking employment, 2） policies regarding the demand side of the labor market, which help to improve general working conditions, are crucial, and 3） there is an urgent need to train counselors （employed by municipal governments or NPOs, etc.） who can provide appropriate support and bolster the motivation of disadvantaged job-seekers, and to improve the counselors’ employment conditions.

Japan has suffered from a long economic downturn which has severed many persons from conventional social institutions such as households, the government or employment. We call this phenomenon of displacement from the conventional safety net “muenka” in Japanese. “Mu” means loss, “en” means conventional ties, and “ka” means change of conditions. How we can help those who have lost contact with the rest of society ?In this paper, I briefly report on the activities of the Youth Job Development Support Network of Shizuoka （hereafter, YJDSNS）, which has been active for 15 years in Shizuoka Prefecture. The focus is on its recent efforts to overcome “muenka” by reorganizing communities.

YJDSNS was established in 2002 to help youth who had difficulty in finding and keeping work due to the economic recession and harsh working conditions prevalent in Japanese workplaces. YJDSNS has recently changed its policy, and now focuses not only on assisting individuals （＝those who are in trouble）, but also re-organizing local communities as mutual aid entities so that community members can help one another. Today, YJDSNS is driven by the idea of “commoning” to recognize our community as a commons, and it relies on the concept of community organizing to promote commoning.

The term “Half Welfare and Half Employment” does not always hold the same meanings, ideas and conditions. Sometimes it is used to signify a new style of work life for people who have difficulty in a competitive job environment, and it is sometimes criticized as a term that refers to work activities with unacceptably low standards in a more positive way. Although the meaning of this term is varied and shifting, we can also identify some important features by analyzing how it has been constructed and utilized. Through this analysis, I will attempt to derive the possibility for creating a new system of services for people in vulnerable labor market positions.

It was twenty years ago, at the 87th ILO General Meeting in 1999, that realizing Decent Work was designated to be the ILO’s primary goal. But during that time, has Japan taken sufficient measures in this regard ? The policy trends of the past 20 years indicate that Japan’s main objective has been to accelerate economic growth while relying on diversified working methods and Work Style Reform （hatarakikata kaikaku）, so it cannot be said policymaking has sought to protect people’s dignity.

It is essential to once again think about how we can make promotion of decent work a true objective in order to promote the social participation and lifestyle security of diverse people.

The aim of this paper is to analyze, from institutional and historical perspectives, the policy decision-making processes in the 10th Basic Old Age/Survivors’s Pension （AHV）, adopted by referendum in 1995, and the 11th Basic Old Age/Survivor’s Pension （AHV）. Switzerland has seen two major waves of reforms towards welfare reduction : a neo-liberal wave from the early 1990s, followed in the late 1990s by pressure for social welfare reduction by a surging extreme-right party. Contrary to those waves, it is shown that there is continued social consensus on maintaining expenditures to support pensions, and the 10th Basic Old Age/Survivor’s Pension included the world’s first gender equal individual pension, which was an important innovation. This paper examines why such a social consensus was possible, paying special attention to such distinctive Swiss political characteristics as veto players and a political culture that emphasizes consensus among parties and actors. In addition, I point out the shared characteristic of ‘division of issues’ as a democratic element in the policymaking process.

This article reevaluates the struggles of Dr. Bunji Kondo, first by re―examining his intellectual discussions, especially in the early postwar era, then pursuing the struggle’s relevance to the recommendation by the Advisory Council on Social Security in 1950 （the “1950 Recommendation”）, of which he was a drafter.First, the author reviews Dr. Kondo’s discussion about the concept of social security that was raised in his 1952 book. Then the author traces how Dr. Kondo derived his understanding of the sphere of social security, with reference to his systematic explanation of social and other policies, and compares it with the concept of social security in the “1950 Recommendation”. The author also discusses the relationship between the social insurance centrism expressed in the “1950 Recommendation” and Dr. Kondo’s concept of social security. Finally, three circumstances in that era that influenced his discussions are given consideration.

The followings three conclusions are proposed : 1） the sphere of social security in the “1950 Recommendation” embraced the implications of Dr. Kondo’s intellectual discussions of the 1950s, as well as the social necessities of the era, 2） the concept of social insurance centrism was consistent with Dr. Kondo’s theoretical views, and 3） Dr. Kondo’s discussions were influenced by the social conditions of the era.

Can a mutual aid organization that is based on the principle of reciprocity fully include poor people ? The purpose of this article is to investigate the background and circumstances that made it impossible for cooperatives to successfully include poor peasants, with a focus on the cooperatives’ membership, through a case study of the rural credit cooperative operated by the China International Famine Relief Commission （CIFRC）. First, operating on the understanding that the most important factor leading cooperative management to failure was “undesirable persons” （buliangfenzi）, CIFRC strictly limited membership in the cooperative to “good persons” （haoren）. This made it difficult to include the poorest peasants since they had few achievements to prove themselves to be “good persons”. Second, CIFRC recognized the importance of “connection and face” （qingmian） in Chinese social life as the reason why “undesirable persons” could not be admitted to membership in cooperatives. In reality, historical materials in this case suggest that “connections and face” played important roles in establishing cooperative organization. If so, it is conceivable that the result was to exclude poor peasants from membership of cooperative organizations since they lacked “connections and face”.