Participation income solves the entire aff while incentivizing a transition to a broader ethics of care that promotes eco-social values.

The necessity of transitioning towards an ‘eco-social’ (Koch, 2018) welfare model is increasingly acknowledged. As argued in several contributions to this themed section (Gough, 2021; Koch, 2021), this will require re-anchoring welfare institutions in a ‘postproductivist’ architecture wherein income supports and public services are targeted at meeting essential needs rather than catalysing labour productivity and economic growth. While there is now a growing consensus about the need for such an eco-social policy agenda, there is far less agreement about what specific social policies might contribute to this reorientation. The role of social policy in enabling sustainable transitions remains marginal within the literature on decarbonisation (Bohnenberger, 2020) while the ecological impacts of social policies remain ‘largely ignored’ (Koch, 2018: 42) within mainstream social policy debates (Stamm et al., 2020). To rectify this double neglect, we revise the concept of a ‘participation income’ (PI) (Atkinson, 1996), positioning it as a form of ‘green conditional basic income’ (Bohnenberger, 2020: 596) that retains a commitment to the principle of reciprocity but affirms forms of reproductive and ecological labour (care for people, the environment and social-democratic institutions), and not just paid employment, as fulfilling participation requirements.

While early proposals positioned PI as a political compromise between the selectivism of workfarist social assistance and the unconditionality of universal basic income (UBI) – a tactical accommodation that could clear the path towards unconditional welfare (Atkinson, 1996) – we advocate for PI as an important reform in its own right that aligns with a capabilities-oriented eco-social policy framework (McGann and Murphy, 2021). Building on these arguments, we advance a tactical proposal for an eco-social PI, working on two dimensions. First, we reinforce the normative framework that underlines this proposal combining the capability approach (CA) with the ‘ethics of care’. In this context, we argue that an eco-social PI should re-shape the focus of social policy on individuals’ capability to ‘take care of the world’, thereby shifting the emphasis from production and employment to social reproduction and environmental reparation (Laruffa, 2021). Second, we strengthen the proposal of an eco-social PI demonstrating how it might be implemented from an administrative and political perspective. In so doing, we respond to two critiques of PI: those relating to the difficulty of implementing it administratively (because of its complexity and costs) and those pointing to the risk that a PI constitutes either an arbitrary and confusing or invasive and stigmatising policy (e.g., De Wispelaere and Stirton, 2007). To address these concerns, we argue that it is essential that citizens are involved in processes of co-production, whereby they actively participate in co-creating the participation requirements entailed in PI.

Clearly, a PI is not a panacea for resolving all challenges linked to the establishment of an eco-social welfare model but should be considered as one element of a broader set of policies, including, for example, an efficacious taxation policy on highly polluting luxury goods and on extreme wealth; an adequate industrial policy for moving employment from ‘brown’ to ‘green’ economic sectors; and sufficient investments in public infrastructures and services. Nonetheless, a PI may provide an important policy instrument in the promotion of such an eco-social welfare model.

We proceed by presenting the normative framework for an eco-social PI based on the capability approach (CA) and the ethics of care. We then review the key objections to PI on grounds of administrative feasibility before introducing the concepts of ‘co-creation’ and ‘co-production’, which we see as promising solutions to these challenges. To emphasise the administrative and political feasibility of this proposal, we draw on recent experiments in co-creating participation options with social assistance recipients in the Netherlands, Scotland, and Denmark, highlighting how these initiatives illustrate the potential for implementing the principle of reciprocity in a demand-oriented rather than compliancedriven way. We conclude by reflecting on the institutional contexts in which this proposal for a co-productive model of implementation may be most feasible, recognising the embeddedness of existing co-production initiatives in social-democratic structures and devolved administrative contexts with strong collaborative governance arrangements.

Towards an eco-social PI centred on the ‘capability to take care of the world’

To normatively ground our proposal, we build on the CA and the feminist literature on the ‘ethics of care’. The CA implies focusing public action on the expansion of people’s capabilities, i.e. their real freedom to lead the kind of life they ‘have reason to value’ (Sen, 1999: 18; Nussbaum, 2011) 1 . There are two main reasons for choosing the CA as a normative framework of reference for our proposal.

First, the CA has the potential to re-orient welfare reform beyond narrow concerns of employment-promotion, on the basis of two arguments (Laruffa, 2020). On the one hand, from a capability perspective, not only employment but also other activities, such as care work and civic engagement, are considered valuable forms of participation that social policy should support. On the other hand, employment is valuable only if it positively contributes to human flourishing. Thus, the link between labour market inclusion and capability-expansion is not automatic and cannot be simply assumed. Combining these two arguments, we contend that work should be reconceptualised in a broad way to include other activities beyond employment and that social policy should be concerned with promoting meaningful work that sustains people’s lives and the environmental and social conditions upon which they depend (cf. Deranty, 2021) rather than any type of work.

At this point, the CA can be usefully combined with the ‘ethics of care’, as developed by feminist theorists (e.g. Gilligan, 1993; Tronto, 2013). An ethics of care emphasises the social and political value of caring as a human activity and highlights the importance of human connections, interdependence, reciprocity, and the ties between relationship and responsibility. Fisher and Tronto (1990: 40) define care as ‘a species activity that includes everything that we do to maintain, continue, and repair our world so that we can live in it as well as possible. That world includes our bodies, ourselves, and our environment, all of which we seek to interweave in a complex, life sustaining web’. This perspective overcomes the boundaries of public and private spheres, embracing the social totality of relations, including human care relations and our ecological relationship with nature.

Against this background, the issue for social policy is not only that of promoting a work/life balance aimed at reconciling paid employment with other valuable activities. Rather, and more profoundly, we argue that it is possible to re-think the meaning of work – both within and outside the labour market – through the lens of ‘care’. Indeed, the narrative of care promotes a new paradigm, reimagining the meaning of social participation. This fundamentally changes the way in which we see work, whereby the latter can be redefined as the ‘practice of taking care of the world’ and put at the core of a new welfare state architecture (Laruffa, 2021). In this context, PI may be used as a policy lever for promoting the social and environmental sustainability of our societies. A PI would provide citizens with an ‘exit option’ from the labour market, allowing, encouraging and enabling them to participate in various reproductive and ecological activities and make valuable contributions that society greatly needs, ranging from the care of persons to the reparation of environmental degradation or the reinforcement of the democratic culture. Crucially, however, the ethics of care should also re-orient paid work itself, refocusing employment on the care for people and for the planet. Hence, the PI should not be understood as a substitute for interventions aimed at ‘greening’ employment.

The second reason for choosing the CA as a normative framework of reference lies in the importance it accords to democracy (e.g. Sen, 2009). From this perspective, the CA calls for democratising how social policies are designed and implemented. In particular, citizens should participate in defining the nature of the ‘valuable activities’ beyond employment. This ‘democratic’ approach is essential for developing a PI that successfully overcomes its critiques and potential drawbacks. This is in keeping with the anthropological understanding of individuals as multidimensional, comprising receivers, doers and judges of public action (cf Bonvin and Laruffa, 2021). Capability-enhancing policies should simultaneously conceive targeted individuals as ‘receivers’ of welfare benefits, where the latter are sufficiently generous for respecting their dignity; as ‘doers’, i.e. actors who flourish through valuable activities both within and beyond the labour market; and as ‘judges’, i.e. citizens who are capable and willing to express their aspirations and values and to participate in formulating the policies themselves. Our proposal of an eco-social PI combines these two insights: social policy should promote other valuable reproductive activities beyond employment and the precise content of these policies should be defined democratically.