Social Policies Under Adjustment Programmes and Beyond: the Case of Portugal.

The Portuguese welfare regime is challenged by several factors such as ageing, changes to the insertion of women in the labour market and to their role in the provision of care, and youth disengagement due to unemployment, precariousness and low wages. The financial crisis of 2007/2008 and the troika’s structural adjustment measures implemented in response (2010/2015) have added an extra dimension that has to be considered. This article aims at making two different contributions: (1) to examine the effects of the “adjustment” on the Portuguese welfare in the short-term (e.g. cuts to old age pensions, unemployment and other social benefits), and (2) to discuss possible transformation of the retrenchment during the adjustment period into a new configuration of the welfare regime. This analysis is based on data on the evolution of the Portuguese welfare system, on content analysis of texts published in the media and on a comparative analysis of the effects on social policies of structural adjustment programmes previously implemented elsewhere.