The environment remains on the margins of social policy. Bringing degrowth literature into conversation with social policy debates about decommodification, we argue that a re-imagined decommodification remains central to addressing the social-ecological challenges we face and to forging a post-growth, post-productivist ecosocial welfare state. We explore the implications of this for re-imagining and mapping three core areas of an ecosocial welfare state revolving around the work/welfare/care nexus: the redistribution of time across work and care; repurposing of active labour market measures; and reorienting cash transfers and services. In each case we discuss what decommodified social policy in the service of a post-growth, post-productivist future might entail. Acknowledging challenges, we identify how instances of prefiguration of policy programmes and experiments across various countries offer concrete compass points for further transformation and a necessary paradigmatic shift.

We revise Atkinson’s concept of a ‘participation income’ (PI), repositioning it as a form of green conditional basic income that is anchored in a capabilities-oriented eco-social policy framework. This framework combines the capability approach with an ‘ethics of care’ to re-shape the focus of social policy on individuals’ capability to ‘take care of the world’, thus shifting the emphasis from economic production to social reproduction and environmental reparation. In developing this proposal, we seek to address key questions about the feasibility of implementing PI schemes: including their administrative complexity and the criticism that a PI constitutes either an arbitrary and confusing, or invasive and stigmatising, form of basic income. To address these concerns, we argue for an enabling approach to incentivising participation whereby participation pathways are co-created with citizens on the basis of opportunities they recognise as meaningful rather than enforced through strict monitoring and sanctions.

Contemporary models of welfare capitalism have frequently been critiqued about their fit-for-purpose in provisioning for people’s basic needs including care, and longer-term ecological sustainability. The Covid-19 pandemic has also exposed the need for better institutions and a new welfare architecture. We argue a post-productivist eco-social state can deliver sustainable well-being and meet basic needs. Arguing Universal Basic Services are an essential building block and prerequisite for a de-commodified welfare state, we focus on examining the form of income support that might best complement UBS. The article develops, from the perspective of feminist arguments and the capabilities approach, a case for Participation Income. This, we argue, can be aligned with targeted policy goals, particularly reward for and redistribution of human and ecological care or reproduction and other forms of socially valued participation. It may also, in the short term, be more administratively practical and politically feasible than universal basic income.

Recently, the idea of a universal basic income has received unprecedented attention from policymakers, the media and the wider public. This has inspired a plethora of surveys that seek to measure the extent of public support for the policy, many of which suggest basic income is surprisingly popular. However, in a review of past surveys, with a focus on the UK and Finland, we find that overall levels of support for basic income can vary considerably. We highlight the importance of survey design and, by employing new survey data in each country, compare the levels and determinants of support for varied models of basic income. Our results point to the importance of the multi-dimensionality of basic income and the fragility of public support for the idea. The findings suggest that the ability of political actors to mobilise the public in favour of basic income will eventually depend on the precise model they wish to implement.

This article offers a novel defence of participation income (PI). It claims that there are pragmatic and normative reasons to prefer PI over alternative redistributive policies, such as an unconditional basic income and workfare programmes. In particular, it argues that PI should be conceived as a particular type of civic service programme designed to address a large number of unmet social needs that are not met by entrepreneurs in the marketplace. The article ends by addressing five objections that can be raised against its argument.