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Robin Wilson


Robin Wilson (josephrobinsonwilson@gmail.eu) is an expert adviser to the Council of Europe on intercultural integration and was principal drafter of its model framework for national integration plans. He is the author of Meeting the Challenge of Cultural Diversity in Europe: Moving Beyond the Crisis (Edward Elgar).

Robin Wilson

The capacity to ‘compete’—rethinking the welfare state

Robin Wilson 8th January 2025

Rather than a ‘burden on the taxpayer’, the welfare state should be understood in normative terms as productive social investment.

Social rights—securing Europe’s future

Robin Wilson 5th July 2024

In Vilnius, at a high-level conference on the European Social Charter, it felt like a paradigm shift was taking place.

Asylum and migration: a positive alternative policy

Robin Wilson 16th January 2024

It’s time for a Gestalt shift from curbing ‘irregular’ migration to pursuing integration for mutual benefit.

Facing Europe’s huge challenges

Robin Wilson 1st September 2023

The outlines of a new progressive narrative for Europe are emerging amid the smoke from forest fires and the war in Ukraine.

Impartiality and public-service media

Robin Wilson 11th March 2023

The media storm in Britain around a television personality speaks volumes about why the UK has become a dysfunctional state.

Tackling the cost-of-living crisis

Robin Wilson 20th December 2022

Inflation is a number. But addressing it is not just a technical issue, best left to (usually male) economists.

Brexit: why does Northern Ireland matter so much?

Robin Wilson 13th October 2021

So little appears at stake in the Northern Ireland protocol yet it’s at the heart of the Brexit deadlock. But then it’s a proxy for something else.

Northern Ireland—the unhappy ending Europe’s story must avoid

Robin Wilson 15th April 2021

Europe has always had its anti-enlightenment side. Northern Ireland graphically presents its extreme manifestation.

Universal Basic Income: a disarmingly simple idea—and fad

Robin Wilson 9th June 2016

Universal basic income is a disarmingly simple idea based on a disarmingly simple premise. The digital revolution threatens massive technological unemployment; ergo, every citizen should be paid a basic income regardless. Like all simple ideas, however, things get more complicated on closer scrutiny. For decades there have been jeremiads predicting that workers would be replaced […]

Social Europe Needs A Positive Vision

Robin Wilson 5th December 2014

In his magisterial One Hundred Years of Socialism, Donald Sassoon described how, under the influence of the 19th century German leader Karl Kautsky, the European social democrat movement embraced a mechanistic scheme by which the immanent crisis of capitalism would somehow issue in a transition to socialism. This conveniently offered a reassuring fatalism about the […]

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Spring Issues

The Spring issue of The Progressive Post is out!


Since President Trump’s inauguration, the US – hitherto the cornerstone of Western security – is destabilising the world order it helped to build. The US security umbrella is apparently closing on Europe, Ukraine finds itself less and less protected, and the traditional defender of free trade is now shutting the door to foreign goods, sending stock markets on a rollercoaster. How will the European Union respond to this dramatic landscape change? .


Among this issue’s highlights, we discuss European defence strategies, assess how the US president's recent announcements will impact international trade and explore the risks  and opportunities that algorithms pose for workers.


READ THE MAGAZINE

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WSI Report

WSI Minimum Wage Report 2025

The trend towards significant nominal minimum wage increases is continuing this year. In view of falling inflation rates, this translates into a sizeable increase in purchasing power for minimum wage earners in most European countries. The background to this is the implementation of the European Minimum Wage Directive, which has led to a reorientation of minimum wage policy in many countries and is thus boosting the dynamics of minimum wages. Most EU countries are now following the reference values for adequate minimum wages enshrined in the directive, which are 60% of the median wage or 50 % of the average wage. However, for Germany, a structural increase is still necessary to make progress towards an adequate minimum wage.

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Unpaid labour is no longer limited to the home or volunteer work. It infiltrates paid jobs, eroding rights and deepening inequality. From freelancers’ extra hours to care workers’ unpaid duties, it sustains precarity and fuels inequity. This book exposes the hidden forces behind unpaid labour and calls for systemic change to confront this pressing issue.

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