Majella Kilkey is Senior Lecturer in Social Policy at the University of Sheffield. Her current research centres on migration and families.Gaby Ramia is Associate Professor in the Graduate School of Government at the University of Sydney. His research is in comparative and international social policy.Kevin Farnsworth is Senior Lecturer in Social Policy at the University of Sheffield. His research centres on political economy and welfare systems.

• Part One: Current developments ~ Majella Kilkey: Universal Credit: overview and gender implications ~ Fran Bennett; Family support and the Coalition: retrenchment, refocusing and restructuring ~ Harriet Churchill; Housing, the welfare state and the Coalition Government ~ Alan Murie;The 2012/13 reforms of higher education in England: changing student finances and funding ~ Claire Callender; Division and opposition: the Health and Social Care Bill 2011 ~ Sally Ruane; Part Two: Social policy in the developed and developing worlds ~ Gaby Ramia: Immigrant-targeted activation policies: a comparison of the approaches in the Scandinavian welfare states ~ Karen Nielsen Breidahl; Welfare retrenchment under Left and Right government leadership: towards a consolidated framework of analysis? ~ Stefan Keuhner; From black hole to spring: the coming of age of social policy in the Arab countries? ~ Rana Jawad; China's developmental model in Africa: a new era for global social policy? ~ Marian Urbina Ferretjans and Rebecca Surrender; Part Three: Severe crisis: social policy in most challenging circumstances ~ Kevin Farnsworth: The Greek welfare state in the age of austerity: anti-social policy and the politico-economic crisis ~ Theodoros Papadopoulos and Antonis Roumpakis; From opportunity to austerity: crisis and social policy in Spain ~ Javier Ramos Diaz and Albert Varela; From financial crisis to welfare retrenchment: assessing the challenges to the Irish welfare state ~ Mairéad Considine and Fiona Dukelow; The Great Recession and US social policy: from expansion to austerity ~ Daniel Beland and Alex Wadden; Seeking refuge in the Nordic model: social policy in Iceland after 2008 ~ Zoe Irving.

"This anniversary edition of SPR brings together a remarkable collection of papers whose coverage is as global as the 'crisis' that the political class seeks to manage. SPR continues to earn its position as a foremost source of international social policy analysis." Nicola Yeates, Open University