We are delighted to start the new FRIBIS year with the FRIBIS Best Paper Award. The FRIBIS Board of Directors pays tribute to the PhD candidates, Franziska Leopold and Tobias Jäger, for their excellent contributions to the second FRIBIS Annual Conference (2022) “Basic Income and Development”. With their contributions to the anthology, Basic Income and Development. Proceedings of the FRIBIS Annual Conference 2022, Leopold and Jäger have made a significant contribution to both basic income research and the civil debate.
In her paper, I Would Like to Continue to Advocate for the Basic Income, BUT… Barriers to political UBI-participation in German-speaking countries, Leopold examines the crucial role of political education and information in basic income from the perspective of non-profit organizations, against the backdrop of the opportunities and limitations of advocating for a universal basic income. Based on an analysis of qualitative interviews, she examines the socio-demographic profiles of volunteer workers and the hurdles they face, some of which have led to the end of activism in some cases.
In his contribution, In the Face of Double Crises: Crossroads for Social Protection, Tobias Jäger expands on the idea of a universal basic income in the face of current and future crises, referring to Ugo Gentilini’s (World Bank) presentation, Lessons from cash transfers during Covid and implications for the UBI debate, which was delivered at the FRIBIS 2022 Annual Conference. The paper focuses on a discussion of changes in the social protection policies of various countries during the COVID-19 crisis. Leopold points out that the coronavirus crisis has not brought about any new trends in social protection policy but has reinforced existing ones instead.
We would like to thank all the authors once again for their contributions and congratulate Franziska Leopold and Tobias Jäger in particular.
