scholarly journals Myten om alenemødrene og velferdsstaten

2018 ◽  
pp. 99-122
Author(s):  
Liv Johanne Syltevik
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Single Mothers ◽  
Single Parents ◽  
Welfare Benefits ◽  
Political Debates ◽  
Electoral Campaign ◽  
Public Debates ◽  
The Welfare State

Title: The Myth of Single Mothers and the Welfare State. Summary: In the last three decades, there have been two large public debates about single mothers and the welfare state in Norway; the first, initiated by the leader of the Progress Party during the electoral campaign in 1989, portrayed single mothers as parasites on the welfare state; the second, evident since the early 2000s, has focused on Somali single mothers and portrayed them as misusers of benefits for single parents. The article identifies significant myths in these public debates and discusses how they have changed. These stereotypes are compared with insights from research on the situation of single mothers, and the article demonstrates how the welfare benefits for the group have changed in the same period. The article ends with a discussion of the importance of myths in political debates. Myths may “work” both in direct and indirect ways. How influential they are, however, is always difficult to decide. The myths about single mothers have worked in the sense that they have set the agenda. This makes it important for researchers to take on the work of not taking myths as accepted truths, but to challenge and defy them.

Single Mothers’ Post-Separation Provisioning: Child Support and the Governance of Gender

Sociology ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 53 (3) ◽  
pp. 554-570
Author(s):  
Kristin Natalier ◽  
Kay Cook ◽  
Hayley McKenzie
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Single Mothers ◽  
Child Support ◽  
The State ◽  
Interview Data ◽  
Support Programme ◽  
Financial Benefits ◽  
Government Workers ◽  
Child Maintenance ◽  
The Welfare State

This article uses single mothers’ pursuit of child support (child maintenance) to examine how the state governs gender through post-separation financial responsibilities. We draw on interview data to detail how the Australian welfare state compels single mothers’ child support provisioning through claims work and the associated strategies of managing information, emotions and government workers. Despite their sustained efforts, provisioning afforded single mothers’ limited financial benefits. We argue that this outcome reflected a gendered policy and implementation regime that normalised masculine financial discretion and simultaneously compelled single mothers’ provisioning and failed to accord it legitimacy. Provisioning did, however, benefit the welfare state, which appropriated single mothers’ time and knowledge to claim and perform key functions. We conclude that the necessity and challenges of child support provisioning were not indicative of a failing child support programme but rather reflected its role in the reproduction of gendered power, responsibilities and rewards in post-separation parenting.

Justifications of citizens’ subject positions in public debates on welfare

2016 ◽  
Vol 60 (1) ◽  
pp. 61-73 ◽  
Author(s):  
Janne Mikael Autto ◽  
Jukka Törrönen
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Day Care ◽  
Subject Position ◽  
Social Situations ◽  
Welfare Policies ◽  
Subject Positions ◽  
Public Debates ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Welfare State

Foucault’s work has inspired studies examining how subject positions are constructed for citizens of the welfare state that encourage them to adopt the subject position of active and responsible people or consumers. Yet these studies are often criticised for analysing these subject positions as coherent constructions without considering how their construction varies from one situation to another. This paper develops the concept of subject position in relation to the theory of justification and the concept of modality in order to achieve a more sensitive and nuanced analysis of the politics of welfare in public debates. The theory of justification places greater weight on actors’ competence in social situations. It helps to reveal how justifications and critiques of welfare policies are based on the skilful contextual combination of diverse normative bases. The concept of modality, in turn, makes it possible to elaborate how subject positions in justifications and critiques of welfare policies become associated with specific kinds of values. We demonstrate the approach by using public debates on children’s day care in Finland. The analysis illustrates how subject positions are justified in relation to different kinds of worlds and made persuasive by connecting them to commonly desirable rights, responsibilities, competences or abilities.

4. The welfare state 1.0

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Garland
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Social Services ◽  
Social Insurance ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
Economic Governance ◽  
Publicly Funded ◽  
Employment Contracts ◽  
Poor Laws ◽  
Welfare Benefits ◽  
The Welfare State

The newly-emergent welfare states shared a distinctive set of features that set them apart both from the old poor laws and from state socialism. ‘The Welfare State 1.0’ identifies these defining features and describes how welfare states are structured. Welfare states generally have five institutional sectors: social insurance; social assistance; publicly funded social services; social work and personal social services; and economic governance. The WS 1.0 forms that predominated from the 1940s until the 1980s are described. Another feature of the welfare state landscape is sometimes called the ‘hidden welfare state’; it consists of welfare benefits that are channelled through the tax system or through private employment contracts.

When Social Security Fails to Provide Emotional Security: Single Parent Households and the Contractual Welfare State

2013 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 451-460 ◽  
Author(s):  
Evelien Tonkens ◽  
Loes Verplanke
Keyword(s):  
Social Security ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
Single Mothers ◽  
Emotional Security ◽  
Front Door ◽  
Depth Analysis ◽  
Provision Of Services ◽  
To Receive ◽  
Do So ◽  
The Welfare State

The provision of services in the contractual welfare state is conditional. If one wants to receive a service, one has to comply with the demands of the provider. If one fails to do so, the organisation threatens to terminate its services, and indeed often does so. There are, however, people who breach their contracts time after time, falling back into the same dire situation that prompted them to ask for help in the first place. Social workers must then visit these people to help them re-enter the contract. This article draws on an in-depth analysis of such ‘behind the front door’ policies, focussing on single mothers on welfare. It argues that for many single mothers on welfare, social security fails to provide emotional and relational security, which undermines their ability to fulfil the terms of the contract. So long as the welfare state is based on the idea of (material) social security, ‘behind the front door’ workers remain urgently needed.

scholarly journals One British Thing: A Bottle of Welfare Orange Juice, c. 1961–1971

2018 ◽  
Vol 57 (3) ◽  
pp. 564-567 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nadja Durbach
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Orange Juice ◽  
British West Indies ◽  
Welfare Benefits ◽  
History Of ◽  
History Of Empire ◽  
The One ◽  
Short Essay ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Welfare State

AbstractThis essay inaugurates a new series in the Journal of British Studies titled “One British Thing.” This short essay uses a bottle of welfare orange juice distributed sometime between 1961 and 1971 to tell a larger story about the relationship between Britain's Welfare State and the colonization and decolonization of the British West Indies. The history of the Welfare State has largely been told as a metropolitan story severed from a wider global history of empire. The empty bottle of concentrated orange juice, however, tells a different story. It exposes Britain's own dependency on its colonial subjects to provide the means of furnishing welfare benefits to its metropolitan citizens. The history of welfare orange juice thus opens up a richer understanding of the politics and economics of the Welfare State and its relationship to colonial development projects on the one hand and the slow processes of decolonization on the other.

scholarly journals From a Caring State to an Investing State. Stages of a Changing Welfare Model in Labour Market Policy

2021 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Judit Csoba
Keyword(s):  
European Union ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
Labour Market ◽  
Reform Process ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Labour Market Policies ◽  
Policy Model ◽  
Welfare Benefits ◽  
Welfare Model ◽  
The Welfare State

Abstract In this paper, we investigate the changing model of social security. The analyses are focusing on changes in labour market policies which have taken place in the countries of the European Union. With the critical review of scientific literature of welfare changes, we try to answer the next questions. What circumstances led to the shift from the welfare state focusing on welfare benefits and services to the generally accepted model of the activating? What reforms and what stages lead to the transformation of the welfare model especially in the area of labour market policies? How the earlier integration efforts, which had mainly focused on entitlement, was replaced with a market-based approach like social investment? The most important result of the critical analysis is the presentation of the policy model transfer between the states of the European Union and the steps of the reform process, which jeopardise the enforcement of the citizen's social rights. The first part of the study presents the theoretical framework for the transformation of the labour market policies, the key pillars of the welfare state and the term “activation state” and “investing state”. The second part examines the key features of five stages of changing model.

scholarly journals Muslims in Norway: Value Discourses and Interreligious Dialogue

2014 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 137 ◽  
Author(s):  
Oddbjørn Leirvik
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Gender Equality ◽  
Interreligious Dialogue ◽  
Political Extremism ◽  
Public Debates ◽  
Generational Changes ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Conservative Values ◽  
The Welfare State

This article discusses value discourses among Muslims in Norway in the light of political frameworks and public debates. It particularly analyses Norwegian Muslims’ relation to values associated with the welfare state and gender equality, and the role of interreligious dialogue in Norwegian society. Among the findings are, that while generational changes contribute to some young Norwegian Muslims’ identification with institutionalized Norwegian values and practices related to dialogue and gender, others choose to identify with strongly conservative values, not least concerning gender; and others again, although very few, identify with Islamic political extremism.

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