Banishment

Ethno-national boundaries and the gendered body: Jewish women as a human shield

This article offers an analysis of the main tenets of Catholic social teaching as they relate to the politics of asylum in a UK context. Addressing the multilayered and complex crisis of confidence and asylum seekers with regard the moral performance of the UK system, this article proposes that the significance of CST's contribution to public discourse has been heightened by three key shifts in state practice. While the constructive contours of this teaching are explored, to be of service to forced migrants CST itself requires a deeper understanding of and engagement with the political cultures that shape practices of democratic exclusion. To this end the conclusion proposes two areas for further dialogue between CST and asylum experience.

This article draws from Slavoj Žižek’s approach to ideology to theorize neoliberalism as an ideological formation. I focus on neoliberalism’s fantasy of free trade and on its displacement of symbolic identities by imaginary ones. The fantasy of free trade organizes enjoyment through the promise that everyone will win, uses losses to reconfirm the necessity of strengthening the system so that everyone will win, and perpetually displaces the thieves of enjoyment throughout the system as warnings, exceptions, and contingencies. In addition to relying on the fantasy of free trade, neoliberal ideology also functions through the production of imaginary rather than symbolic identities. These identities serve not as means of internalized discipline but of external control. Thus I argue that a key difference between Keynesianism (the economic theory and practice of the welfare state) and neoliberalism is the production of subject positions available for redeployment. The disciplined worker and consumer-citizen of the social welfare state are reformatted under neoliberal ideology as the shopaholic and incorrigible criminal.

What have been the roles of charities and the state in supporting medical provision? These are issues of major relevance, as the assumptions and practices of the welfare state are increasingly thrown into doubt. This title offers a broad perspective on the relationship between charity and medicine in Western Europe, up to the advent of welfare states in the 20th century. Through detailed case studies, the authors highlight significant differences between Britain, France, Italy and Germany, and offer a critical vocabulary for grasping the issues raised. This volume reflects recent developments relating to the role of charity in medicine, particularly the revival of interest in the place of voluntary provision in contemporary social policy. It emphasizes the changing balance of care and cure as the aim of medical charity, and shows how economic and political factors influenced the various forms of charity.

ABSTRACTThe present paper deals with post-separation child positions in two domains of practice in the Swedish welfare state: welfare benefits such as financial aid and child contact. The area of concern is financial oppression in the context of parental separation. Empirically, the study draws upon three types of material: interviews with victimised mothers, court orders in welfare benefit appeals and court orders in contested contact cases. Findings suggest that financial abuse in the context of parental separation is a non-question in the domain of welfare benefits, and in the domain of child contact framed as a conflict between equal parties. Object without voice and with needs ignored was the typical child position in welfare benefits cases, whereas incompetent subject was more prominent in child contact cases. Age order as a form of domination may be reinforced by the practice of both domains.

The configuration of French welfare state is determined by a mix of factors. Historically, the nation’s social insurance system is based on the principles of solidarity, social protection, collective efforts and government’s responsibility. To a large extent this explains its paternalistic features. The French social model has a complex institutional structure and consists of different insurance schemes which are highly segmented according to the professions and industries, to belonging to the private or public sectors. The article deals with the theoretical framework, specifics of the development and modernization of French social model, its adaptation to the most recent economic changes triggered by the processes of globalization and European integration. The French welfare state’s transformations are necessitated by domestic and external economic, social and political challenges. The financing of the system is largely based on Bismarkian principle, namely, the bulk of social contributions are traditionally assumed by the firms along with the workers themselves. But it is mixed with a dose of Beveridgian society with its wide solidarity via general taxation. The author focuses on the welfare policy and legislation framework according to its model and type of regime. The analysis of the reform’s process reveals the specifics of the weaknesses of French model which still faces contradictions between dirigist and market approaches in resolving social problems, between the aims of economic effectiveness and social protection. Successive reforms of the social protection system towards reductions of state social expenditures and privatization of pensions will help France to recalibrate its welfare model in accordance with a new logic at the European level and its mainstream in social policy. Acknowledgements. The article has been supported by a grant of the Russian Humanitarian Scientific Foundation. Project no. 14-07-00048 “Transformation of Concept and Practices of Social State in EU Countries”.

This chapter address the Differences between social work in Danish context compared with social work in other parts of the world. It also discusses the Division of employment areas i.e., the state, municipalities and NGO. The NPM impact on professional educations and social work practice is also discussed in this chapter. The chapter concludes with the opportunities for social workers and what are the challenges in the future.

Purpose – The purpose of the paper is to discuss and illustrate how contemporary market discourses rearticulate socio-political relationships and identities, including the rights, duties, and opportunities of individuals and categories of individuals as citizens. More specifically, the purpose is to analyze how “economic citizenship” is articulated and negotiated in the intersection of (Nordic) welfare state ideals and shareholder-oriented market discourses. The paper further elaborates on how different identity markers, especially gender and class, intersect in these articulations and contribute to exclusionary practices. Design/methodology/approach – The paper approaches the articulation of economic citizenship through an empirical study that focusses on business media representations and online discussions of a major factory shutdown in Finland. Drawing from discourse theory and the notions of representational intersectionality and translocational positionality, the paper analyzes how gender and class intersect in the construction of economic citizenship in the business media. Findings – The study illustrates how financialist market discourses render citizenship intelligible in exceedingly economic terms, overriding social and political dimensions of citizenship. The business media construct hierarchies of economic citizens where two categories of actors claim full economic citizenship: the transnational corporation and the transnational investor. Within these categories, particular systems of privilege intersect in similar ways, rendering them masculine and upper middleclass. Whether interpreted as hegemonic or counter-hegemonic, the financialist discourses rearticulate the social hierarchies and moral landscape in Finnish society. Originality/value – The paper contributes to critical/feminist management studies by elaborating on the role of the business media as an important site of political identity work, positioning, and moral regulation, where neoliberal ideas, based upon and reproducing masculine and elitist systems of privilege, appear as normalized and self-evidently valued.

This article explores the positions of Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) on providing humanitarian assistance to European Union (EU) citizens with limited rights to public welfare services in Norway through 19 interviews with leaders of humanitarian services run by CSOs in Oslo. The article shows a contradictory picture. On one side, leaders expressed awareness and concern regarding risks associated with the provision of humanitarian services in a country with a comprehensive and ambitious welfare state. These include creating parallel welfare services based on charity rather than rights, and that such services may hide structural violence, or give it a humane façade, thus potentially contributing to the legitimacy and preservation of exclusionary welfare policies and practices. On the other side, service leaders were sceptical towards granting all EU citizens equal access to public welfare benefits and services and reported advocating for the expansion of humanitarian services rather than inclusionary rights for all EU citizens in Norway. We suggest that this may indicate an acceptance of the EU’s principle of conditionality of welfare support on employment history, and a limited willingness or capacity of CSOs to engage in advocacy that could contribute to alternative narratives about EU citizenship and challenge structural exclusion.

Ideology has developed a significance and centrality in Marxist theory in the last decade which it had never possessed before. This change represents an attempt to come to terms with pressing political problems and struggles in modern capitalism. The Women’s Movement, the struggles around the character and content of education, movements among Blacks and anti-racist struggles, questions of welfare state practices, the political role and effects of the mass media, and so on, have forced Marxists to recognise a complex field of social relations inadequately comprehended by the classic Marxist theories of the economy and politics. Louis Althusser’s work is the primary means by which these problems, inadequately signalled under the notion of ‘ideology’, have been thought through in this country and in France. The three essays on ideology published here are different stages of my attempt to come to terms with and to criticise Althusser’s work. This criticism is no mere dismissal; it attempts to take up and extend certain of Althusser’s innovations in relation to Marxist theory. These innovations made possible a new kind of attention to certain political questions, and yet at the same time his concept of the ‘ideological instance’ closed-off an adequate theoretical response to those questions, restoring the theoretical continuity with classical Marxism which they had disturbed. It is this continuity that I began to challenge.KeywordsSocial RelationPolitical TheoryPolitical SituationHistorical MaterialismCapitalist RelationThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

Since the 1960s, Finnish feminists have argued for state responsibility in the provision of childcare. The aim of this chapter is to analyse the ways in which feminist discourses about childcare construct state practices in respect of childcare in Finland. State feminism — the idea of Finnish feminists acting from within established state structures — is reflected in the title of this chapter: ‘Feminists “in” the State?’ One of the objectives is to trace the emergence and consolidation of the women-friendly welfare state discourse, which embraces the idea that Finnish feminists are ‘in’ the state. The question mark in the chapter title indicates my desire not to take the understanding as a first premise for the study but as something that needs to be problematized. In the course of the analysis, I wish to point to the existence of contradictions and discontinuities as well as alternative discourses in Finnish childcare debates. In the chapters that follow, I analyse the power, limitations and costs of the women-friendly welfare state discourse.KeywordsLabour MarketWelfare StateGender EqualityCentre PartyParliamentary DebateThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.