Seminar: Neoliberalisations of Welfare Work? Analyses of Shifting Practices
Seminar headed by The Research Priority Area The History and Sociology of Welfare Work, Section of Educational Research, Department of Media, Cognition & Communication, University of Copenhagen
Tuesday March 3, 2015, 10:00-16:00, Room 22.0.11.
Ever since the crisis of the welfare state was voiced in the 1970s, liberalism has been strengthened and formed anew with a more positive attitude towards the state. Thus, ‘neoliberalism’ gained momentum with its focus on state activities directed at behavioural matters, cultural and social change, security and safety. Fundamentally, a welfare state works by intervening in society, actively trying to prevent or address social problems. In this perspective welfare work aims at making and remaking practical and sensible individuals, whom the state can expect uses the knowledge provided by the welfare professionals. Thus, welfare states urge their citizens to plan and conduct their own welfare according to the collective norms expressed by welfare professional practices and institutions. The question is how the welfare professions intervene, act and think about its citizens in neoliberal manners. This seminar investigates the field of welfare work and its professional agents’ actions and viewpoints, their adaptions and transformations under neoliberalism. The strength of the presentations at the seminar is to contribute to ways of thinking about welfare work. Consequently, the seminar intends to unpack and understand the specific symbolic dimensions of welfare work in different contexts and across contexts, presenting and discussing the different professional repertoires which are used and circulate, thus adding dynamism to the study of the shifting practices of welfare work under neoliberalism.
Registration
Registration is needed. Please write to Trine Øland, before February 20.
Programme
10.00-10.15: Welcome and introduction to the seminar
10.15-11.00: ONE COLD CITY: CARE AND CONTROL IN INNER CITY WINNIPEG AIMS/ Professor Andrew Woolford, Department of Sociology,
University of Manitoba, Winnipeg
11.00-11.30: Policing the Juvenile Delinquent: The Street as Pedagogical Object, Copenhagen 1930s as Case/Assistant Professor Christian Sandbjerg Hansen, Department of Education, Aarhus University
11.30-12.00: Questions, Comments, Discussions
12.00-12.45: Lunch
12.45-13.15: From Women’s Shelters to Public Institutions – on the institutionalization of the psychological and pedagogical work with battered women in Denmark from 1978/Assistant Professor Eva Bertelsen, Section of Educational Research, University of Copenhagen
13.15-13.45: Transformations of the Danish Field of Welfare Work/Assistant Professor Jan Thorhauge Frederiksen, Section of Educational Research, University of Copenhagen
13.45-14.15: Questions, Comments, Discussions
14.15-14.30: Break
14.30-15.00: Daycare education and policy as an expression of national government/Ph.D.-Fellow Sofie Rosengaard, Section of Educational Research, University of Copenhagen
15.00-15.30: Welfare work addressing immigrants and refugees: Integrationist visions and beyond/Associate Professor Trine Øland, Section of Educational Research, University of Copenhagen
15.30-16.00: Questions, Comments, Discussions – Finale
Abstracts of the presentations
ONE COLD CITY: CARE AND CONTROL IN INNER CITY WINNIPEG AIMS (Andrew Woolford)
My seminar presentation examines the ways in which federal, provincial and local governments, non-profit social service agencies, and marginalized inner city dwellers in Winnipeg, Canada interact with and relate to one another under neoliberal conditions. I argue that in neoliberal times the conditions under which we get to know and care about marginalized inner city residents (who are frequently Aboriginal) have shifted in such a manner as to create distance, or freeze out, those whose needs are the greatest. Through this process the marginalized are transformed into legible problems, calculable inputs, measureable outcomes, and manageable clients. At risk of over-burdening the metaphor of the “cold city,” I liken this to an inner city cooling of relations with grave implications in terms of efforts to care for and control individuals who live in difficult conditions.
Policing the Juvenile Delinquent: The Street as Pedagogical Object, Copenhagen 1930s as Case (Christian Hansen)
In this presentation I will sketch an analysis of the pedagogical relation between the category of “the juvenile offender” and the street or the neighborhood that is part of a larger planned research project of place as a pedagogical object and as a pedagogical subject. Through a detailed study of the Northwestern neighborhood of Copenhagen, from 1930-2014, operationalized as three points in time, this research project analyses how this place as object and subject was made and re-made; structured, formed and lived in and through pedagogical relations and processes. My presentation will sketch the preliminary empirical and theoretical considerations on the first focus point in time. This is done on the basis of police archives from the 1930s Cases related to a growing working-class neighborhood in Copenhagen are chosen as empirical ground for an analysis of how the “neighborhood” in general and “juvenile delinquent” specifically was constructed and how it became a pedagogical category to be “handled” and “intervened”. Special attention is given to the ways in which the street is governed and how signs of delinquency are constructed and given meaning through police practice and pedagogical work. This way the street is analyzed as a socio-symbolic battle-field intersecting pedagogical relations of identity, territory and state practice.
From Women’s Shelters to Public Institutions – on the institutionalization of the psychological and pedagogical work with battered women in Denmark from 1978 (Eva Bertelsen)
The Danish Battered Women’s Movement have since 1978 been the primary caretaker of women leaving intimate violent relationships. Starting out as a nongovernmental organisation run by volunteers concerned with the politics of violence and thus concerned with helping battered women, the movement experienced an increased interest in the shelters and their workings from the Danish state from 2000 onwards, resulting in a so called ‘professionalisation’ of the organisation and its interventions toward women and children. The study presented shows an interest in characterising these changing institutional conditions and in understanding the multiple effects hereof especially regarding 1) the changing classifications of the woman, the violence and its character and causes, 2) the changing groups of professions and professionals (volunteers, social workers, residential social workers, psychologists, financial and executive administrators) conducting the daily work, and 3) their changing strategies of intervention. My presentation will contain an outline of the overall project as well as a reflection on how to relate everyday interventions with institutional and structural transformations.
Transformations of the Danish Field of Welfare Work (Jan T. Frederiksen)
What forms of capital structure the Danish field of welfare work, and what relations of dominance do these structures reveal? What changes has this structure undergone in recent years? How do these changes in capital structure relate to the political, educational and bureaucratic fields? The structure of Danish field of welfare work transforms due to changes in the political field, the bureaucratic field and the field of education. These structural adaptions are observed through a series of geometric data analyses at different points in time between 1980 and 2013; the underlying assumption being that dominant bureaucratic and political interventions affect the capital structure of the field of welfare work. It is the agents of the field of welfare work who make up the population of the analysis. 4 separate spaces of welfare worker capital structure are constructed from register data on the capital possessed by these individuals, encompassing own and inherited cultural and economic capital, and a number of data on employment, demography and social position.
Daycare education and policy as an expression of national government (Sofie Rosengaard)
This presentation aims to discuss the theoretical constructions of my PhD-project ”Daycare education in a time of crisis”. The project aims to examine whether and how the state increases it's interventions in daycare pedagogy when society is considered to be in some sort of national crisis. This is done through Stephen Ball’s interpretations of Foucault’s genealogical method, policy and governmentality terms. I argue that a certain understanding of the good Danish citizen is produced through daycare pedagogy and policy, and that this form of Danishness is likely to change in times of crisis. Crisis is here identified as a point in time where a discursive break allows robust systems to act differently than they would otherwise have been able to. That is to say, that the crisis is seen as a moderator of decisions to produce new objects of intervention. To be able to analyze these transformations of national conceptions I have chosen to study three historical periods, where society is articulated as being in different forms of national crises: The rebuilding crisis (1945-1950), the modernization crisis (1987-1993) and the productivity crisis (2010-2015).
Welfare work addressing immigrants and refugees: Integrationist visions and beyond (Trine Øland)
In this presentation I will discuss the ways in which welfare workers addressing immigrants and refugees reproduce integrationist visions, symbolizing society as an integrated whole and immigrants/refugees as a distraction/disturbance to that whole. Hence, welfare workers are oriented towards handling the distraction/disturbance and aim to construct the individual immigrant/refugee as an active, functional and emancipated citizen who can be a valuable resource in society. Paradoxically, welfare workers also oppose these integrationist visions in their quest to protect immigrants’ and refugees’ fundamental wellbeing and status as human beings with equal rights, group life and history. These opposing elements generate ambiguity and contradiction within integrationist welfare work. The ambition of the presentation is to enquire into the ambiguities and contradictions as dynamic processes of the collective destinies of welfare professionals, who conquer, invent, problematize and transform welfare work from within. The aim is to understand welfare professionals’ visions and divisions as significant factors in the making and remaking of society, solidarity and what it takes to be and/or become a legitimate member of society. The presentation is based on preliminary analyses of 48 interviews with a range of welfare professionals (social workers, psychologists, police officers, doctors, teachers, job consultants, health visitors, nurses and street level workers) addressing immigrants and refugees and their families and descendants in the Danish welfare nation-state.