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Paper short abstract:

This paper will discuss contemporary volunteering programs within Czech hospitals. It will consider the gendered notions of citizenship that emerge from this caring activity, and how such forms of public participation contribute to the neoliberal reorganisation of Czech welfare.

Paper long abstract:

This paper will consider the ways in which hospital volunteering programs in the Czech Republic contribute to the neoliberal restructuring of the country's health and welfare frameworks. It is based on the findings of an ethnographic research project carried out in 2008, which focused on hospital volunteering programs in three Czech urban locations. These programs enable (predominantly female) volunteers to provide company, care and support to hospital patients on a range of wards. The paper will explore how volunteers of different ages and backgrounds engage with and experience volunteering, and how these experiences are informed by a range of techniques employed to recruit, train and supervise volunteers. Such expertise tends to highlight the significance of reflexivity and self-knowledge for volunteers, and advises on the appropriate boundaries to establish in their relationships with patients. The paper will then compare contemporary volunteering with older forms of public participation from the former socialist era in Czechoslovakia in order to draw out how notions of gendered citizenship are undergoing transformation, and in particular to highlight the changing contexts in which women are engaged in providing care and welfare. Finally, the paper will explore why volunteering programs need to be considered both as a complicated response to the neoliberal restructuring of Czech health care and welfare frameworks, as well as part of what helps to bring it about.