Paper short abstract:

In Serbia, the ideology of family care remains resilient in spite of practical, economic and ideological challenges. Recent practices of state elder care, while having positive effects on social security, stabilize the existing, mutually exclusive discourses on the bad state and the good family

Paper long abstract:

The introduction of ambulant state elder care in central Serbia began in 2007/08. By that time, norms of family care for the elder generation were under challenge. On the one hand there was a strong believe in family relations as "good and "normal", yet it was increasingly agreed that the elder were needy and families less able to provide care.

This is the context within which the state introduced ambulant elder care by applying norms of home and the family. By creating new relations based on established norms that are valued by the population, the local state used ambiance as a means to enhance its welfare function.

In the enfolding network of care, elder people establish close and supportive relationships with the state employees and employ kin language - a process that I call "kinning the state". In the process, ideologies of the family and the state become appropriated, are employed and changed by the population. While the state provides better social security to a segment of its population in exchange for rather low financial contributions, the face of the state - widely associated with bad government - does not change.

The enfolding relations have to be incorporated into existing ties. This sometimes results in better cooperation within the "biological" family, sometimes in dekinning, as elder people who prefer to stay at home resist offers by their children to move to them in order to get family care.

While state care relations remain volatile, the future is invested with new possibilities.