Paper short abstract:

As the UK’s social security system fails to ensure food, fuel, and housing security, local councils provide what I call “meantime welfare” – projects presented as temporary forms of aid. I argue that such meantime welfare produces unruly communities amidst a palpable absence of the welfare state.

Paper long abstract:

In the UK, the ongoing cost-of-living crisis has seen food and fuel insecurity deepen and spread into previously secure middle classes. An increasing number of people are now facing basic needs crises that don’t seem to be going away. As key actors of welfare provisioning in the UK, local councils are attempting to address residents’ unmet needs. In the context of a national social security system that is consistently failing to ensure food, fuel, and housing security, local councils provide what I call “meantime welfare.” Limited in their ability to ensure that residents have sufficient resources to provide for themselves, local councils fund projects presented as temporary forms of aid. What sociopolitical relations does such meantime welfare produce?

Focusing on a council-funded Food Hub in a London borough, I track the unruliness of meantime welfare, exploring how the Food Hub transformed relations in a diverse working class neighbourhood through the creation of an unprogrammed “community” that spans generations, abilities, classes, ethnic and racial difference. Many have written about the ways in which welfare governs through communities (Rose 1996). Yet the unruly ways by which “community” emerges and generates “the welfare state” remains underexplored. I show how this Food Hub evolved from a food aid distribution node to a volunteer-focused community. Rather than bringing the welfare state to the neighbourhood, I argue that this Food Hub – and the logics of meantime welfare that shape it – instead brought about a collective arrangement from which the welfare state was palpably absent.

Paper short abstract:

Through analysing the ascendance of a charity as they become the dominant political player in poverty management in Hungary, we show the possibilities and limitations of faith-based actors to introduce alternative modalities of social integration within the current semi-authoritarian context.

Paper long abstract:

The Hungarian Charity Service of the Order of Malta plays a significant role in providing welfare services in the most marginalised places in Hungary. Churches and faith-based organizations (FBOs) have become important actors in provision of welfare across the globe, as states have outsourced responsibilities to a range of non-state institutions. In Hungary’s conservative, illiberal, ‘Christian’ political climate, churches and FBOs enjoy more autonomy and government support than the state’s own institutions. Since 2010 there has been increased welfare support for segments of the middle classes, punitive anti-poor measures, the dismantling of public services, decreasing social support and, in the most disadvantaged settlements, abandonment of state responsibilities. The case of this FBO is significant not only because it fulfils important welfare provision roles previously undertaken by the state, but also because it has a national policy making position. Through its role as the leader of a nation-wide social integration programme, it not only decides on the participant organisations and target settlements, but is also in a position to advance alternative more inclusive methods and approaches to poverty alleviation that run counter to the state’s dominant mode. At the same time, in a semi-authoritarian climate, their closeness to state power leads to a replication of clientalism and the differentiation between ‘favoured’ and ‘unfavoured’ actors, characteristic of the Hungarian polity. We draw on more than a decade of ethnographic and policy research into the charity’s various programmes and political ascendancy.

Paper short abstract:

A decade of austerity has rendered Greek welfare state employees into precarious workers, tasked with caring for people that are even more vulnerable than themselves. The paper shows the unruly effects produced by this shared precarity between state employees and clients.

Paper long abstract:

In Thessaloniki, municipal frontline workers, hired on temporary contracts and paid meager wages, are tasked with the daily operation of local state services. These workers are called on to address ever growing demands for help and assist people that are even more vulnerable than themselves. Their precarious institutional position fills them with uncertainty about the future and makes them feel uncared for both as employees and citizens. How do these frontline workers position themselves vis-à-vis the municipal social provision system and the welfare state writ large? What are their visions for the future of welfare, and what relations do they seek to craft with the people they help?

This paper explores the diverging visions, relationalities and affects produced by municipal frontline workers’ precarious institutional position, developing a critical yet empathetic analysis of them as welfare state agents. It shows how frontline workers’ precarity and associated feelings of powerlessness prompt them to experience and critique the municipal system as senseless and disorganized, lacking in proper rules and procedures. For some, this critique inspires conservative and ethnonationalist visions, resting on the (re-)institution of bureaucratic formality. Attempting to (re-)institute bureaucratic formality in practice, frontline workers create unequal, disempowering relationalities with their clients, steeped in ugly feelings. Yet, for others, their critical stance gives rise to more egalitarian visions for the future of welfare. Such visions rest on creating intimate, personal relations with clients and expanding the latter’s access to limited state resources.

Paper short abstract:

Retrenchment of the welfare state in the UK has coincided with growth in the visibility and role of NHS charities. We trace processes through which NHS charities supplement (or outright replace) established welfare arrangements, through a distinctive everyday pragmatism.

Paper long abstract:

The UK’s welfare state has progressively shrunk in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, and amid ongoing austerity policies since the 2010s. Emblematic of this trend is the National Health Service (NHS), which for years has been considered to be in a state of crisis, but which is, since the COVID-19 pandemic, struggling with growing waiting lists and entrenched industrial disputes.

In this context, there has been a remarkable growth in the visibility and role of NHS charities. These organisations have long existed to supplement state funding of healthcare in the UK (via local fundraising and voluntary activities, such as capital appeals to buy additional equipment, provide non-clinical services, and fund patient and staff wellbeing initiatives), and debate on whether the services they provide are simply ‘add-ons’ or ‘essential’ has become particularly pressing. Based on a focused ethnographic study of an NHS charity in England, this paper examines the emergence of NHS charities as key actors in the UK’s mixed economy of welfare. Exploring this topic through the lens of affect, particularly Berlant’s ‘cruel optimism’ (2011), highlights that NHS charities sustain daily practices that supplement (or outright replace) established welfare arrangements, and create spaces where alternatives, such as ‘fugitive coproduction’ (Stewart 2021), can flourish. The paper thus argues that NHS charities, and those who work and volunteer for them, enact an everyday pragmatism that seeks to address growing gaps in welfare provision, in ways that are very often creative, local, public, and also intimate.

Paper short abstract:

This paper draws on an ethnography in a banlieue of Marseille to shed light on the role of mothers, a key but understudied set of gendered intermediaries, who negotiate and implement social assistance and hence, contribute to transforming the imaginary of the French state at its urban margins.

Paper long abstract:

This paper engages with a sub-set of actors – mothers - who participate in negotiating and redefining the limits of the welfare state in French urban peripheries. I draw on an ethnographic study conducted in 2021/2022 in a marginalized neighborhood of Marseille (France), among women of post-colonial immigrant background. In contrast with common studies focusing on the role of male public actors, my ethnography bridges political anthropology and gender studies to study the contemporary transformations of the French welfare state by taking everyday encounters with the state seriously. In this neighborhood, inhabitants are dependent on welfare assistance, yet suspicious about an opaque state which imposes an ever-increasing administrative burden on them. Social rights are no longer a given but are up for negotiation with an assemblage of state and non-state actors (de Koning et al. 2023).

I conducted my ethnography among local mothers who integrate this assemblage as key intermediaries at the margins of the state (Das et Poole 2004). I illustrate how their everyday acts such as administrative arrangements, political bypasses, and food parcel distributions, rely on their ability to produce intimacy with the municipality, social landlords and charities. Mothers integrate these actors into the neighborhood’s relationships of reciprocity, thus bringing back the state within reach. Their everyday practices are thus transforming the imagined topography of the state, which is no longer seen as a distant and overhanging entity, as Fergusson and Gupta (2002) have described it, but as a relational fabric in which some residents regain a grip.

Paper short abstract:

This paper explores an ongoing welfare experiment in Switzerland, where an Ecological Transition Income is offered to last-resort welfare recipients who can convincingly show they contribute to the ecological transition. The analysis is based on ongoing ethnographic fieldwork in an innovation hub.

Paper long abstract:

This paper explores an ongoing welfare experiment in Switzerland: the 'Ecological Transition Income' (ETI). As an offshoot of the idea of a universal basic income, the experiment consists of citizens receiving income provided they convincingly commit to what becomes routinely invoked across Europe: 'the ecological transition'. This ETI is currently tested on a small cohort as a replacement of the 'insertion income', the last-resort welfare assistance in Switzerland's third largest canton. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork on the design and implementation of this multi-million experiment, I dive into the backstage of a third sector renegotiating the social contract in a country that seeks to become a global leader in spearheading this ecological transition. By attending not only to the ‘innovators’ behind these welfare experiments but also to the individuals targeted and their experience, I ask what might be falling apart, in their view, as they strive to innovate and to labour as productive citizens. Furthermore, I consider what appears to fall apart from an ethnographic point of view in the backdrop of recent anthropological conversations on the transformation of European welfare states. To these debates, I suggest a complementary analytical angle exploring how the idea of an ‘ecological transition’ insinuates itself into welfare states’ transformation. This analysis is part of an ongoing ethnography of welfare experiments unfolding within an entrepreneurial hub in a major Swiss city, where ideals of innovation and entrepreneurship are mobilized to create new ways of governing productive citizenship in the era of environmental and ecological crises.

Paper short abstract:

This paper examines plans to build a social infrastructure that would assemble, facilitate, and fund a welfare community in every neighbourhood in Amsterdam. It traces the political imagination and roles of welfare actors that this state experiment entails and envisions.

Paper long abstract:

Like elsewhere in Europe, in the Netherlands, welfare state tasks have been devolved to the local level and unto what is imagined as an active and caring community. Such community-based welfare aspirations are thwarted by increasing precarity and sustained distrust of state institutions. Indeed, since 2023, bestaanszekerheid (“existential security”) has emerged as a central theme and the Netherlands, with a traditionally robust welfare state, has seen the triumph of far-right populist politics.

In this dilemmatic context of wanting to work with increasingly precarious and estranged communities to provide welfare in intimate ways, the municipality of Amsterdam introduces a seven-year long welfare program (2025-2032) aimed at restructuring the city’s sociale basis. Sociale basis is a nebulous and elusive policy term that encompasses the whole of organisations, services, facilities, and relationships that enable individuals to participate in society and care for one another in their neighbourhoods.

This paper examines the plans for the sociale basis as an attempt at social infrastructuring. The goal is to build a social infrastructure that would assemble, facilitate, and fund a welfare community in every neighbourhood. What political imagination does this state experiment entail? What state-society and state-citizen relations does it envision? And what are the roles of the myriad welfare actors contracted to repair and reinvent Amsterdam’s welfare infrastructure?

Paper short abstract:

This study examines Colombia's implementation of Payment-by-Results schemes, focusing on Social Impact Bonds. It explores the implications of emphasizing measurable outcomes in social programs and the evolving roles of the state and private sectors in social protection.

Paper long abstract:

Unlike many European nations, Colombia has historically lacked a well-developed welfare state, primarily due to profound inequalities and a colonial legacy. International development programs and local policies for social provision and protection have attempted to address some of its problems, often with limited success. Currently, approximately 36% of the population lives in poverty, 13% in extreme poverty; meanwhile, unemployment hovers around 12%, while informal employment around 50%.

In response, in recent years, the country has turned to payment-by-results (PbR) schemes, particularly Social Impact Bonds (SIBs), for reconfiguring social protection programs. In these mechanisms private investors fund social interventions upfront, with the state reimbursing the investment, plus profits, if predefined targets are met. This model posits a shift in social program implementation, with the promise of fostering greater efficiency and innovation in social service delivery.

In this paper, I analyze the transformative potential of PbR schemes in Colombia using ethnographic evidence. I focus on the experiences of beneficiaries of SIBs, designed to promote formal employment among vulnerable populations, and on the practices of professionals implementing them. I explore the consequences of prioritizing measurable outcomes, such as a certain number of job placements, over meaningful social impact. I highlight the role of SIBs in reframing state responsibilities and private sector engagement in welfare provision, and offer insights into the broader global discourse on privately-funded alternative welfare strategies in the face of state inefficiency and fiscal constraints.

Paper short abstract:

Experts by experience are expected to craft horizontal relations and restore trust in Dutch welfare provision. This paper traces what happens to these promises in the context of decentralized welfare landscapes in which their role is increasingly institutionalized.

Paper long abstract:

Experts by experience are increasingly central to new welfare models in the Netherlands. Experiential expertise gained prominence in the 1970s, in the context of antipsychiatry and client movements, prefiguring futures built on peer support, which reject psychiatry’s narratives of chronicity. Today, experts by experience are called upon in Dutch welfare landscapes to transform top-down, paternalist welfare by crafting horizontal relations. Experts by experience are imagined as capable of connecting with people deemed ‘hard-to-reach’ or ‘care avoidant,’ and of rebuilding a deeply fractured trust between Dutch welfare professionals and citizens. In the context of decentralized welfare landscapes, experts by experience are often framed as a solution to a myriad of social issues. To what extent are experts by experience able to make good on these promises?

In this paper, I analyze the deployment of experts by experience in various organizations throughout the Netherlands. Experts by experience imagine their role as building horizontal relationships through shared experiences with distress and recovery, however, in doing so they are faced with precarity. A ‘recovery house’ run by experts by experience, which offers temporary respite and a place to ‘catch your breath,’ for instance, is faced with increasingly complex questions, such as homelessness or people living in unsafe housing conditions. I conclude that experts by experience, in struggling to fulfil their promises, are deployed as a stopgap for those moments and issues in which the welfare state falls short.