Paper short abstract:

Using the example of recent transformations in a child-protection NGO in Hungary, our paper inquires into professional discourses of ‘deinstitutionalisation’ and ‘community-based care’ in the context of postsocialist authoritarianism, and the consequent reinforcing of restricted imaginaries of care.

Paper long abstract:

The paper explores how concepts of transnational policy-making become localised and gain their meanings in particular societal contexts. Specifically, using the example of recent transformations in a child-protection NGO in Hungary, it inquires into professional discourses of ‘deinstitutionalisation’ and ‘community-based care’ in the context of postsocialist authoritarianism.

The analysis exposes how financial scarcity pressured the management of the NGO in focus to redefine family-community-institution boundaries, in order to legitimise the downsizing of services and staff, and the reassignment of childcare duties to less-paid and less-recognised positions. Austerity measures disguised as emancipatory processes of deinstitutionalisation have already been described in numerous European contexts. Our paper nuances this picture, and shows how discourses of the East-West slope of modernisation emerging in Central and Eastern Europe, and recent discourses of familisation dominating public policies in Hungary enhance such discoursive shift. In this way we draw attention to the role of professional and political discourses, transnational and national, in reinforcing restricted imaginaries of care. By using the conceptual framework of distributed agency we also formulate the call for empirical analyses on how the caring for children unfold in hybrid – state and civic dominated - contexts, in practice, beyond simplistic and essentialising ideological categorisations of ‘family’, ‘community’ and ‘institution’.