A longer version of this paper has been written for The Political and Social Economy of Care Proj... more A longer version of this paper has been written for The Political and Social Economy of Care Project at the United Nations Research Institute on Social Development and is due to appear on their website shortly. Please don’t quote this paper without permission from the author, thanks. Please note: this paper replaces the one billed for the conference as I am unable to attend for family reasons.
The UK has always been ethnically diverse with a population developing from complex historical mi... more The UK has always been ethnically diverse with a population developing from complex historical migration patterns and periods of conflict, conquest, state formation, empire and decolonisation. Specific movements relevant here include sporadic in-migration of Gypsies and the importation of African slaves and servants from the sixteenth century onwards, mass migrations of Irish and Jewish people in the nineteenth century and post-war economic migration to Britain from the Caribbean, the South Asian subcontinent, China and Africa ( ...
Introduction Nannies and domestic servants had disappeared by the 1960s from all but the most bou... more Introduction Nannies and domestic servants had disappeared by the 1960s from all but the most bourgeois households in Europe. But by the 1990s research revealed that in Western and Southern Europe the demand for care and domestic work was growing again (for the UK, see Gregson and Lowe, 1994), and in the major cities it was migrant women from the poorer regions of the world who were meeting this demand (Anderson, 2000). Many of the new employers were working mothers, and, by the turn of the century, older frail people or disabled people needing support in their own homes. Even in Sweden, by 2007 the government was offering tax breaks to low and middle wage earners employing domestic workers in an attempt to end the unregulated domestic service economy.
Page 1. Claiming and Framing in the Making of Care Policies The Recognition and Redistribution of... more Page 1. Claiming and Framing in the Making of Care Policies The Recognition and Redistribution of Care Fiona Williams Gender and Development Programme Paper Number 13 November 2010 United Nations Research Institute for Social Development Page 2. ...
Research-led teaching is the sine qua non of the 21st century university. To understand its possi... more Research-led teaching is the sine qua non of the 21st century university. To understand its possibilities for teaching and learning about race in Social Policy requires, as a first step, interrogating the epistemological and theoretical core of the discipline, as well as its organisational dynamics. Using parts of Emirbayer and Desmond’s (2012) framework of disciplinary reflexivity, this article traces the discipline’s habits of thought but also its lacunae in the production of racial knowledge. This entails focusing on its different forms of institutionalised and epistemological whiteness, and what has shaped the omission or marginalisation of a full understanding of the racialisation of welfare subjects and regimes in the discipline. Throughout, the article offers alternative analyses and thinking that fully embrace the historical and contemporary role of race, racism, and nation in lived realities, institutional processes, and global racial orders. It concludes with pointers towa...
This article examines ‘care’ and ‘values’ in local self-help groups and voluntary organisations w... more This article examines ‘care’ and ‘values’ in local self-help groups and voluntary organisations which mobilise around partnering and parenting. It finds that a shared identity based upon common experiences of misrecognition and stigma is the most significant element of involvement. This provides the basis for new knowledge, for challenging professional practice, and for alternative practices of care and support based on trust, reciprocity and mutual respect. However, sometimes it also contributes to forms of social closure. The article sets these findings in the context of New Labour policy on voluntary organisations, participation, and parenting and partnering.
The papers in the themed section emerge from the work of the ESRC Research Group on Care, Values ... more The papers in the themed section emerge from the work of the ESRC Research Group on Care, Values and the Future of Welfare (CAVA), based at the University of Leeds. CAVA was funded from 1999 to undertake a five-year programme of research into changes in parenting and partnering in Britain and their implications for future social policies. At the heart of CAVA's research is an investigation into the values that people attach to their parenting and partnering activities. We are interested in ‘what matters’ to people in their family lives and personal relationships, especially as they undergo change. This question lay at the centre of our core empirical projects, all of which were based on in-depth qualitative research. (An account of our methodology may be found in the Appendix to this Introduction). The projects focused on different aspects of change: motherhood, care and employment; kin relationships after divorce; care and commitments in transnational families; practices of car...
This article argues for a political ethics of care to balance New Labour's current preoccupat... more This article argues for a political ethics of care to balance New Labour's current preoccupation with the ethic of paid work. However, care as a practice invokes different experiences, meanings, contexts and multiple relations of power. With this in mind, the article traces the development of the concept of care taking up, in particular, challenges and differences raised by disability, ‘race’ and migration. These offer important insights for a new political ethics of care whose key dimensions are spelled out in the final part of the article.
The aim of this article is to widen the grounds of the debate on the relationship between values,... more The aim of this article is to widen the grounds of the debate on the relationship between values, social change and welfare reform. In the public debate on welfare reform and the Third Way the significance of the welfare politics and campaigns of civil society in challenging the old welfare order has received little acknowledgement. The article argues that these politics and campaigns have, along with both the New Right and New Labour, attempted to construct a new vision of an ‘active welfare subject’. In the process they have also expanded the moral repertoire for understanding people's engagement with welfare beyond the self-interest/altruism dichotomy. The article uses this new repertoire to propose seven key principles for a reordering of the social relations of welfare.
Social Politics: International Studies in Gender, State & Society, 2004
... Social Politics, Volume 11, Number 2, Oxford University Press 2004; all rights reserved. ..... more ... Social Politics, Volume 11, Number 2, Oxford University Press 2004; all rights reserved. ... In the wake of the work of Michel Foucault (1994) on ethical substance, Jurgen Habermas (1990) on moral consciousness, Charles Taylor (1992) and Axel Honneth (1995) on the struggle ...
A longer version of this paper has been written for The Political and Social Economy of Care Proj... more A longer version of this paper has been written for The Political and Social Economy of Care Project at the United Nations Research Institute on Social Development and is due to appear on their website shortly. Please don’t quote this paper without permission from the author, thanks. Please note: this paper replaces the one billed for the conference as I am unable to attend for family reasons.
The UK has always been ethnically diverse with a population developing from complex historical mi... more The UK has always been ethnically diverse with a population developing from complex historical migration patterns and periods of conflict, conquest, state formation, empire and decolonisation. Specific movements relevant here include sporadic in-migration of Gypsies and the importation of African slaves and servants from the sixteenth century onwards, mass migrations of Irish and Jewish people in the nineteenth century and post-war economic migration to Britain from the Caribbean, the South Asian subcontinent, China and Africa ( ...
Introduction Nannies and domestic servants had disappeared by the 1960s from all but the most bou... more Introduction Nannies and domestic servants had disappeared by the 1960s from all but the most bourgeois households in Europe. But by the 1990s research revealed that in Western and Southern Europe the demand for care and domestic work was growing again (for the UK, see Gregson and Lowe, 1994), and in the major cities it was migrant women from the poorer regions of the world who were meeting this demand (Anderson, 2000). Many of the new employers were working mothers, and, by the turn of the century, older frail people or disabled people needing support in their own homes. Even in Sweden, by 2007 the government was offering tax breaks to low and middle wage earners employing domestic workers in an attempt to end the unregulated domestic service economy.
Page 1. Claiming and Framing in the Making of Care Policies The Recognition and Redistribution of... more Page 1. Claiming and Framing in the Making of Care Policies The Recognition and Redistribution of Care Fiona Williams Gender and Development Programme Paper Number 13 November 2010 United Nations Research Institute for Social Development Page 2. ...
Research-led teaching is the sine qua non of the 21st century university. To understand its possi... more Research-led teaching is the sine qua non of the 21st century university. To understand its possibilities for teaching and learning about race in Social Policy requires, as a first step, interrogating the epistemological and theoretical core of the discipline, as well as its organisational dynamics. Using parts of Emirbayer and Desmond’s (2012) framework of disciplinary reflexivity, this article traces the discipline’s habits of thought but also its lacunae in the production of racial knowledge. This entails focusing on its different forms of institutionalised and epistemological whiteness, and what has shaped the omission or marginalisation of a full understanding of the racialisation of welfare subjects and regimes in the discipline. Throughout, the article offers alternative analyses and thinking that fully embrace the historical and contemporary role of race, racism, and nation in lived realities, institutional processes, and global racial orders. It concludes with pointers towa...
This article examines ‘care’ and ‘values’ in local self-help groups and voluntary organisations w... more This article examines ‘care’ and ‘values’ in local self-help groups and voluntary organisations which mobilise around partnering and parenting. It finds that a shared identity based upon common experiences of misrecognition and stigma is the most significant element of involvement. This provides the basis for new knowledge, for challenging professional practice, and for alternative practices of care and support based on trust, reciprocity and mutual respect. However, sometimes it also contributes to forms of social closure. The article sets these findings in the context of New Labour policy on voluntary organisations, participation, and parenting and partnering.
The papers in the themed section emerge from the work of the ESRC Research Group on Care, Values ... more The papers in the themed section emerge from the work of the ESRC Research Group on Care, Values and the Future of Welfare (CAVA), based at the University of Leeds. CAVA was funded from 1999 to undertake a five-year programme of research into changes in parenting and partnering in Britain and their implications for future social policies. At the heart of CAVA's research is an investigation into the values that people attach to their parenting and partnering activities. We are interested in ‘what matters’ to people in their family lives and personal relationships, especially as they undergo change. This question lay at the centre of our core empirical projects, all of which were based on in-depth qualitative research. (An account of our methodology may be found in the Appendix to this Introduction). The projects focused on different aspects of change: motherhood, care and employment; kin relationships after divorce; care and commitments in transnational families; practices of car...
This article argues for a political ethics of care to balance New Labour's current preoccupat... more This article argues for a political ethics of care to balance New Labour's current preoccupation with the ethic of paid work. However, care as a practice invokes different experiences, meanings, contexts and multiple relations of power. With this in mind, the article traces the development of the concept of care taking up, in particular, challenges and differences raised by disability, ‘race’ and migration. These offer important insights for a new political ethics of care whose key dimensions are spelled out in the final part of the article.
The aim of this article is to widen the grounds of the debate on the relationship between values,... more The aim of this article is to widen the grounds of the debate on the relationship between values, social change and welfare reform. In the public debate on welfare reform and the Third Way the significance of the welfare politics and campaigns of civil society in challenging the old welfare order has received little acknowledgement. The article argues that these politics and campaigns have, along with both the New Right and New Labour, attempted to construct a new vision of an ‘active welfare subject’. In the process they have also expanded the moral repertoire for understanding people's engagement with welfare beyond the self-interest/altruism dichotomy. The article uses this new repertoire to propose seven key principles for a reordering of the social relations of welfare.
Social Politics: International Studies in Gender, State & Society, 2004
... Social Politics, Volume 11, Number 2, Oxford University Press 2004; all rights reserved. ..... more ... Social Politics, Volume 11, Number 2, Oxford University Press 2004; all rights reserved. ... In the wake of the work of Michel Foucault (1994) on ethical substance, Jurgen Habermas (1990) on moral consciousness, Charles Taylor (1992) and Axel Honneth (1995) on the struggle ...
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