Policy, People, and the New Professional: An Introduction

Self-casting and alter-casting: Healthcare professionals’ boundary work in response to peer workers

“…“This is us, this is mine”.’ Finally, some interviewees related the employment of PWs to a tendency of ‘deprofessionalisation’, describing a general development towards cutbacks, removal of professional control and a deskilling of the human services. Thus, the boundary work manifested in the interviews did not only concern the interviewees’ own position, it also reflected worries about broader policy changes regarding monitoring, diminished discretionary space and a devaluation of education-based expertise (Duyvendak et al, 2006).…”

“…Within medical professionalisation, there has been an ongoing functional differentiation between specialists. Or, as Duyvendak et al (2006) put it: 'Modern health care is no longer the job of an individual professional, it is divided labour within an institution, where the responsibility is shared among a team of physicians and nurses' (p. 156). In such teams, all members have their own area of expertise, although studies, as will be discussed in the next section, have demonstrated that the demarcations between team members' functions may be anything but clear.…”

“…are hard to find, the notion of professionalism has become a manifest part of struggles to find new professional roles. (Noordegraaf, 2007: 781) Scholars have depicted a general 'deprofessionalisation' of human service work, consisting of two parallel developments (Duyvendak et al, 2006). First, accountability initiatives have led to new managerial and processual standards, creating more bureaucratic duties for professionals and limiting their discretionary space.…”

Putting participation into practice: An ethnographic study of sheltered workshops in the Netherlands and Portugal

“…Despite their shared policy language of participation, Portugal and the Netherlands show steep differences in their welfare histories and current set-up. The Netherlands has a social-democratic plus conservatist welfare state (Esping-Andersen, 1990), with more social services and rights for users, supported by a professionalized care context (Duyvendak et al, 2006). Portugal, conversely, has a ‘corporatist’ welfare state (Esping-Andersen, 1990) with less social services and rights and more informal family-oriented, unpaid care arrangements (Andreotti et al, 2001; Fontes, 2008; Pinto, 2011a, 2011b).…”

Rethinking ‘The Public’ in Troubled Times

“…Nevertheless assimilation models are at the core of new attempts to foster social cohesion in the face of concerns about the presumed challenge to the 'solidaristic' public sphere that had supported the welfare settlements of the post-war years. Public service professionals are sometimes blamed for having emphasized the importance of responding to cultural difference rather than promoting integration and assimilation (Duyvendak et al, 2006), while the problem of the sustainability of welfare states has been laid at the door of migration policies that have weakened national identity and ties of mutuality. Giddens and Diamond (2005: 167), for example, argue that 'Immigration requires a clearer and more overt contract between new immigrants and the host society, and welfare too requires a more overt contract between established citizens and society'.…”