Welfare, social citizenship, and the spectre of inequality in Amsterdam

Abstract

This article explores how notions of citizenship are negotiated in encounters between parents and youth care professionals in Amsterdam in the context of heated debates over citizenship and belonging. We draw on ethnographic research on Egyptian migrant parents’ interactions with the welfare state, and on the work of youth care professionals. We found that both parents and professionals were invested in universal forms of citizenship. Parents wanted to be treated like their fellow citizens regardless of their background, while professionals wanted to care for all children. While parents feared and suspected that their children were subject to unfair treatment, professional practices left little space for disagreement or a consideration of racialized aspects of their encounters with clients. We conclude that notions of equal citizenship provide a primary, but uncertain ground for the elaboration of citizenship and belonging in parenting encounters, which is haunted by the spectre of difference and inequality.

Diversity-mainstreaming in times of ageing and migration: implementation paradoxes in municipal aged care provision

“…The studies that do exist point to a second implementation paradox inherent to diversity-mainstreaming policies: the vagueness of 'diversity' can inhibit concrete action to address inequalities linked to ethnicity and race. For example, Nieswand (2017) and De Koning and Ruijtenberg (2019) found that diversity-mainstreaming led to a 'colour-blinding' of care provision. As frontline workers attempted 'not to see colour', aspects of cultural and ethnic difference became unspeakable in conversations with and about families receiving care.…”

Introduction Special Issue “Paradoxical orders: Parenting encounters, the welfare state, and difference in Europe”

“…In welfare encounters in the social domain, we see an emphasis on equality, for instance in the forms of universalist or generic approaches, and the professional ethics that derive from such approaches. and support families (De Koning and Ruijtenberg, 2022;Johansen, 2022).…”

“…In her analysis of parenting encounters between Palestinian parents and welfare workers in Denmark, Johansen argues that the potential of punitive action and harm entwines with immigrant parents' prolonged experiences of crisis and determines their ways of seeing and being as parents, including how they relate to people in their closest social and institutional surroundings. Such in the Amsterdam case (De Koning and Ruijtenberg, 2022), delinquency in the Aarhus case (Johansen, 2022), or the so-called communautarist identifications and socialities in Paris (Vollebergh, 2022). Such tropes function as icons of troublesome difference in these contexts.…”

“…The various contributions to this special issue document encounters between migrant parents and professionals in the context of welfare programs that seek to govern and support families (De Koning and Ruijtenberg, 2022; Johansen, 2022). While the governing of parenting and childhood has been studied as a site for the deployment of the disciplinary state (Faircloth et al., 2013; Gilliam and Gulløv, 2017), in these ethnographies we encounter far more unsure, ambiguous, and paradoxical forms of governance.…”

“…Many anthropological analyses of contemporary Europe have taken their lead from the highly acrimonious public discourses that spell out racialized visions of national and European society, and articulate a clear national/European self against a range of others, most notably Muslims (Lentin and Titley, 2011; Vertovec, 2011; Vertovec and Wessendorf, 2010). Public discourses that outline the nation by explicitly naming its others in ethnic, religious or racialized terms are indeed prevalent in many of the sites that appear in this special issue: Amsterdam (De Koning and Ruijtenberg, 2022), Aarhus (Johansen, 2022) and Milan (Marchesi, 2022). In Paris (Vollebergh, 2022), where the Republican project does not allow for such upfront articulations of difference, policies instead use spatial nomers like “sensitive urban areas” to designate risky subjects and problem areas (Van Breugel and Scholten, 2017).…”