1st Edition
Changing Relations of Welfare Family, Gender and Migration in Britain and Scandinavia
Changing Relations of Welfare is concerned with the complexities of family relations and practices in the recent past and how these have been imagined, addressed or elided in present policy making. It uses rich and varied sources to offer an innovative approach to the analysis of meanings afforded to the family in different policy, legal and welfare contexts in Sweden, Denmark and Britain. This book considers how debates about responsibility, obligation and rights have been gendered in social policy and welfare practice, whilst also focusing upon the intersections of family, gender, race and ethnicity and the different ways in which legislation and policy in northern Europe have been used to regulate not only immigration but also the lives of migrant families. Presenting a historically informed, comparative analysis of the shifting dynamics in the relationship between family and the state, this volume offers new pathways for exploring questions of change and continuity.
Biography
Janet Fink is Senior Lecturer in Social Policy at The Open University, UK and Ã…sa Lundqvist is Associate Professor at the Centre for Gender Studies, Lund University, Sweden
'This book brings a new dimension to the feminist analysis of family policies by introducing the issues of race and ethnicity. Viewing family policies in the UK and Scandinavia across time and from a transnational perspective, it exposes not only the gendered but also the racialized assumptions embodied in supposedly neutral and universal measures. Changing Relations of Welfare is essential reading for all those seeking to understand the politics of social policy in an era of globalization.' Sonya Michel, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, USA 'Despite being written by different authors with different disciplinary backgrounds, the book succeeds to compare the welfare regimes of Britain, Denmark, and Sweden in a relatively short number of pages... This is an important contribution at a time when efforts toward European Union integration have led to a growing interest in comparative studies that assess different welfare models within the Union.... this book provides an innovative way of understanding welfare states more generally, and their corresponding gender and migration regimes. This, in my view, is a true achievement, and I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in gender, family, or migration studies, as well as those with a more general interest in welfare states.' Nordic Journal of Migration Research