Social politics in European borderlands: A comparative and transnational study, 1870s-1990s

Descripción del proyecto

Una revisión histórica del bienestar desde la perspectiva de las fronteras de Europa

Este proyecto tiene como objetivo reformular la historia de la atención social en la Europa moderna mediante la restauración para ver la contribución de los actores locales a la configuración de los sistemas de bienestar en tres regiones fronterizas del noroeste, este y sudeste de Europa. Al analizar las familias, las asociaciones y los estados como constructores conjuntos del bienestar social y al centrarse en las fronteras donde el alcance de los estados centrales a menudo fluctuaba, el proyecto SOCIOBORD, financiado con fondos europeos, examina una amplia gama de estructuras de bienestar local basadas en formas de identidad y solidaridad (ocupación, religión, género) tanto en el ámbito nacional como en el internacional. Estas estructuras de prestaciones sociales superpuestas o contrapuestas ofrecen una lente a través de la cual se pueden analizar las interacciones entre la inclusión y la exclusión que, durante mucho tiempo, han moldeado la provisión de bienestar europeo, transformando las fronteras de Europa en laboratorios para el desarrollo de la protección social.

Objetivo

This project seeks to reframe the history of welfare and social care in modern Europe by restoring to view the contributions of local actors – primarily families and associations – to shaping welfare systems in three European borderlands: Galicia, the North-eastern Adriatic and the Franco/Belgian/German border regions. By focusing on the interactions among local actors and following developments from the late 19th century to the 1990s, this project turns our attention to the co-construction of welfare by public and private actors in highly mixed borderlands, where the reach of central states often fluctuated and a range of local welfare structures, based on national, but also non-national forms of identity/solidarity (e.g. occupation or religion) flourished. The focus on overlapping, and, at times, competing structures of social provision will allow me and my team to examine the interplays between inclusion and exclusion that have long shaped European welfare provision by zeroing in on those contexts where such competition was particularly visible. We will do this by placing intensively researched local studies in comparative and transnational frameworks, examining similarities and differences between north-western, eastern and south-eastern borderlands while tracing the circulation of ideas, people and practices.

It is our conviction that the long-range historical study of local actors’ ideas and practices around social welfare in European borderlands has much to tell us about the development of welfare across Europe in general. Our comparative and transnational analysis of the three borderlands will thus enable us to contribute constructively to contemporary societal debates about welfare reform at a time when the social rights (or lack thereof) of populations in Europe are the subject of acrimonious, even violent debate.