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

Project Information

SOCIOBORD

Grant agreement ID: 882549

DOI

10.3030/882549

EC signature date 8 June 2020

Start date 1 September 2020

End date 31 August 2026

Funded under

• EXCELLENT SCIENCE - European Research Council (ERC)

Total cost

€ 2 499 682,00

EU contribution

€ 2 499 682,00

Coordinated by

EUROPEAN UNIVERSITY INSTITUTE
Italy

Periodic Reporting for period 3 - SOCIOBORD (Social politics in European borderlands: A comparative and transnational study, 1870s-1990s)

Reporting period: 2023-09-01 to 2025-02-28

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

Social politics in European borderlands, 1870s-1990s: A comparative and transnational study (hereafter Sociobord) seeks to reframe the history of welfare and social care in modern Europe by restoring to view the contribution of local actors to shaping welfare systems in three European borderlands: Galicia, the Northeastern Adriatic and the Franco/Belgian/Luxembourg/German border region from the late 19th century to the end of the 1990s. Sociobord thus turns our attention to the co-construction of social assistance by public and private actors in three borderland contexts marked by social, cultural, economic, religious or ethnic diversity. Here, the reach of central states often fluctuated and a range of welfare structures, based on national, but also non-national forms of identity/solidarity flourished.
The project thus initiates a dialogue between two fields that have yet to engage with one another - welfare studies and border studies - and places that dialogue at the core of its methodology. This novel approach reveals the manifold ways in which borders have shaped welfare, and welfare has shaped borders. We analyze these processes by placing intensively researched case studies of local phenomena in comparative and transnational frameworks, examining similarities and differences between north-western, eastern, and south-eastern borderlands while tracing the circulation of concepts, people and practices. Within each case study, we are deploying a bottom up approach that emphasizes the dynamic relationships among three distinct actors - voluntary associations, families, and states - who interact at different levels and in multiple ways in the construction of social protection on behalf of three categories of recipients: working women, children, and veterans.
The project’s methodology permits us to examine a wide range of local welfare structures, based on national, but also non-national forms of identity and solidarity. Focusing on these overlapping, and at times competing structures of social provision allows us to explore the interplays between inclusion and exclusion that have long shaped European welfare provision by homing in on those contexts where such competition was particularly visible. For 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.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

The period from 1 September 2020 to 28 February 2023 was dedicated to setting up the scientific and administrative infrastructure for the project’s operation. After completing the selective hiring procedure for staff with the necessary linguistic and research skills, I began to acquaint the team with the field-specific approaches, methods, and academic debates that arise at the nexus of welfare studies and borderland studies. I then focused on selecting the project’s ten case studies, refining their scope with each team member individually.
Thanks to a sustained, collective meditation on the borderlands/welfare dialogue, team Sociobord has elaborated a set of four interrelated themes which cut across and connect the ten case studies on the three borderlands. Accordingly, our analyses are built around: 1) spatialities and temporalities of borders, 2) boundary making processes in social provision as a bordering practice, 3) borderland mixed economies of welfare, 4) the role of crisis in shaping welfare provision.
By winter 2022 Sociobord had begun preparing three collective publications: two peer reviewed special issues and a collective volume, while the PI has continued to work on the advanced outline of her monograph tentatively titled 'La piu serena italianizzazione?' Gender, social action and nationalist politics in the North-eastern Adriatic borderlands, 1890-1978.
The project’s activities also include: developing a detailed project plan and research timeline for each team member; forming an Advisory Board consisting of specialists in the relevant fields; organizing the project’s inaugural conference with Advisory Board members and other invited guests; designing and commencing the project’s website with information on the research project, scientific events and ongoing research dissemination; organizing three series of public talks with invited guest speakers (most of these talks are now available on the project’s website); actively seeking collaboration with scholars with comparable research interests so as to exchange scientific results and launch common publishing projects; offering group and individual presentations during international scientific conferences and talks; organizing a conference on religion and welfare in European borderlands; production of a short promotional movie that features selected archival documents and a general description of the project’s objectives (also available on our website).

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

Sociobord’s first major innovation lies in bringing into dialogue the fields of border studies and welfare history. This facilitates a new understanding of state borders’ impact on the development of European schemes of social provision while deepening our comprehension of welfare as a fragmented and multipolar field of social action, where families, associations and state actors are centrally involved in the creation and delivery of transnational, national, regional and local social services.
Sociobord’s second beyond the state-of-the-art contribution are the results yielded by the ten case studies on which the project builds its commentary on European welfare histories from a borderlands perspective. These studies are in themselves of great value, for by analyzing new archival material through the lens of insights drawn from the two disciplines, they intervene critically in the existing historiography on our three borderlands, on the development of national welfare regimes in at least 11 currently existing European states, on histories of social assistance to minors, working women and veterans, and on transnational welfare studies.
Though an indispensable source of great empirical richness, the project’s case studies’ great diversity has posed a challenge: how to connect the individual research findings in a logically consistent structure. In response to this issue, the team made its third breakthrough achievement with the invention of an original conceptual framework composed of four overarching themes. When applied together, these constitute a grid that enables us to integrate the findings from individual case studies into large-scale comparative and transnational analyses across the three borderlands. Besides its functional role in overcoming the limits of the case study method, the four-theme grid has been designed to build on the insights of welfare history and border studies. It has led us to pose previously unasked questions about the role of spatiotemporal aspects of state borders in the development of transnational, national, regional and local schemes of provision, and to formulate nuanced analytical concepts such as mixed economies of borderland welfares. It has also helped to create new research tools, such as one that permits us to make distinctions between national welfare, borderland welfare, and welfare provided in contexts known for a social and cultural heterogeneity that has been attained through means other than bordering processes.