Care is now a widely-used concept in welfare state research, firmly established in the literature by feminist analysis. We believe that the concept as it has been used and developed to date has limitations that have hampered its development as a general category of welfare state analysis. In essence we argue that the political economy aspects of the concept have remained underdeveloped. The main purpose of this article is to elaborate a care-centred concept – which we name social care – that countenances and develops care as an activity and set of relations lying at the intersection of state, market and family (and voluntary sector) relations. We are especially concerned to examine what the concept of social care can tell us about welfare state variation and welfare state change and development. The article works systematically through these themes, beginning with a brief historical sketch of the concept of care and then moving on to elaborate the analytic potential of the concept of social care. In the latter regard we make the case that it can lead to a more encompassing analysis, helping to overcome especially the fragmentation in existing scholarship between the cash and service dimensions of the welfare state and the relative neglect of the latter. The concept of social care serves to shift the centre of analysis from specific policy domains so that instead of focusing on cash benefits or services in isolation it becomes possible to consider them as part of a broader set of inter-relating elements. In this and other regards, the concept has the potential to say something new about welfare states.

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The concept of social care and the analysis of contemporary welfare states.

This article focuses on the caring function of the family in child care and elderly care and follows a comparative as well as a gender perspective. It aims at developing a gender-sensitive theoretical concept of familialism which allows to identify real world variations of familialism. Four ideal types of familialism are distinguished and care policies in the EU member states are classified according to them. It can be shown that countries cluster differently for different care policies. In addition, structural gender effects of the four ideal types of familialism are reflected upon. The empirical analysis of paid parental leave in nine EU member states gives an example of gendered and de-gendered variants of familialism.

Varieties of familialism: The caring function of the family in comparative perspective

Throughout Europe, the family is still an important provider of care, but welfare state policies of individual countries may support and/or supplement the family in different ways, generating different social and economic outcomes. This article compares and categorizes care strategies for children and elderly persons in different member states of the European Union, while also taking into account the varied modalities for providing care, like leave arrangements, financial provisions, and social services. In EU countries, care regimes function as “social joins” ensuring complementarity between economic and demographic institutions and processes. As these processes and institutions change, they provide impetus for care regimes to change as well. However, because ideas and ideals about care are at the core of individual national identities, care regimes also act as independent incentive structures that impinge on patterns of women's labor market participation and fertility.

Comparing Care Regimes in Europe

Editor – I am moved by Professor Allan's elegy to bygone NHS virtues of ‘calm caring and gentle pace of clinical life… and all the time in the world to deliver compassionate care' ( Clin Med October 2009 p 407). One's immediate instinct would be to say ‘Ah, but times have changed' – only

Quality of care.

Citizenship has been described as a “momentum concept”. One important development over the past decade has been the various ways in which scholars and activists have developed citizenship's inclusionary potential. The first part of the article explores these developments in general terms with regard to the values underpinning inclusive citizenship; the implications of the notion of cultural citizenship; and the theorization of differentiated forms of citizenship, which nevertheless appeal to universalist principles. These principles provide the basis for the citizenship claims of people living in poverty, a group largely ignored in citizenship studies. Other lacunae have been disability and, until recently, childhood. The second part of the article discusses how citizenship studies has reworked the concept in a more inclusionary direction through the development of a multi-tiered analysis, which pays attention to the spaces and places in which lived citizenship is practised. It focuses in particular on th...

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Inclusive citizenship : realizing the potential

The purpose of this article is to bring social care services into the domain of comparative social policy research. The reason why it is important for social care services to be incor porated into the debate is that they represent an expanding component of the welfare state; that they are important for women; and that there are major differences between different countries in social care services. We have defined social care services as a specific way of increasing the autonomy of both care pro viders and care receivers.

European Social Care Services: Is It Possible To Identify Models ?:

Gendering Citizenship in Western Europe : New challanges for citizenship research in a cross-national context

Gendering citizenship in Western Europe: New challenges for citizenship research in a cross-national context

Marketisation in Nordic eldercare: : a research report on legislation, oversight, extent and consequen

Marketisation in Nordic eldercare : a research report on legislation, oversight, extent and consequences

Universalism is a category that is widely used both in mainstream theorizing on welfare states and in feminist scholarship. Yet, scientific analyses of the concept and politics of universalism are rare. The article looks at the idea, principle and politics of universalism in the contexts of income security and welfare services. Universalism turns out to be a complex concept with different dimensions and meanings. It is an important ideology behind social policy, and universal solutions have successfully resolved class- and gender-related conflicts in the Nordic countries. Universalism is also an integral part of woman-friendly social policies.

Universalism and social policy: A Nordic-feminist revaluation

This article is about the transnational movement of policy discourses on childcare. It considers whether the spread of neoliberal ideas with their emphasis on marketisation, on the one hand, and a social investment discourse on the other, are leading to convergence in childcare arrangements in Nordic countries (Finland and Sweden) and liberal Anglo-Saxon countries (Australia and Canada). We find points of convergence around both themes at the level of policy discourse and continued diversity in the way these ideas are translated into actual policies. In other words, convergence is mediated by institutions and political realignments.

Anneli Anttonen

Papers

European Social Care Services: Is It Possible To Identify Models ?:

Gendering citizenship in Western Europe: New challenges for citizenship research in a cross-national context

Marketisation in Nordic eldercare : a research report on legislation, oversight, extent and consequences

Universalism and social policy: A Nordic-feminist revaluation

Convergent care regimes? : Childcare arrangements in Australia, Canada, Finland and Sweden