P08- Becoming partner? Volunteering, welfare partnerships and publicness in times of crisis and austerity
PANEL Organizers
• Guidi Riccardo (riccardo.guidi@unipi.it), Department of Political Sciences - University of Pisa (Italy)
• Bonetti Marta (m.bonetti@volontariatoepartecipazione.eu), Volunteering and Participation Foundation (Italy)
SUMMARY
Since the 1980s the rhetoric of 'getting closer' to the citizens has accompanied the welfare systems reforms and supported new patterns of governance. Volunteer and civil society have acquired a growing role in the delivery of 'public' services in ?partnership? with State institutions. Their involvement seems to have further increased with the current crisis and austerity measures. Questions of what is publicness in the reshaping of service delivery are not new but remain contested. Some scholars emphasized negative effects of partnerships on social citizenship, democracy and public accountability as well as on volunteer organizations. Others observed that partnerships can enhance the advocacy of weak groups and minorities. Especially in turbulent times, the publicness of welfare services appeared as a result of a chain of connections. The Panel focuses on the interrelations between power, materialities and discourse in welfare services provision. It invites single or comparative case-studies exploring partnerships between volunteer organizations and public institutions. Papers are likely to contribute to our understanding of: Features, processes, assemblages through which partnerships re-design, improve, validate, monitor the publicness of welfare services Definitions of publicness implied and implemented in the partnerships Role and limits of interpretive analysis in understanding the publicness of current local welfare patterns. Some pivotal issues seem to be: Collective action repertoire of volunteer organizations between protest and service Citizens' and users' powers Role of politicians, public managers, street-level bureaucrats Influence of administrative cultures. The format for the panel will be flexible and adapted to the papers submitted. It aims to enable the necessary reflection and to avoid bilateral exchanges between speakers and members of the public. From brief paper presentations we will identify some emerging key questions and topics which presenters and audience will then further work out into small-group conversations.
KEY WORDS
Partnership, Welfare, Volunteer Organizations, Publicness, Crisis, Austerity
ROOM
Faculty E2.15
SESSION 1 : 8/07/2015 : 13:15-14:45
Chair: Riccardo Guidi (riccardo.guidi@unipi.it), University of Pisa (Italy)
Discussants:
Bonetti Marta (marta.bonetti@volontariatoepartecipazione.eu), Volunteering and Participation Fondation (Italy)
Clarke John (john.clarke@open.ca.uk), Open University (United Kingdom)
Eliasoph Nina (eliasoph@usd.edu), University of Southern California (USA)
Guidi Riccardo (riccardo.guidi@unipi.it), University of Pisa (Italy)
• Beyond Indiscipline of Labour Market. Intermediaries. The Case of Public Employment. Services and Private Providers Partnerships.
Remy Céline (celine.remy@ulg.ac.be), Centre de recherche et d'intervention sociologiques (Belgium)/Centre d'étude des capabilités dans les services sociaux et sanitaires (Switzerland), Gérard Julie (julie.gerard@ulg.ac.be), Beuker Laura (laura.beuker@ulg.ac.be).
• Managing hybridity in a changing welfare mix: Everyday practices in an entrepreneurial nonprofit in Belgium
De Waele Els (els.dewaele@ugent.be), Ghent University (Belgium), Hustinx Lesley (lesley.hustinx@ugent.be), Ghent University (Belgium)
• Blurring the Borders of Voluntary Action in Times of Crisis: the Program of Short-Term Volunteering of Expo Milan 2015
Bonetti Marta (marta.bonetti@unipi.it), Guidi Riccardo (riccardo.guidi@unipi.it), University of Pisa (Italy)
