Abstract
Personal assistance is a welfare scheme that aims at increasing disabled peoples' independence and empowerment. Since the historical beginnings of this scheme, rights have played a crucial role, but are rarely analysed per se. This article presents a social scientific analysis of personal assistance legislation in the Scandinavian countries. Based on a theoretical framework focusing on variations of the concept ‘active citizenship’, it discusses the complex balance between the strength of rights and activation requirements, whether explicitly or implicitly expressed in the legislation. This article concludes that Sweden combines a strong right with implicit requirements, while Denmark and particularly Norway combine a weak right to personal assistance with rather explicit requirements that must be met in order to be eligible for the services. This article is a contribution to the discussion, originally introduced by T.H. Marshall, on how to strengthen peoples' ‘membership of society’ through social rights.
Highlights
Ideas about empowering welfare service users and emphasizing their role as active citizens, in regard to their services, as well as within society, are pillars of the changing European welfare states
The theories of Marshall have been criticized, in particular by feminists who claim that Marshall’s citizenship concept does not include all people. Taking into account this critique and the fact that newer social processes in society, such as the much discussed process of individualization, have since taken place, we elaborate on a contemporary Nordic approach to social citizenship, which points to the new emphasis on active citizenship
We have not made it a part of the country’s analyses above, we find that all three countries Á on a general level based on legislation and guidelines Á include in their PA schemes republican ideas in terms of requiring the user to participate in the application and allocation of PA, with some variations when practiced
Summary
Ideas about empowering welfare service users and emphasizing their role as active citizens, in regard to their services, as well as within society, are pillars of the changing European welfare states. The theories of Marshall have been criticized, in particular by feminists who claim that Marshall’s citizenship concept does not include all people Taking into account this critique and the fact that newer social processes in society, such as the much discussed process of individualization, have since taken place, we elaborate on a contemporary Nordic approach to social citizenship, which points to the new emphasis on active citizenship. Johansson and Hvinden clarify these variants by using the activation-differentiation developed by Miller (2000), which comprises a socioliberal interpretation (duties in return for PA), a libertarian (stressing self-responsibility) and a republican one (stressing participation) This differentiation model will be central in our theoretical framework and will be applied in this article’s analysis to identify variations and trends of activation ideas in PA legislation. The third part further explores the analysis of differences by providing an overview and discussion of the various intraand inter-country differences we uncovered
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