ABSTRACT Becoming a parent involves encounters with institutions that reach into the private domain of child-rearing [Koning, A. D., Johansen, M.-L., & Marchesi, M. (2022). Introduction special issue “Paradoxical orders: Parenting encounters, the welfare state, and difference in Europe”. Ethnography, 23(3), 319–334. https://doi.org/10.1177/1466138120919448]. This study examines how parenting ideals are produced and reshaped within everyday interactions between parents and Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) institution. The research material was generated from two ECEC groups, each comprising children aged 1–4 years, through ethnographic methods. Using the concepts of territory, territorialization, and de/reterritorialization [Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. (1987). A thousand plateaus: Capitalism and schizophrenia II. University of Minnesota Press, Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. (2003). Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and schizophrenia. University of Minnesota Press), the study highlights three recurring parenting ideals: diligent gear management, pedagogically oriented parental engagement, and punctuality. These ideals are reshaped in daily institutional encounters, where established expectations can be re-negotiated. The findings reveal how various sociomaterial elements shape what comes to be understood as ‘good” parenting within ECEC settings. Overall, the article shows that ECEC institution both sets standards for parental behaviour and reflects broader societal goals and values. These findings highlight the importance of reflexivity in ECEC policy and practice, with attention to the temporal and contextual dynamics through which expectations toward parenting are formed and negotiated.

With welfare states considered contested sites for the construction of unequal social relations, this article explores official welfare imaginaries – discursive practices and narratives which construct the nature of the “good society” and the role of government policies in achieving this – as strategies of depoliticisation, aimed at reproducing authoritarian governance. Through an analysis of Singapore National Day rally speeches by then Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, the article focuses on appeals to maintaining Singapore’s established cultural, societal, and economic relations. Three inter-connected depoliticising logics to National Day speeches are highlighted: technocracy (an appeal to government through rational expertise); survivalism (an appeal to stable leadership in the face of global challenges); and anti-welfarism (an appeal to the necessity of eligibility-based and productivity-geared welfare). Central to maintaining oligarchic modes of authoritarian political governance, welfare imaginaries disseminated through officialised political narratives pre-emptively diffuse alternative discourses and practices which could trouble established hierarchies. The mobilisation of these imaginaries insulates the political economy from deeper critique or the possibility of popular mobilisation against an economy skewed towards enriching an oligarchic state-capitalist elite. Welfare imaginaries help to legitimate accumulation based in disciplined labour and one-party rule albeit within a welfare state facilitating asset-building for some.

ABSTRACT This study examines how marginalised communities in India strategically use identity as a means of social mobility. While major theories of recognition politics, such as those of Charles Taylor and Axel Honneth, were largely developed in Western liberal contexts, this paper argues that in post-colonial welfare states like India, identity claims are shaped not only by the search for dignity and respect but also by access to state benefits, reservation policies, and official recognition. To explain this, the study introduces two concepts: Symbolic Status Movements (SSM), where communities seek higher social status through cultural emulation, including Sanskritisation, and Legal Status Movements (LSM), where communities mobilise for official state recognition such as SC, ST, or OBC status. Drawing on Social Identity Theory, Weber’s class-status-party framework, and Pierre Bourdieu’s idea of different forms of capital, the paper conceptualises identity as flexible and responsive to changing institutional conditions rather than fixed or primordial. Through four case studies — the Rajbanshis, Naths, Matuas, and Kudmi-Mahatos — the paper develops the concept of institutionally responsive identity: the argument that identity politics in India operates through constant adjustment to changing institutional conditions, rather than through a simple linear path of social mobility.

ABSTRACT This article introduces the concept of ‘constrained divergence’ to examine how nationally bounded welfare regimes and growth models limit subnational policy divergence despite a clear intention to achieve policy outcomes different from those at the centre. We illustrate the concept through the example of skill formation in the devolved nations of Scotland and Wales within the welfare regime and growth model of the United Kingdom. We find significant subnational divergence in policy rhetoric and governance congruent with differences in partisan politics. However, we find less evidence of divergence in policy outputs and outcomes. We expect that the findings are generalizable, reinforcing the argument that subnational policies cannot be fully isolated from national contexts. Thus, while acknowledging subnational dynamics, we expose the risks of replacing ‘methodological nationalism’ with ‘methodological sub-nationalism’. Instead, we argue for a balanced comparative research approach that incorporates both national and subnational perspectives in welfare state analysis.

This article examines how participants in the Norwegian Drug Court (ND) describe their everyday experiences of support, control, and motivation. Drawing on qualitative interviews with 15 men enrolled in the program, the study explores how participants contrasted ND with other parts of the welfare and justice systems. While correctional staff were described as supportive, respectful, and sometimes protective advocates, welfare institutions such as the Norwegian Labor and Welfare Administration (NAV) and health services were often experienced as stigmatizing and exclusionary. Through the lens of complexity theory, the findings suggest that motivation and hope did not arise from formal structures but from micro-level relational encounters that created temporary stability in otherwise fragmented systems. Yet these supports were fragile, contingent on individual professionals, and easily disrupted. The analysis argues that ND embodies a paradox: it offers care and continuity where other systems fail, but it does so within a framework of conditionality and control. Even in a strong Norwegian welfare state, rehabilitation remains dependent on the discretionary efforts of frontline workers, pointing to systemic vulnerabilities in how justice and welfare institutions respond to people with complex needs.

"Your problem is still your problem": Gatekeeping, perceived exclusion, and Ukrainian refugees' (dis)engagement with Danish general practice.

This commentary challenges the target article's sociocultural explanations for men's greater relationship investment, proposing instead that evolved sex differences in sexual desire, combined with societal changes in industrialized welfare states, better account for observed patterns. As traditional male contributions lose value and sex differences in sexual desire increase with age, men face diminishing relational prospects and greater costs from breakups.

Posthumous care-honouring advance directives, keeping deathbed promises, defending deceased persons' reputations-is central to clinical ethics, yet its philosophical foundations remain contested. This paper asks whether such care can be rationally grounded without presupposing either a robust transcendent ontology (the view that persons persist after death as welfare subjects) or the Epicurean conclusion that death renders all posthumous concern irrational. The paper proceeds by philosophical argumentation and case analysis. It first reconstructs and critically evaluates subsequentialism (the leading contemporary attempt to ground posthumous harm in antemortem interests) and identifies an internal instability: interests are not stable across death in the way subsequentialism requires. It then examines three paradigm cases of posthumous care-posthumous publication, deathbed promises and defence of memory-and draws on narrative identity theory (Ricoeur, MacIntyre) and Kant's doctrine of regulative ideas to develop an alternative account. Subsequentialism fails because it cannot explain why interests should be 'frozen' at the moment of death rather than at any other point in a person's life, and because Parfitian accounts of personal identity undermine the interest-continuity it presupposes. The Epicurean alternative is likewise rejected: it conflates the question of whether the dead can be harmed with the distinct question of whether the living have reasons to act on behalf of the dead. The paper develops weak practical transcendence: the thesis that the living may rationally act as if a deceased person's interests remain in force, grounded in narrative coherence, relational loyalty, and a Kantian regulative idea of biographical integrity. Posthumous obligations are particular rather than universal, calibrated by the depth of relational histories and the degree to which the deceased's narrative remains alive in a community of interpreters. Weak practical transcendence has direct implications for clinical ethics. It reframes advance directive interpretation as a task of biographical stewardship rather than preference-execution, reconceives surrogate decision-making as the exercise of practical wisdom about what a patient's life-narrative calls for, and identifies genuine posthumous obligations for clinical teams that persist after a patient's death. The account requires no posthumous welfare states and no metaphysics of personal survival; it is a normative thesis that articulates what our best clinical and moral practices already implicitly acknowledge.

This study identifies factors associated with not proceeding to clitoral reconstructive surgery among women with female genital mutilation (FGM) enrolled in a specialized surgical pathway. A retrospective cohort study was conducted at a multidisciplinary referral center in Montreuil, France, between January 2021 and December 2023. The study included 220 women who expressed a wish for reconstructive surgery during their initial assessment. Factors associated with non-progression to surgery were identified using univariable and multivariable logistic regression, supplemented by Bayesian analysis. Of the 220 women, 35% did not proceed to surgery. In the multivariable model, lack of support within the care pathway (odds ratio [OR] 3.28, 95% confidence interval [CI] 1.46-7.55; P = 0.004) and financial vulnerability, specifically reliance on state welfare (OR 3.43, 95% CI 1.28-9.80; P = 0.017) or financial support from relatives/community (OR 6.18, 95% CI 1.40-28.9; P = 0.017), were independently associated with non-progression. Model discrimination was good (area under the curve 0.75). Bayesian analysis confirmed these findings (P[direction] >99%) and suggested that memory of the FGM event also played a role (OR 1.87, 95% credible interval 0.88-4.09; P[direction] 94.9%). Access to clitoral reconstruction is primarily determined by socioeconomic stability and social support rather than clinical factors alone. These findings highlight the need for multidisciplinary pathways that integrate social and psychological accompaniment to ensure equitable access to care for vulnerable women.

Understanding how horses experience their lives is essential for improving their welfare, particularly in high-performance industries such as horseracing. Quality of Life (QoL) frameworks highlight the balance between positive and negative experiences over time, yet there is limited evidence on how racing professionals assess horse emotions and QoL, especially positive emotional states. This study reports findings from an international online survey of 230 racing industry participants. It explored confidence in assessing racehorse emotions, the perceived importance of emotional state for performance and welfare, views on racehorse QoL, and changes in understanding over time. Most respondents (92.5%) reported high confidence in judging racehorse emotions, and 94.8% of these considered emotional state important or very important for performance. The majority (87.7%) believed racehorses experience a good life at least sometimes, although this varied depending on management practices, individual horse characteristics, and human factors. Turnout, social contact, health management, staff experience, and regulatory environments were identified as key influences on QoL. Recognition of the importance of emotional state and QoL within the industry is increasing, alongside a shift towards more individualized, welfare-focused approaches. These findings support developing practical, industry-informed emotional state measures within equine QoL tools for assessing horses' experiences and inform management decisions.

ABSTRACT This study examines how professionalism is embedded and reshaped through the process of contracting out social services. Analysing tenders for mental health rehabilitation services in Israel, we examine professionalism across four dimensions: credentialed expertise, service standards, training, and ethics. The findings show that professionalism remains central in procurement, but in modified and hybrid forms. Professional expertise, language, and logics are embedded into tendering and contractual arrangements, contributing to the hybridization of professionalism already at the procurement stage. The article concludes by discussing the implications of this reconfiguration for understanding professionalism in the regulatory welfare state.

In the post-World War II Netherlands, women architects faced enduring challenges to practice, exacerbated by the marriage bar that confined married women to traditional housewife roles. Within this context, women’s organizations such as the Women’s Advisory Committee (VAC) in Rotterdam emerged as a vehicle through which women could make contributions as voluntary advisers to the construction of new neighborhoods. This article explores the VAC Rotterdam’s advisory work through extant documentation related to different social housing projects in Zuidwijk IV, now known as Lo’s neighborhood. Zuidwijk IV, which includes buildings by architects Jaap Schipper, Grijpma and de Roos, and Ernest Groosman, is one of eight sections of the garden city of Zuidwijk, itself only one of the ambitious postwar public housing schemes built on the southern edge of Rotterdam. The article concludes that, despite the VAC Rotterdam’s valuable input in shaping social housing design, their persistent advisory efforts were only intermittently respected.

On-farm welfare assessment of equines is a challenge given the large diversity of management practices, especially in terms of housing and activities. In our study, we tested time budget measures as a complementary tool to more conventional welfare indicators (e.g., stereotypic behaviours, ear position while foraging, neck shape). We observed 174 horses living in eight facilities (in their home environment) for which data on management practices and welfare were available. Time budget was assessed using the scan sampling method (1 min scan sampling over 30 min; 33 scans), while welfare assessment was based on classical measures. The study was performed in two parts: The first part consisted of validating time budget as a correlate of welfare state, which was performed at the individual level and according to the context of observation. In the second part, the data were analysed at the farm level by averaging data from all horses in the same facility. The results showed that the time spent feeding, in exploratory walking and observation behaviour were correlated with indicators of positive welfare and/or good practices in contrast to the time spent standing immobile resting or in fixed attention and/or in negative social interactions. Time budget varied greatly between facilities, reflecting welfare state and management (feeding, working) practices. This study shows that, provided that observations are made at different time periods when animals are calm, three sessions of 10 min. could give a good account of the local «atmosphere». These findings bring new insights into both methodological approaches and the significance of behaviours and, in particular, the importance of precisely defining and measuring the types of attention as a window into an animal's internal state.

Rising housing prices in major Western cities have increased the share of middle-class households living in the private rental sector and heightened the importance of parental financial support in shaping their housing trajectories. Drawing on qualitative interviews carried out with middle-class households aged 30 to 39 in the Paris Metropolitan Area, this paper examines how parental financial support is negotiated among homebuyers and renters and how it affects family relationships. Results indicate striking divergences across housing tenure. Support for homeownership is viewed as a legitimate cause and fosters family bonding, because it is central to middle-class status and facilitates wealth accumulation. Conversely, middle-class renters report feelings of ongoing dependence. This is primarily driven by the nature of support that complicates reciprocation, and the perceived devaluation of middle-class status associated with rental housing. Overall, these findings suggest that representations of tenure, housing expectations and wealth accumulation concerns amid growing economic insecurity help explain why housing tenure shapes middle-class perspectives on parental support. I conclude by highlighting the salience of tenure for understanding the relationship between housing, social class and family relations in the context of welfare state retrenchment and growing middle-class status anxiety.

ABSTRACT Due to their growth dependency, developed welfare states frequently exceed planetary boundaries and transgress sustainable consumption and production corridors that scholars deem crucial for mitigating climate change. Recognizing that international organizations (IOs) often act as policy entrepreneurs and innovators of new ideas, the article asks whether and how concepts of limits to welfare, which are crucial in recent academic debates on social policy in times of ecological crises, are translated and discussed by IOs. Empirically, it focuses on three key IOs: the International Labour Organization (ILO), the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the World Bank. The article maps how IOs frame limits in global eco-social policy and use them strategically. It finds that limits have important implications for social policy: socially, they shift responsibilities to private actors; temporally, they allow a focus on innovation and future change; spatially, they expand policy opportunities into the periphery. These implications are also translated into specific policy proposals: promoting self-limitations rather than regulation, fostering technological and economic change, and exporting economic and social policy models from the Global North worldwide. These results give rise to doubts whether IOs sufficiently acknowledge ecological limits that could orient a transformative agenda of sustainable welfare.

ABSTRACT This paper aims to create a complex index of migration destination satisfaction to find out which host country characteristics are important for explaining the perceived differences in immigrants’ subjective well-being. The model integrated mixed-level theories with an emphasis on soft powers. Partial least squares path modeling was used to operationalize it. The results, based on micro data from an online survey of young Croatian emigrants, confirmed that migration destination satisfaction is a hierarchically structured complex construct, which consists of two main dimensions: economic opportunities and soft power resources, with three sub-dimensions: social, institutional, and environmental. The paper evaluates the level of satisfaction with migration destination in countries categorized by the welfare regime criteria from the Croatian emigrants’ perspective. Croatian emigrants are mostly satisfied with life in the conservative and socio-democratic welfare state regimes, primarily due to a specific combination of economic opportunities and soft power resources provided. The opportunity to achieve economic success is not a sufficient condition for immigrants. Soft powers, embedded in the welfare state regime, are important contextual factors when making location migration decisions. To be more attractive to talented and easily integrating immigrants, a country must provide a welfare system that migrants perceive as beneficial for migration decisions.

ABSTRACT How did women's political inclusion shape the early development of the welfare state? We examine Sweden – one of the most egalitarian countries today – to explore the relationship between women's political representation and welfare state formation. Our focus is on the first local election after universal suffrage, analysing over 700 rural municipalities at a time when the welfare state was in its infancy, and women were newcomers in the political arena. Using data on welfare spending and original data on women's representation in municipal councils, we examine how the gender and party affiliation of local representatives relate to subsequent changes in social spending. Despite their small numbers, we find that Social Democratic women – unlike women from other parties or Social Democratic men – played a crucial role in expanding social spending, particularly in municipalities where the Social Democrats were strong. These findings enhance our understanding of women's early political representation in young democracies and political systems with limited women representation.

Under rentier capitalism, class struggle extends beyond production, encompassing the entire process of value appropriation, circulation and distribution. Housing is a stark example. In post-war Nordic welfare states, organised labour played key roles in endorsing wide provision of affordable social housing. Today, workers are not only dominated as wage-labourers but also as tenants and debtors, struggling against rising rents and precarious mortgages. How are labour organisations adjusting their role in this complex struggle? Illustrating the omnipresence of rentiership, we explore the case of an unexpected rentier: the trade union. In 1969, Finnish trade unions established a social housing cooperative, VVO, to provide affordable housing for their members. Over the following decades, VVO became one of the largest social rental housing providers in Finland. Since the 1990s, it has privatised or sold off most of its social housing stock. Known today as Kojamo, it is Finland’s largest private real estate investment company. Finnish trade unions remain among Kojamo’s biggest shareholders. This paper explores how and why unions decided to assetise their affordable housing. Through a qualitative document study supplemented with expert interviews, we find the answer in a residualising state housing policy and the retrenching role and realignment of unions’ purposes.

In the post-secular and mediatised public sphere of Sweden, the Pentecostal pastor Tomas Sjödin has emerged as a significant voice through his recurring appearances on the prestigious radio series Sommar and Vinter i P1. This article analyses Sjödin’s radio talks, specifically whether his message constitutes kerygmatic integrity – where theology challenges culture – or apologetic accommodation – where the message is subordinated to cultural demands. By applying Paul Tillich’s method of correlation, the study examines how Sjödin relates the eternal truths of the Christian message to contemporary existential questions. The analysis focuses on Sjödin’s treatment of Tillich’s ontological anxieties – finitude, meaninglessness, and guilt – and scrutinises his use of central symbols such as rest, nature, and brokenness. The analysis shows that while Sjödin’s rhetoric risks therapeutic reduction, it can rather be understood as a Praeparatio Evangelica. By validating existential experiences and offering diagnosis rather than a direct cure, Sjödin operates as a theologian of the boundary. The article concludes that Sjödin’s theology serves a preparatory function. He challenges the self-sufficiency of the secular welfare state by making it porous to questions of ultimate concern.

This article aims to examine the intersection of dense-low housing architecture and welfare politics in 1970s Denmark. Although scholars have investigated the role of architecture and housing in the expansion of the welfare state and later neoliberal restructurings, little attention has been given to the ways in which dense-low housing architecture and non-profit housing estates more broadly functioned as experimental platforms for the reimagining of community and decentralization in the context of the welfare state's crisis in the period. Focusing on two housing estates – Galgebakken and Gadekæret – the article identifies two central linkages between housing architecture, shifting welfare values and everyday life. First, the article shows how the design of Galgebakken and Gadekæret intertwined with the implementation of new models for resident democracy in the non-profit housing sector, rendering the housing estates as central sites for developing the meaning of local democracy and civic participation in everyday life. Secondly, the article points to the importance of emotions, particularly nostalgia, in shaping how non-profit housing architecture could emerge as models for community-making and civic participation in 1970s Denmark. In exploring these linkages, the article not only shows how non-profit housing estates came to work as platforms for envisioning, interpreting and practising new welfare values of community and decentralization on an everyday scale, but it also demonstrates the capacity of housing architecture in mediating new relations between materiality, emotions and welfare.