Network ‘Histories of welfare and social policies’

The DEPOP project team is active withing the network ‘Histories of welfare and social policies’ is affiliated with.

Yuliya Hilevych (Groningen) co-launched and co-leads this network together with Paul van Tijgt (Leiden), and Robert Vonk (Utrecht).

The network aims to reconsider the histories of welfare beyond the mere actors of welfare states. While the welfare state has seemingly constituted the main actor of welfare provision since the 1950s in many societies in Europe and beyond, historians of both pre-modern and modern periods would agree that it is the combination of formal and informal actors of support that need to be accounted for in the histories of welfare and social security. It is indeed precisely the various forms and manifestations of formal and informal welfare provision that we are interested in exploring with this network.

We ask:

(1) How areas of welfare provision have historically been determined and what combinations of actors have been involved in welfare provision? Whether it is family and kin and neighbors, or social non-governmental institutions, such as charities and profit and non-profit actors, or indeed the governmental- or even trans-governmental services.

(2) What have been the conditions in which these combinations of welfare provision emerged and how have these been reflected or not in the social policies? And what was the role of international organizations and transnational exchange?

(3) And what social groups and categories have these welfare conditions and social policies included, excluded, or even created (e.g. as forms of health citizenship)?