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Transnational Social Policy and Social Work: An Introduction
Stefan Köngeter and Luann Good Gingrich
The nation-state is becoming too small for the big problems of life, and too big for the small problems of life.
(Bell 1987, 13–14)
Social policy and social work are being transformed by accelerating transnationalization of economies, labour markets, education, and care within an increasingly asymmetrical global context. The nation-state has long established itself as the seemingly natural site where solidarity and welfare are produced and organized. This idea is based on an imaginary of the global society as divided into distinct nation-states, and all human beings are members of one nation-state or another: ‘National welfare states are by their nature meant to be closed systems. The logic of the welfare state implies the existence of boundaries that distinguish those who are members of a community from those who are not’ (Freeman 1986, 52). Particularly in social policy and political sciences, this nexus of nation-state and welfare institutions has been considered a quasi-natural unit of analysis (Zürn 2003). Although inherently international in its orientation, the same applies to social work, as we can see even in the discourse of international social work (Lyons and Hokenstad 2012, Healy and Link 2012).
The general starting point of social work has been the national welfare state, which includes social services that are designed to meet the needs of residents within state boundaries, and are regulated and financed by institutions embedded within nation-states. The territories of the nation-state are often assumed to be the borders of welfare production (Powell and Barrientos 2004). This is also true for studies that claim to be international, such as comparative analyses of welfare architecture and production. The implicit assumption about the social world as divided into national entities has restrained the study of welfare societies; however, only in the last three decades have we identified an increase in theoretical reflections and conceptual critiques of this so-called ‘methodological nationalism’ (Wimmer and Glick Schiller 2002).
The idea of comparing national welfare states or welfare regimes reinforces the focus on national welfare institutions. Due to this strong comparative focus, welfare research not only neglects a broad range of welfare production and care work that is organized across national boundaries (Mahon and Robinson 2011), but also fails to recognize the increasing flow of both capital and labour (Swaan 1994a). Economic globalization facilitates the mobility of capital and has tremendous impacts on the welfare of people and the need for welfare policies (Gough 2000). Among other factors, such as war and natural disasters, this development promotes the mobility of people. As a consequence, this mobile population is situated in the precarious situation of moving across nation-state borders in order to work (e.g. in the care sector), but is at the same time confronted with national welfare states that restrict their entitlements to their long time resident population (see e.g. Righard in this volume).
This publication will explore the interplay of social policies, mobile populations and knowledge production about welfare within transnational spaces. Against the background of the increasing importance of the ongoing transnationalization of our everyday life (Mau 2010), we identify a lack of systematic research on social policies and their capacity to organize solidarity, to counter social injustice, and to attend to the well-being of people across national boundaries. The essays in this book develop a transnational social policy approach that is largely missing not only in social policy, but also in social work and political sciences. The term ‘transnational’, as a concept distinct from ‘international’, ‘supranational’, or ‘global’, refers to movement across the boundaries (borders, cultures, etc.) of nation-states (see Conrad 2011, Jones Finer 1998). It is an inherently paradoxical term, as the act of transgressing national boundaries challenges the integrity of boundaries, while also confirming those boundaries as a ‘fait social’ (Durkheim 1982). ‘Due to on-going interconnections and flows of people, labour, capital, objects, institutions, knowledge, ideas, and models across national boundaries’ (Glick Schiller and Levitt, 2006, 5) our social world is continuously transnationalized.
The transnationalization of our everyday life challenges the way we think about and produce social welfare. Since their inception at the end of the nineteenth century, social policies have generally been designed to target a specific, identifiable, and nationally bound population. Citizenship was – and largely still is – the main entry point for recognition in, and benefit from, social policies (Bosniak 2006). However, the increasing mobility of a diverse range of population groups – men and women, managers and care workers, minors and adults, refugees and voluntary migrants, and so on – raises concerns about the boundaries of social policies and calls into question the national welfare state as the dominant locus of welfare production. This situation provokes new questions about the importance of transnational welfare practices, and their relation to social policy.
The Transformation of Social Policy in Times of Transnationalization and Globalization
These new transnational social constellations in welfare production have been recognized by social science since the mid-1990s. In particular, the observation that social policy is no longer restricted to the territorial boundaries of nation-states came to the fore during this time. However, only a few publications connect a pronounced transnational approach to the social policy discourse. In 1992, the Dutch sociologist Abram de Swaan was one of the first to use the term transnational social policy (Swaan 1992, 1994a, 1997). He proclaimed a new era of social policy:
For the field of social policy studies, this means that a third stage has arrived: after the initial period of national studies and the more recent phase of comparative research, the time has come to investigate the prospects for transnational social policies.
(Swaan 1994a, 2)1
In an edited volume, Catherine Jones Finer (1999) brings together papers that focus on the globalization of standards for the well-being of individuals and groups, and the harmonization of development strategies between the Global North and Global South. In the same vein, Daniel Morales-Gómez’s (1999) book emphasizes the social reform agenda in developing countries, which has been initiated by international organizations. Finally, a special issue of Social Policy and Society, edited by Nicola Yeates and Zoë Irving (2005), aims to connect the interdisciplinary nature of transnational studies (Khagram and Levitt 2008) with the discourse of social policy.
If we extend the scope of relevant research, we find a broader discussion on social policy across borders. In particular, the Global Social Policy approach (Deacon 2007, Yeates and Holden 2009) contributed to this emerging field. All of these publications react to the clairvoyant statement made by Daniel Bell, that the ‘nation-state is becoming too small for the big problems of life’. The effects of globalization and transnationalization have fueled the resizing of the nation-state, and have therefore altered the behaviour and approach of ‘big problems’. In these times of transnationalization and globalization, we have identified four strands of discourse on the transformation of social policy that are related to our transnational social policy agenda. Each is briefly discussed below.
Globalization of Economy and its Impact on Social Policy
The first strand of discussion on social policy across national boundaries started in the early 1990s. Here, social policy is reflected against the backdrop of the end of the Cold War, the increasing globalization of economy, and the endangerment of the achievements of the welfare state and its institutions by a neoliberal agenda (Teeple 1995). Globalization has an impact on welfare policies in several ways (Wilding 1997): Globalization has reinforced – or at least transformed – social problems, such as migration, unemployment, and poverty. As the globalization of markets leads to the erosion of economic sovereignty, the nation-state is stretched to its limits to manage these problems. Confronted with the challenge of maintaining their competitiveness with other national economies, many states have changed their social policy priorities to focus on the employability of young people and working adults. This shift from a rights-based to a productivist social policy agenda (Jessop 1994) shows a shift in the balance between capital and labour in favour of capital. However, this shift has also created the demand for increasingly powerful supranational institutions to regulate economic and social development. Supranational institutions, such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank (WB), and the International Labour Organization (ILO), have profoundly influenced the configuration of national welfare policies in the last three decades (Mahon 2010). The impact of the ILO on welfare policies during the financial crisis in Greece has been most recently discussed.
Social Policies Travelling from the Global North to the Global South
A second strand of the discussion focuses on social policies that are promoted by countries in the Global North, and enforced in the Global South. Currently, nation-states of the Global North are not only concerned with poverty and inequality within their own countries, but also with the social problems that extend beyond their national borders (Jones Finer 1999). Within the European Union, the social divide between the new members in the East and the wealthier countries in Central Europe has provoked discourse about a social policy agenda for the EU (Swaan 1994b). The EU has predominately focused on economic integration among member states, and has not harmonized social standards throughout the union. It has only been in the last few years, with the influx of refugees from Syria and Afghanistan, that policy makers in the EU have recognized that social problems are not confined within the borders of nation-states. Not only within the EU, but also in other regions of the world where economic differences are palpable, we can identify a growing awareness of the interdependence between rich and poor countries and a demand for new social policies that reach beyond the territory of nation-states (Morales-Gómez 1999). In particular, for example, powerful states and international organizations are enforcing new welfare policies in those weaker and often dependent developing countries.
Transnational Standards, Translating Knowledge
The third strand points to the importance of knowledge translation in the production and implementation of transnational social policies. Globalization promotes the comparison not only of economies, but also of welfare production. Rooted in the competition between countries since the late nineteenth century and, notably, during the confrontation between two political blocs after World War II, attention to welfare developments in other countries has become pervasive. Specifically, for example, the discourse on different welfare regimes (Esping-Andersen 1990) and the development of internationally renowned indices, such as the Human Development Index (HDI) or the Migration Policy Index (MIPEX), encouraged the circulation of knowledge and ideas among various countries. Regardless of whether or not this fosters ‘the homogenizing tendencies of interdependency’ (Parry 1993, 146), globalization promotes a clearer sense of the global prevalence and interdependence of social problems. For Ulrich Beck (2002), the globalization of economy needs to be accompanied by a ‘cosmopolitan consciousness’, which promotes social standards beyond the realm of nation-states. However, a transnational approach reflects the adaptation and transformation processes that accompany the movement of theories and concepts between nations. Ramesh Mishra (1998) identifies two reasons for the slow progress of ‘developing effective transnational social protection’:
First, the absence of global institutions of governance with the authority to formulate binding standards and to ensure their implementation. The second and related point is that […] social rights (or rather social standards) must be formulated in relation to the level of economic development. Otherwise they tend to remain abstract principles with little purchase on socioeconomic realities.
(496)
These two arguments also point to the inherent tensions that go along with the travel of social policy ideas and knowledge across national boundaries. Social policy ideas and ideals often encapsulate universal norms and demands on social welfare and get contested when they are translated in social contexts that (necessarily) have their own cultural norms, legal regulations, economic situations, and so on. This is exactly the starting point of our transnational approach, which is interested in the characteristics and challenges of such translation processes.
Global Social Policy
The most important and influential strand of the discussion coined the term ‘Global Social Policy’. With the assumption that transnational and international organizations are becoming increasingly important actors in the field of social policy, this strand developed its own model of explaining the transformation of social policies (Deacon 2007, Yeates and Holden 2009). The overarching aim of global social policy research is to analyse the ‘contested terrain of emerging global governance’ (Deacon 2007, 15). Deacon points to a wide range of inter- and transnational actors: multinational enterprises, transnational knowledge networks, international unions, international NGOs, the Catholic Church, Islamic movements, and so on. All of these actors have certain investments in shaping social policy issues; in particular, research on supranational institutions, such as the OECD, World Bank, and ILO, has shown the impact of international organizations on social policy developments around the world. This research reveals a complex multi-lateralism in a global arena (O’Brien et al. 2000) wherein a nation-state is merely one actor among many.
In order to assess the progress of globalization in social policy, Lutz Leisering (2007) distinguishes three levels: the globalization of a) discourses and norms, b) agencies and organizations, and c) instrument, programmes and services. On the level of ideas, norms and discourses, it is evident that globalization and transnational flows have a strong impact on social policies and services, both currently and historically (Köngeter and Schröer 2013). On the level of agencies and organizations, we see the establishment of supranational actors, such as various UN agencies, and multiple transnational social movements, that have emerged in recent decades. However, on the level of instruments, programmes, and social work practice, Leisering (2007) argues that transnational or global structures remain virtually absent from the social welfare landscape. For example, there are neither redistributive and regulatory mechanisms, nor social provisions that function at a global level that are empirically recognizable. Welfare programs are designed in scope and mandate to fall within the carefully defined and regulated boundaries of the nation, and all long-standing and enforceable social policy structures are implemented at the national level. The national welfare state still seems to be the eye of the needle through which institutional change must go.
Transnational Social Policy and Social Work
While the field of global social policy tends to focus on institutional and social practices in the global arena, we emphasize, with our use of the term ‘transnational social policy’, the distinction between globalization and transnationalism; as articulated by Clarke, ‘globalisation’ often refers to ‘new supra-national institutions and agencies that directly or indirectly reshape welfare and state capacities’ (Clarke 2005, 408). A transnational approach towards social policy, on the other hand, focuses on the changes – even transformations – in the production of welfare and the related meaning and importance of the nation-state and its institutions that are caused by the ongoing border crossings of people, ideas, norms, organizati...
