Saviours of Citizenship, Sinners to Activists? Citizenship practices in FBO’s within a Welfare State under Pressure

• In Event: Faith-based organizations

Abstract

As is often argued, the Belgian welfare state has a distinctively non-state character. Third sector organisations, civil society initiatives and individual citizens take part in the execution of welfare service delivery and influence policy making, whether formally as subsidised government partners or in the shadow of formal welfare structures. Faith-based organisations (FBO’s) form a constitutive link in this ‘welfare mix’, but the implications of the religious background of these organisations is undertheorized. On the one hand, roman catholic organisations are some of the largest in the care and other sectors, but their religious background is not always visible or thematised. On the other hand, newer and smaller religious initiatives pop up in many cities, and also take up a role in the welfare landscape. Recent events and developments such as the covid-19 pandemic, increased migration, changing demographics or the effects of the climate crisis are placing welfare states under increasing pressure. Through their response to these events, this second group of FBO’s have become more visibly present, as they have been shown to take responsibility for vulnerable groups for which other welfare actors cannot provide in their needs. This is a tendency which is observed in different forms around the globe, and has drawn the attention of researchers in several disciplines. The presence of religious actors in welfare service delivery and their modus operandi has raised questions related to neutrality, conditionality, territoriality and the concept of welfare. In this paper, I will look at these questions through the lens of citizenship, more precisely how FBO’s, as civil society actors, mediate citizenship practices of their constituents. The three most common interpretations in the literature do not seem to fully capture the dynamics at play in the Belgian context. FBO’s are mostly either seen as sites of civic renewal, which stimulate citizens to take responsibility for the wellbeing of fellow citizens (cf. Smidt et al. 2008; Baker 2012; Dunlop and Beckingham 2019), criticized as apolitical allies which legitimize governments’ non-response or retreat from service delivery (cf. Goode 2006; Hackworth 2009; Lyon-Callo 2008), or salvaged as critics-from-within engaging in subtle forms of subversion against neoliberalism (cf. Williams et al., 2012). Most of these publications focus on the retreat of welfare states within a neoliberal institutional context. This reading of welfare developments is not fitting for the Belgian situation, where there are no signs of welfare retreat (Cantillon 2016). Other transformations of welfare policy and discourse are nevertheless visible, which could be called neoliberal but then in a different meaning which is arguably more in line with the reality of policy developments in most contexts (Laruffa, 2022). The three interpretations mentioned above consequently do not fully capture the dynamics at play in Belgium. Based on the preliminary results of a multi-method research project within 20 FBO’s working across 4 Belgian cities, consisting of semi-structured interviews with constituents and clients combined with participant observation, this paper will explore different ways of conceptualising the dynamics of citizenship within FBO’s in the Belgian context.

References

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Author

• Dries Ver Elst