‘It’s an invisible wound’: the disenfranchised grief of post-separation mothers who lose care time

This paper enriches understandings of the implications of contemporary custody law for mothers and their children. It does so through a discussion of mothers’ grief and emotional pain over involuntarily losing care time with children. Mothers involuntarily lose care time by becoming non-resident parents against their will or by having a shared care parenting order imposed on them. Both experiences of losing maternal care time are becoming more commonplace as a result of the gender neutrality of custody laws across the Anglo-West and the increased emphasis given to shared care parenting as a viable post-separation parenting arrangement. Yet investigations into the emotions engendered by mothers’ loss of care time are sparse. Exploratory qualitative research with twelve mothers who involuntarily lost care time reveals the intensity and durability of their grief, its entanglement with emotions like fear, and its significance, as a relational welfare approach emphasises, to children’s best interests.     

Social Policy by Other Means from a Comparative Historical Perspective Continuity and Change in Nineteenth-Century Belgium (1800 ‒1920)

ABSTRACT

While social policies in the past are “by other means” if compared to traditional welfare states, historians have successfully established that they were much more conventional in their own time. Moreover, welfare states are historically grown constructs often still containing many pre-existing elements of precisely such social policies by other means, for example non-state provision. Belgium is an excellent example. Historically both nineteenth-century poor relief and early twentieth-century social insurance were mixed private/public forms of provision and funding. Today the Belgian welfare state still retains fundamental aspects of non-state provision not usually associated with “conventional” welfare states in the core OECD.     

Equality as a driver of inequality? Universalistic welfare,generalised creditworthiness and financialised housing markets

Abstract

Scandinavian countries are known for their universalistic welfare states, corporatist coordination, strong economic performances and egalitarian outcomes, an institutional combination often referred to as the ‘Nordic model’. However, these countries also possess volatile and increasingly vulnerable housing markets characterised by periods of sharp increases in prices and rents and some of the highest debt to income ratios in the world. The combination of a universalistic welfare state and housing market dynamics sets off a self-reinforcing process of increased stratification and re-familialisation. How did these orderly, egalitarian and welfare-oriented societies end up with housing markets that expose their citizens to increasing risk while driving inequality? The key lies in the effect the Nordic welfare state has on financialised housing markets. Successful decommodification of human lives leads to generalised creditworthiness which stimulates asset price inflation and new wealth and risk inequalities.     

Does poor health cause political passivity even in a Scandinavian welfare state? Investigating the impact of self-rated health using Swedish panel data

Poor health is generally believed to cause political passivity. Prior studies that satisfactorily acknowledge the causality problems involved are mainly limited to considering turnout and the U.S.A., so we lack knowledge of how non-electoral participation is affected in other countries. This article considers Sweden, characterized by a generous welfare state and an extensive public health system. Using unique panel data, which allow more thorough analyses of causality, poor health was found to have a negative effect on voting but not on non-electoral participation. By primarily focusing on other countries than Sweden and the U.S.A., it is a task for future longitudinal research to show whether the belief that poor health lead to political passivity is incorrect—or whether Sweden is an exceptional case, due to the barriers to participation being particularly low there.     

Do multiparty elections improve human development in autocracies?

Improvements in human development under democratic institutions are often attributed to electoral contestation. We evaluate the effect of multiparty contestation on infant mortality in the authoritarian context. Contrary to what extant scholarship argues, we find no evidence that multiparty elections in authoritarian regimes reduce infant mortality. Specifically, we show that electoral autocracies do not produce better infant mortality outcomes compared to closed autocracies holding no multiparty elections. We also demonstrate a non-monotonic effect of electoral competition on infant mortality: Infant mortality increases in levels of electoral contestation common in electoral authoritarian regimes and decreases only at levels of contestation that are nearly exclusive to democracies. Finally, we show that increases in infant mortality in electoral authoritarian regimes operate partially through increased political violence and reduced state capacity.     

National self-image as an obstacle to ensuring children’s rights in the context of domestic violence and family law – the case of Sweden

ABSTRACT

The aim of this paper is to highlight and discuss contradictions and challenges in the current policy and practice regarding fathers’ violence towards mothers and children in the Swedish welfare state. In particular, professional discourses and understandings of domestic violence in disputes about contact, custody, residence and maintenance, following parental separation, are analysed. My research suggests that abusers find ways to manipulate professionals and get them unwittingly to enable their continued control of victimised mothers and children. One conclusion is that oppression is maintained through processes of familialisation and selective repression. These discursive practices reproduce intersectional inequalities and, in doing so, in many cases result in the administration rather than prevention of further violence.