Social care and welfare state changes

The recent welfare state reforms in European countries are often interpreted as a mere adaptation to a lack of funds and the demand for an increase in efficiency. However, changes in the field of childcare and elderly care bring about the need for a more selective approach to analysing the internal restructuring and rearrangement of institutional and financial resources as well as the interaction between labour market structures and family structures. In the area of care policies and care politics, new structures have been created in terms of the relationships between the family, market, the state, and non-profit organisations, and new scope for action has been opened up for the actors concerned – both caregivers and care receivers.

This volume outlines the care arrangements in various countries as a result of this change, comparing them with regard to certain key indicators. Several chapters emphasise the role of cultural values and gender relations in explaining national specificity in the care arrangement (see Pfau-Effinger, 2004). Therefore, equal attention has been devoted to the cultural and to the structural and political aspects of the change. As a consequence, the complexity of national care arrangements (see Chapters One and Two of this volume) can be investigated both from an institutional perspective and from the actors’ perspective (that of various actors). The concept of care arrangement (Chapter One of this volume) is suitable for portraying national ‘cases’, historical change, and providing international comparisons of different welfare states. The aim of this volume was to present and substantiate this theoretical concept and to use it for international historical and comparative research in an interdisciplinary cooperation. This complex social scientific approach refers to the interrelationship between societal institutions such as the family, the market, the labour market and non-profit organisations, and cultural and socio-structural factors (Pfau-Effinger, 2004; Chapters One and Two of this volume). A central aspect is the inclusion of culture in the concept itself. Future cross-national comparisons of European care arrangements should relate not only to socio-structural indicators and to the welfare state institutional framework, but also to development paths of cultural values and models (family and welfare values), which are emphasised in the approach of the care arrangement as an important new concept.