Special issues by Milena Marchesi
Ethnography, 2020
This special issue examines welfare programs as sites where Europe’s increasingly diverse societi... more This special issue examines welfare programs as sites where Europe’s increasingly diverse societies are being shaped and negotiated. It zooms in on parenting as a central governmental domain where concerns about, and hopes for, the future of society intersect with notions of citizenship, family care, welfare, and deservingness of public resources. In this introduction to the special issue, we draw out three paradoxical orders that shape the encounters between migrant parents and welfare actors we have studied. One is concerned with the tension between the universal and difference, the other with the re-articulation of the public and the private, and a third with irreconcilable social and institutional demands. This helps us understand how Europe’s diverse societies are being shaped on the ground, beyond the often strongly racialized, nationalist rhetoric that has come to dominate public debates.
Papers by Milena Marchesi
Current Anthropology, 2021
Across Europe, new welfare programs exemplify attempts to govern through community. This article ... more Across Europe, new welfare programs exemplify attempts to govern through community. This article asks how such governing through community is done in practice. Drawing on comparative insights from fieldwork with parenting support professionals and volunteers in Amsterdam, Milan, and Paris, we document not only how governing through community is actually done but also what new forms of entanglements and unruly effects such governing creates. We argue that intimate welfare landscapes organized at the scale of the neighborhood (1) entangle welfare actors in neighborhood-focused networked relationships; (2) tend to bridge, obfuscate, and dissolve boundaries between state agent and citizen and between state and society; and (3) rely heavily on affective labor and personalized relationships. We show that the reorganization of governance through neighborhood-based networks produces an unwieldy quagmire of networks and partnerships. Moreover, rather than creating self-caring communities, new welfare programs primarily draw increasing numbers into governmental roles. Finally, instead of being released from its welfare and social responsibilities, locally embedded professionals turn out to be particularly effective at bringing the welfare state back in.
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Special issues by Milena Marchesi
Papers by Milena Marchesi