Publications
Books
Mobilizing for Welfare in Europe. The Unpolitical Politics of Social Action, 1870s-1990s. A Document Reader (Bloomsbury Publishing 2025)
Co-edited by Efi Avdela, Clarisse Berthezène, Laura Lee Downs (SOCIOBORD), Dominika Gruziel (SOCIOBORD), and Dimitra Lampropoulou, the book is an engaging collection of 22 primary sources that provide insights into different approaches to social welfare from around Europe, focusing particularly on marginalized groups.
Each chapter sheds light on a case of collective welfare action, and includes translated archival documents, alongside commentary that contextualises each case, and examines its socio-political underpinnings. This volume explores sources from 14 European countries, capturing historical approaches to collective action, and encompassing a plethora of welfare issues – such as religious and secular philanthropy, youth protection, gender history, and campaigns for prison reform. The result is a detailed study of the social welfare state in Europe.
With every source accompanied by an analysis of the ideas, ambitions, and practices of the actors themselves, in addition to an exploration of the larger regional context that influenced each pattern of collective mobilization, the editors highlight the distinction between the social and the political that underlies many forms of action undertaken in the field. Using the idea of ‘unpolitical politics’ as a new lens through which to explore the development of social welfare in a number of European contexts, this volume analyses who and what purports to be ‘neutral’, and why.
The table of contents
https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/mobilizing-for-welfare-in-europe-9781350457331/
For the case studies on the welfare reforms in the borderland and multicultural contexts, please consult the chapters by Laura Lee Downs, Fabio Giomi, Dominika Gruziel, and Pirjo Markkola.
Articles
Editorial by Dominika Gruziel and Machteld Venken
🔗 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/09075682241296586
📌 Laura Downs – When Social Provision Became a Bordering Practice: The Association ‘Assistance to Redeemed Italy’ and Children’s Welfare in Italy’s Northeastern Borderlands, 1919-1939
🔗 DOI: 10.1177/09075682241295549
📌 Federica Moretti & Machteld Venken – Transcending National Borders Through Educational Practices: The Children’s Castle in Luxembourg
🔗 DOI: 10.1177/09075682241297164
📌 Machteld Venken – A Trip Organised for Children is Not a Serious Matter’? Summer Treatment Camps for the Belgian-German Borderlands (1919-1939)
🔗 DOI: 10.1177/09075682241295455
📌 Dominika Gruziel – The Moving Targets and Vanishing Points: Children Recipients in the Mixed Economies of Welfare of the Polish-Ukrainian Borderlands at the Dawn of Communist Poland (1944-1949)
🔗 DOI: 10.1177/09075682241299067
📌 Bettina Diwersy e Stefan Köngeter – Transnational Professionalism in Child Welfare in Germany
🔗DOI:10.1177/09075682241287447
📌 Christian Schröder, Mark Unbehend, Ulrike Zöller – A comparison of child protection systems in the Greater Region: Implementing the UN convention on the rights of the child through narrow and broad understandings
🔗DOI:10.1177/09075682241288656
📌 Machteld Venken – Border Temporalities of an Old Letter: A Hermeneutic Interpretation of Cross-Border Veteran Welfare
🔗DOI:10.18357/bigr61202421650