Remaking Social Citizenship in Multicultural Europe: Women’s Movements’ Agency in Child-Care Politics and Policies

Gendered Citizenship in a Multidimensional Perspective: The Challenges Facing Norway within the Nordic Model

“…The FEMCIT study of social citizenship focused on women's movements' agency in shaping child-care and parental leave policies in the Czech Republic, Finland, Norway, and Spain (Bergman 2011). 6 Three types of women's movement claims around child-care were examined: claims concerning the public provision of day care services, public support for home care of young children, and fathers' position in parental leave policies.…”

Reproduction and citizenship/reproducing citizens: editorial introduction

“…This has led to arguments about how the analysis of the ways in which welfare regimes of the global north support, provide or neglect care-work is crucial to understanding citizenship (Knijn and Kremer 1997;Tronto 2001;Lister et al 2007;Bergman et al 2012;Le Feuvre et al 2012). Relatedly, the care-work of citizen-mothers has come to be understood as vital to "the reproduction of the nation" (Yuval-Davis and Anthias 1989;Yuval-Davis 1996;Luibheid 2004;Tyler 2013), so that demographic concerns about the health, strength and/ or ethnic/ racial composition of the nation have historically often shaped reproductive law and policy, and hence who is and is not able to have children (Yuval-Davis and Anthias 1989;Mottier and Gerodetti 2007).…”

“…So, for example, FEMCIT research by Monica Threlfall and colleagues 7 (see Halsaa, Roseneil and Sümer, 2011:10-20;Threlfall et al, 2012) suggests that women's traditional relegation to the private sphere and their reproductive roles -actual and potential -continue to impact upon their realisation of full political citizenship as elected representatives. The work of Solveig Bergman and colleagues 8 (see Halsaa, Roseneil and Sümer, 2011: 20-28;Bergman et al, 2012) found that childcare politics and policies remain one of the most important and unresolved issues of social citizenship addressed by European women's movements, albeit that movements frame their claims and visions of "good childcare", "good mothering" and "good fathering" in different ways across different national contexts, and sometimes within countries. Nicky Le Feuvre and colleagues 9 (see Halsaa, Roseneil, and Sümer, 2011: 29-38;Le Feuvre et al, 2012) identified gender inequalities and the differential level and nature of state regulation of, and involvement in, the social reproductive work carried out in the rapidly expanding elder care sector as increasingly important in understanding women's differentiated experiences of economic citizenship 6 This research design was both a theoretically informed and practical decision, expressing both our commitment to a feminist, multi-dimensional and multi-disciplinary understanding of citizenship that does not prioritize the traditional domain of institutionalized politics, and also enabling us to carry out discrete subprojects.…”