(Un)caring communities: Processes of marginalisation and access to formal and informal care and assistance in rural Russia

Abstract

1(Un)caring communities: processes of marginalisation and access to formal and informal care and assistance in rural Russia. AbstractThe marginality of rural life, understood in structural, economic, political and geographic terms, has been an underlying theme in both historical and contemporary studies of the Russian countryside. Much less attention has been paid to marginality as relational and the moral discourses of (un)belonging and (un)deservingness through which moral centres and peripheries are constructed within rural Russian contexts.This paper explores the ways in which both fixed, structural and constructed, personalised explanations of hardship are employed by rural people and how these relate to processes of integration into or exclusion from 'caring' and 'moral' communities. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Burla village, western Siberia, in 2008-10, and focusing primarily on the activities of the Centre for Social Assistance to Families and Children located there, the paper discusses the ways in which affiliation with the 'moral centre' facilitates access to both formal and informal forms of care and assistance from which those at the 'moral periphery' are more often excluded.

Managing everyday (in)securities: Normative values, emotional security and symbolic recognition in the lives of Russian rural elders

“…Nonetheless most of my previous research has taken place in urban settings and issues of access, the gradual establishment of trust as well as questions about my autonomy as a researcher and my responsibilities to my hosts were challenged in this smaller, and more remote rural setting. I have explored these issues in detail in a previous article in this journal (Kay, 2011). 10 The former discussion of demographic change notwithstanding Burla's relatively stable birth rate and a degree of in-migration from surrounding villages means that the overall population has declined only slightly over the past decades, and hardly fits the profile of a 'dying village'.…”

Understanding care for the poor in rural Russia

“…The social security structures in the countryside, despite claiming to be "open for all", tend to distinguish between more personalised care for certain needy groups and formalised forms of care for others (Kay, 2011). However, the care-centred theory discussed earlier challenges the distinction between the public (formal) and private (informal) spaces of care.…”

“…There is a certain overlap between informal and formal mechanisms within the CSS in terms of providing help for the poor: although many of these formal provisions are specifically not about care, they include some informal practices of care mediating normative claims about access to resources. As other scholars of rural Russia note (Steinberg, 2005;Kay, 2011), discursive frameworks, representations of the poor and formal approaches to care often define roles and responsibilities of caregivers, differentiate access to care and reinforce existing inequalities. Care-centred theory can provide different understandings of meaning of care and help to evaluate and critique policy decisions centred on rationalist and impartial notions of welfare for the poor (Popke, 2006).…”

Beyond the Global Care Chain: Boundaries, Institutions and Ethics of Care

“…In such logics, state-provided care, which either in the industrial welfare state or socialist welfare used to be considered a matter of citizen entitlements or social rights, is being reconceptualized as a sign of dependency and thus stigmatized. Access to state welfare such as means-tested benefits and cash transfers creates a boundary between the deserving and undeserving while constructing communities of needs that are made accountable for their problems (Kay 2011;Cho 2013). In China and Vietnam, individuals and families who are in receipt of such benefits are deemed lacking in 'human quality' (Nguyen and Chen 2017); they either lack access to kin-based care or to the economic, social and symbolic capital to secure future security.…”