Abstract
This research project on third sector welfare provision is concerned with the relationship between solidarity and deservingness, a moralized assessment of whether a person is deemed to be deserving of support and access to social services. The research's central argument is that claims around who deserves what and why are intrinsically linked to practices of solidarity. While in some cases, deservingness claims serve to foster solidarity, in other instances they impede solidarity by delineating boundaries of in- and exclusion. The project investigates these concerns by studying practices and rationalities of various social enterprises, third sector organizations which pursue social goals by means of the market. In recent years, social enterprises have increasingly taken up a role as welfare provider alongside (or in absence of) the state. Occupying a locally negotiated middle ground between the private, public and non-profit sector, they are often promoted as key sites for community development and the battling of social exclusion. What kinds of solidarity can emerge in such a context, or why instead do solidarities fail to materialize? How do moralized assessments reverberate in everyday interactions, as well as seep into public discourse and policy-making spaces? That is what this research project aims to provide insights into.
Through an ethnographic study of different social economy initiatives which are active in the fields of housing and labor market integration and focus specifically on people with a migration background, the project seeks to investigate how deservingness acts as a moral assessment of distribution processes which reflects the limits of and hierarchies within logics and practices of solidarity. In doing so, it contributes to debates on the ambivalence of solidarity and the conditionality of social support in European welfare states, as well as the role of third sector organizations in engendering social change.
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