People who comprise today's mass migrations are the embodiment of an increasingly hurtful planetary interconnectedness between towering inequalities and hegemonies and human lives. The humanitarian ...crisis has turned into a fundamental crisis of humanitarianism. The crisis of humanitarianism builds up by the state borders increasingly militarized, equipped with one manner or the other of securitization, seeking to externalize the migrating people. Further, the governments seek to institutionalize and spatially segregate the people, whilst the resident population is subjected to programmatic inciting of racism and xenophobia. Racist eurocentrism pictures the West as democratic, and migrant people as non-democratic; it does not distinguish between individuals and political regimes; does not take into consideration the emergency situations from which they flee: it is thus a form of armed humanitarianism. The Balkan countries which were part of the Balkan Refugee route have become prison countries, custodians of the EU border. They conserve the image of the dangerous Balkans and consolidate Balkanism. A complex social work response includes individual, institutional, curricular, and research levels of reflection and intervention.
A qualitative, mixed and partly covert research of the locally specific characteristics of deinstitutionalisation was carried out in Slovenia in 2015. The research showed that more than 20,000 adults ...with different disabilities still live in different long stay institutions and that there are not sufficient NGOs that would support community-based living. Deinstitutionalisation is viewed as a change for the worse and is therefore reduced to minor transformations of the existent long stay institutions, described in the study. The state worries that deinstitutionalisation would demand a more costly welfare system and the relatives of disabled people worry that deinstitutionalisation will increase privatisation of welfare and that the burden of care will fall on them, as is the case in many other post-socialist countries. Within the locally specific context of post-socialism, deinstitutionalisation needs to be a top-down social policy decision that will influence professional education in different areas of care work and will provide a re-training of the existing staff. The experiences of people who survived long stay institutions or still live in them need to become public knowledge, as learning from the lived experience might make the process of deinstitutionalisation more vibrant, efficient and useful for everyone. The study captured some of their experiences.
The transformations seen in women's active citizenship in Central and Eastern Europe mirror the social political and economic transformations in the region since the fall of communism at the end of ...the 1980s. This book challenges the universal notion of 'citizenship' by focusing on the diversity of situations women in this region have found themselves in since the end of the 1980s, looking at the challenges and struggles they have faced to assert themselves as citizens and their citizenship rights. Featuring detailed case studies which demonstrate the social and political discrimination between women that still exists, the book will be of interest to academics and post-graduate students in women's/gender studies, political sociology and European studies.
Contents: Introduction, Joanna Regulska, Jasmina Lukic, Darja Zavirsek. Part 1 Regimes: Romanian gender regimes and women's citizenship, Eniko Magyari-Vincze; Women and the law in Poland: towards active citizenship, Malgorzata Fuszara and Eleonora Zielinska; Citizenship, systemic change, and the gender division of labour in rural Hungary, Salvatore A. Engel-Di Mauro; Clashes and ordeals of women's citizenship in Central and Eastern Europe, Jacqueline Heinen; Gender equality in Latvia: achievements and challenges, Irina Novikova. Part 2 Agency: The parameters of the political: does meaning matter for participation in public life for women in Poland and in Ukraine?, Ann Graham and Joanna Regulska; Belgrade's protests 1996/97: from women in the movement to women's movement?, Marina Blagojevic; 'A right and a great need': food rights and praxis in Silesia, Poland, Anne C. Bellows; Disabled women everyday citizenship rights in East Europe: examples from Slovenia, Darja Zavirsek; The making of political responsibility: Hannah Arendt and/in the case of Serbia, Dasa Duhacek. Part 3 Transnational Dialogues: Poetics, politics and gender, Jasmina Lukic; Looking at Western Feminisms through the double lens of Eastern Europe and the Third World, Kornelia Slavova; Women's NGOs in Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union: the imperialist criticism, Nanette Funk; Cautionary tales, Ann Snitow; Epilogue: persisting struggles, Darja Zavirsek, Joanna Reguiska, Jasmina Lukic; Indexes.
Jasmina Lukic is a Recurrent Visiting Associate Professor in the Department of Gender Studies at the Central European University, Budapest, Hungary. Joanna Regulska is Professor of Women's and Gender Studies and Geography at Rutgers University, USA. Darja Zaviršek is Associate Professor of Disability and Gender Studies and teaches at the Faculty of Social Work, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia.
Independent Living in Post-Socialist Countries Zaviršek, Darja; Fischbach, Svenja
International Journal of Disability and Social Justice,
04/2023, Letnik:
3, Številka:
1
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
This article considers how, as a result of the persistence of familialism and paternalism, the legislative changes made in some Central and Eastern European countries (CEE), all of which have ...ratified the UN CRPD, mainly aim to: (a) incorporate the work of relatives in the home care of people with long-term disabilities and (b) place people who previously lived in large welfare institutions into smaller facilities (either in residential units for at least 25 persons or in group homes). None of these changes enables a radical shift toward independent living, and conversely, independent living as a philosophy and way of life is not yet a real alternative to family-based and paternalistic welfare provision in CEE. By extension, the social model of disability, which promotes dignity, respect, and self-determination to improve the lives of people with disabilities, remains an ‘alternative’ and a ‘radical way of thinking’ rather than being mainstream.
Collection centres and hot spots, asylum and detention centres for refugees are forms of institutionalisation and spatial segregation of people. The well-known processes of the "big confinement", ...biopolitics and the creation of "populations" are today pervaded with the ideologies of eurocentrism, culturalisation and cultural racism produced by the media. Compared with the processes of spatial segregation of the disabled in the past, one can conclude that while the deinstitutionalisation was achieved in the west and is in some countries on its way (in Slovenia for example), the institutionalisation of migrants and refugees takes place across Europe. Instead of the construction of the refugees as the national threat, health risk and the cultural Other, the measures of deinstitutionalisation and depathologisation of the refugees' lives are needed.
In the article, the authors pose a question: to what extent can we speak of social work practice in support of refugees in post-socialist Southeastern Europe given that in the region, which was part ...of the Balkans Humanitarian Corridor in 2015 and 2016, state-supported social work practice is very limited and very prescriptive at the same time? The vocal anti-refugee sentiment in Central and Southeastern Europe that accompanied the migrants can be said to stem from the nineteenth-century primordialism: the one-state, one-nation ideology that also was embedded in the very construction of post-socialist states after 1991. Consequently, refugees are seen as the ultimate danger to everything “ours,” to women, men, and children of purportedly pure-blooded ethnonational origin, threatening “our” transgenerational sense of cultural and pseudobiological homogeneity. The rising post-socialist ethnonational primordialism, intertwined with conservative neopatriarchal ideologies, directly affects human rights observance and social work education and practice. The predominantly government-funded social workers generally are neither trained nor encouraged to work with refugees, while the popular and party politics of hatred is directed toward those who support refugees, social workers included. Anti-refugee sentiment, culturalization, and neopatriarchy are rationalized with arguments of fear and care; protecting the cultural and biological homogeneity of native residents leads to processes that turn care into violence, and ultimately into coercive care.
Zavirsek analyzes how the communist leadership in Yugoslavia established social work education in the 1950s and the important place some women founders had in these time. In addition, some ...characteristics of social work education in the communist period, as well as their legacy in current social work practices, are discussed.
The work of disability activists and social service users has lead to a shift in the way disability is perceived in social work. The author examines this shift, from a medical model to a social ...model, from an international perspective. Adapted from the source document.
PDF
