Voluntary Associations and the Welfare State: The Case of Contemporary Immigration Politics

Danning He, University of California, San Diego

This paper examines the ways in which contemporary voluntary action reflects welfare state concerns and logic. It traces the historical development of the British welfare state in relation to voluntary associations, starting from the nineteenth-century charitable social reform via the New Poor Law. Its legacy in the logics of abnormality and the non-participating citizen later shaped the idea of “scientific charity”, particularly for the Charity Organisation Society that sought to distinguish between the deserving and undeserving poor for relief distribution. The period of the late nineteenth century leading to the twentieth century saw the liberal reforms on welfare provisions. However, Thatcher-era neoliberal policies drastically changed how public spending was understood and deployed, and at the same time significantly altering the role of the voluntary sector. Situating in this historical account, I argue that the political advocacy discourse of contemporary voluntary associations retains the welfare state’s concerns with citizenship participation and deservingness. By examining recent immigration politics in the UK over the period of 2015-2025, I demonstrate that political advocacy concerning refugees, asylum, immigration detention, and human trafficking manifests beyond how it is fashioned in the migrant rights movement. I find that the project of voluntary associations is imagined as, on the one hand, one in which it justifies service provision as relieving the state from the burden of caring for categories of migration individuals; and on the other pressing for migrant rights into recognized forms of the citizen. This paper contributes to our understanding of how voluntary associations are positioned with the political economy today, while extending calls to reconsider the virtues of contemporary civil society against this reality.

No extended abstract or paper available

 Presented in Session 71. Civil Society and the Welfare State