Social Welfare in the European Borderlands

Dr John Paul Newman is a member of the research team on the ERC project Social Welfare in the European Borderlands.

This project seeks to reframe the history of welfare and social care in modern Europe by restoring to view the contributions of local actors – primarily families and associations – to shaping welfare systems in three European borderlands: Galicia, the North-eastern Adriatic and the Franco/Belgian/German border regions from the late 19th century to the 1990s. SOCIOBORD will turn our attention to the co-construction of social assistance by public and private actors in three borderland contexts marked by social, cultural, economic, religious or ethnic diversity. Here, the reach of central states often fluctuated and a range of welfare structures, based on national, but also non-national forms of identity/solidarity (e.g., occupation or religion) flourished. By exploring social care in eastern, southeastern and northwestern European borderlands over an extended period of time we intend to examine similarities and divergences across a long 20th century, bringing the histories of welfare in east and west, socialist/post-socialist and liberal democratic regimes into dialogue with one another.