Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-jkksz Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T15:16:40.384Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Discontents of Reform: Boundary Work and Welfare Stigma at Mixed Elder Homes in China

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 April 2014

HAIJING DAI
HAIJING DAI*
Affiliation:
Department of Social Work, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, NT, Hong Kong SAR, The People's Republic of China email: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

During the 1990s’ welfare reforms in China, which highlighted budgetary cuts and decentralisation, local governments in Taizhou, Zhejiang Province, placed self-financing elders in public welfare homes or sent the ‘Three Nos’ (no children, no income and no relatives) elders on public assistance to the emerging non-governmental elder institutions, so as to strategise their public spending. Using ethnographic data collected at the reformed mixed elder homes, this article examines how physical, social and cultural boundary work is constructed and maintained during the everyday interactions of the paying elders and the public clients on welfare. The self-financing customers, through their efforts of distinction, stigmatise the ‘Three Nos’ elders as incompetent, irresponsible and dependent individuals of low quality, and condemn their incompatibility with the regional market prosperity. The elders on public welfare, although marginalised at the institutions, adopt the ideals of collectivity, equality and reciprocity under state socialism as their persistent yet weak resistance. While previous research hails the welfare reforms for introducing diverse funding mechanisms and innovative service models, this study of the antagonistic boundary work at mixed welfare institutions calls for an assessment of the class hierarchy and social inequality that have appeared in the post-reform era.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Social Policy , Volume 43 , Issue 3 , July 2014 , pp. 497 - 515
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Burawoy, M. (1998), ‘The extended case method’, Sociological Theory, 16: 1, 4–33.Google Scholar
Chang, K. (2003), ‘Market socialism and ruralist welfare reform in post-Mao China’, Development and Society, 32: 2, 147–171.Google Scholar
Chen, S. (1996), Social Policy of the Economic State and Community Care in Chinese Culture: Aging, Family, Urban Change, and the Socialist Welfare Pluralism, Avebury, NY: Brookfield.Google Scholar
China Broadcasting Network (2013), ‘Ministry of Civil Affairs: elders who have lost their only child will be supported by the state as the “Three Nos” elders’, http://jiangsu.china.com.cn/html/jsnews/gnxw/58136_1.html (retrieved 17 April 2013).Google Scholar
China National Committee on Ageing (2012), ‘Extra beds, care centers planned for seniors’, http://www.cncaprc.gov.cn/en/info/1753.html (retrieved 17 April 2013).Google Scholar
Croll, E. (1999), ‘Social welfare reform: trends and tensions’, The China Quarterly, 159: 684–699.Google Scholar
Dai, H. (forthcoming), ‘Care for whom: diverse institutional orientations of non-governmental elder homes in contemporary China’, The British Journal of Social Work.Google Scholar
Davis, D. and Wang, F. (2009), Creating Wealth and Poverty in Postsocialist China, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
DeParle, J. (2004), American Dream: Three Women, Ten Kids, and A Nation's Drive to End Welfare, New York, NY: Viking Books.Google Scholar
Giles, J. and Mu, R. (2007), ‘Elderly parent health and the migration decisions of adult children: evidence from rural China’, Demography, 44: 2, 265–88.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Gustafsson, B. and Zhong, W. (2000), ‘How and why has poverty in China changed? A study based on micro data for 1988 and 1995’, The China Quarterly, 164: 983–1006.Google Scholar
Hancock, A. (2004), The Politics of Disgust: The Public Identity of the Welfare State, New York, NY: Penguin.Google Scholar
Hebel, J. (2003), ‘Social welfare in rural China’, Journal of Peasant Studies, 30: 224–251.Google Scholar
Huang, Y. (2008), Capitalism with Chinese Characteristics: Entrepreneurship and the State, Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jackson, J. (2001), Harlemworld: Doing Race and Class in Contemporary Black America, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Kefelas, M. (2002), The Last Garden: Culture and Place in a White Working Class Chicago Neighborhood, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Lamont, M. (2000), The Dignity of Working Men: Morality and the Boundaries of Race, Class, and Immigration, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Lamont, M. and Molnar, V. (2002), ‘The study of boundaries in the social sciences’, Annual Review of Sociology, 28: 167–195.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lan, P. (2003), ‘Negotiating social boundaries and private zones: the micropolitics of employing migrant domestic workers’, Social Problems, 50: 4, 525–549.Google Scholar
Li, L., Long, Y., Essex, E., Sui, Y. and Gao, L. (2012), ‘Elderly Chinese and their family caregivers’ perceptions of good care: a qualitative study in Shandong, China’, Journal of Gerontological Social Work, 55: 7, 609–625.Google Scholar
Ministry of Civil Affairs (2002), China Social Welfare, Beijing: Ministry of Civil Affairs.Google Scholar
Ministry of Civil Affairs (2012), China Social Welfare, Beijing: Ministry of Civil Affairs.Google Scholar
Mu, G. (2011), ‘Senior citizens need better treatment’, China Daily Asia Weekly, 14–20 January.Google Scholar
Myles, J. and Quadagno, J. (2002), ‘Political theories of the welfare state’, Social Service Review, 76: 1, 34–57.Google Scholar
National Bureau of Statistics of China (2010), Census 2010, Beijing: China Statistics Press.Google Scholar
Nipper-Eng, C. (1995), Home and Work: Negotiating Boundaries through Everyday Life, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Ozyegin, G. (2001), Untidy Gender: Domestic Work in Turkey, Philadelphia: Temple University Press.Google Scholar
Saich, T. (2008), Providing Public Goods in Transitional China, New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
Shang, X. (2001), ‘Moving toward a multi-level and multi-pillar system: changes in institutional care in two Chinese cities’, Journal of Social Policy, 30: 2, 259–281.Google Scholar
Shang, X. and Wu, X. (2004), ‘Changing approaches of social protection: social assistance reform in urban China’, Journal of Social Policy and Society, 3: 3, 259–271.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Swidler, A. (2001), Talk of Love: How Culture Matters, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Seccombe, K. (2011), So You Think I Drive a Cadillac? Welfare Recipients’ Perspectives on the System and its Reform, Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon.Google Scholar
Seccombe, K. and Hoffman, K. (2007), Just Don't Get Sick: Access to Health Care in the Aftermath of Welfare Reform, Piscataway, NJ: Rutgers University Press.Google Scholar
Whyte, M. (2010), Myth of the Social Volcano: Perceptions of Inequality and Distributive Injustice in Contemporary China, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Zhan, H., Feng, X. and Luo, B. (2008), ‘Placing elderly parents in institutions in urban China: a reinterpretation of filial piety’, Research on Aging, 30: 5, 543–571.Google Scholar
Zhan, H., Liu, G., Guan, X. and Bai, H. (2006), ‘Recent developments in institutional elder care in China: changing concepts and attitudes’, Journal of Aging and Social Policy, 18: 2, 85–108.Google Scholar