Introduction

In this chapter, we explore how the changing politics of the third sector under austerity problematises minority women's intersectional social justice claims in Scotland, England and France. In particular, we examine how the transformation of the third sector in each country into a ‘governable terrain’ (Carmel and Harlock 2008) for state social welfare service delivery entrenches an ‘enterprise culture’ that valorises neoliberal principles and behaviours, which in turn undermines and misrecognises minority women's claims-making.

We define ‘enterprise’ as encompassing the values of ‘individualism, personal achievement … and the assumption of personal responsibility’ (Diochon and Anderson 2011: 96). We label the emerging neoliberal practices of the third sector as enterprising, as this seems to capture the twin processes of:

• • the privatisation of the state through the contracting out of social welfare services to an array of providers;

• • the remodelling of the third sector in the image of the private sector through the inculcation of values and practices related to competition, commodification and individualisation.

Enterprise is often used in the third sector as a synonym for innovation, risk-taking and dynamism. As we demonstrate in this chapter, the market-derived meanings for these terms have been obscured, and these ideas and organisational practices are being promulgated with little thought about what is being invoked (and what is being silenced) in their widespread use. The neoliberal colonisation of the third sector is not a new phenomenon. However, in this moment of economic crisis and instability, what is new, we argue, is the rapidity with which an enterprise culture is being adopted by (and in some cases foisted on) third sector organisations, in order for them to survive in a context of acute resource scarcity.

We begin by exploring the ‘governable terrain’ of the third sector in Scotland, England and France since the 1990s. It seems that once third sector organisations become the object of state policy – in our cases, as one of the key delivery mechanisms for state social welfare services – this has the (sometimes unintentional) effect of embedding marketised principles and practices, such as individualisation, competition and commodification, in the sector. As the principle of a ‘welfare mix’ becomes normalised in each country, the reality of having different welfare providers vying for state contracts seems to prompt isomorphic changes, whereby third sector organisations refashion themselves in the image of the private sector as a necessity for survival.