Debate regarding the relationship between individual and state has been prominent throughout the current UK government's term in office and localism has come to occupy a central role in current policy. This article argues that attempts to deliver this localist vision should focus on the critical role of social trust and that this is best developed through collaboration. The actions identified as necessary for delivering decentralisation are considered alongside a review of the view of localism articulated in Coalition policy. The article then explores collaboration and co-production as a means of strengthening social networks and delivering the promises of localism.

Two analytical tasks have been conducted in this article. The first is to construct a defamilisation typology that covers eighteen OECD members and four tiger economies (namely Hong Kong, Taiwan, South Korea and Singapore). The second is to demonstrate this typology's contribution to the debate on the existence of two essential preconditions for the development of an all-encompassing East Asian welfare regime: (1) the existence of significant differences in the welfare systems between the East Asian countries and the non-East Asian OECD countries; and (2) the existence of significant similarities in the welfare systems of the East Asian countries.

The focus of this article is on the ways in which emotions are engaged in the discursive construction and treatment of disabled people in receipt of social security benefits. The article draws upon the literature related to the social importance of emotions and that concerned with moral boundary drawing. It argues that the evocation of emotional reactions is crucial in understanding the ways in which changes to out-of-work benefits for disabled people (the development of Employment and Support Allowance) have recently been effected and the ways in which this has reflected a desire to more closely denote those judged able and not able to work in a redrawing of the ‘disability category’. While this has been done in the name of ‘inclusion’, the article concludes that its consequences are, in various ways, the ‘exclusion’ and stigmatisation of disabled people.

In welfare societies, disability pensions or incapacity benefits provide income security to people who, due to health problems or disability, are assessed as being unemployable. However, it is sometimes possible for people on disability pensions to work, for instance on a voluntary basis in and on behalf of associations of disabled people. This article applies perspectives on employability and discusses whether voluntary workers, like representatives of associations of disabled people, could have been employed in the ordinary labour market or whether there are definite characteristics of voluntary work which allow their capacity for work to be utilised.

This article describes an exploratory study of the Making Safe Scheme, which is a multi-agency initiative designed to provide a coordinated and integrated response to domestic violence by focusing on both victims and perpetrators. A key feature of the intervention is that it enables victims to remain in their own homes, provided it is considered safe to do so, and re-houses perpetrators. Consequently, the wrong-doer leaves the home and practitioners can work with families in their established communities to prevent further abuse. In 2008, the project was awarded the Butler Trust Public Protection Award for its innovative work with victims and offenders. The findings from this study focus on a number of themes: perpetrator accountability, the changing balance of power in abusive relationships and the increased opportunities for victims and their families to engage in recovery work whilst remaining in the family home.

Welfare state retrenchment and its corollary, the encouragement of ‘active citizenship’, are widespread phenomena in Western countries today. While public and academic debates have focused on the practical consequences of changing rules and shrinking entitlements, there has been much less attention on how citizens experience these reforms and their accompanying rhetoric. We know even less about how welfare reform impacts upon people's emotions. Such a focus, however, is important because the reform of the welfare state is about more than changing rights and duties. Reforms tell citizens what they are worth, how they are valued and judged, and how they are supposed to feel about the new arrangements.

This article reviews how activation policies frame citizens as individual welfare agents. The analysis focuses on the framing of feeling rules employed by governments that encourage active citizenship, in this instance in the Netherlands and England. In England, encouraging voluntarism is central to the Big Society agenda; in the Netherlands, it is at the heart of the 2007 Social Support Act and more recent ideas on citizenship. Governments cannot compel their citizens to volunteer their time; they can, however, try to seduce people by playing on their emotions. Based on an analysis of thirty-nine policy documents and political speeches, we find that English politicians employ ‘empowerment talk’ calculated to trigger positive feelings about being active citizens, while Dutch politicians employ ‘responsibility talk’ conveying negative feelings about failure to participate more actively in society. Responsibility talk runs the risk that citizens respond with counter-responsibility claims, whereas empowerment talk can fail to incite sufficient enthousiasm among citizens.

This article contributes to our empirical understanding of self-respect in rising meritocracies by focusing on the experiences of unemployed, low-skilled people recruited as workfare volunteers in the Netherlands. As many theorists have argued, the long-term unemployed struggle to maintain self-esteem. We found that workfare projects that introduce them to voluntary work can help them regain self-respect through four types of emotional labour: feeling respected through their newfound status, enjoying a craft, being able to perform in less stressful working environments, and taking pride in the meaning bestowed by voluntary work. But the emotional labour necessary to experience their situation more positively also increases the risk of experiencing negative emotions, thereby posing new threats to the fragile self-respect of unemployed citizens.

Choice is central to developments in many areas of welfare. Making choices, for example about health, social care, employment and housing, can be very emotional. This article draws on theories from experimental psychology and behavioural economics to analyse empirical evidence from a longitudinal, qualitative study of support-related choices. It argues that if people are expected to make emotion-laden choices, and to minimise negative aspects associated with the process of making a choice, they need to be supported in doing so. It contributes to the limited evidence and debate to date about the process costs to individuals of choice.

The provision of services in the contractual welfare state is conditional. If one wants to receive a service, one has to comply with the demands of the provider. If one fails to do so, the organisation threatens to terminate its services, and indeed often does so. There are, however, people who breach their contracts time after time, falling back into the same dire situation that prompted them to ask for help in the first place. Social workers must then visit these people to help them re-enter the contract. This article draws on an in-depth analysis of such ‘behind the front door’ policies, focussing on single mothers on welfare. It argues that for many single mothers on welfare, social security fails to provide emotional and relational security, which undermines their ability to fulfil the terms of the contract. So long as the welfare state is based on the idea of (material) social security, ‘behind the front door’ workers remain urgently needed.

Many European countries are experiencing a redistribution of care work from family members to paid migrant workers in private households. This involves not only a commodification of the practical tasks of care work, but also a redistribution of the emotional element of care. This study explores the emotional experiences of migrant care workers from Central Eastern Europe providing care work in private households in Austria. Based on a literature review and qualitative interviews with migrant care workers, the article investigates the emotional dimensions of migrant care work and the ways in which the regulatory context impacts on these dimensions.

This article examines how Dutch citizens with long-term care needs have used existing legal opportunities to respond to cuts in publicly financed care. Unexpectedly, most did not make use of their right to appeal the reduction or elimination of their previous entitlements, even when this led to marked problems in daily life. Thirty interviews with disabled and elderly persons and their care-givers revealed that specific social norms on how to feel about the cuts inhibited the lodging of appeals. Given the new policy's stated intention of preserving care for the most needy, many affected clients felt they had no right to be angry. Despite their (often objectively warranted) grievances, they did not appeal as breaking with the new moral code would trigger feelings of shame – of not being autonomous, of demanding too much when others are worse off, and of appearing ungrateful.

In this themed section, the editors and authors take us far beyond the usual thinking about welfare reform. How, they ask, do politicians want us to feel about welfare reform? How do we think we should feel and how do we feel about it? How does the disabled woman who has lost her government-provided caregiver and ‘hasn't been out of the house since Christmas’, feel about it? Or the man who petitions to restore his lost government aid – but fails to do so? Or the wealthy Dutch tax payer? These are are the sorts of questions that arise in the study of a changing welfare states.