This is episode eight of the Disobedient Buildings podcast, an AHRC funded project at the University of Oxford.
Our focus is on the everyday lives of people living in ageing blocks of flats in three European countries the UK, Romania and Norway.
My name is Inge Daniels,
and in this episode I will be joined by Anna Andersen and Gabriela Nicolescu to further explore some of the key issues raised in season one.
We will discuss what welfare actually means in our three film sites.
In episode five, Jackie Peacock from Advice for Renters expresses her concern about the demise of the welfare state in the UK.
Somebody had come along one day, one day and said in an election manifesto, We're going to rip up the welfare state.
They would never have got elected, but it got salami sliced. So every single little slice people haven't noticed.
We don't have a welfare state in this country anymore.
That's why I am bringing the people who are suffering now to get them to understand this isn't inevitable.
We could have a welfare state again. Of course, the weakening of this relationship of trust, if you will,
between citizens and their governments in Europe over the past 40 years, is also central to our project.
The three countries we study each represent an example of the European welfare
state that is struggling with social and economic challenges on the ground.
And this in turn, of course, has a huge impact on the everyday health and well-being of the inhabitants of the blocks we study.
So how would you summarise the major changes to the welfare systems that have taken place in Romania and Norway over the past 30-40 years?
In Romania, I think the change from a socialist state to liberal and neo liberal government was so drastic
that people cannot even really imagine what was the effect on the everyday lives of people.
For example, the social protection benefits that are usually transfers in cash or in kind made to relieve households and individuals
of the burden of one or more social risks or needs in Romania are calculated based on the income from 2008.
But the income from how many years ago? 13.
It's so different from the needs of the people today.
So four hundred thousand people that receive these social protection benefits of struggle really to live with the amount they receive.
Other than that, there are 11000 people who have no employment or no benefits at all.
And the question that might be obvious is why it could be that they don't know how to apply for these benefits.
There are not enough people employed to explain and to help them get these benefits, but it's also possible that they work on the black market.
This meaning even different, very different sites, including agriculture, and to be paid by date.
This is in sharp contrast with how the situation of the social protection was during state socialism,
where in theory the state catered to for everybody and work was mandatory.
In fact, it was a kind of urban legend.
If if a policeman or policewoman would would see somebody on the street during a work time or work hour and that person would not go to work,
they would be taken from the street and put into prison. Work was mandatory and this is interesting because through work,
people would receive accommodation in flats built by the state so they would rent from the state or people would live in flats that they would buy.
But these flats would be projects designed and run by state enterprises.
So one can summarise and say that in socialist Romania, there was workfare and not welfare.
But after the change of the regime in 1990s in Eastern Europe, the state withdrew massively from the life of its citizens.
The flats that were previously rented were bought by those who rented them, usually at very small prices.
State companies collapsed slowly. Public hospitals education was underfunded for 30 years.
In theory, all employees benefited from public services. But in reality, the salaries of doctors, nurses, professors and many others.
You know, previous state institutions were so small that some people would tell me a story.
They didn't have enough money to buy food and put on the table. I think the shift from state socialism to capitalism.
It's visible on the life of people living in the blocks in small cities in Romania, but also in Bucharest.
Yeah. And I mean, in the Norwegian context, although you have traces of what we today would call the the welfare states back to like the 19th century,
the model that we know today was very much developed post-war and then gained a foothold in the immediate past
four years when Norway was suffering from being at war for five years and having to rebuild the country.
And I mean, there are certain traits about this welfare state that are quite clear, such as the fact that the welfare system in Norway is universal.
So that means that it is for for everyone and it's not means tested.
So even if you're very, very rich, you can get access to this and these services, and it's it's a guarantee basically for its members.
But in case of illness or any unforeseen life events, unemployment, ageing and so on, then you would be taken care of.
And this care could either be benefits or it could be services such as hospitals or public schools and and so on.
And another key thing is that the services provided by the state should be of high quality.
So it shouldn't be the fact that richer people could go to private services and get quicker or better care.
The state should be able to offer the same services, and that is also true to even out the playing field.
It's a very comprehensive system embedded in many areas of society.
And the idea is that, you know, difference in income and wealth and services available to you should be quite equal throughout the country.
In the 70s and 80s, the system did start receiving criticism,
especially from the right wing politicians arguing that, you know, the state had too much of a control,
saying that, you know,
these support systems could potentially lead to people not working and people not bothering to work and contribute because you had the support system.
Another thing is, you know, over the today compared to what it was like in 1945 today, would you have a lot more immigration?
Would you also see an increased ageing population? And that is putting pressure on the social welfare system in Norway.
And I think this system is continuing to be developed and changing and definitely discussed and debated.
So in the UK than the welfare system and perhaps can be traced back if you want
to a broad set of social services for people who could not care for themselves.
With this, I mean, like the elderly, children and mothers, in a way, it was enshrined in what's called the poor law.
This is a law that went to various transformations since the 17th century and that
stresses a criminal responsibility for the less fortunate members of our society.
However, it's after World War Two that we really see the development of a Social Security
system that provides a protection for all citizens from the cradle to the grave.
The system consists of four cornerstones, which is public provisioning of education, so we shall security, health care and housing.
And the most well known example is, of course, the NHS or the National Health Service,
which was established in 1948 and which still 95 percent of the population in the UK makes use of the service, which is quite amazing.
I think it's based on needs and it's free for all at the point of delivery.
This Social Security system is paid for through taxation, at least partly paid for.
I think it's called National Insurance contributions. That is a tax on earnings and profits that old people that work paid and in exchange,
they are entitled for certain benefits like unemployment, disability support, pensions or maternity leave.
However, like we've heard in the other two countries in in the UK as well, they were from the start already actually many cracks in the system.
So it's been argued that it was mainly the middle classes who actually have profited from the welfare state.
If you want and millions of people already right after the war continued to live in poverty during the 1960s,
there were the first critiques of talking about the longevity and the validity of this system.
But it's actually during the 1980s, particularly that we see a real decline of the welfare state,
and this was linked with a growing belief that the self-regulating market economy is the way forward.
And this has been called the so-called neoliberal turn or neoliberalism.
And in the UK, this is very much associated with Thatcher, but it also has been embraced, for example, by New Labour since the 1990s.
What did this actually consist of? Well, first of all, it was the privatisation of a huge number of state owned assets.
And if you want, this is still happening today and during my field work again and again,
participants would point out to me when we did or when I did their walks with them,
they would point out buildings, public buildings that had been recently sold off to the private sector.
Examples are buildings that why I was a trainee nurses, police officers, families, actually GP services.
So actually where the doctor doctors, we would see you.
These buildings have been sold off on mosques and been turned into hotels, destroyed or expensive private flats, if you want.
So it's kind of interesting how this process is still ongoing.
Another way in which we see this decline of the welfare state is to the outsourcing of public services to private companies,
but also the deregulation and decline in social and environmental responsibilities.
And of. The current issues surrounding climate change and global warming is one consequence of that.
And the letter that we asked people to write about what worried them, many,
many people mentioned actually climate change and global warming and privatisation or the decline of the welfare state.
So it's interesting that it is a topic that is quite alive in people's everyday conversations as well, I think.
But I also want to point out that in episode two, Danny Dorling, a professor of geography at the University of Oxford,
also discussed these consequences of these changes that have happened over the past four decades,
which in the UK was coupled with what we call austerity politics.
So policies and this has led to a huge economic inequality with the gap between
the extremely rich and the extremely poor only growing and more recently,
perhaps this has led to anti-globalization, anti-immigration sentiment and eventually that culminating in what we call Brexit.
Thank you for listening to the Disobedient Buildings podcast. Edited by Anna Andersen and produced by Jack Soper.
If you want to hear more,
go to our website on WW dot disobedient buildings dot com or search for a podcast where you normally find your podcasts in the next episode.
The Disobedient Buildings team will discuss what the impact has been of neoliberal reforms on housing in London, Bucharest and Oslo.