10. Neoliberal Care: From Welfare to Self-reliance

10. Neoliberal Care: From Welfare to Self-reliance

Welcome to Week 10 of Transforming Lives through Care. 


This week we turn our attention to neoliberal care—how care is reshaped when states withdraw from direct provision and individuals are expected to become self-reliant, responsible citizens. Neoliberal reforms reflect deeper changes in how care, personhood, and citizenship are understood. What happens to care when it is no longer a right, but a personal duty? 

🎯 Learning Goals

By the end of this week you should be able to
  • Examine how neoliberal reforms reshape understandings of personhood, care, and citizenship.
  • Critically reflect on the role of the state, family, and market in elder and disability care.
  • Compare Dutch reforms to Australian care frameworks, especially in the wake of austerity and marketisation.

🚦 Introduction

Neoliberalism: Although this week’s reading focuses primarily on care policy, it is also about changing ideas of citizenship and responsibility in the neoliberal era. As you read, consider: What kind of person is imagined in these reforms? What assumptions are made about autonomy, self-reliance, and community?

Barbara Da Roit and Josien de Klerk describe how Dutch elder care has changed across three major historical phases:

  • Pre-welfare state (before WWII): characterised by informal, family-based care networks.
  • Welfare state (post-WWII to 1980s): care became a professionalised right, separating the "heavy" aspects of care from intimate family life.
  • Post-welfare state (2007 onwards): under the banner of the "participation society," care is being re-familialised and moralised, framed as a duty of autonomous citizens within community networks.
These shifts are not merely administrative. They reflect a broader transformation in the way personhood and care are imagined in neoliberal contexts—where the ideal citizen is self-managing, resourceful, and embedded in informal networks rather than dependent on state provision

📚 Recommended Materials

To get a grip on what neoliberal proponents think, watch Nobel Prize winner Milton Friedman

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yhc63K7PNlg

You need to understand the way anthropologists and other social scientists critique neoliberalism.  We can't agree precisely on what neoliberalism is. But to get the broad outlines, you could:

To see another application of the neoliberal concept and to prepare you for the interactive activities, you could also:
  • Read my blog "Neoliberalism: Productive Aging", in which I use the neoliberalism concept to critique a newspaper article calling for the elderly to become productive entrepreneurs.

.📘 Essential Materials

Read da Roit & de Klerk (2014), “Heaviness, intensity and intimacy: Dutch elder care in the context of retrenchment of the welfare state,” Medicine Anthropology Theory, 1(1): 1–20. Da Roit and de Klerk trace how Dutch elder care has changed over time—from family-based support, to state-provided services, and now to a neoliberal "participation society" model. Under this model, citizens are expected to manage their own care through community and family networks. The authors argue that while this is framed as empowerment, it often shifts the burden of care—especially emotional and intimate care—back onto households, particularly women. Care becomes moralised, and dependency is reframed as a failure of citizenship.


🏁 Conclusion

Summary

Da Roit and de Klerk argue that care in the Netherlands has undergone a moral and structural transformation. The welfare state once enabled autonomy by relieving individuals of intimate, burdensome care responsibilities. Today, under neoliberal reform, the ideal citizen is self-reliant and embedded in informal care networks. The rhetoric of community and autonomy masks the renewed burden placed on families—particularly women—to care.

Significance

This case helps us see that care is not just about services—it is about ideas of the person, the family, and the state. The Dutch shift toward the “participation society” resonates globally, including in Australian debates about welfare, responsibility, and autonomy.

What’s Next

Next week, we explore self care in response to neoliberal reforms.

Further Research

To see how anthropologists apply the concept of neoliberalism, you could do worse than read:

  • Povinelli's "Indigenous Politics in Late-Liberalism", which I have summarised here
  • Gershons analysis of Uni students' use of social media using neoliberalism concept, summarised here. 

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