How does the state create subjects of welfare? A historical analysis

The dissertation answers the question “How does the state create subjects of welfare?” via a comparative historical analysis delivered by three research papers. Each paper explores the construction of social groups by the welfare state during time periods spanning 1880-2020. Through the exploration of laws and other policy documents, parliamentary discourses and secondary literature, the dissertation explores the categories that define social groups and analyzes their transformations through a comparative approach. The dissertation’s contribution is threefold: first, it challenges the traditional framing of subjects of welfare via their position in the job market by social policy literature. Results expose the evolving and multidimensional character of the construction of welfare subjects over the past 140 years in old age protection. Second, the dissertation advances existing research through the production of a novel comparison and case study, that show the long term historical evolution of the welfare state’s ideas about the conditionality and deservingness of subjects of welfare in the particular case of survivors’ benefits. Third, the dissertation provides a contribution to the study of the historical relations of gender and welfare through the study of the construction of gendered subjects of welfare in survivors’ benefits. This is explored particularly in terms of men and women’s relationship to paid and unpaid work.