Decolonization and the European Welfare State by Dr. Emil Wolff
In their talk, dr. Wolff addresses decolonization in the context of the European welfare state. In Europe, the first three decades after the Second World War saw both the ‘Golden Age of welfare expansion’ and the most decisive phase of decolonization, with several million people moving from colony to empire. The coincidence of these two phenomena is puzzling: In the public sphere and in welfare state scholarship, the notion that immigration threatens welfare states is prevalent and proliferating. These anxieties are predicated on the notion that migrants introduce cultural diversity, which in turn frustrates the development of trust and solidarity. However, decolonisation prompted the migration of several millions from colony to European metropole. Postcolonial migrations clearly did not obstruct redistributive efforts at the height of Europe’s “Golden Age” of welfare expansion. Why not? How did welfare expansion and decolonization, two colossal developments in European political life of the postwar period, coexist? What traces did coloniality leave on the modern welfare state, one of Europe’s proudest twentieth century accomplishments?
These anxieties are predicated on the notion that migrants introduce cultural diversity, which in turn frustrates the development of trust and solidarity. However, decolonisation prompted the migration of several millions from colony to European metropole. Postcolonial migrations clearly did not obstruct redistributive efforts at the height of Europe’s “Golden Age” of welfare expansion. Why not? How did welfare expansion and decolonization, two colossal developments in European political life of the postwar period, coexist? What traces did coloniality leave on the modern welfare state, one of Europe’s proudest twentieth century accomplishments?
These questions form the animating force of this presentation, which provides an overview of how agents of the welfare state in the three biggest overseas colonial empires of the twentieth century - Britain, France, and the Netherlands - accommodated postcolonial migrants from the Caribbean, Algeria and Indonesia respectively from 1945 to 1971. Wolff shows how in France and the Netherlands, welfare was administered through loose assemblages of care and surveillance that assisted, disciplined and penalised different migrant populations in different ways depending on their proximity to a racialised notion of the cultural insider. In the UK, where welfare infrastructure was less nimble, street-level bureaucrats under-served their recipients of colour, politicians stripped entry rights from overseas citizens, and officials ultimately handed over confidential data to border police. In essence, the welfare state ultimately became a partner in external border control. Each case suggests that contrary to the terms of popular debate, welfare chauvinism is not the welfare state’s only answer to migration.
What
Decolonization and the European Welfare State by Dr. Emil Wolff
When
12 May 2026, 15.30-17.00 hrs, followed by drinks (location TBD)
Where
REC B5.12, Common Room Anthropology (Roeterseiland, B-building, 5th floor).
If you are not able to join in person, you can also follow the talk and discussion via the live stream (with the option to pose a question in the chat).
The talks
Martha Kapazoglou’s talk ‘At the frontline of the state: Negotiating the social contract in Thessaloniki’s municipal food provision services’ will propose a fresh approach to studying frontline service providers.
Anthropologists increasingly approach fraught encounters at the frontline of local welfare services through the lens of deservingness (Koch 2021; Tošić and Streinzer 2022). They foreground frontline workers’ position as gatekeepers who arbitrate citizens’ access to scarce state resources through moralizing judgements, thereby extending compassion to some, whilst treating others contemptuously. Drawing on 10 months of fieldwork in Thessaloniki’s municipal food provision services, I complicate these insights by ethnographically unpacking frontline workers’ positionality vis-à-vis the Greek state as their employer. I explore how municipal workers got stuck in precarious jobs, left alone to navigate material impoverishment and denigrating working conditions, which rendered them socioeconomically proximate to beneficiaries. This proximity rankled: it generated anxieties over workers’ own déclassement, casting doubt on their status as state representatives. In the face of such disconcerting closeness, often obscured in the deservingness framing, we can understand workers’ animosity as a mechanism of disavowal, aimed at (re-)inscribing firmer boundaries with beneficiaries. Attending to how different subject positions take shape in relation to the state enables me to consider not only the moral, but also the political contestations unfolding in frontline encounters. I focus on beneficiaries’ complaints about the food they received, examining how these generated heated negotiations over the social contract—what the state ought to provide and its responsibilities to poor citizens (Burnyeat and Sheild Johansson 2022). Ultimately, I argue that an anthropology of frontline work can move beyond questions of moral agency and presumed dichotomies between frontline workers and the poor to illuminate how state-citizen relations are negotiated and crafted in everyday welfare encounters.
Vénicia Sananès’ talk ‘How to build a society (and other things welfare policy takes for granted)’ will take a microscope to welfare policy’s taken-for-granted social foundations.
Welfare reform speaks the language of participation, proximity, neighbourliness, self-reliance and community. Residents should help one another. Professionals should work closer to people. Communities should become more resilient. Institutions should rebuild trust. Yet these ambitions quietly presume a social world already capable of carrying them: willing neighbours, active residents, familiar professionals and relationships strong enough to sustain social assistance. In other words, contemporary welfare increasingly relies on a social world it often assumes is already there.
My (upcoming!) PhD dissertation, Under Construction, starts from the opposite end. Based on ethnographic fieldwork across three welfare organisations in Amsterdam, I follow the professionals and volunteers tasked with making these promises work in practice. They search for “good neighbours,” facilitate participation, calibrate vulnerability, recruit familiar faces, coordinate across fragmented organisations, knock on closed doors and occasionally spend an extraordinary amount of time arguing about mugs. These mundane activities reveal a reversal at the heart of contemporary welfare. Rather than society simply providing the social resources on which welfare can draw, welfare professionals increasingly find themselves building, repairing and maintaining the very social world their interventions presuppose. Moving through neighbourly matches, community rooms, meeting tables and doorsteps, this presentation asks what becomes visible when policy ideals such as participation and proximity are treated not as starting conditions, but as practical achievements. If welfare increasingly has to happen through society, who is actually building the society it needs – and how?
Dr. Emil Wolff's bio
Emil Wolff is an Assistant Professor at the Institute of Public Administration at Leiden University. They use historical sociology and critical political economy to study the persistent convergence of economic and racial inequalities.
Welfare Futures Seminar Upcoming Events
June 2026 (exact date TBD): Summerson Carr
