Who matters, for better and for worse? Personal networks in an international perspective

Jacques-Antoine Gauthier, currently visiting CRFR from the University of Lausanne, summarises the research he presented at a recent CRFR Informal Seminar.

What do we know about the conditions that favour or hamper the ways in which individuals get connected to each other in a significant way? Are personal networks influenced by life course transitions such as marriage and parenthood (or their absence)? Do they change from one country to another?  

A recently published book (Wall, Widmer, Gauthier, Česnuitytė, & Gouveia, 2018) based on a study carried out in Lithuania, Portugal and Switzerland offers some new insights on these issues by asking the question Who are the individuals who, over the past year, have been very important to you, even if you do not get along well with them? First, despite variations over time and place, the research underlines that close relationships continue to form the base of personal networks, challenging the idea of a global decline of the family through the process of individualisation.

This study shows that the closeness between individuals is the result of multiple influences. It is often built over time through co-residence, couple and intergenerational relationships. It also depends on the way cohabitation, birth outside wedlock, childlessness or same sex-marriage are socially perceived and by the place given to friendship and colleagueship. More generally, gender, generation and social class remain influential regarding how close one feels to somebody else. An additional effect may be also attributable to welfare states when considering how their singular historical, social, and normative contexts influence the construction of their citizens’ personal networks.

In Switzerland, long-term stable and wealthy living conditions are associated with liberal policies and ideologies supporting individualised behaviours. At the same time, enduring conservative forces support a rather traditional dynamic of family life and gendered division of labour. Hence, high importance is attributed to friendship and colleagueship within more traditional interdependencies associated with marriage and parenthood.

In Portugal, a long period of low welfare provision associated with a right-wing dictatorship favoured strong intergenerational solidarities and patriarchal models of the family, later thoroughly transformed by the emergence of new family forms and more gender-equal representations. As a result, personal networks are now more adaptable and differentiated. While open to friends, kin and non-kin relationships are combined in a much less exclusive way compared to the other two countries.

In Lithuania, personal networks reflect the hardship and uncertainties associated with the former Soviet occupation and its aftermath. Political instability and economic unrest lead to mass migration and day-to-day struggles, favouring new normative frames focused on pro-traditional family values and policies. Compared with Switzerland and Portugal, personal networks in Lithuania are smaller and less open to non-kin relationships. Despite their smaller size and strong kin orientation, they provide weaker emotional support, which makes them also less cohesive.

The book sheds new light on the complexity of the contexts and conditions potentially influencing the ways in which personal networks are constructed. In particular it shows that their diversity is predominantly shaped by historical and social factors on which private individuals have only a limited influence. 

Jacques-Antoine Gauthier
Universities of Lausanne and Edinburgh

 Jacques-Antoine.Gauthier@unil.ch


Reference

Wall, K., Widmer, E. D., Gauthier, J.-A., Česnuitytė, V., & Gouveia, R. (Éd.). (2018). Families and Personal Networks An International Comparative Perspective. Palgrave McMillan. 
Full text version available at: https://link.springer.com/book/10.1057%2F978-1-349-95263-2

Integrating children’s services: exploring practice through comparison

A new project, affiliated with What Works Scotland, to explore how local authorities integrate children's services will be the focus of an CRFR informal seminar on 21 January. In this blog Stefanie Schmachtel-Maxfield introduces the project and extends an invitation to two WWS local authority learning partners and others to participate.

How do local authorities implement integrated children’s services? Who is involved? What governance structures and processes are needed to help with the implementation? And what challenges and dilemmas does the implementation pose to local authority professionals? These questions are at the core of a new project affiliated with What Works Scotland (WWS) to explore the governance practices and challenges in local authorities of implementing integrated children’s services.

Existing studies of local partnership repeatedly stress the crucial yet complex role of local authority leadership in implementing partnership-based policies. Leadership in this context involves the difficult and paradoxical juggle between taking authority, acting as moderator and engaging in egalitarian participation. On one hand, leaders have to ensure the implementation of integrated policies, account for it, and provide sufficient guidance and structure so, for instance, everyone has an opportunity to participate. One the other they also have to moderate partnerships whilst also acting as just one stakeholder amongst several. Local authorities also occupy an intermediate position between the central government and diverse localities, which means they face direct pressures from both ‘above’ and ‘below’. Despite these findings about the complexity of leadership in this context, little research has been done on the local authority level investigating the implementation of integrated children’s services. Such research can serve the dual role of exploring the issues whilst also providing valuable opportunity and space for local authority professionals to collectively and in situ reflect on these challenges.

This WWS affiliated project will take a comparative approach to address these issues. Comparison, if conducted in a collaborative situated way, offers considerable underexplored potential as a form of learning for local authority professionals. Traditional comparative policy research is often done solely by researchers ‘from above’, and is often located at the macro level, comparing how whole states differ in their policies and ways of governing. This makes it difficult for comparative policy research to connect with the specific situations on the local level. Yet, if we change how we think about comparison and build it around concrete problems and dilemmas of local authority professionals, we can make it much more relevant locally and transform it into learning possibilities. But how exactly can such a comparison ‘from within’ look like and how does it work?

The idea is relatively simple. It needs (for starters) two partnering teams from different Scottish local authorities who are already engaging in the strategic leadership of integrated children’s services and who are open for a ‘dilemma swap’. This ‘dilemma swap’ is embedded in a three-step procedure which is conducted as a series of three workshops in each locality: in the first meeting, each team decides upon a core dilemma in implementing integrated children’s services for the other team to work upon. In the second workshop, the teams work on each other’s dilemma. The third workshop is dedicated to reflect on the leaning that took place through working on the other team’s dilemma and through receiving their responses to the own dilemma.

When working on a solution of someone else’s problem, our own issues and perspectives inevitably come into play. In putting ourselves into the shoes of others, we are comparing ourselves with others – and in doing so, we can become aware of own ways of thinking about and dealing with problems. We might be surprised about certain aspects which might then provoke us to rethink our own problem focus. Comparison helps to reveal tacit assumptions that become accessible only through taking the issue out of the context. But we might also find out what we value and like to retain and build upon (Hetherington, 2002). More generally, leadership and more specifically, developing leadership in the way described, becomes a collective endeavour. This offers an alternative to the still prevalent approach of developing the ‘heroic individual local authority leader’: one that might contribute to the wellbeing of local authority professionals.

I am looking for two local authority partners to participate in this project from the WWS learning partners. However, if you are interested but are not a learning partner or if you have further questions or comments on this project, please get in touch (stefanie.schmachtel@ed.ac.uk).

I am hosting a free informal seminar on 21 January 2015 (12.30-1.30pm, CRFR, University of Edinburgh) to discuss and develop this project further. To book please email: Brenda.saetta@ed.ac.uk.


References
Freeman, Richard; Mangez, Eric (2013): For a (self-)critical comparison. Critical Policy Studies, 7(2), 198-206.

Hetherington, Rachel (2002): Learning from Difference. Comparing Child Welfare Systems. Partnerships for Children and Families Project. Social Work, Wilfried Laurier University. Waterloo, Ontario, Canada.