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The purpose of this paper is to examine the relation between estate transformations produced during the governments of the Citizen Revolution (CR) in Ecuador (2007-2017) and welfare regime transformations.

The CR’s project registers an array of specificities that make it a relevant case study to understand it. Among them, it articulated the transformation of the development model with a comprehensive state reform: emphasized both the modernization of the state and the productive structure, and the creation of the basic pillars of a welfare state. The ambitious project materialized in an ambivalent manner, revealing accomplishments and limitations.

The recovery of resources for the state, the efficient organization of resources, decentralization and deconcentration processes, public administration transformations and policy de-corporatization processes accompanied and even propelled important achievements in the social sphere in terms of decommodification, stratification, commodification and defamiliarization. Ecuador’s starting point, as a small and impoverished country with pubic and communal goods and services dismantled through neoliberal reforms, was quite precarious. But, progress was made. Beyond the identified limitations, its accomplishments must be highlighted because they are novel in comparison to other progressive government experiences, especially in the context of Central Andean countries.

This article vindicates the need to link state transformation processes to welfare regime transformations, as well as the academic literature that informs both fields. The description of what took place in Ecuador in the field of social welfare during the ten years of the CR continues to confirm the theoretical potential of the concept of welfare regime with the necessary translations and appropriations that allow for the analysis of countries in the region. It enables an approach to a more theoretically and methodologically elusive object that is at the same time tremendously potent in analytical terms and in its contributions to social transformations. An object that alludes to areas gravely affected during neoliberal hegemony, linked to public institutionality, state capacity and state autonomy. This is why everything that affects the state and the management of public goods and services must be incorporated into the analysis.

This paper considers the role of nonhuman animals in the thought of Donna Haraway, going from her critique of the animal as model/mirror for the evolution of the human body politic to her proposal for a “compost” society. It demonstrates her changing positions in relation to the social role of animals and the deepening of her critique of intersectional relations that subordinate nonhuman animals and animalized people.

The paper intertwines a loosely historical approach and a thematic one, focusing on key issues of sociological theory, such as work, agency and kinship, and the way these relate to the animal question in Haraway's writings. Her texts are discussed both broadly and in-depth, and her positionality in terms of both feminism and antispeciesism is foregrounded.

The paper shows how the progressive abandonment of a posthuman approach in favor of a compostist one brings Haraway nearer to intersectional ecofeminism and to a fuller consideration of nonhuman agency at a material level, as well as to a deeper critique of instrumental relations of domination and issue that had been problematic in critiques of her earlier work.

The paper highlights the role of nonhumans in the evolution and constitution of societies and advocates a response-able multispecies politics.

This paper offers a comprehensive analysis of the social role of animals in Haraway's thought and the deepening antispeciesism of her feminist approach that sheds a different light on her positionality in relation to ecofeminism.

The production of the ‘good life’ or the ‘less bad-life’ (Berlant, 2007, 2011), especially among generations of the Marcos dictatorship and the Epifanio de los Santos Avenue revolutions (henceforth, EDSA revolutions) in the Philippines, is animated by the ‘mobility imperative’ (Farrugia, 2016). The mobility imperative includes processes that encourage or demand mobility (Farrugia, 2016) for individuals and institutions. It figures in various ‘systems of practice’ (Levitt, 1998, 2001) among families in migrant-sending communities, government and corporations that magnify how migration is the ticket to better life (McKay, 2012) or its glorification as a heroic act (de los Reyes, 2013, 2014). Among the generations of the Martial Law and the EDSA revolutions, therefore, the ‘good life’ is hinged upon departure as professionals (e.g. nurses and engineers), workers in elementary occupations (e.g. construction and domestic workers) or mail-order brides or pen pals. Put simply, the good life in these generations is a function of remittances.

This chapter examines how the contemporary generation of young people construct the ‘good life’ in differential and new terms (de los Reyes, 2023; McKay & Brady, 2005) from previous generations. Using interviews and vision boards of left-behind children (15–18 years old), it argues that left-behind children critically appraise the ‘mobility imperative’. The chapter shows that there is a growing imagination of alternatives to the migration-induced good life among left-behind children, and therefore, they gradually refuse the ‘mobility imperative’. For them, the aspired good life consists of potentially being employees or entrepreneurs in their own villages and living a life with their own families (de los Reyes, 2019, 2020).

This article aims to present aspects related to women’s personal life and work illustrated in the TV series Most Beautiful Thing (Coisa Mais Linda, in Portuguese).

To this end, a film analysis was carried out considering the first season of the TV series Most Beautiful Thing, and to analyze the data, qualitative content analysis was used according to Bardin (2006).

The analysis showed that women’s struggles were and are distinct. While white women are fighting for the right to work - concomitantly reconciling their roles as mother, wife and housewife -, black and poor women fight for survival and dignity. As result, the film analysis showed that women’s search for a different social position is related to an inherent cultural aspect. It is relevant to mention herein that this struggle remains up to the present; such struggle is characterized by the occultation of the social role played by women.

As a limitation, there are few studies that address the theme of white and black women during the period reported in the series.

The main contribution of this article is the use of a filming product that portrays the 1950s, but bringing current discussions on the role of women in society, especially regarding the labor market, the patriarchal domination of men, prejudice, racial, and class discrimination.

This paper explores the perceptions and experiences of women and men who work as informal waste collectors in four different cities. The purpose of this paper is to map out how and to what extent occupational, political-legal, economic and social dynamics are experienced differently by gender in a highly vulnerable segment of the urban informal economy, and explore gender differences in these workers’ coping strategies and the levels of action they develop to protect their livelihoods.

The analysis is based on a mixed methods study which combined a quantitative survey of informal workers with a qualitative participatory methodology. Study participants were drawn from a purposive sample of informal workers who belong to, or are affiliated with, membership-based workers’ organisations. The sample consists of waste pickers (n=614) from Belo Horizonte, Brazil; Bogotá, Colombia; Durban, South Africa; and Nakuru, Kenya.

The data show that despite significant differences between women and men upon entry into (informal) employment, their perceptions of key drivers and impacts are largely similar, with the exception of concerns around various types of physical security among women. They also indicate that levels of action among men and women waste pickers are only moderately influenced by gender, but are strongly influenced by the degree of organisation in the sector and the symbolic assets held by workers. The findings also illustrate the way in which gendered power dynamics operate within the informal recycling sector and how different levels of sector organisation and development often contribute to opportunities for collective action and, in turn, a reduction in gendered vulnerabilities.

The study offers a new policy angle which connects the level of sector organisation and development with the levels of action taken by informal workers in adapting to different types of shocks, as well as what this means in terms of gender empowerment.

The European H2020 Families_Share project aims at offering a grass-root approach and a co-designed platform supporting families for sharing time and tasks related to childcare, parenting, after-school and leisure activities and other household tasks. To achieve this objective, the Families_Share project has been built on current practices which are already leveraging on mutual help and support among families, such as Time Banks, Social Streets and self-organizing networks of parents active at the neighbourhood level and seek to harness the potential of ICT networks and mobile technologies to increase the effectiveness of participatory innovation. The aim of this paper is to present and discuss the Families_Share methodology and platform, as well as the results obtained by several partecipating communities in different European countries.

This paper discusses how the Families Share approach (CAPS project, Horizon 2020) is bringing the sharing economy to childcare. Families Share developed a co-caring approach and a co-designed digital welfare platform to support parents with sharing time and tasks related to childcare, after-school and leisure activities. Families Share conducted two iterative pilot experiments and related socio-economic evaluations in six European cities. More than 3,000 citizens were engaged in the co-design process through their local community organizations and more than 1,700 parents and children actively experimented with the approach by organizing collaborative childcare activities. The authors discuss the challenges and solutions of co-designing a socio-technical approach aimed at facilitating socially innovative childcare models, and how the Families Share approach, based on technology-supported co-production of childcare, may provide a new sustainable welfare model for municipalities and companies with respect to life––work balance.

The authors discuss the challenges and solutions of co-designing a technological tool aimed at facilitating socially innovative childcare models, and how the Families Share approach may provide a new sustainable welfare model for municipalities and companies with respect to work–life balance.

As a main difference with state-of-the-art proposals, Families_Share is aimed to provide support to networks of parents in the organization of self-managed activities, this way being orthogonal with respect either to social-network functionalities or to supply and demand services. Furthermore, Families_Share has been based on a participative approach for both the ICT platform and the overall structure.

The aim of the paper is to ethnographically detail the poverty-shame nexus in contemporary Spain, and to highlight the contradictions of the newly adopted consumption-based models of inclusion led by charities.

Drawing on 39 cases out of a sample of 78 gathered through two long-term research projects, the paper employs a mixed-methods approach that mainly draws on a multi-sited ethnographic approach and interviews.

The paper ethnographically documents major contradictions that shed light on the complex relationships between poverty, shame, work and consumption in modern societies.

This paper analyses the sources of shame in the experience of poverty and downward mobility, but also it opens new ground for understanding the complex poverty–shame nexus and lets some questions unanswered.

The contradictions highlighted shed light on the complex relationships between poverty, shame, work and consumption that may inform modern policies to fight poverty. Ethnography gives voice to these individuals that currently experience an increasingly precarious and unequal modern world.

The paper contributes to a better understanding of the processes that underlie modern poverty and downward social mobility and points out the contradictions generated by consumption-based models of inclusion.

While the poverty-shame nexus has been already analyzed from the point of view of stigma and exclusion from the labor market, the links between a growing consumerism and the neo-liberal values that underlie our modern societies are largely unexplored. The ethnographic contribution and the detailed case studies are also original in the case of Spain.

The purpose of this paper is to describe how migration affects the care of older people in Italy.

The paper is based on anthropological fieldwork by one of the authors. This consisted of in-depth interviews with 20 “badanti” (migrant caregivers), with relatives of older people and with social workers in the city of Verona, Italy. It further included extensive study of secondary materials on the topic of migrant care of older people.

Badanti, Italian families and older people find themselves locked in an uneasy contract: badanti because they are exploited and often unable to find better, formal employment; Italian families because they are aware that they fail to render their moral duty to their aged parents and grandparents; and older people because they feel neglected and maltreated by their children. Yet the three parties also rely on each other to make the best of a precarious situation. The relationship between badanti and Italian elderly highlights the contradictions within Italian politics on care and migration. This case study shows how migrants help Italian families to hold on to the tradition of family care for ageing parents.

The small sample of badanti and families provides a detailed and profound insight of the complexity of elder care in Italy but does not allow generalisation for developments in the country as a whole.

Policy makers should take notice of the indispensability of informal migrant care in present day Italy.

The originality of the paper lies in the in-depth conversations with badanti and in the way in which elderly care is contextualised in the Italian tradition of care and present day politics.