Emotional and Relational Impoverishment: Social Unsustainability in the Welfare State

Nordic welfare states are often considered to be good examples of social sustainability due to progressive taxing policies, a generous provision of social security and general access to a relatively high standard of welfare services, not least professional care in welfare state institutions like nurseries, kindergartens, and hospital. But if we examine how care is provided and what care giving demands from professional care workers in these welfare state institutions, the picture looks different. In this thorough, empirical analysis of care and care work in the Danish welfare state we show how important resources for care – emotions and relations – are subject to systematic impoverishment. The Marxist notion of impoverishment serves as an analytical tool that sheds new light on the social sustainability of the Danish welfare state and reveals an unsustainable system that does not allow for professionals to recover emotionally and practice self-care. Instead, the work life of care professionals is full of relations with people in need of a care that is impossible for the care professionals to provide sufficiently. With this analysis, the chapter focuses on the emotional aspects of social sustainability