‘Is there a place for ‘community’? Transnational governance, post-socialist authoritarianism, and deinstitutionalization in a child protection NGO in Hungary’

Zakariás Ildikó, Kovai Melinda, Kovai Cecília és Kerényi Szabina tanulmánya
International Journal of Sociology

Absztrakt

With a focus on processes of community building from above and deinstitutionalization, the paper explores how concepts of transnational policymaking become localized in particular societal contexts. Specifically, through a case of recent transformations in a child-protection NGO in Hungary, it inquires into professional discourses of ‘deinstitutionalization’ and ‘community-based care’ in the context of post-socialist authoritarianism. The analysis exposes how financial scarcity pressured the management of the NGO to redefine family-community-institution boundaries, to legitimize the downsizing of services and staff, and to reassign childcare duties to less-paid and less-recognized positions. Austerity measures disguised as emancipatory processes of deinstitutionalization have already been described in numerous European contexts. To nuance this picture, we show how discourses of the East-West slope of modernization emerging in Central-Eastern Europe, and recent discourses of familisation and carefare dominating pubic policies in Hungary enhance such discursive shifts. Through the case study the authors draw attention to the role of professional and political discourses, transnational and national, in reinforcing restricted imaginaries of care. They also formulate the call for empirical analyses on how the caring for children unfold into hybrid – state and civic dominated – contexts, in practice, beyond simplistic and essentialising ideological categorisations of ‘family’, ‘community’ and ‘institution’.