Evelien Tonkens

• Distinguished Research Professor
• Professor (Full) at University of Humanistic Studies

Dit betoog gaat over de relatie tussen burgerraden en populisme. Het is geschreven vanuit de zorg dat 'deliberatieve' democraten soms naïef zijn, en onderschatten dat burgerraden als een vooruit-geschoven post van technocratie kunnen worden gezien. En daarmee vanuit maatschappelijk oogpunt eerder bijdragen aan problemen dan aan oplossingen. Achter...

It is not uncommon that women residing in Dutch shelters following domestic violence consider returning to their partners during the course of their stay. Social workers cannot prohibit return due to the importance of the client’s autonomy, as stated in the Code of Ethics. Simultaneously, social workers aim to ensure women’s safety and encourage a...

While emerging right-wing populist voices are calling to prevent the arrival of refugees and their integration, volunteers perform solidarity by performing activities to support refugee integration. Most studies on these forms of solidarity in diversity focus on the quality and effectiveness of the activities. The emotional labor involved has recei...

Over the last decades, western mental healthcare has increasingly been governed by market and bureaucratic principles. As a consequence, therapists are faced with conflicting demands and decreased autonomy. This study examines how they cope and whether their strategies suffice. Drawing on the direct experience of therapists through interviews, we d...

Introduction: Alongside the logic of care, many Western welfare states have introduced market elements or a logic of choice in their healthcare systems, which has led to consumerist behavior in patients. For the medical field, it is well documented how consumerism creates complex ethical dilemmas and undermines ways of thinking and acting crucial t...

Dichotomisation between winners and losers is a prominent element of the debate on globalisation, with ordinary workers often considered losers. However, little is known about what workers make of globalisation, how they experience the phenomenon, and how they talk about it. We use a set of focus groups to explore meaning-making on the globalisatio...

Het afgelopen jaar voerden de onderzoekers een grondige overzichtsstudie uit naar burgerparticipatie-initiatieven in Europa, in opdracht van Charge, het nieuwe wetenschappelijk bureau van Volt. Het onderzoek omvat de Europese burgerparticipatie-initiatieven die de afgelopen tien jaar zijn beschreven in de wetenschappelijke literatuur. Ook de grijze...

Zorg voor ons allemaal Yasmin is op uitnodiging van de Nederlandse regering met driedui-zend andere Iraanse en Afghaanse vrouwen naar Nederland gekomen en hee hier een opleiding tot verzorgende gevolgd. Ze hee een j-ne baan: zinvol werk, fatsoenlijk betaald, een vast contract, leuke col-lega's, en veel invloed op hoe ze haar werk uitvoert, met vold...

In The Netherlands, women who experience domestic violence can rely on public policies that aim to support them, such as shelters. Drawing on the lived experiences, through 10 interviews and observations, of women with different cultural backgrounds and nationalities staying in a shelter, and on 37 interviews with social workers working with these...

Wat betekent het toenemend samenwerken van zorg- en welzijnsinstellingen voor burgers? In hoeverre en onder welke voorwaarden hebben burgers er profijt of juist last van? De dominante gedachte achter de toename aan netwerken (van zorg en welzijnsinstellingen en andere partners zoals gemeenten of woningcorporaties) is dat netwerken bijdragen aan mee...

The Democratic Potential of Community-Based Initiatives As governments in Western Europe have retreated from providing public services over the past decades, they have stimulated communities to take over many of these services. This has resulted in, among other things, a plethora of community-based initiatives (CBIs). CBIs are heralded by some for...

There is now a lot of talk about the ‘safe’ classroom, and more generally about the ‘safe’ society, as the two are obviously connected. It may raise some eyebrows that there is even a need for such talk (instead of only a need for action). After all, surely no one is willing to defend bullying, sexism, racism, or the use of violence in education? I...

Little is known regarding the ways in which practitioners’ views and approaches impact support for persons with a migration background (PwM) caring for individuals with dementia. This paper responds to this knowledge gap by identifying how practitioners frame dementia care in families with a migration background, and how these frames can be underst...

Since 2015 Dutch street-level bureaucrats have ample discretionary space to determine how to help clients. Simultaneously, resources were reduced. According to Zacka SLBs should avoid three pathological positions: indifference, caregiving, and enforcing. At the individual level SLBs supposedly accomplish that by a gymnastics of the self. We observe...

For more than fifteen years, frontline workers in the Netherlands have facilitated civic initiatives by practicing a ‘modest approach’ that can be seen as an example of democratic professionalism as developed by Albert Dzur. In this paper we empirically explore the understudied topic of how the implementation of this modest approach affects frontli...

De blinde vlek The most relevant part of a discussion is not what is discussed but what cannot be spoken of. The real taboos are those for which it is taboo to call them taboos. The status quo defines itself as non-ideological while denouncing any challenge to itself as radical. Therefore the column ‘De blinde vlek’ frames the framers, politicizes...

In many European countries, including the Netherlands, current care policies encourage ‘active citizens’ to support each other rather than having individuals rely on paid professional help. Rehabilitation centres also put greater emphasis on social networks assisting adults with acquired long‐term disabilities and their caregivers. Often these adul...

Full participation is recognized as fundamental for the inclusion and wellbeing of people with intellectual disabilities. Only few studies have identified subjective meanings of participation from the perspective of people with intellectual disabilities themselves. Three cross-cutting themes that arise in the few studies that have are choice, socia...

Background and objectives: Previous studies show that persons with a migration background (PwM) caring for a family member with dementia often experience access barriers to formal care services, and that family carers often perform the lion's share of care. Yet research offering a detailed account on their experiences of dementia care-sharing is sp...

The needs of carers are still poorly understood in medical rehabilitation research. This article explores the lived experience of carers and the adverse effects of caring throughout the different phases of the rehabilitation care trajectory in the Netherlands, based on in-depth interviews with couples where one partner has acquired brain injury or...

Citizens’ initiatives in times of crisis: An investigation into the factors that influence the durability of citizens’ initiatives In the Netherlands, citizens’ initiatives have received a lot of praise and are increasingly made responsible for providing public services. If they are to fulfil this role, they must be able to weather a crisis, as dur...

Family group conferencing (FGC) is considered to be a promising method for empowerment and community building of people in need of care and their families. However, empirical studies on the effects of FGC show mixed results, and often fail to explain these. In this article, we critically reflect under which conditions FGCs may or may not become suc...

Wat een wonderlijke situatie. Ondanks ieders beste bedoelingen en alle maatregelen tegen bureaucratische rompslomp lijkt voortgaande bureaucratisering onstuitbaar en onuitroeibaar. Zelfs nieuw beleid, gemaakt met dat in het achterhoofd, is vaak niet minder bureaucratisch. De zorgverzekeringswet uit 2006 heeft de bureaucratie in de zorg verder vergr...

Jacobson (Social Science & Medicine 64:292–302, 2007) finds two distinct meanings of “dignity” in the literature on dignity and health: (1) intrinsic human dignity and (2) social dignity constituted through interactions with caregivers. Especially the latter has been central in empirical health research and warrants further exploration. This articl...

This paper examines the prevalence of the ideal of “independence” in intellectual disability care in the Netherlands. It responds to a number of scholars who have interrogated this ideal through the lens of Michel Foucault’s vocabulary of governmentality. Such analyses hold that the goal of “becoming independent” subjects people with intellectual d...

Samenvatting Dit essay richt zich op de vraag hoe de bijstand rechtvaardiger kan: hoe kunnen baankansen voor bijstandsgerechtigden vergroot worden en hoe kan het bestaan in de bijstand rechtvaardiger? Onder rechtvaardigheid verstaan we, in navolging van politiek filosofe Nancy Fraser: herverdeling, erkenning en vertegenwoordiging. Op basis van rece...

In dit boek vragen bijstandsonderzoekers zich af of hoe rechtvaardig de bijstand ruim vijftig jaar later is. Worden mensen in de bijstand rechtvaardig behandeld? Ervaren bijstandsgerechtigden de bijstand nog steeds als een recht? Hoe ervaren zij de tegenprestatie en de ‘activering’? En hoe kijken uitvoerende klantmanagers hier tegenaan?

Dependency is fundamental to caring relationships. However, given that dependency implies asymmetry, it also brings moral problems for nursing. In nursing theory and theories of care, dependency tends to be framed as a problem of self-determination-a tendency that is mirrored in contemporary policy and practice. This paper argues that this problem...

According to the International Federation of Social Workers, social work has always been a human rights profession. However, the legalistic language of human rights is often found to be of limited use in the everyday practice of social workers. This article offers a practical and relatable translation of human rights language by operationalising th...

Design principles for better citizen participation Citizen participation is a regular feature of recent legislation and policymaking. However, more often than not, the goals of participation remain implicit. As a consequence, exclusion mechanisms well known from the literature keep coming back. A current example is the Dutch Environment and Plannin...

In many countries in north‐western Europe, the welfare state is changing, and governments expect a great deal of informal care. In the Netherlands, citizens are also increasingly expected to rely on informal instead of professional care. In this study, we aim to determine to what extent Dutch care‐dependent people want to rely on social network mem...

Background and objectives: By shedding light on the reasons why persons with a migration background (PwM) may take up the role of family caregiver of a person with dementia, and how this relates to gender norms, we aim to elucidate cultural and social dynamics that impede care sharing. Research design and methods: A qualitative study of 12 PwM w...

Werknotitie voor Eerste Kamer over burgerparticipatie, in verband met bespreking van Omgevingswet

Aftrap voor een expertmeeting op 11 oktober '19 te Leiden. "Waar houdt participatie het leven dragelijk en waar maakt participatie het leven beter?"

This paper discusses a case study of a Dutch work-integration social enterprise (WISE) to add to the debate on the contribution of employment to the citizenship of intellectually disabled people and those experiencing mental health conditions. In current welfare state policies, the value of labour market participation is narrowed down to regular em...

Recent work has pointed to the importance for their social inclusion of convivial encounters between people with and without disabilities, but little is known about the spatial and social conditions of the places that encourage these encounters. This paper is concerned with public places that are conducive for convivial encounters between people wi...

Social workers are often depicted as street-level bureaucrats (SLBs) or professionals interchangeably. However, to find out how social workers relate to new policy measures, a clear distinction between SLBs and professionals is helpful. Ideal–typical SLBs subscribe to new policies although they may diverge from them in practice, to accommodate clie...

The past decades have witnessed growing interest in the concept of recognition, in social movements as well as in social theory. While the ‘recognition turn’ has made recognition a cornerstone in social and political philosophy, empirical interest – in sociology, anthropology and business studies – remains limited and has mainly focused on misrecog...

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In this chapter, we analyze the interactions between local governments and citizens’ initiatives. In the Netherlands, local governments take up the role of civic enabler based on a modest approach that leaves citizens room to invent and design initiatives on what they deem to be public issues by facilitating and activating their efforts. We focus o...

Het bestuur komt dichter bij de burgers en kan beter naar hen luisteren. Hulpverleners komen dichter bij burgers en kunnen hen daardoor sneller en effectiever helpen. En burgers komen elkaar meer nabij: ze gaan meer voor elkaar en hun buurt zorgen en worden daardoor 'zelfredzamer'. Dat zijn drie beloften van de herziening van de Nederlandse verzorg...

Een belangrijke pijler van de verhuiselijking van zorg en hulp is het aanspreken en inschakelen van iemands naaste sociale omgeving. Hulp door professionele krachten van formele organisaties moet waar mogelijk vervangen worden door informele hulp van mensen uit hun eigen omgeving. Die omgeving wordt in beleidsnota’s aangeduid met de term ‘sociaal n...

In dit artikel onderzoeken we de emotionele dimensie van de herziening van de verzorgingsstaat. We betogen dat hier sprake is van een nieuw arrangement van professionaliteit en burgerschap, dat we in navolging van enkele andere auteurs ‘affectief burgerschap’ noemen. We onderzoeken de politieke emoties die hierbij in het geding gebracht worden. Hoe...

Meer ‘zelfredzaamheid’ is een centraal uitgangspunt in de herziening van de verzorgingsstaat. Ogenschijnlijk gaan sociaal werkers daarin mee, maar er is veel stil verzet. Dat constateren Marc Hoijtink, Evelien Tonkens en Jan Willem Duyvendak naar aanleiding van meerjarig onderzoek naar sociale wijkteams.

This article focuses on experiences of welfare recipients summoned to do volunteer work. Proponents of ‘workfare volunteerism’ argue that it leads to empowerment and employability while critics dismiss it as disempowering, stigmatising, and disciplining. Our longitudinal qualitative inquiry into experiences of sixty-six ‘workfare volunteers’ in the...

Recent decades have witnessed mounting attention to the theme of recognition, both in public policy and in the academic world. Scholarly debate on recognition is dominated by philosophers, while the policy debate is dominated by political and educational perspectives. A sociological perspective has scarcely been developed. In this article, we appro...

In activation work – supporting jobless people to perform activities that are supposed to lead them back to paid work – a personalised approach is deemed crucial. What a personalised approach entails, however, remains unclear. In this article, we try to further develop the notion of a personalised approach in activation work, by analysing Dutch wor...

In urban neighbourhoods, there is an enduring problem with inequality in participation. Middle-aged, higher educated, white men are often overrepresented. Research indicates that front-line workers can play an important role to reach and activate underrepresented groups, but there is little evidence on how they manage (or fail) to do so. In this ar...

Wanneer voel jij je respectloos behandeld? Als er niet naar je geluisterd wordt? Er wordt gedaan alsof je nog een kind bent? Als je een negatief stempel krijgt? Er wordt gedaan alsof je eng bent? Gevaarlijk bent? Een soort monster? Als mensen dwars door je heen kijken, alsof je niet bestaat? Als je – in plaats van als mens – behandeld wordt als een...

How the participation style in local youth councils contributes to the civic engagement of young people Local youth councils are increasingly seen as suitable places for young people to come together and act on issues of public concern. However, little is known about the style of young people’s participation in councils and whether they do indeed f...

Hoe komt het toch dat onze relatief genereuze verzorgingsstaat vaak geen effectieve hulp biedt aan mensen die de voorzieningen het hardst nodig hebben? Waardoor belanden velen dus ondanks hulp keer op keer in schulden, armoede en isolement? Aan de hand van ervaringen van eenouder gezinnen (i.c. moeders) in de bijstand betogen we dat deze mismatch ee...

Shifts from professionals to volunteers are observed across national contexts and in various types of public services, particularly in long-term care and social work. This article examines how professionals and volunteers in the Netherlands perform boundary work to construct, maintain and dissolve boundaries between them in the context of social se...

‘Protecting our culture’ has become common code in Western Europe to deny immigrants full citizenship. By ‘full citizenship’ we mean not only enjoying the legal rights that come with citizenship but being recognized symbolically and emotionally as co-citizens. As will become clear in this book, it has recently become much harder for immigrants to a...

Governments of contemporary welfare states call upon citizens to care for people with psychiatric or intellectual disabilities. This is deemed sensible and morally just. However, social–psychological theory suggests that stereotyping may stand in the way of engaging into contact. Sociological theory suggests that the giving of help is based on eith...

http://www.palgrave.com/us/book/9781137534095 The notion of citizenship has gradually evolved from being simply a legal status or practice to a deep sentiment. Belonging, or feeling at home, has become a requirement. This groundbreaking book analyzes how 'feeling rules' are developed and applied to migrants, who are increasingly expected to express...

In een meritocratie zijn individuen zelf verantwoordelijk voor hun lot. In een meritocratie telt wat jij als individu presteert, in vergelijking tot wat andere individuen presteren. Hoe ervaren mensen het om te verliezen in de maatschappelijke wedstrijd die meritocratie heet? Krijgen zij onvoldoende respect, 'liefde van de wereld' (De Botton, 2004), en ond...

Zorg, welz n, onderw s en veiligheid als verhandelbare producten. De burger als consument, de professional als producent, af te rekenen via meetbare targets. Deze neoliberale noties hebben hun langste t d gehad. Ze vormen een aanslag op bezieling, vertrouwen en burgerschap in de publieke sector. Evelien Tonkens bespreekt in haar oratie drie wegen v...

Een van de belangrijkste belo en van de decentralisaties van het sociaal domein is democratisering. In het publieke debat gaat het daar zelden over. Daar gaat het meestal over mogelijke en actuele tekorten aan zorg en hulp. Je zou daarom bijna vergeten dat met de decentralisaties ook een fundamenteel andere , meer democratische verhouding tussen bu...

The value of voluntary care in meeting minor care needs is greatly emphasized in the Dutch Social Support Act (Wet Maatschappelijke Ondersteuning, WMO). Many positive qualities are attributed to voluntary care, which would allegedly be lacking in professional, nonmedical care provision. In the process of policy reform, the opinions of caredependent...

Many European welfare states are replacing comprehensive welfare schemes with selective and conditional entitlements. Such changes affect the recognition of vulnerable citizens' needs, which are increasingly framed as private responsibilities to be met by the voluntary sector. Repeated interviews with 30 clients affected by cutbacks to publicly fin...

People with intellectual disabilities or psychiatric disorders who live in ordinary neighbourhoods often have little contact with fellow residents without disabilities. Recent research suggests that we should not strive for warm contacts based on familiarity and shared values between utterly different groups in urban areas. Daily life between peopl...

Het gaat niet goed met onze democratie, volgens kenners. Maar er is één lichtpuntje en dat is de lokale inzet door burgers zelf. Waar burgers zelf hun handen uit de mouwen steken, ontstaat positieve energie. Aan gemeenteraad en bestuur vooral de taak om ‘los te laten’. Deze studie kijkt naar een aantal plekken waar men de lokale democratie vernieuw...

Academisch gezien is ‘actief burgerschap’ een vreemde formulering. Een Franse collega vond het zelfs een pleonasme: burgerschap is voor Fransen altijd actief, zei ze. Maar in de wereld van Nederlands en Europees beleid was en is actief burgerschap een zeer geliefd begrip.

This paper explores the way community groups, central to new systems of local governance, are related to local institutions and how those relations influence them. We draw from two theoreti-cal approaches – behavioural and institutional – that offer different answers to the question: what makes community groups thrive? Based on an analysis of 386 c...

Wederkerigheid en tegenprestatie zijn centrale nieuwe idealen in de hedendaagse herziening van de verzorgingsstaat; ook bij de drie decentralisaties keren deze idealen veelvuldig terug. Hoe ervaren burgers dit? In hoeverre vinden mensen deze eis redelijk of zelfs aantrekkelijk, en onder welke voorwaarden willen zij iets terugdoen? In dit hoofdstuk...

Vrijwilligerswerk staat prominent op de agenda van politiek en beleid. 5 Vooral in het gemeentelijk zorg- en welzijnsbeleid zijn de verwachtingen van de inzet van vrijwilligers hooggespannen. De hoop is dat vrijwilligers veel taken en verantwoordelijkheden op zich nemen die nu nog bij betaalde krachten liggen, en deze taken liefst ook helemaal over...

Aims: During this presentation we examine whether active citizens are heeding government calls to care for their more vulnerable fellow citizens (people with mental or psychiatric disabilities). We explore sociological mechanisms such as ‘like looks for like’ and ‘reciprocity’ and how these influence the development and survival of contacts between...

Met de invoering van de Wmo, wordt veel verwacht van de buurt als plek om de ondersteuning van mensen met een verstandelijke beperking of psychiatrische achtergrond vorm te geven. Het moet een plek zijn waar men samenhangende zorg en hulp kan krijgen, niet alleen van professionele organisaties maar ook van buren en buurtbewoners. Maar hoe reëel is...

This article contributes to our empirical understanding of self-respect in rising meritocracies by focusing on the experiences of unemployed, low-skilled people recruited as workfare volunteers in the Netherlands. As many theorists have argued, the long-term unemployed struggle to maintain self-esteem. We found that workfare projects that introduce...

The provision of services in the contractual welfare state is conditional. If one wants to receive a service, one has to comply with the demands of the provider. If one fails to do so, the organisation threatens to terminate its services, and indeed often does so. There are, however, people who breach their contracts time after time, falling back i...

Welfare state retrenchment and its corollary, the encouragement of ‘active citizenship’, are widespread phenomena in Western countries today. While public and academic debates have focused on the practical consequences of changing rules and shrinking entitlements, there has been much less attention on how citizens experience these reforms and their...

Begin deze eeuw waren er grote zorgen over de kloof tussen burgers en instituties. Politici en bestuurders besloten om beter naar mensen te gaan luisteren. Wethouders gingen gezellig ontbijten met bewoners, gemeentes ontwikkelden ‘burgervriendelijke’ diensten en maakten budget vrij voor bewonersparticipatie. Bewoners werden uitgenodigd om actief te...

De afgelopen jaren hebben wijkinstituties – zoals overheid, woningcorporaties, welzijnsinstellingen en zorginstellingen – toenadering gezocht tot burgers. De inzet daarbij was samenwerking in plaats van strijd, aandacht in plaats van afstand, nabijheid in plaats van verlating. Instituties gingen nu eindelijk eens echt luisteren naar burgers en burg...

Bij achterstandswijken rijst al snel het beeld op van problemen en spanningen tussen bewoners. Die zijn er wel, maar de spanningen tussen bewoners en instituties zijn minstens zo groot, vooral als bewoners actief zijn geworden in hun wijk. Hun positieve ervaringen hebben ook vaak betrekking op deze instituties. Wij onderzochten in de drie wijken di...

Begin deze eeuw waren er grote zorgen over de kloof tussen burgers en bestuur. Politici en bestuurders besloten om beter naar de mensen te gaan luisteren. Wethouders gingen gezellig ontbijten met bewoners, gemeentes kregen budget en middelen voor burgerparticipatie. Bewoners werden uitgenodigd om actief mee te doen in hun wijk. Veel mensen gaven a...

How do professionals respond to the commodification of health care? Using an interactionist perspective, we answer this question by referring to the findings of five qualitative studies of hospital surgeons, mental health-care professionals, emergency and ambulance personnel, and youth workers in the Netherlands. We find that differential levels of...

Deinstitutionalisation has not only made the social inclusion of clients a key objective in long-term mental healthcare, it may also affect the role of the care professional. This article investigates whether the social inclusion objective clashes with other long-standing professional values, specifically when clients give gifts to care professiona...

This article reviews how activation policies frame citizens as individual welfare agents. The analysis focuses on the framing of feeling rules employed by governments that encourage active citizenship, in this instance in the Netherlands and England. In England, encouraging voluntarism is central to the Big Society agenda; in the Netherlands, it is...

Dit waren de ‘tien geboden' voor de leerling-mijnwerker aan de Ondergrondse Vakschool. Het zijn eerder deugden dan geboden: er staat niet wat de mijnwerker moet doen maar wat een goede mijnwerker wil zijn. Of beter: wilde zijn. Dit deugdenlijstje hangt niet voor niets achter glas, in een vitrine van het Heerlense mijnwerkmuseum. Met de mijnwerker z...