On the common sense of social reproduction: social assistance and ideologies of care in austerity Europe

In this article, we examine the mobilization, justification, and enactment of ideologies of care and social reproduction in the field of religious charity-based social assistance in Italy and Portugal under austerity. Our framework combines the feminist critique of the naturalization of gendered inequalities with Gramsci’s notion of common sense. Drawing on ethnographic research in two mid-size cities in Italy (Brindisi) and Portugal (Setúbal), we address, from a comparative perspective, changes in the model of welfare redistribution enhanced by implementing austerity policies. We aim to illuminate how the gendered domestic sphere and the expansion of religious charities under austerity are tight together through ideologies of care and social reproduction, becoming operative in the concrete management of welfare redistribution and integral to the implementation and legitimation of emerging austerity welfare regimes. Focusing on the everyday and mundane tasks of charity work, we show the existence of a relational continuum between the gendered domestic sphere and charity voluntary work. We provide evidence of how naturalized visions and patterns of care inherent in family ideologies are transferred into the sphere of social assistance, hence recasting as moral and practical regulatory principles of welfare distribution. Finally, we show how the common sense of social reproduction ultimately becomes instrumental in the regressive naturalization of poverty at the core of the exclusionary and discriminatory patterns of welfare distribution.