Jour Fixe with Prof. Sara Niedzwiecki on Wednesday, June 19, 2024

As the last event of our CRC 1342 Jour Fixe lecture series in the summer semester, Sara Niedzwiecki from the University of California, Santa Cruz, gave a lecture on "Immigrants and the Welfare State in Latin America. Barriers to access" on June 19, 2024. The lecture was not only attended by numerous colleagues on site, but could also be followed via video conference format.

Abstract:

Countries in the Global South experienced a massive increase in immigration in the past decade, with more migrants ending up there than in the Global North. Within South America, over seven million Venezuelans have left their country since 2015, leading to an extraordinary scale of intraregional migration. During these same years, and due to the expansion of social programs, millions of citizens in the region accessed basic income and better-quality healthcare, many for the first time. This talk studies these dual trends and analyzes whether social policies effectively incorporate immigrants. Failing to provide newcomers with a basic standard of living produces social exclusion. It shows that immigrants have more impediments to accessing the welfare state than citizens, even for universal public health, but especially for targeted social assistance. This derives from a combination of political elites’ views around the degree to which immigrants “deserve” access to different types of policies. The research focuses on the barriers that immigrants face to accessing social policy in middle-income South American countries with high rates of immigration—Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Colombia. Barriers to access are measured through qualitative coding of social assistance, social pensions, and public healthcare that build on legal documents, information requests, and secondary literature from 1990 to 2023, and public officials’ views are measured through in-depth interviews. In analyzing barriers to accessing social policy, this study contributes to the literatures on comparative welfare states and immigration, as well as comparative social policy in middle income countries. 

Sara Niedzwiecki is Associate Professor of Politics at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She studies social policy, subnational politics, and immigration in Latin America. Sara is the author of Uneven Social Policies: The Politics of Subnational Variation in Latin America (2018, Cambridge University Press), which was awarded LASA's Donna Lee Van Cott Book Award from The Political Institutions Section and the International Public Policy Association's IPPA Book Award. She also co-authored Measuring Regional Authority: A Postfunctionalist Theory of Governance (Oxford University Press, 2016). Sara has authored and co-authored articles in Comparative Political Studies, Electoral Studies, Latin American Politics and Society, Studies in Comparative International Development, Regional and Federal Studies, PS: Political Science and Politics, International Political Science Review, among other peer-reviewed journals. During 2020-2021 academic year, Sara was a fellow at the University of Notre Dame’s Kellogg Institute for International Studies where she worked on a new project on social policy and immigration in South America.

Website: saraniedzwiecki.com

Contact:
Prof. Dr. Delia González de Reufels
CRC 1342: Global Dynamics of Social Policy, Institut für Geschichtswissenschaft / FB 08
Universitäts-Boulevard 13
28359 Bremen
Phone: +49 421 218-67200
E-Mail: dgr@uni-bremen.de

Prof. Natalia Sobrevilla Perea, University of Kent

As part of the CRC 1342’s Jour Fixe, Prof. Natalia Sobrevilla Perea from the University of Kent presented her research on the social care network in the nineteenth century Peruvian army on 12th of July. In her presentation she gave insights into her forthcoming book "Armed citizens and citizens in arms, the military and the creation of Peru (1800-1870)" (Cambridge University Press).

She explained her findings, based on her historical research in different archives, on how the Peruvian army was the first state institution to provide specific social care networks regarding health care, retirement, survivors pensions as well as veteran’s pay. After the lecture, Natalia Sobrevilla Perea discussed with colleagues and students the origins, structures and processes that lead up to this unique development.

Natalia Sobrevilla Perea is Professor of Latin American History at the School of Languages and Cultures at the University of Kent. Her research interests include state formation and political culture in the Andes from the end of the colonial period throughout the nineteenth century, as well as issues of identity, race and ethnicity, and military culture in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in South America.

Publications:

Sobrevilla Perea, N. (2023) ‘The Abolition of Slavery in the South American Republics’, Slavery and Abolition. Taylor & Francis, pp. 90-108. doi: 10.1080/0144039X.2022.2122814.

Eastman, S. and Sobrevilla Perea, N. (2022) Independence and Nation-Building in Latin America. Race and Identity in the Crucible of War. New York, United States: Routledge. Available at: https://www.routledge.com/Independence-and-Nation-Building-in-Latin-America-Race-and-Identity-in/Eastman-Perea/p/book/9780367820718.

Sobrevilla Perea, N. (2023) ‘Emerging States’, in Posada-Carbo, E., Innes, J., and Philp, M. (eds) Re-imagining Democracy in Latin America and the Caribbean, 1780-1870. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Available at: https://global.oup.com/academic/product/re-imagining-democracy-in-latin-america-and-the-caribbean-1780-1870-9780197631577?cc=fi&lang=en&#.

Contact:
Prof. Dr. Delia González de Reufels
CRC 1342: Global Dynamics of Social Policy, Institut für Geschichtswissenschaft / FB 08
Universitäts-Boulevard 13
28359 Bremen
Phone: +49 421 218-67200
E-Mail: dgr@uni-bremen.de

Conference Report

In the aftermath of the Second World War, Winston Churchill advised in classic fashion: ‘Never let a good crisis go to waste’, and thus pointed to the potential any crisis entails. This was not lost on the attendees and presenters of the international conference "Economic Crises and Social Policy in the Twentieth Century" on December 1st and 2nd, 2022 which was organised by professors. Delia González de Reufels and Cornelius Torp as part of the CRC project B11.

At the centre of the conference were the two most important worldwide recession phases of the twentieth century: the Great Depression of the late 1920s and 1930s and the crisis-ridden period spanning the oil price shock of the early 1970s to the Asian financial crisis and the economic turmoil in Latin America at the end of the millennium. These shocks generated important impulses in social policy and the conference sought to shed light on these developments. This raised several important questions a to whether economic shocks were ever truly global in nature. And to what extent does the memory of previous crises shape responses to new economic downturns? Finally, what is their relationship to social policy? These overarching questions shaped the presentations and discussions that followed.

The first session focused on the interplay of crises, inequality, and social reform. Phillip Rehm started by explaining the nexus of how crises effect societal risk perception and welfare-state creation. His model linked ‘risk flips’ during a crisis to the increased preference for social programmes. Paul Dutton then demonstrated the ways historians can shed new light on unequal population health outcomes by seeing beyond the myopic fixation with medical care as the sole determinant of health.

Martin Daunton, Jason Scott Smith, and Daniel Béland presented in the second session which engaged with the Great Depression of the 1930s and its aftermath in Britain, the United States and Canada respectively. Topics as varied as tax-system rationalisation, spending on public-works programmes and the different impacts of centralisation vis-á-vis federalism on the implementation of social policies were covered to show the responses of anglophone countries to deep economic crises and the instruments they implemented.

In the third session, Klaus Petersen and Ángela Vergara underlined in their presentations the trajectories of Denmark and Latin America from the Great Depression of the 1930s, to the oil shocks of the 1970s and, in Latin America, the resulting debt crisis in the 1980s. By exploring both internal and external influences, they illuminated the discourses that allowed different forms of social policy to take root.

The presenters of fourth session on social policy reform explained employment policy reform from a comparative perspective in Asia, focussing on South Korea and Japan, and looked at labour and welfare in response to crisis in Australia. Juyoung An called for researchers to pay close attention to union strategy in order to understand divergent social policy outcomes while Gaby Ramia demonstrated the peculiarity of Australia’s ‘wage-earners’ welfare state’.

Drawing the first day to a close, Carmelo Mesa-Lago presented in his key note lecture his findings on pension privatisation in eleven Latin American countries between 1980 and 2020. He showed that, except for those countries who considered increased capitalisation of pension funds, none of the benefits that privatisation had promised, from adequacy and coverage, to concentration, materialised. This implies a serve crisis of pensions in these countries.

On the second day of the conference, Paolo Mattera, Raquel Varela and Paul Stubbs illustrated the impacts economic crises had on the development of the welfare state during the 1970s in Southern Europe and South-Eastern Europe. Mattera showed that Italian political actors opted to align domestic fiscal policy to decisions taken by other European countries, while Stubbs highlighted that the Yugoslavian government favoured the narrative of non-alignment. Finally, Varela demonstrated that important national shifts such as the Carnation Revolution in Portugal were decisive for the field of social policy.

In the following session, Cecilia Rossel and Andrés Solimano presented their work on two countries in the Southern Cone: Uruguay and Chile. Rossel showed how the banking crisis in Uruguay in the early 2000s led to a substantial change in social policy to address the shift of social assistance preferences. Here data indicated that this financial crisis led to a reconsideration of the principles of the 1989 ‘Washington Consensus’. Andrés Solimano’s work similarly drew attention to the complex relationship between increasing socio-economic inequality in Latin America during the period of stabilisation on the one hand, privatisation and liberalisation and the response by means of social policies on the other.

Social policy development in the face of crisis in Asia, the title of the seventh panel, was illustrated by the example of China where according to Aiqun Hu, social security reforms were made in a response to the employment crisis in China during the 1970s. This research tells the story of how the impact of an economic crisis was addressed in the field of social policy in the context of a system of state planned economy.

After an inspiring conference a lively debate completed the second day of the CRC conference. This discussion highlighted the need to evaluate ‘crises’ on both a theoretical and empirical level. The detailed historic reconstruction and analysis of the repercussions of economic crises on social policy needs to include a trans- and cross-national as well as a historical perspective. is an important endeavour that the participants emphasised as being far from completed. Future work could therefore enrich the field by focusing on more regions as for example African countries. Different aspects like gender and the categories of work distinguishing for example between formal and informal labour are aspects that could be worth looking at in more detail in further debates. The conference nevertheless demonstrated that the link between economic crises and social policy is a rich and fundamentally important topic of research a with the potential to enlighten the overarching CRC interest in exploring the global dynamics of social policy.

 

 

Contact:
Prof. Dr. Delia González de Reufels
CRC 1342: Global Dynamics of Social Policy, Institut für Geschichtswissenschaft / FB 08
Universitäts-Boulevard 13
28359 Bremen
Phone: +49 421 218-67200
E-Mail: dgr@uni-bremen.de

Prof. Dr. Cornelius Torp

What social policies did Eastern and Western Europe pursue during the Cold War? What influence had the competition between the systems? How did the transformation phase proceed from 1989 onwards? These were questions addressed at the 4th Hermann Weber Con

For the West, the communist welfare state represented a central challenge in the competition of systems. In the competition of systems, socio-political superiority was also supposed to be demonstrated. The end of the Cold War and the end of the pressure to legitimise against the other system were in turn reasons for the welfare state reforms in the 1990s and 2000s in East and West, which were also discussed at the conference.

Six CRC 1342 researchers took part in the conference:

• Herbert Obinger explained the basics of the relationship between the Cold War, communism and social policy
• Carina Schmitt and Maria Ignatova-Pfarr gave a presentation on Bulgaria's pension policy during the Cold War
• Delia González des Reufels gave a presentation on the social policy of the last Chilean military dictatorship during the Cold War
• Cornalius Torp gave a presentation on pension policy in East and West Germany during the Cold War
• Lukas Grawe gave a presentation on the legitimisation of pronatalist family policy in the GDR.

The 4th Hermann Weber Conference took place in Berlin from 8 to 10 June 2022. The organisers were the research group "The 'activating welfare state' - a political and social history of German social policy, 1979-2017" at the SOCIUM of the University of Bremen, funded by the Federal Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs, and the Jahrbuch für Historische Kommunismusforschung. The conference was financially supported by the Gerda-und-Hermann-Weber-Stiftung.

Contact:
Prof. Dr. Delia González de Reufels
CRC 1342: Global Dynamics of Social Policy, Institut für Geschichtswissenschaft / FB 08
Universitäts-Boulevard 13
28359 Bremen
Phone: +49 421 218-67200
E-Mail: dgr@uni-bremen.de

Dr. Lukas Grawe
Maria Ignatova-Pfarr
CRC 1342: Global Dynamics of Social Policy
Mary-Somerville-Straße 3
28359 Bremen
Phone: +49 421 218-57057
E-Mail: ignatova@uni-bremen.de

Prof. Dr. Herbert Obinger
CRC 1342: Global Dynamics of Social Policy
Mary-Somerville-Straße 5
28359 Bremen
Phone: +49 421 218-58567
E-Mail: herbert.obinger@uni-bremen.de

Prof. Dr. Carina Schmitt
Feldkirchenstraße 21
96045 Bamberg
Phone: 0951-863 2734
E-Mail: carina.schmitt@uni-bamberg.de

Prof. Dr. Cornelius Torp

In his thesis, the historian examined Argentina's social policy in the years 1919 to 1943, the impact of relevant actors and the influence of the ILO.

Simon Gerards Iglesias completed his doctorate in the project "Formation, Development and Reconstruction of the Welfare State in the Cono Sur in Exchange with (Southern) Europe (1850-1990), which was supervised by Delia González de Reufels. His doctoral thesis is entitled "Argentine Social Policy and the International Labour Organization, 1919-1943. Conflicts, Debates, and Cooperation".

In his work, Gerards Iglesias identified the most important actors of the time and, in his archival work, reconstructed which international influences affected their decisions. In this context, the International Labour Organisation, which opened its South American branch in Buenos Aires, plays a prominent role, intensifying the already lively exchange with Argentine actors. "The ILO acted as a platform and hinge of knowledge generation in [Argentine] social policy," says Gerards Iglesias. Large comparative studies, extensive archives and libraries were important factors in this.

However, the ILO only had an indirect influence on the shaping of Argentine social policy: "[In Argentina] conventions were ratified very late and only implemented in certain areas," says Gerards Iglesias. "There was a cherry picking of conventions for the areas where there were already very sophisticated laws. As a result, the conventions usually had neither a positive nor a negative impact on Argentine legislation."

Simon Gerards Iglesias had been a member of SFB 1342 since 2019. Now he is joining the German Economic Institute  in Cologne.

Contact:
Simon Gerards Iglesias

The seventh volume of the Palgrave Macmillan series "Global Dynamics of Social Policy" highlights in 39 essays how inter- and transnational influences have affected social policy in a wide range of countries around the world.

The edited volume "International Impacts on Social Policy - Short Histories in Global Perspective" was published by Frank Nullmeier, Delia González de Reufels and Herbert Obinger and illustrates the importance of inter- and transnational influences for the development of public social policy worldwide. The book consists of 39 case studies that are divided into four sections analysing the importance of (1) violence, (2) international organisations, (3) trade relations and economic crises, and (4) ideas, networks of experts and migration. The contributions illustrate important parts of the results produced by the CRC 1342 and its 15 projects in the period from 2018 to 2021.

Like the entire Global Dynamics of Social Policy series, this volume is published in open access format to make the research results of the CRC 1342 easily accessible to the scientific community in all parts of the world.

The entire volume as well as the individual contributions can be downloaded free of charge from the Palgrave Macmillan/Springer website:

Frank Nullmeier, Delia González de Reufels, Herbert Obinger (eds.)(2022): International Impacts on Social Policy - Short Histories in Global Perspective, Cham: Palgrave Macmillan.

Contact:
Prof. Dr. Delia González de Reufels
CRC 1342: Global Dynamics of Social Policy, Institut für Geschichtswissenschaft / FB 08
Universitäts-Boulevard 13
28359 Bremen
Phone: +49 421 218-67200
E-Mail: dgr@uni-bremen.de

Prof. Dr. Frank Nullmeier
CRC 1342: Global Dynamics of Social Policy
Mary-Somerville-Straße 7
28359 Bremen
Phone: +49 421 218-58576
E-Mail: frank.nullmeier@uni-bremen.de

Prof. Dr. Herbert Obinger
CRC 1342: Global Dynamics of Social Policy
Mary-Somerville-Straße 5
28359 Bremen
Phone: +49 421 218-58567
E-Mail: herbert.obinger@uni-bremen.de

Building on his dissertation in the completed project B02, the historian talks about the suppression of the workers' protests in Argentina at the beginning of 1919 and the founding of the ILO shortly afterwards.

The Institute of Historical Studies at the University of Bremen has launched its own podcast. In the interview series, which former CRC member Simon Gerards Iglesias was instrumental in developing, members of the Institute's staff talk about relevant and at the same time illustrative areas of their research work.

Gerards Iglesias himself is the first guest in the series: In a conversation with Institute Managing Director Imke Sturm-Martin, he sheds light on how the workers' protests in Argentina, which were violently suppressed in early 1919, are connected to the founding of the International Labour Organisation (ILO) shortly afterwards and what role the ILO subsequently played in the development of Argentine social policy.

The podcast: Aufstand transnational - Was Argentiniens wütende Arbeiter mit Genfer Gesetzen zu tun hatten

Simon Gerards Iglesias is an economic and social historian researching the history of Latin America at the University of Bremen. He was a member of SFB 1342 from 2019 to the end of 2021, where he conducted research in the now completed project B02 Emergence, Expansion, and Transformation of the Welfare State in the Cono Sur in Exchange with (Southern) Europe (1850–1990). His dissertation deals with transnational history and the relationship between Argentina and the International Labour Organisation.

Contact:
Simon Gerards Iglesias

Delia Gonzalez des Reufels and Simon Gerards presented their findings to the Association of European Latin American Historians in Paris.

The AHILA Congress took place in Paris from 23-27 August 2021, at which Delia González de Reufels and Simon Gerards Iglesias from project B02 presented and discussed their research findings in a separate panel on the history of social policy in Latin America. Under the title "Los vínculos de las políticas sociales estatales en Amércia Latina y sus representaciones mediáticas, siglos XIX y XX", the two-day panel brought together established historians who spoke about their projects on the history of public social policy and its representation in the media.

The focus was on the policy fields of work, education, health and housing, and their historical development as well as special social policy instruments were examined. The contributions examined both the nation-state conditions in the countries Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Mexico and Uruguay and the processes of transnational exchange, the transfer of knowledge and ideas. The importance of gender for the historical analysis of social policy was highlighted, as was the role of photography and the medium of film and television. Claudia Agostoni from the UNAM in Mexico, Washington Dener Santos Cunha from the Universidade do Estado do Rio do Janeiro in Brazil and Maria Rosa Gudiños from the Universidad Nacional Pedagógica in Mexico as well as eight young Latin American historians gave presentations that also discussed the research problems and the particular challenges of empirical research.

Delia González de Reufels focused on the role of the Chilean armed forces in the development of social policy since the late 19th century and the links between "warfare and welfare" in this pioneering country of Latin American social policy. Simon Gerards Iglesias presented his dissertation project on Argentina's relations with the International Labour Organisation (ILO) and underlined the importance of transnational knowledge production for the formation of social policy. Martín Cortina Escudero, who is researching in the SFB sub-project B03, presented his findings on the importance of the colonial past for the formation of social policy, as did

Teresa Huhle, who left SFB 1342 this spring, who spoke about the connection between education and health using the example of Uruguayan "open-air schools".

The AHILA (Asocicación de Historiadores Latinomaericanistas) is the association of European historians of Latin America that emerged from the meetings of European Americanists at the end of the 1970s, in the middle of the Cold War. From the beginning, it also included Latin Americans living in Europe and European historians who taught and researched Latin American history beyond the so-called Iron Curtain. The AHILA Congress takes place every three years.

Contact:
Prof. Dr. Delia González de Reufels
CRC 1342: Global Dynamics of Social Policy, Institut für Geschichtswissenschaft / FB 08
Universitäts-Boulevard 13
28359 Bremen
Phone: +49 421 218-67200
E-Mail: dgr@uni-bremen.de

Delia González de Reufels and Simon Gerards Iglesias talk about the results of project B02, how they dealt with pandemic-related constraints and what is particularly appealing about the cooperation between history and political science.

You were faced with the monumental task of examining 90 years of socio-political development in three countries - how did you structure this huge task?

Simon Gerards Iglesias: There are different focal points for the three countries. I am examining the case of Argentina and have placed a focus on the International Labour Organisation (ILO), which has only existed since 1919. I have defined the following years up to the Second World War as the central period of investigation, because in this phase certain structures dominated relations between the ILO and Argentina and the foundations were laid for the future development of relations.

The period under study in the project is indeed long, yet it can be meaningfully considered because it is criss-crossed by long lines of development. What has always been important, for example, is the transnational exchange of knowledge. I also see this in Argentina from the 19th century until today: people are always looking at what is happening in Europe. And another point: we find certain path dependencies. If we look at the labour protection laws for women in Argentina and other Latin American countries, for example, we find that there were quite restrictive regulations here very early on. They were actually more restrictive than in Europe. In Argentina there were laws such as the Ley de silla, translated as the "chair law": In every industrial company, a chair had to be available for every employed woman, which was intended for recreational breaks. This was because in Argentina women's health was primarily linked to concerns about the health of mothers and thus the future generation, which is why women were allowed more rest breaks at work. Even today, this law can be found in a certain form so that attentive travellers can discover chairs everywhere in Argentina, even in the most curious places. The background, however, only becomes clear to those who can relate to Argentina's labour protection laws.

Delia González de Reufels: In the example Simon gave, one can see very clearly that social policy has left visible traces up to the present day and has responded to the concerns of the respective countries: The countries of the Cono Sur had precarious demographics in the 19th and also in the early 20th century. In Europe, where the population was growing exponentially at the time, employers may have been relatively relaxed about the fact that pregnant women were also at the machine and worked extreme hours. But it was different in the Cono Sur: there were fewer children and this was identified as a problem and taken up by social policy. The "Ley de silla" may seem bizarre today, but the future of the nation was decided at the workbench, at least when a pregnant woman was standing at it. Not surprisingly, population development was one of the lines of development along which social discussions unfolded, which can be followed very well over 90 years.

And during these nine decades, fortunately, events do not come thick and fast every year. It is rather a process of accumulation with important points of culmination. First of all, there had to be an awareness of the problem. The state did not immediately take on all problems, but rather made a selection. In Chile, our period of investigation begins in the 19th century, and in 1850 the government said for the first time that it was unacceptable for people to go to hospitals to die. These were so poorly equipped that patients had no chance of being cured. So in 1850, for the first time, there was a discussion about how government money, or more precisely: revenue from trade and customs duties, could be diverted into the development of a functioning hospital system. Until then, health had been a private matter, but in 1850, the Chilean state steps into this responsibility for the first time and begins to understand public health as a field of political action. And from that moment on, the field of health policy expands to include other elements. To observe this, the 90 years are actually ideal.

Your work is not only divided spatially, but also thematically. Delia, you mainly study the development of health policy in Chile, while Simon studies occupational health and safety in Argentina. How did this division come about?

Delia González de Reufels: All social policy fields are of course effective in all these countries. But in the case of Chile, I have noticed that many developments in occupational health and safety have emerged from health protection. In other words, from the observation that certain working conditions undermine people's health. This observation was made in the health sector, and therefore it made sense to focus on health policy.

And in the case of Argentina, we have occupational health and safety as a focus because the ILO Office for Latin America was established in Buenos Aires: After South America was initially administered from Madrid, the ILO moved to Buenos Aires with its own office and was present there. In order to be able to depict this development and its consequences in the project, we have made this separation. This gives a more complete picture than if all the developments in all the countries were traced.

Simon Gerards Iglesias: The separation also helps us to be able to apply the historiographic magnifying glass, i.e. this analytical approach, despite the large time period. This is only possible with a thematic division. On labour protection: In Argentina there was an important law in 1915 that redefined labour protection for industrial workers: it regulated compensation for accidents at work and for the first time gave the working class an important enforceable right to monetary compensation, which was a big step towards the later social insurance. Many regulations followed this law, and many bilateral agreements with European states were also concluded as a result. This example shows that social policy in the early 20th century had many transnational linkages and that rights for minority groups, such as foreign workers, were already introduced at an early stage in the development of the welfare state.

Delia González de Reufels: In Argentina, the work of a supranational organisation that looked at both areas - work and health - is becoming prominent. For health protection, we could have focused on the PAHO, founded in 1902. However, in Chile, health policy began much earlier and was closely linked to the professionalisation of medicine, which was of particular interest to us here because it was of great importance for the development of public health. So we have history before the foundation of PAHO to capture. And it is particularly important that the ILO takes up issues that have been discussed before on the part of public health. Through our division in the project, we have been able to capture this dynamic.

What other major influencing factors or mechanisms for social policy developments have you encountered in your work?

Delia González de Reufels: It was confirmed that the countries observed each other closely and also learned from each other and took up each other's initiatives. There was an intrinsic motivation to make a difference in the fields identified as important through their own measures, but there was also competition between them. Argentina and Chile observed each other very closely, even though there was a neighbour in the region, Uruguay, which was very reform-oriented and defined itself very much in terms of social policy progress. Nevertheless, the Chileans and Argentines looked to each other. And towards Europe, of course.

Simon Gerards Iglesias: Argentines looked in many directions, but always towards Europe. Argentines didn't really consider themselves Latin Americans, they always emphasised their special connection to Europe. You can find this in fashion, architecture and so on. Europe is then also an important reference point in social legislation. Spain is not seen as an old colonial power, and if it is, then as a positive one that introduced the first social laws with the so-called "Leyes de Indias". Argentina knew that it was not as industrialised as Europe, but at the same time it wanted to become so and copied many things - industrialisation, but also the related social legislation.

What is important with regard to the role of the ILO: I have the impression that the conventions and recommendations do not have that much influence on national social legislation. It is the classic problem of international cooperation: one only agrees on the lowest common denominator. As a result, many conventions are relatively weak and vague, they leave a lot of room for interpretation without really establishing a higher standard. This is clearly the case in Argentina. Here, conventions were ratified very late and only implemented in certain areas. They cherry-picked conventions for areas where there were already very sophisticated laws. As a result, the conventions usually had neither a positive nor a negative impact on Argentine legislation.

Nevertheless, the ILO was a very important actor: namely as a platform and hinge for knowledge generation in social policy. The ILO was the first and, at that time, the only organisation capable of carrying out large-scale comparative studies. It had also built up a huge library and archives that were used by Argentines. You can tell that from looking at the correspondences. Especially in the field of social security, a lot was requested from the ILO because it had built up an incredible wealth of knowledge.

You report that these countries looked very much to their neighbours and to Europe. The world was not as interconnected then as it is today. What were the ways of exchange?

Delia González de Reufels: The world was much more interconnected back then than we often imagine today. Back then, there were close connections, not by plane, but by ship. If we look at the organisations, but also the military, they were highly mobile personalities who could travel and see things in Europe for themselves. The same goes for doctors. Ideas travel with people, they also travel in writings. The actors read French, German, English and also Italian. Doctors in particular have mastered a wide range of European languages in order to be able to receive the specialist journals and to be at the cutting edge of their discipline; this at least applies to the luminaries. In the oldest medical journal, which is still published today, there was therefore always a kind of Reader's Digest that summarised what was being discussed in international journals. In this way, the entire medical profession could participate in medical advances. In some cases, one gets the impression that the authors were present when Robert Koch made another discovery; their enthusiasm about this is just as evident in the texts as the pride in their own discipline, which was constantly developing and would contribute to solving the problems of the time in Chile and elsewhere.

Simon Gerards Iglesias: There were also numerous attempts on the part of the ILO to have a stronger impact on these South American countries, to reach people and to enter the discourse. This began with Spanish-language publications in the 1920s. Then there were trips by ILO presidents, by Albert Thomas and Harold Buttler and other ILO personnel, who all travelled to Argentina, Uruguay and Chile to present the work of the ILO and to promote their organisation. On the other hand, there is interest and commitment from national authorities: The Argentine Labour Authority published papers from ILO conferences in its bulletin and their proceedings were translated into Spanish. This bulletin was read by social policy experts in Argentina, and so the debates and knowledge were carried into Argentina.

Argentina was always the most important country for the ILO to reach the whole of Latin America. This was because - as Delia says - Chile looked to Argentina and the smaller countries even more so. That's why, for example, Alejandro Unsain, a social lawyer from Argentina, was elected to a committee of the ILO, to the Executive Board. The declared feminist and socialist Alicia Moreau de Justo is also the only representative from a country in the southern hemisphere to become a member of the Commission for Women and Children. An attempt has thus been made to involve Argentinean actors, to bring them to Geneva and thus to promote exchange and the production of knowledge.

Delia González de Reufels: As a developed country, Argentina also had a special infrastructure to offer the ILO. This also applies to Chile. So in the 1930s, a large ILO meeting was held in Santiago. Chile enjoyed the fact that the world looked to Santiago. They were willing to pay for it, even in times when money was scarcer.  This also applies to the Congresses of Latin American Physicians, whose idea was developed in Chile. At the same time, the country organised the first congress, which was a further development of the first Chilean medical congress. Thus, national development and transnational development were closely interwoven.

We found that there were always eventful periods of time that were driven by transnational exchange as well as by domestic developments. Neither one nor the other alone is sufficient to explain the dynamics of social policy developments. There was always a link between the transnational and national levels. Only this created a dynamic that made change possible. This is true for all social policy areas.

You have spoken of your historiographical magnifying glass, yet you are part a CRC that is mostly about political science. What was challenging about this constellation and what was particularly fruitful?

Delia González de Reufels: It is challenging, that the two disciplines are used to look at different time spans. Historical science is operating very close to the source, and sometimes you don't see the bigger picture in the beginning, but have to work it out first. We are usually in the archives for a long time before we can start to falsify our theories and make statements on the basis of sources. Our colleagues in political science are much faster. But the CRC didn't start out of nowhere. There were years of preparation, it was also about developing a common language, uniting our perspectives and learning from each other. That's what makes it so exciting for me to this day. By the way, we mostly come to similar results and complement each other very well, even though we look at things differently.

Simon Gerards Iglesias: I think political science focuses very much on methods, e.g. causal mechanisms, which we also had to acquire first. We, on the other hand, have this source perspective, and it usually takes longer until we can present results. But it is a very fruitful cooperation. I learned a lot and was able to use theories on international relations for my dissertation.

Let's move on to an unpleasant topic: How did the Corona pandemic affect your project and your research?

Delia González de Reufels: It's really tough: we have travel funds that we can't use. At the moment it is completely uncertain when we will be allowed to travel again. And unlike many colleagues, we are bound to the printed word: we have to go to the library and the archives. There are ways around it: Through a contact in a Chilean library, I was able to have some material digitised and thus get access to sources. But of course, that is only an excerpt and cannot replace weeks of archival work. Because you have to know from a distance exactly where in which serial publication something relevant can be found. And you have to be sure that no mistakes are made during digitisation and that the collections are complete.

Simon Gerards Iglesias: Fortunately, I was in Argentina two years ago, right at the beginning of my dissertation phase, and was able to collect material there. Since the beginning of the pandemic in March 2020, the ILO has not let anyone into its archives, which is a shame and ultimately a bit incomprehensible. That is a huge problem. We have hardly been able to view any ILO archive material, only that which has already been digitised. That's a lot, but it doesn't include correspondence, letters and informal reports. Yet it is precisely these unofficial sources that we as historians are so interested in. And we still hope that the archives will be opened up in time to allow us to look at them.

Despite all this, what publications can we expect from you in the coming months?

Delia González de Reufels: A working paper will soon be published that presents the results of my research and that of Mónika Contreras and puts them up for discussion. This is about the field of social housing and how it affects a particular professional group: the Carabineros de Chile. This is a militarised and centralised police force, created in 1927 through a merger of various other police forces and present throughout Chile.This new national police force was quickly able to use the social housing legislation to make itself attractive as an employer and to turn the housing crisis in Santiago around in a positive way for the members of its own unit. Housing, after all, is more than just a place to live, it has an impact on family life, on health, on the social fabric. I also have two essays in the pipeline for which I can draw on archival material I was able to collect before Corona in Chile and the Conway Medical Library in Boston.

And as a project, we will contribute two chapters to a a volume that I am one of the editors of: The volume aims to look at the breadth and dynamics of global social policy dynamics. It was fun to present some of the results of our work in a short and concise form for our countries.

Simon, when will you complete your doctorate?

Simon Gerards Iglesias: I will probably finish in late summer. It will then be published a little later, i.e. after the colloquium. I also have a lot of material and sources that I haven't used yet. Based on that, I will still write paper, but that is only due in the second half of the year.

Contact:
Simon Gerards Iglesias
Prof. Dr. Delia González de Reufels
CRC 1342: Global Dynamics of Social Policy, Institut für Geschichtswissenschaft / FB 08
Universitäts-Boulevard 13
28359 Bremen
Phone: +49 421 218-67200
E-Mail: dgr@uni-bremen.de

Teresa Huhle and Johanna Kuhlmann report in an interview on a 6-day seminar on social policy in the Global South that they led during the Spring Academy of the German Academic Scholarship Foundation.

CRC members Teresa Huhle and Johanna Kuhlmann led a working group at the Spring Academy of the German Academic Scholarship Foundation from 20 to 25 March 2021. Thirteen students from different disciplines took part in the six-day seminar on "Social Policy in the Global South - An Interdisciplinary Change of Perspectives". In the interview, Huhle and Kuhlmann tell us how the seminar turned out.

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Who was entitled to take part in the academy?

Johanna Kuhlmann: Scholarship holders who are at the beginning of their studies were able to take part in the academy. We had 13 students from the first to the sixth semester.

Teresa Huhle: Access was not restricted to any discipline. So we had a diverse mix: about half came from the social sciences, plus a historian. The others studied law, economics, medicine, physics and philosophy.

How was your seminar designed?

Huhle: We had five main working days - after an introductory day, each day had a thematic focus: colonial social policy, international organisations, development policy as social policy and finally propaganda and behavioural policy. Day six was dedicated to a review and the preparation of a presentation for the joint concluding evening of the academy. In preparation, the participants had to read two to three texts per day. But we then varied the individual days and worked on the topics in very different formats.

Kuhlmann: Especially with regard to the digital format, we wanted to activate the participants. That worked well. Two examples: We held a plenary debate on social policy as development policy, in which the participants acted as different characters in a kind of role play. Another time we discussed a social policy measure in detail: What reasons and arguments can be put forward for or against the introduction of a certain programme and what does the decision ultimately depend on?

Huhle: On the day on propaganda, one text was about health films produced by Disney in the USA for Latin America in 1943/1944. We were able to watch one of the films together and discussed it afterwards. We paid attention to variety in the formats. This worked well - the students were all very motivated and wanted to work and discuss in groups.

What criteria did you use to select the texts that served as the basis for each day?

Kuhlmann: Because we wanted to combine the historical and political science approach, we had to find texts that spoke to each other - be it because they complement or also contradict each other. The accessibility of the texts was also important to us. We also had students from other disciplines in the seminar. But it was an unfounded concern that they might be overwhelmed.

In the seminar, you were concerned with a change of perspective - did that refer to the North-South perspective or to the disciplinary perspective?

Huhle: When we announced the programme, we were thinking more in terms of the disciplines. But we quickly realised that what attracted the students was not the social policy or historical perspective, but the category "Global South". All of them were interested in questions of global inequality, colonial structures and their legacy, and so on. Many had also been abroad for a longer period of time, including voluntary service. Fortunately, some of them said at the end that it was particularly interesting for them to get an insight into the way we work in history and political science.

You had participants from a range of different disciplines - from physics to philosophy to law - were they still able to speak to each other in a "common language"?

Kuhlmann: Yes, that worked surprisingly well. Most of the time we didn't even notice who was studying which subject.

Huhle: The physics student once asked us not to simply use special terms without explaining them. Otherwise there was no moment when the subject affiliation came up. That was certainly because everyone was very motivated and interested. But perhaps it also plays a role that the participants had finished school not long ago. They have just come out of a system in which it is completely natural to deal with very different topics.

What did you as seminar teachers learn from the course, what did you take home?

Kuhlmann: In the seminar, students from very different disciplines contributed thoughts from their perspectives. That particularly appealed to me: It made me think about issues not only from a historical or political science perspective, but also, for example, from an economic or legal perspective.

Huhle: The seminar was very intensive and provided a lot of food for thought for everyone. I would very much like to do it again. And quite pragmatically: It was a great exercise for online teaching, we could try out very different methods. Presence cannot be replaced, of course, but we still managed to create a group atmosphere during the week. I feel like I actually got to know 13 people over the course of the week. And I really like that.

Contact:
Dr. Teresa Huhle
Dr. Johanna Kuhlmann