Exclusive protection

165 to Rajko: “Even for such like you are there is a place in this state.” When Dejana and Rajko recounted this anecdote to me, Rajko added: “Look, I am not some vagrant who happens to come along (došljak), but I was born and raised here. And see how they treat me. These are bad people!” (I, Dejana and Rajko, 25.10.2010). Not that the SMZ was unhelpful. It had helped a lot, maybe more so than other SMZs would have done in similar cases, as Siniša the psychologist remarked on several occasions. Nonetheless Rajko was scolded by them as a fool (budala) who was not able to maintain his inheritance in a proper “rural father” way (see Chapter Four). Villagers told him frankly: “We only help you because of your children.” The children were not seen as innocent, as the incident with the rifle-brandishing neighbour showed.

But their ‘improper’ deeds were blamed on their ‘foolish’ parents.

Like the villagers, social workers supported the Milovići mainly because they were concerned about the children. The 2008 incident with the journalist may have tainted the social workers’ valuation of the Milovići for a while. However it did not profoundly change the modus of their welfare-state relation, which the psychologist Siniša summed up as follows: “[T]his family was always seen from a perspective of material endangerment – and they really are materially endangered – but there was some kind of tolerance with relation to untidiness of the children and a bit worse progress in school” (I, Siniša, 10.9.2013). In 2008 the social workers had summoned and ‘counselled’ Rajko that he should not lie about the involvement of the CSW.

Afterwards Rajko refused to go to the CSW and renew the social aid application, so Dejana overtook this task, and the welfare-state relation was again settled for a while.¹⁶⁶

However, the child motif soon came up again in the deliberations of the CSW. This time it was decided by the social workers to downgrade their support for the Milovići parents and to concentrate more on the protection of their children.

166 pedagogue in Lower Village had no strong support from the teachers’ collective and her director, and asked the CSW to intervene and ensure the legally compulsory education of Ranko. Because of this request, the new section on child and youth protection became involved in the Milović case for the first time. Siniša remembered his first thought when seeing the squalid and insanitary living conditions of the family: “I did not believe it, I said: ‘Where has the Centre [for Social Work] been until now?” (I, Siniša, 31.8.2013).

Soon, the size of the file quadrupled. The family was put under supervision (pod nadzor) and Ranko was told to attend school. The social workers asserted that the children lived “on the brink of poverty” (na ivici siromaštva), and that there was an “intensive emotional bond”

(intenzivna emocionalna veza) to their parents (File Milovići, follow up sheet, 27.1.2011).

Within a couple of weeks, the relations in the family worsened and Siniša felt an urge to take the children out and give them into foster families. However, the socialist humanist modality of supporting the family prevailed. The professional conflict over which relational modality to choose echoed in the psychologist’s explanation: “Still, such people, unless they are totally impoverished, of course have a right to have children” (I, Siniša, 13.3.2011).

In April 2011 things came to a head when Dejana left the family after a fight with her husband, and went to live with a brother and sister who had come as refugees from Kosovo.

Rajko called the police and said he could not care for his children – at that moment his very elderly sister was cooking for them. Alarmed, the social workers took the small children to Dejana, while Ranko insisted on staying with his father. Psychologist Siniša still considered Dejana the much more reasonable parent – after all, who would not run away from such a husband, he thought? On the other hand, how could she stay so long in the first place? So, Siniša concluded retrospectively, she must also have some psychological issues (I, Siniša, 10.9.2013).

The first contacts of the child and youth protection team with the situation of the Milovići had not merely involved talks to the family. To form a more holistic picture, team members spoke to social worker Ana, to the school pedagogue, to the SMZ clerk, to customers at the nearby village shop, to Bogdan the driver, to the village doctor (who ran an ambulance in the SMZ building), and even to me via Skype. The situational framing was highly ambivalent, and the professionals struggled to pigeonhole the case, with its bewildering array of stories. In contrast to the psychologist from the adult section, who roundly dismissed village gossip as

“their stories” (to su njihove price) (I, psychologist, 2.10.2013), Siniša showed interest in the heterogeneous experiences and worldviews in his surroundings. Yet, village gossip about Rajko’s mother slaying his father with an axe when Rajko was a child, about Rajko clubbing a former communist killer who had not paid his day labour, or about Rajko’s family descending

167 from an elfin, were received with a healthy dose of disbelief. Siniša conceded that Rajko had had a difficult childhood with effects on his behaviour today, but in the present situation he should have struggled to get the children out of trouble (da ih izvuče). Conversely, allegations that the children stole chickens in the village were interpreted by Siniša as their moral economic right to feed themselves (I, Siniša, 10.9.2013). The gossip was neither noted down in the documentation nor seriously followed up: “After all, we are not the police,” Siniša used to say, indicating his relatively tolerant and non-punitive approach towards diverse life scripts (e.g. I, Siniša, 28.8.2009).

With hindsight, Siniša identified two strands of his thinking about the family system of the Milovići. On the one hand, he had been “maybe too optimistic” when he was looking for

“capacities in Dejana as mother” to take better care of the children. Her promises that the place would be renovated, for instance, never materialized.¹⁶⁷ Siniša’s view of Dejana’s maternal care was also shaded by her endurance in a complicated partnership – he evaluated Dejana’s running away from her family in April 2011 as an indicator of an abusive relationship. However, Rajko had turned the tables and alleged that Dejana’s new partner threatened the children, which Dejana was unable to prevent. Meanwhile, Siniša lost faith in the fatherly qualities of Rajko, as the social workers “discovered” his alcohol problem. Siniša explained to me:

The family was followed up in accordance with the plan for protection of children and as we went along we saw that problem of alcoholism, of which we did not know. Because in principle everybody there drinks a little – you know yourself that in the village everybody drinks a bit – but Rajko really likes to drink, which directed us towards the plan to remove the children. So that a couple of months before the removal we knew in which direction the things would go, because we saw that there were no healthy resources, but we tried that it would be as little stressful for the children and that somehow the parents also accept that. This means we waited for a favourable situation, well the children were not life threatened so an urgent removal was not necessary, but we waited for a moment so that we could proclaim an urgent removal (I, Siniša, 10.9.2013).

In the quote we see an initial professional tolerance by the psychologist of the behaviour of Rajko Milović. But, the limited potential for male bonding across social classes and the rural/urban divide was finally shattered when the “alcohol verdict” was made. The issue of alcohol abuse led to a deterioration of the value of the welfare-state relation in the eyes of the youth protection team (compare Pero’s struggle against losing moral ground in Chapter Four).¹⁶⁸ This paved the way for the over-implementation of the new law.

167 The child and youth team planned to help the parents in renovating the house. It also collected new clothes for the children and made sure that the administrative section slightly increased the MOP to 13,000 dinar (€ 120).

168 Had the priorities remained to support the family like in the Yugoslav street work approach, social workers might have advised Rajko to undergo alcohol treatment and attend CSW family counselling with Dejana.

168 Over-implementing the law

The youth team concentrated on its core mandate of protecting the children by planning to proclaim “urgent removal” when “the children were not life threatened so an urgent removal was not necessary” (see above). They only waited for a “favourable situation” so that the children were not traumatised and became negatively predisposed to their foster parents (I, Siniša, 10.9.2013). Similar to the under-implementation of the law discussed as inclusive distribution above, the newly emerging over-implementing of the law was related to humanist ideals – to protect the interests of the child (here excluding the interests of the parents). The street-level bureaucratic action again translated the recent transformations of the law, which I discuss below as the law’s reduced aims, its top-down deliberation, enhanced material support, and stricter supervision.

First, the new law on social protection was much more detailed than its predecessor.¹⁶⁹ However, its goals were curtailed, symbolised by dropping the subtitle: “provision of social security of the citizens.” Furthermore, the introductory paragraph (Article 2) erased references to social needs, humanism, and the respect of human dignity. Instead, it emphasized autonomy and work as pathways out of social exclusion. Second, the consultation process was criticised because street-level bureaucrats and self-organised researchers had been pressured to accept ministerial decrees and university expertise. The perceived interests of the CSW, i.e. to obtain more resources and employees, have reduced documentation demands, and to transfer MOP to another institution, were ignored (I, sociologist, 13.9.2013).¹⁷⁰ Third, the social workers accepted the law because it incorporated the regulations of 2008, and somewhat enhanced the scope to materially help the poor. The decade-long discretionary pushing by social workers for more social aid had materially condensed in, for instance, the increased number of family members used for tabulating MOP. Now six family members instead of five were calculated, which increased the aid to the Milovići (MWSP 2011, Article 88; see MWSP 2001, Article 11).¹⁷¹ However, increased support was coupled with stricter “supervision” and “counselling conversations” (savetodavni razgovori) with the users of the CSW. The law provided new tools to remove children threatened by “neglect” (zanemarivanje) and to organise foster care by a

169 The 1991 law on social protection (in the version of 2001) contained 131 articles and 37 pages (see MRSP 2001), while the new law of 2011 was expanded to 230 articles on 80 pages (see MRSP 2011).

170 The negotiation process remained opaque from the bottom up perspective. The social policy researcher (and former consultant) Paul Stubbs recently described the blurred “boundaries between ‘international’ and

‘domestic’ actors, creating a hybrid and flexible ‘intermestic’ sphere […]. Interpreters, intermediaries and ‘flex actors,’ skilled at blurring roles and juggling representations […], often offering their expertise across a range of unstable institutional sites and settings, hold particular power in translation in this context” (Stubbs 2015, 72).

171 Furthermore, the MOP eligibility limit in land was enlarged from 0.5 ha to 1 ha (MRSP 2011, Article 82).

169 new regional “Centre for family placement and adoption” (Centar za porodični smeštaj i usvojenje) (I, Siniša, 10.9.2013).

So what happened with the plans for “urgent removal”? In line with the increased tolerance towards parenting styles, and the expanded, but untried legal authority to remove the children, it took almost seven months to reach a decision. The prolonged deliberations highlighted the constraints and possibilities of team work and the relational complexity of even a small local state institution like the CSW. The senior lawyer of the CSW, who was instructing the team on how to deal with the case, warned against suing the Milovići for negligence, as it could cost the CSW a lot of money if the case was lost. She argued that the police should sue, which did not come forward. Siniša, who had switched to the new relational modality of exclusive protection earlier than the others, highlighted the relational aspect, too:

The former social worker [who was at this moment the team leader] was there, and I as a psychologist. When the professional [lawyer] who has worked in this job for 30 years says that we do not sue, it is a bit rookie-like (debutanski) to lecture somebody who I cooperate with about whether we should sue or not (I, Siniša, 10.9.2013).

Siniša was arguably also restrained in pushing the new relational modality of exclusive protection by the temporality of his contract. The flexibilisation of the social work profession enhanced the period of juniority of younger colleagues like Siniša, and coerced them to conform to their senior colleagues’ caution and higher inclusionary tolerance.

Finally, in July 2011 the decision for removal was taken by the legal team and signed by the director after a foster family willing to take three to four children had been prepared. The social workers swiftly put the small children, who were by now between five and ten years old, under temporary guardianship. Ranko, who was 12 years old at that moment, ran away. “Of course I could not keep him against his will,” Siniša explained (I, Siniša, 4.5.2012).¹⁷² In 2012, Ranko visited his siblings in their new foster family and slept there, but he returned to Upper Village and continued living with his father and mother. In 2013, “asocial behaviour” crept up as a motive in the Milovići files, but other than one might expect, it was not attributed to Rajko.

Rather, the latter repeatedly complained at the school that his son abused alcohol and physically threatened his parents. These allegations seemed rather unlikely to the school pedagogue, given Ranko’s introvert character. Nonetheless, the CSW was involved again. In September 2013 psychologist Siniša matter-of-factly characterized Ranko as “for us a closed story” (za nas zatvorena priča). He “chose his freedom,” Siniša said, and explained that Ranko was by now too old for fosterage, and as long as he did nothing criminal he would not be put in a children’s home, from which in all likelihood he would run anyway. Meanwhile, Ranko’s siblings were

172 The MOP of the Milovići was now reduced, reflecting the decrease from six members to three.

170 well adapted in their new foster family, had solid results in school, and “saw the sea for the first time,” when they went with their new foster family on summer holiday (I, Siniša, 10.9.2013).

Elder social workers like Dunja expressed a genuine shock about the decision to remove the children. Dunja connected the removal to the looming degradation of her profession. “Have we come so low to estrange children from their parents because they are impoverished,” she asked?

Dunja’s intervention showed that the new focus on the exclusive protection of the children in foster families, even when it offered a safe environment and better school results, was not uncontested. Many social workers, especially older ones, remained attached to the relational modality of inclusive distribution that saw the child as best protected within the family as long as it was financially protected and supported (or supervised) in its capacities by the CSW.

Others, like the Director, had long complained about the trend to disinvest from systemic solutions like proper children’s homes, thereby leaving the family (both parents and foster parents) the burden to care for children. Siniša did not present the dealings of the CSW in the Milovići case as a full success story, either. Indirectly, he criticized the scarce (and diminishing) street work resources of the CSW, when he argued:

What we need to bear in mind is that there was not always such a situation. They [Milovići]

indeed were always problematic. But apparently with the years, as a result of their increasing alcohol abuse and ageing processes, the behaviour of the parents grew worse and increasingly dangerous [for the children and themselves]. It means they [the responsible local state relations] did not identify their asocial behaviour which became worse and worse and more imperilling” (I, Siniša, 10.9.2013).

Conclusion: Relational modalities – inclusive distribution vs. exclusive protection

During the 1990s and 2000s, a local social policy emerged out of interactive practices within the triple dialectic of the large-scale state and societal transformations, mediated by the local Centre for Social Work. Each moment of the triad influenced the other two, opening up the possibility for change in the always-emerging local state Relation. In this context, the relationships between the users and the CSW were characterised by the tension between field work and office based counselling on the one hand and bureaucratic demands of paper work and recent computer assisted governing by indices on the other hand. Social work professionals could choose to work for, alongside, or against these professional and bureaucratic norms. On top of this, the self-will of the users was sometimes at odds with the bureaucratic-professional struggles, and created additional moments of chaotic creativity. The outcome was at times the under-implementing, and at others the over-implementing of national laws and regulations. Out of these muddled struggles emerged two relatively stable relational modalities of social workers’ interactions with their users: inclusive distribution and exclusive protection.

171 In the early 2000s, the street-level bureaucrat’s dilemma veered towards a near-consensus of inclusive distribution. This relational modality operated on the principle that the social workers offered material help to impoverished families, giving them the benefit of the doubt regarding eligibility. Inclusive distribution drew on the humanist aspirations of the law of 1991 to ensure the best-possible support for impoverished families in times of politico-economic and social transformation. Socialist humanism had merged with the professional under-implementation of bureaucratic red tape. The main social proponents of this relational modality were the late-socialist generation of high-school educated social workers. Yet, as their policy lacked financial means and political support e.g. from the Director, social workers needed to select beneficiaries carefully, tending to exclude potential users like refugees or people hesitant to ask for support.

The second relational modality of social work – exclusive protection – gained strength a decade later, around 2011. This local policy consisted of the close attention to the individual needs of the child, with the trend to quickly remove a child from parents who did not seem to have the capacity to care properly. A more liberal humanist professionalism merged with the over-implementation of new exclusionary legal norms. The social proponents tended to be the next, post-socialist generation of professionals who had studied at university. Although sympathetic to the socialist humanist ideals of their senior colleagues, the new cohort believed in helping individuals, not collectives. It is too early to tell if this policy will establish a local consensus.

What united both relational modalities was that they charted a professional interpretation of the law on social protection. Thus, the inclusive distribution interpreted the law of 1991’s underlying humanist idea of cushioning the transformation to capitalism in the interest of the family. In the wake of exclusionary legal change in the 2000s, inclusive distribution was maintained by under-implementing the law. The post-socialist generation, turning away from the family, focused more on the individual child. Over-implementing the new exclusionary tools (proclaiming an “urgent situation”), this generation acted on the liberal humanist spirit of the law of 2011. In the moment when the professionals put the children of the Milović family into foster care, Dušan Lakićević was proved right that in capitalist class society, humanism can only be partial.

In the final empirical chapter I turn from the family-child bond to the “problem” of the ageing society. I will follow the innovations that the framing of the elderly-question held in Creek Town for the CSW’s social workers and elder carers, and the urban elderly and their families.

172