The intimate public of relational welfare in Milan

Abstract

This paper examines the enactment of relational welfare in Milan through a focus on how new welfare professionals operating in deprived neighborhoods in Milan work to stimulate participation and relational energies among migrant and low-income parents. The paper introduces the notion of the “intimate public,” a spatial and relational milieu for activating an increasingly diverse public in the absence of traditional welfare resources. Through the lens of the intimate public, a number of effects come into view: First, the incitement to participate recasts the private as simultaneously a source of new forms of solidarity and a potential obstacle to social cohesion and integration. Second, assumptions about the organic and sustainable nature of citizen-based solidarity effectively erase the affective labor required to produce and sustain it, especially in marginalized neighborhoods. Finally, the intense relationality that characterizes the intimate public produces uncertainty and entanglements that bind professionals and participants in compelling ways.