ABSTRACT

The organizations around which the new welfare communities mobilized consisted of people who fell through the gaps of the normative framework of the welfare state social consensus. With the advent of community politics into the welfare arena, the distinguishing features of these groups came to be thought of as so many obstacles, or 'barriers' to equal opportunity. It is ironic that while the aims of the new welfare communities clearly expanded 'the community' as a contestable terrain, they also resulted in the constraining of it. When the welfare communities were first established, their role expanded as they identified new needs in their communities and monitored the government's performance. In this chapter, the author describes the process of creating communities through the community management welfare system as 'welfare corporatism'. 'The government' became the enemy in struggles for the funding dollar and the voices of welfare communities became fragmented into so many competing claims upon the state.