At the Crossroads: NGOs Becoming Welfare Providers in Post-Soviet Kazakhstan

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About the talk: Sofiya An will offer some insights into the shifting child welfare landscape in post-Soviet Kazakhstan, focusing on emerging non-state welfare providers. Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) entering welfare provision is one of the key characteristics of post-Soviet welfare restructuring; the centralized welfare system managed and run by the Soviet state has been transformed into a welfare mix, that is, the provision of welfare shared by the state, the emerging market, and the NGOs. Moreover, the development of NGOs in post-Soviet societies has been embedded in the policy environment and policy process that are open to transnational influences. Drawing upon historical institutionalism and a modified welfare diamond, An will examine how newborn domestic NGOs have evolved as new welfare and social service providers shaped by the shifting policy context and complex relationships among domestic and transnational organizations. Applying T.H.Marshall’s framework of social and political/civil rights as a point of reference, An argues that the dialectical interplay between the social and the political in the transnational policy frameworks has shaped the ambiguous and contradictory identities of child-welfare NGOs in post-Soviet Kazakhstan.

About the Speaker: Sofiya An is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Nazarbayev University School of Humanities and Social Sciences. She received her master’s degree in Social Work from Columbia University (2002) and her PhD from the Faculty of Social Work of the University of Toronto (2014). Her research focuses on post-Soviet social policy, child welfare institutions, non-state welfare providers, and transnational social policy. She is particularly interested in the development of professional social work and social service provision in post-Soviet contexts.