„Forgers of success”: the dilemmas of institutionalization for Sure Start houses and tanoda houses

Abstract

The article examines two programmes, which are aimed at equalizing the chances of disadvantaged children through services that compensate family disadvantages and socio-spatial inequalities: Sure Start houses and Tanoda. Although the emergence and institutionalization of the two programmes followed a rather different route, they both became important and widespread institutions that are now centrally financed and are part of the public child welfare services. The paper draws on long-term ethnographic fieldwork in two chosen institutions – a Sure State house in a disadvantaged but gentrifying neighbourhood of a well-positioned large city and a Tanoda in a small, disadvantaged city with considerable Roma population. The study examines those structural determinants, which local implementers of the two programmes face and the ways they adjust, shape and reformulate the goals and the form of these programmes within their local settings. The analysis points to the connections of these local reformulation processes to the (re)production of socio-spatial inequalities. The article connects to critical development studies, by revealing the different ways these programmes can reconcile the contradictions between the socio-spatial structures within which they work and the developmental goals of these programmes. Specifically, it shows that ‘success’ is locally defined by the different actors of the programmes in a way that helps them mitigate the formerly mentioned contradictions and ‘give sense’ to the programme.