The article written by Lena Dominelli offers an insightful analysis of the ways in which voluntarism, emerging in the current developments towards a Big Society, leads to negative consequences. Dominelli rightly refers to (1) the erosion of citizenship, as voluntaristic discourse and practice weakens the focus on the realization of rights; (2) the erosion of public service delivery, because of the weakening of financial support for these services; (3) greater social inequality; and (4) the possible negative impact of wealthy philanthropists on the development of a social policy focus on structural answers to social problems.

We concur with the author that these developments put a strain on the capacity for real solidarity; the focus lies on the ‘deserving’ recipients of support, on the ‘good’ citizens. Recently, this dynamic has also been denounced and tackled by one of the wealthy philanthropists himself. Peter Buffet, son of Warren Buffet, referred to ‘Philanthropist colonialism’. Is his remarkable piece in the New York Times of 26th of July 2013, he stated: “Philanthropy has become the “it” vehicle to level the playing field and has generated a growing number of gatherings, workshops and affinity groups. As more lives and communities are destroyed by the system that creates vast amounts of wealth for the few, the more heroic it sounds to “give back.” It’s what I would call “conscience laundering”—feeling better about accumulating more than any one person could possibly need to live on by sprinkling a little around as an act of charity. But this just keeps the existing structure of inequality in place. The rich sleep better at night, while others get just enough to keep the pot from boiling over. Nearly every time someone feels better by doing good, on the other side of the world (or street), someone else is further locked into a system that will not allow the true flourishing of his or her nature or the opportunity to live a joyful and fulfilled life.” Hence, solidarity, as Lena Dominelli rightly argues, does not refer to these sprinkles of humanity, but to ‘the right to have rights’. As such, it cannot be limited to those worthy of our good deeds.

The contribution of Lena Dominelli also raises some questions. In what follows, we go deeper into three points of discussion: (1) the relation between citizenship and voluntarism; (2) the relation between political and social citizenship; and (3) the relation between voluntarism and professional social work.

A first point of discussion refers to the way citizenship and voluntarism are related to each other. In Dominelli’s essay, voluntarism is seen as an important component of citizenship. But what does this mean? From a historical perspective, citizenship initially refers to the recognition of individual civil rights, such as the right to free speech, privacy, freedom of religion, free press, ... In a democratic state, citizenship, together with civil rights, also encompasses political rights, such as the right to vote and to be elected. In a social welfare state, socio-economic rights are the capstone of citizenship, as formulated by Marshall (1950). These socio-economic rights imply an appeal to the government for making it possible for everybody to lead a dignified live. The right to labor is an important lever in realizing the right to a dignified life. This does not only include paid labor, as this would reduce the importance of labor to its economic function. It would also ignore the diversity of labor in itself as well as the importance of labor for the development of people. In this light, voluntary work should first and foremost be seen as an important form of ‘labor’. This raises the question whether people have equal access to this kind of labor. Hence, in this development, it is important that citizenship is underpinned by a rights-based character, and the realization of citizenship is a never-ending challenge. For instance, the political rights of women were recognized much later than those of men, and migrants until today—as also Lena Dominelli points out—are devoid of these rights. For instance, it is also possible that voluntary work is mainly embedded into the private sphere, and the rights perspective on this form of labor is being ignored.

Social work has always played an important role as an actor in the realization of citizenship. Social workers had to teach laborers the rules of proper behavior, which marked good citizenship. As such, social work tried to manage citizenship (Payne 2005; Lorenz 2004). Hence, social work was deployed as a vehicle to decide who could be recognized as a good citizen, and under what conditions. From this perspective, social work was a form of ‘social education’. This social education was not necessarily an expression of solidarity, as it mainly expressed the expectations of some citizens towards others to be accepted as a member of society. From this perspective, social work can be regarded as a disciplinary connection between the individual and society (Butler and Pugh 2004). Hence, the formal recognition of rights in itself does not necessarily imply the recognition of ‘social’ citizenship; the recognition of people who experience this sense of belonging as valuable and full members of society. This links to the observation that people have unequal access to (the diversity of) voluntary work. For instance, on the one hand people in poverty are increasingly being activated to certain types of voluntary work (as unpaid labor), while on the other hand they experience high thresholds to other types of voluntary work (such as participation in social cultural activities).

The role of social work as social education has not disappeared, on the contrary. A concrete example is the way in which welfare dependency, non-participation in social work or the lack of motivation to work is problematized (Roets et al. 2012). Once again, social work is deemed important in terms of guiding people in order to acquire the necessary competences and motivation to live up to the expectations of becoming good citizens. Voluntary work and professional social work find each other in this common goal. The debate is lingering on, mainly about who should do what to reach this goal. From this perspective, the way voluntarism currently is presented reflects a specific interpretation of citizenship, embodying the expectation that citizens present themselves with civic duty, which contributes to an ideal society. This expectation might take on different forms—as Lena Dominelli points out—in more residual welfare states such as the US more than in Western European Countries, where a more structural welfare state model has been embedded (Lorenz 2014).

As an answer to this disciplinary role of social work, there is often a demand for more radical approaches of social work, from a belief that there is a better world to win for social work while embodying claims “about what social work can achieve (...) aligned with the radical tradition in social work” (Marston and McDonald 2012: 3). Although this perspective introduces a liberating instead of a disciplining perspective on the role of social work as educator, the question of societal development still remains to be seen as a technical question instead of a result of human interaction. We would argue for an educational perspective of social work in which education is seen as a shared activity, creating space for dialogue, uncertainty and unpredictability. As such, social work practices should be seen as practices of ‘learning democracy’: professional social workers and volunteers, as well as the people they are involved with can learn to act political by being engaged in public debate, not as a conflict of interests, but as joint action to understand democracy as an engagement to human dignity and social justice (Bouverne-De Bie et al. 2014).

Hence, in this approach citizenship is not something to be realised for once and for all, but has to be reconceptualised over and over. The focus lies on the connection rather than the opposition of social and political conceptions of citizenship. It is in this dialectic tension that social work finds a meaningful answer to the question of how to relate social work to learning democracy. Volunteers can take on a specific function in this perspective, as it stresses the importance of communication between social workers and clients, of listening and being present without necessarily defining situations as specific problems. However, as we argue later, this should not be seen from a romantic point of view in which voluntary work is seen a more genuine than professional work. We have argued that volunteer work should first and foremost best seen as work, including the question how it contributes to the right to work as an important dimension of the right to lead a dignified life.

A second point of discussion concerns the impact of the growing pressure on the welfare state and on political citizenship. The growing pressure on the welfare state leads to a growing focus on social citizenship rather than reaffirming a focus on political citizenship. The ideas of ‘civil society’ and of ‘social capital’ become central and citizenship becomes a relational concept rather than a political one. The development towards a ‘Big Society’ strengthens this development; it weakens the right to have rights, and increases the dependency of the goodwill of ‘strong and good citizens’. Lena Dominelli illustrates the consequences of such an approach strikingly. We can name and address additional risks: the risk of an increasing de-professionalization of social work, and the fact that social work becomes more and more conditional (Maeseele et al. in press).

A third point of discussion refers to the relation between voluntarism and professional social work. Also in strong welfare states, voluntarism continues to play an important role. From the perspective of the volunteer, there can be different motives at stake in doing volunteer work. It can be an expression of civic duty, but volunteering might also function as a way for citizens to spend their leisure time in a meaningful manner, a way to realize personal growth, a way to get access to training and education, ... From a professional perspective, we can ask questions concerning the surplus value of voluntary work, the training which is required, and the division of tasks between professionals and volunteers. Hence, the relation between voluntary work and professional work is an important theme in its own right. An important question concerns the alleged surplus value of voluntary work. It is argued by some, for example, that volunteers would create a form of ‘warm and genuine solidarity, compared to cold (read: paid) solidarity from professionals. For instance, currently there is a tendency to professionalize the work of volunteers (Carey et al. 2009). This tendency arises from a variety of arguments, for example related to the growing demand for training and lifelong learning of volunteers. Several scholars believe that this professionalization might imply the demise of the belief in the specific qualities of volunteer work (Bagilhole 1996; Dillenburger et al. 2008; la Cour and Høljund 2008), which are defined in terms of attentiveness, enthusiasm, reciprocity and empathy. It is stated that volunteers can provide flexible, personal and attentive care, and that they base their work more on user’s terms, as opposed to the care of paid professionals. Hence, there seems to be an almost inversely

proportional relationship between the level of quality and professionalization: professionalizing voluntary work means downgrading the specific quality of volunteering (Roose et al. 2012). From our perspective this is a very romantic approach of volunteer work and a very technical approach of professionalism. Although an important discussion, it deserves empirical grounding. Volunteer work can be important, but this is not inherently the case.