It investigates how local authorities, church organizations, charitable associations, and private actors responded to poverty, social hardship, and various forms of social marginality in a predominantly Catholic and rural region of Switzerland.
While recent scholarship has significantly advanced our understanding of welfare institutions, administrative coercion, and out-of-home placements in twentieth-century Switzerland, little is known about how these processes operated at the local level in Upper Valais. Existing studies have largely focused on national developments, urban settings, or the institutional history of social policy.
The project approaches welfare not merely as a system of social assistance, but as a social practice through which inclusion and exclusion were negotiated. It explores how different actors defined need, distributed support, exercised control, and justified interventions. Particular attention is given to the relationship between charitable assistance and coercive measures, including child placements and administrative interventions.
Drawing on municipal, cantonal, and ecclesiastical archives, the PhD thesis seeks to reconstruct the everyday functioning of welfare in the Upper Valais. By examining the interplay between poverty, moral norms, social control, and charitable support, the project contributes to broader debates on welfare, social exclusion, and the role of religion in twentieth-century European societies.
