Alternativen für soziale Teilhabe?

The guarantee of social participation is a public responsibility of the welfare state. However, this constellation has recently undergone a fundamental transformation. This transformation has been accompanied by a boom in donation-based and voluntarily organised care services, such as food banks (“Tafeln”) and charity shops (“Sozialkaufhäuser”), but also medical advice centres and digital second-hand platforms. These offers are repeatedly attributed with the potential to provide opportunities for the social participation of citizens. Other positions contradict this assessment and see gaps in the increasingly inadequate welfare state guarantee of social participation. Although there is, so far, a lack of differentiation between such offers, only such a systematic differentiation would make it possible to assess their potential for social participation. The article undertakes an ideal-typical differentiation into offered support which is compassion based and charitable, as well as self-organised, solidarity-based and market oriented ; thus allowing reflection into their potential for social inclusion.