Most studies on the processes and effects of neoliberalization concentrate on the public sphere. Some feminist scholars argue that young middle class women are increasingly becoming the bearers of neoliberalism–encouraged to achieve success in multiple areas of life. There is, however, a lack of empirical research on how women engage with neoliberal ideals in post-socialist settings. This article draws on 25 interviews with single mothers in Estonia to discuss how neoliberal ideology manifests itself in the private sphere. Our findings suggest that single mothers have an ambivalent relationship with neoliberalism as they are both challenging as well as reproducing this ideology in their everyday practices of gender and motherhood.

This article draws on the idea that welfare systems and institutions are based on normative assumptions about justice, solidarity, and responsibility. Even though the literature on welfare deservingness has highlighted the connection between ideas of solidarity and the support to, for instance, people with different ethnic backgrounds, there is very little research on the interconnections of different welfare state models and ideas on how migration should be governed. This article suggests that there is a link between the welfare state models suggested by Esping‐Anderssen and different discourses on migrant welfare deservingness. The article explores the interlinkages of three welfare state models—liberal, socialdemocratic, and continental‐corporative—and four discourses on welfare deservingness of migrants in respect to social welfare—labourist, ethno‐cultural, residential, and welfarist (see Carmel & Sojka, 2020). It is suggested that the normative foundations embedded in different welfare systems lead to dissimilar ways of approaching migrants and migration.