In recent years, a number of studies have shown that the scientific base for Swedish social work is weak and that methods for evaluation of practice are poorly developed. As a response to this, the government has made significant efforts to develop evidence-based practice (EBP) within social services. However, these efforts have so far been characterised as a top-down project, and as several authors have concluded, they have not proved productive. Therefore, they must, it is argued, give way to EBP where the role of the profession is central. This article should be seen as a contribution to the discussion of this alternative route. We try to tackle the crucial question about how the knowledge base for social work practice can be strengthened, and we discuss a model for developing education and research in collaboration with social work practice. In this, the tradition of Practice research has offered important points of departure.
This article has a focus on how discursive positioning is carried out during encounters between people in the daily routine of social work, and how a basis for “otherness” can be created through positioning during the social work encounters. Social work practice includes discursive activity between social workers and clients, and the occurrence of stories is seen as a central element in this activity. Narratives have in earlier studies been described as tools used in social work practice, and parts of the narrative are often documented and compiled with the rest of the information gathered to serve as a basis for professionals’ actions. Theories relating to the narrative relayed during the encounter between social worker and client have evolved over the past few decades, and this development is also reflected in social work research. One key theme that has emerged in this research is the use of narratives to categorize the clients in the social services. Analyses carried out in recent years, however, have gradually become ever more refined, and show how people position themselves in relation to others on the basis of words such as “we” and “them”. This article gives an overview of this development in social work research with the use of empirical examples from social work practices in different fields of social services, from the encounters in social work offices, and assessment meetings in eldercare, and from team talk among professionals
In recent years, an increasingly visible poverty has been widely debated in Sweden, not least in terms of ‘vulnerable EU citizens’. Issues of EU-internal mobility have gained renewed interest as EU citizens have the legal right to move freely within the EU. The focus in this debate has been on poor EU citizens categorized as ‘Roma’. In many respects, ‘the Roma’ have become a symbol for the mobility of poor people as a problem. The purpose of this article is to investigate contemporary discourses on poor people’s mobility as a social problem, in the light of similar descriptions in the past. Starting with the 2010s, we analyse governmental reports from the 1950s and 1920s in which the mobility of poor people has been subjected to political debate. We draw upon a genealogical approach informed by Michel Foucault, focusing on the categorization of mobile poor people as problematic and deviant, in relation to what is conceptualized as the norm. In line with this approach, we analyse historical formations of particular ‘regimes of truth’ concerning the mobility of poor people. Our results show that the mobility of poor people is a recurring problem, even though in different ways at different times. The political responses to the problems caused by poor people’s mobility range from disciplinary and excluding to assimilating interventions directed at the mobility of poor people – in the 2010s represented by ‘the vulnerable EU citizens’, in the 1950s by ‘the gypsies’ and in the 1920s by ‘the travellers’.
The increasing fragmentation and the rising number of organizations in society create major challenges when implementing knowledge structures. In this article, we propose that the concept of metagovernance is useful when addressing these challenges. The enhancement of knowledge structures in the Swedish social services is our study object. Networks at national, regional and local levels have been organized and facilitated by national resources and agreements since 2003. The shifting of participants, switching assignments and ambiguity about the networks purposes created difficult conditions for successful implementation. In this paper, we argue that fragile top-down government and shifting local network organization provide limited opportunities to ensure that new knowledge structures will have an impact on social work practice. Research is based upon monitoring a national program that started in 2003, affecting five universities and their surrounding regions and municipalities. The article is also based upon observations and interviews among national and regional actors. Results show that national agencies are hands-off, but still in control by setting up legal and discursive frameworks for those networks. It is argued that this creates new challenges for participating organizations and professionals in social work.
This article focuses on the forms and conditions of welfare provision and social work in the transforming welfare state. The Sport Programme (SP) is a municipal sport-based social intervention launched in response to segregation causing tensions in society, crime, and social exclusion. The programme constitutes a case for examination. Sport activities for youths at risk in the SP are assumed to foster a sense of community and social cohesion. The article investigates how ‘the community’ is constructed as a space for social inclusion. A variety of statements articulated by policy makers and municipal administrators are analysed from a governmentality perspective. The analysis suggests that ‘community’ is formed by distinguishing the SP from public welfare and social work and by mobilising civil society in the intervention. Public welfare is problematised as bureaucratic and insufficient, whereas civil society is associated with the potency of voluntarism, authentic leadership, and personal relations based on common identity and shared experiences. By involving a social entrepreneur, the SP mobilises and activates civil society as a means of responding to social problems, forming ‘community’ as a space with a ‘human touch’. Such a partnership re-distributes responsibility for responding to social problems to a variety of agencies. It is discussed how the SP enables role model identification as the primary governing rationale and how this incorporates elements of de-professionalisation in social work. Consideration is given to challenges for social work and to how activating ‘community’ illustrates tendencies and transformations in contemporary Swedish welfare provision.
The social services in Sweden have become key actors in the field of support for female victims of domestic violence. However, knowledge about what kind of support the social services offer is underdeveloped. The aim of this article is to examine social workers’ perceptions of the needs they meet among female victims of domestic violence, what kind of support they offer to meet these needs, and how they use their discretion to negotiate and justify their work. The article builds on a qualitative analysis of interviews with social workers. The analysis shows that the social workers have a great deal of discretion, as a result of framework legislation and a high status among local politicians and managers. However, both specialization and a lack of available services limit their discretion. What an abused woman is offered or is entitled to is negotiated and justified depending on, for example, which services are available, whether the woman is considered to have own resources (not only financial but also emotional and practical), and if the social worker is available. Three main strategies for reducing workload are identified: increasing demands for authority decisions, transferring responsibility to others, and placing requirements on the abused women’s actions and attitudes.
This ethnographic case study examines how knowledge was produced in collaboration between a welfare organization and its target group. The study investigated the Swedish Public Employment Service (PES), which is responsible for the integration of newly arrived migrants through the ‘introduction programme’. To explore how migrants perceived its services, the PES initiated a six-month project in which three employee-researchers and four participant-researchers (migrants participating in the introduction programme) conducted an interview study together. I followed the project as an independent researcher, making observations and conducting interviews with the members of the research group on several occasions.
The study shows the participant-researchers were enabled to obtain quite extensive control over the project. The study also suggests that organizational leadership on practical and methodological matters does not necessarily conflict with the user perspective of the study. The project produced knowledge that revealed the migrants’ perceptions in a relatively unedited way. The knowledge produced was ‘radical’ as it differed considerably from the typical knowledge produced by the organization, which made it unfamiliar and difficult to handle. Not until the final report of the project included an organizational perspective was it made official, and even so the PES made no efforts to publicly present or disseminate the report.
Departing from the theory of street-level bureaucracy, this article usesa qualitative approach to examine employment officers’ perceptions of workingin the Swedish introduction programme for newly arrived migrants. Theprogramme is managed by the Swedish Public Employment Service, and theaim of the study is to illuminate how street-level bureaucrats perceive theprerequisites of implementing integration policy within the introductionprogramme, and how they respond to these prerequisites. The study showsthat the interviewees perceive the working conditions as difficult, characterizedby a pronounced tension between organizational demands andmigrants’ needs. To manage this dilemma, the street-level bureaucratsapply several coping strategies, and we highlight two broad patterns ofpractice. Within the client-centred pattern, attempts were made to use discretionto assist the participants in accordance with their needs. Within theauthority-centred pattern, the street-level bureaucrats applied a formal andrule-oriented understanding of their assignment, concentrating their effortson maintaining the functionality of the introduction programme. The mostimportant implication of the study is that it reveals a mismatch between thepolitically formulated integration policy and the actual needs of the migrants,as perceived by the interviewees. The current integration policy is heavilyinfluenced by a workfare logic, causing the introduction programme to befocussed on providing support connected to labour-market matching.However the programme lacks adequate structures to support its participantsto handle e.g. practical, health-related and psychosocial issues that wouldindirectly facilitate labour-market participation. Thus, this study encouragespoliticians and policymakers to formulate a more holistic integration policy.
This article aims to show an example of how municipal policy promotes a social work of policing and expulsion, represented as a child welfare. It is legitimated through a therapeutic rationality promoting emotional wellbeing among asylum-seeking minors arriving on their own. The material consists of municipal policy documents Children?s best interests when returning and Unaccompanied returns issued by the municipality of Strömsund, Northern Sweden, developed as a best practice project during 2014?2020. A post-structuralist policy analysis is applied, underpinned by Foucauldian governmentality. It de-constructs how productive and repressive elements of care and control are intertwined into a rationality of policed empowerment and a technology of activation into expulsion . The rationality encourages re-orienting motivations to stay in Sweden into willing self-exclusion, through collaborative reflection and normalization of expulsion as ?crisis management? and child welfare. Concerns of children arriving alone are described as manifestations of ?crisis?, caused by immature mobility, expectations to stay in Sweden and separation from roots. Social services, legal guardians and staff at housings are encouraged to form a collaborative and motivational technology of support. Children?s needs are represented as emotionally fragile, to be cared and reshaped therapeutically through collaborative reflection on exclusion as being in service of children?s self-development. Techniques presented in the material re-shape motivations through collaboration, securitization and activation. Although effects might turn out differently, this case shows a combination of neo-liberal empowerment and policing encouraging a child welfare regime of exclusion and policing.
In recent decades, market reforms have paved the way for new forms to govern social work practice by means of procurement, cost efficiency, measurement, and freedom of choice. In this article, we draw attention to how clients are constructed in terms of motivation, in a context where social work is shaped by a procurement arrangement. Empirically, the article is based on interviews with social workers providing social services in a procurement setting, with a focus on how they describe their work in relation to presumptive clients, and specifically their work upon the motivation of clients. The analysis is informed by a constructionist approach to governing and the construction of clients. The results illustrate how the ideal client is constructed as motivated to choose a provider of social services matching their specific needs and interests as well as displaying a will to change and take part in the services offered. The social work appearing as desirable is based on a therapeutic rationality, with dialogue as the primary means of working upon the motivation of clients. The results further illustrate how different technologies (of the self and power) operate and intertwine in the work upon motivation of clients.
This article departs from the promise frequently put forward, that Social work is a profession committed to human rights. In a Swedish context, this commitment is manifested in ethical guidelines as well as national law referring to rights such as the right to ‘a reasonable living standard’. In recent years, politicized processes have allowed legislation guiding social work to interact deeply with other legal areas such as migration law which has a different raison d’être, focus and scope than social law (interlegality). This has greatly affected social workers opportunities to live up to its human rights commitment. In this article, we explore two critical incidents of interlegality in resent years, illustrated with two different empirical data sets and their intersection – a change in the Act on the reception of asylum seekers and others (1994:137) and a verdict by the Swedish Supreme Administrative Court concerning the ultimate protection net in the Social Services Act (2001, 453) (HFD 2017 ref. 33). Making use of cartographic analytical tools, we analyse transformations in the conditions set for access to a ‘reasonable living standard’ in Sweden. In particular, focus is on what the intersection of legal (vertical) scales and legal (horizontal) spaces perform, qualaw, and how changes in one legal branch (migration law) deeply affect another area (social law). As a consequence, the Social Services Act, which is central to Swedish social work, may be constructed as a law about legal status rather than about needs and welfare rights. This has a profound impact on social work as a human rights profession.
The relation between sociology and social work is analysed in this article as a relation between observer and object of observation. As a theoretical framework, we use Luhmannian systems theory, according to which modern society is characterised by functional differentiation, that is a horizontal structure of function systems such as polity, economy, education, science, law, etc. Each of these ful fils a particular function for society. One such system is the help system, referring to social services and their practice. Its societal function is the management of inclusion/exclusion and social integration. Function systems contain what Luhmann calls‘reflection theories’, which are associated with specific academic disciplines (such as the political system/political theory/political science or the education system/pedagogical theory/ educational science). Although their basic operations are linked to science (research, theories and methods, publications), reflection theories are part of their system; their function is to reflect on the unity and meaning of the function system. This article argues that the discipline of social work serves as the reflection theory for the help system. A solid reflection theory in the help system is important in order to define guiding criteria for professional ethics to be used in social services. The lack of an adequate reflection theory can lead to the intrusion of ideologies that are inappropriate to the logic of the help system, such as New Public Management or administrative technocracy, which might threaten the integrity of the help system.
In this article, we bring attention to the local-level administration of social services as a site of bordering. Specifically, we focus on the provision of social assistance (i.e. a means-tested cash support program, ekonomiskt bistånd) for irregularised migrants. Based on a close comparative reading of the City of Malmö’s 2013 and 2017 guidelines on social assistance, we analyse how entitlements to social assistance have been redefined and restricted following the 2015 so-called refugee crisis and the subsequent overhaul of Swedish asylum policy. Prior to this ‘crisis’, in 2013, the City of Malmö became the first Swedish municipality to extend access to social assistance to irregularised migrants. In 2017, the guidelines were revised with the expressed aim to discourage irregularised migrants from remaining in the country. We see this as a shift from a needs-based approach to one that, instead, sees social policy as subordinate to the goals of immigration enforcement. Further, we conceptualize this as a shift towards a type of indirect internalized bordering measure that so far has received relatively little scholarly attention in the Nordic context, namely self deportation measures that aim to deter immigration and encourage ‘voluntary return’ by restricting access to public services and welfare benefits for (irregularised) migrants. Finally, we argue that the overall specialization, juridification and standardization of social service provision supports the shift in question, providing a convenient justification for restricting entitlements to irregularised migrants.
Research has explored how social workers in team constellations perform assessments of the needs of clients in case conferences. However, the process in which gatekeeping is applied in the categorization of clients as inappropriate receivers of support in collegial discussions has received less attention. This article presents findings from a case study of a complex case where a 64-year-old person with dementia was assessed by two teams of social workers handling the same case under two different forms of legislation (elder care and disability services). The data consist of recordings of two case conferences in one Swedish social work agency. The conferences were analysed using positioning theory. The findings suggest that the conferences contained different storylines where the social workers categorized the client as an inappropriate receiver of support. Furthermore, the discourses for gatekeeping differed depending on how the social workers positioned the client in the different storylines in the case conferences. The study shows that institutional and professional responsibilities are central to the assessments that the social workers perform, and that there is a risk that the client will be subject to gatekeeping when the case is handled on an ambiguous legal basis in different legislations, which may result in the client falling between two stools. The findings suggest that research needs to explore, in a more systematic manner, how social workers’ gatekeeping practices are performed in collegial team discussions.
Following the 2015-peak of asylum-seeking migrants in Europe, asylum-policies have become increasingly restrictive. As bordering has become a prioritized issue among many European national governments, including in the Nordic countries, practices of bordering have also become more decentralised, diffuse and dispersed. This special issue set focus on such bordering practices as these are manifest in the social service sector. It draws on research conducted in Norway and Sweden and consists, besides this introduction, of seven original articles.Of particular focus is how social work, in its regulations and practices, are involved in the bordering of both the nation and the welfare state. Connecting insights from border studies – and related critical research – with social work research, the articles present empirical analyses of the dynamics of bordering practices among varying practitioners and in varying organizations, including legislators, courts, municipalities, street-level social workers and civil society organizations. The special issue as a whole also raises questions about the ethical and political challenges that emerge at the nexus of bordering and social service provision. In this introductory article, we provide an overview of the field of border studies and discuss how it relates to social work research. This serves as a conceptual foundation which we hope will enable critical reflections on the relationships between social service provision and bordering practices in Norway, Sweden and beyond.
Grief research highlights risks associated with parental suicide during childhood and adolescence: mental illness, social difficulties, repeated suicide attempts and actual suicide. This article aims to explore how these ‘risks’ are constituted, by investigating the relationship between suicide-related grief and ‘othering’ in four young women’s narratives on their experiences of losing a father to suicide during adolescence. Othering works through expressions of insecurity, avoidance and outright rejection from individuals in the women’s vicinity and even family members. However, what is noteworthy is that othering is also found to work from the inside; due to their father’s norm-breaking act, the women describe themselves as actually being ‘different’ or ‘strange.’ Moreover, attempts to ‘normalise, or ‘liberate’ oneself from the suicide involves attempts to understand its reasons. The preoccupation with ‘why questions,’ thereby primarily appears to be a question of self-formation. ‘The stranger inside’ is described as the strongest impediment to seeking social support.
This article discusses how qualitative research with children exposed to intimate partner violence deals with methodological issues of children’s voices. Violence researchers argue for the need to see children as competent social actors, di erentiate between groups of children, attending to adult– child asymmetry in research and acknowledging children’s individual experiences. However, little is said about how children’s voices are produced in their local, cultural and societal contexts. There is also an ignorance of the politics of representation, which may hamper the development of ethically responsible research on children exposed to intimate partner violence.