ABSTRACT. Universal Credit changed the landscape of welfare-to-work policy in the UK, through the merging of in-work and out-of-work benefits (Jones, 2022), extension of conditional welfare (Dwyer and Wright, 2014), and digitalisation of services (Coles-Kemp et al., 2020). Under this new landscape, the way in which couples are activated at the street-level is of particular interest; first, as second-earners and parents, typically women, have increasingly been the target for workfare policies (Ingold and Etherington, 2013), and, second, Universal Credit means-testing centres on total household earnings, whilst behavioural change mechanisms are largely individualised (Millar and Bennett, 2017). The street-level bureaucracy literature has explored how frontline staff navigate tensions within competing policy aims of personalisation and uniformity of service delivery (Lipsky, 2010 (1980)), however, in respect to couples, personalisation could mean responding to both individual and household needs.

In centring couples’ experiences of activation, this paper will explore how frontline staff and service users implemented and experienced welfare reform at the street-level and in the household. This paper draws on findings from a PhD research project, using interviews with 10 frontline staff (the Work Coaches), and a secondary analysis of interviews with 78 coupled service users from the ‘couples navigating work, care and Universal Credit’ project (Griffiths et al., 2020, 2022).

The analysis highlights that the way that Universal Credit has created limited spaces for Work Coaches to personalise employment support and tailor conditionality requirements, with coupled service users largely individualised. However, how couples were individually activated was often at odds with household decisions around work and care, and how couples jointly engaged in managing conditionality requirements. This research highlights the need for understanding the relational nature of frontline work beyond a two-way interaction (Wright, 2016), and how contexts and relationships in the household are important dynamics at play in street-level implementation.

ABSTRACT. The article investigates how Danish frontline employees, working with some of the most vulnerable unemployed people in the Danish employment service system, experience tensions as they strive to realize the ideals of the so-called social investment (SI) state paradigm (e.g. Hemerijck, 2015): they are expected to focus on resources of clients more than on their problems; to focus specifically on labor market resources; and to focus on future possibilities of clients rather than just on the here and now. The analysis shows how those frontline workers encounter a number of challenges as they strive to realize the promises of the SI state paradigm: e.g., the optimistic rhetoric of the system - focusing on resources rather than on impairments of clients - sometimes resonate very poorly with the self-depictions of clients. The article, thereby, seek to add to ongoing macro-level discussions over the SI state paradigm by analyzing what its core components can turn into, when brought to life in specific ways and in specific contexts. Thereby, the paper critically discusses some of its key assumptions. Empirically, the article turns to nine focus group interviews with a total of 78 employees working in Danish job centers. All interviews had a primary focus on how informants perceive and handle cross-pressures emerging as they are expected to balance economic and social aims in their work.

ABSTRACT. The aim of this paper is to explore how street-level bureaucrats’ perceptions and experiences reflect administrative reform trends within Public Employment Services. We position our research within (1) street-level bureaucracy theory and narratives of professional identities as state agent, citizen agent and professional agent (Cecchini & Harrits, 2022; Maynard-Moody & Musheno, 2000) reflecting public sector ethics of justice and of care (Stensöta, 2010) as well as (2) literature on administrative reforms paradigms and the changing relationship between citizens and the state (Bogumil & Jann, 2020; Konle-Seidl, 2008). Based on survey data collected from 400 placement officers advising short-term unemployed workers in the German Public Employment Services, this study employs a mixed-methods approach to investigate the perceptions and experiences of these frontline workers. Data was collected by asking a closed question to assess own understanding of the predominant role identity (including classifications such as social worker, clerk, service provider, agent/salesperson, among others) and open-ended questions to uncover the underlying rationales behind specific role identities and to identify the most significant challenges faced by the caseworkers in their interactions with clients. The analysis of the data combines quantitative text analysis to identify patterns in the data and qualitative techniques to extract explanations and narratives from respondents' open-ended responses. This research seeks to contribute to a deeper understanding of how street-level bureaucrats understand their roles within bureaucratic systems, and how these role identities shape their interactions with clients.

ABSTRACT. The German Participation Opportunities Act (POA), in force since January 2019, aims at providing social participation for long-term unemployed who are very remote from the labour market by placing them into subsidized employment with generous financial assistance. Implementing the POA thus leaves a lot of room for discretion. Our analyses of the management level, based on 46 qualitative interviews with job centre managers, show two patterns of implementation that can be discussed in terms of state-agent and citizen agent narratives (Maynard-Moody/Musheno 2000): In the first pattern, job centres follow the idea that only integration into unsubsidized employment can provide ‘real’ participation. Accordingly, the POA is seen as an instrument for labour market integration. In the second pattern, the subsidized labour itself is seen as providing the opportunity for participation. Here, the POA is interpreted as a “social labour market” that offers social participation as an alternative goal to labour market integration. Manager’s strategies and budgets both matter when it comes to the implementation of the POA. But what do they mean for the discretionary power at the frontline? Based on four qualitative case studies in contrasting job centres, we discuss the role of management and budgets for the creative use of discretion. We argue that a combination of frontline workers acting in consensus with the strategy provided by the management level, financial freedom and organizational trust in the professionalism of frontline workers enables creative discretion and provides positive outcomes for clients. In contrast, a consensus based only on the law’s interpretation which does not include the organizational arrangements, in combination with financial restrictions limits the discretionary power, undermines the professional claims of frontline workers. Overall, management and budgets can foster or hinder positive outcomes and innovation at the frontline which has consequences for those affected.

ABSTRACT. Street-level research emphasises that workers’ policy delivery is shaped by their position in between the clients’ need and the resources they possess to meet these needs (Lipsky 1980). The workers develop conceptions of their work and of their clients that narrow the gap between service ideals of meeting clients’ needs and the prevailing structural constraints on human service bureaucracies. In contrast, theories of professions emphasise that professional workers’ approach to their clients – their diagnosing, inferring and actions in clients’ cases – is shaped by their professional background and their profession’s the knowledge, skills, and ethics. A distinctive feature of professions is that their fields of expertise define the character of a problem and its proper solutions.

This paper assumes that to understand street-level professionals’ conceptions of their work and of their clients, we must understand not only how these conceptions are shaped by their professional background and the organizations in which they work, but also by these organizations’ locations in the hierarchy of the service system.

In the paper we analyse how street-level professionals conceptualise young people at risk of being marginalized from education and employment, i.e. how they perceive and describe the youth and their problems. The data comes from a larger research project on the organization of service delivery. In a strategic selection of Norwegian municipalities, we have conducted qualitative interviews with various professionals involved in inter-organizational collaboration to prevent young people’s risk of marginalization, including professionals from the employment and social service, a follow-up service targeting early school leavers and local healthcare and addiction services. Based on contextual information about the interviewed professionals, we investigate whether there are consistent patterns of variation by profession, type of service, or municipality, which might explain their conception of at-risk youth. Our findings show de-specialised professionals with shared problem conceptions, framed in everyday language. We emphasize that this can be understood considering the professionals being employed in organizations located at the bottom of the service hierarchy, which are ‘receiving’ services, meaning that they are dealing with problems that cannot be handed over to other services.

ABSTRACT. Working with children who are not thriving often requires collaboration across professional and organizational boundaries. In this paper we focus on individual SLB’s coping mechanisms employed in collaboration with other professionals either internally in the same organization (school or daycare) or collaboration outside the organization (e.g. between schoolteachers and family therapist or psychologist). We will argue that the condition of chronically limited resources and differentiated demands from policies, leaders, and citizens (3) applies also when street-level professionals are to collaborate with other professionals. We argue that service delivery of today is not only depending on individual street-level workers but is also very much dependent on the division of labor between different actors. In our case, the support a child can get is very much dependent on how teachers collaborate (or negotiate?) with other professionals in other organizations. In other words, the individual street-level worker does not (necessarily) have the means or possibility to ration services or cream clients, but is part of a larger organizational set-up, where smaller units are dependent on other actors to get the child extra support. Coping mechanisms have mainly been studied as behavioral efforts employed by SLBs in client relations (4&5). This article expands existing knowledge by applying a street-level bureaucracy perspective and focus on individual coping strategies in collaborative work. Hereby combining SLB coping research with theory on boundary spanners (1) A research project (2) was conducted in seven Danish municipalities. 55 interviews conducted with seven different professions, who is involved in either everyday care of children in day care or schools or are experts called upon. We identify 3 families (4) of coping mechanisms applied by professionals in collaborative work: A) Passing the buck, B) Preparing and anticipating, C) Postpone/delaying tactics

ABSTRACT. In Italy, employment-based amnesties are considered a key and recurrent immigration policy tool. In the past 25 years, seven amnesty laws have been enacted. In the summer of 2020, amid the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic, a further amnesty program was approved. It was a long-awaited event for both undocumented migrants and employers, coming eight years after the previous one – an unexpectedly lengthy period by Italian standards. The program was justified as both a measure to address labor market shortages triggered by global travel restrictions in crucial sectors (such as agriculture and domestic work) and as a way to protect the health of the overall population by guaranteeing undocumented migrants’ access to legal status and healthcare-related rights. While more than 200,000 people applied for this program, as of the latest official data from April 2023, only 65,166 applicants have successfully completed the procedure and obtained a renewable residence permit for employment reasons. This study sheds light on how this amnesty program and in particular its uncertainty and temporality is experienced by foreign workers and employers who applied for it but still wait for a response. It aims to analyze their perception of policy limitations, alongside their interactions with other stakeholders (e.g., intermediaries, institutions, advocates for social rights), everyday life implications, and adaptive strategies. Diverse conditions influencing their experiences are also under examination. Methodologically, the study derives insights from participant observations at service desks and from numerous in-depth interviews conducted with foreign workers and employers who sought participation in the amnesty program, as well as key stakeholders. Furthermore, this research project builds upon two other endeavors: one delving into the specific encounters of Salvadorian asylum seekers concerning the discussed amnesty program, and another exploring regularization policies on an international scale, as part of the Horizon Europe-funded project MirreM.

ABSTRACT. In Norway, despite the welfare state’s efforts to foster social integration through work inclusion for all, and despite a comprehensive ‘Introduction Programme’ for recently arrived migrants, we observe low labour market participation and precarious labour conditions of migrant and refugee women. This paper explores the role of contextual factors in (re-)producing inequalities, as an additional dimension to individual factors (such as formal skills, language etc.). The paper will present and discuss findings from a study (part of the EQUALPART project; RCN number 324298; https://prosjektbanken.forskningsradet.no/project/FORISS/324298) based on extensive ethnographic field research (weekly observations and in-depth interviews with street-level bureaucrats over a 2 years period) within the Norwegian Labour and Welfare Administration (nav). The data thus consists of observations (over time) of street-level-bureaucrats’ practices, experiences and reflections (i.e. dilemmas) as regards supporting unemployed immigrants (receiving benefits from KVP, social benefits), adapting services in relation to their users’ needs and exerting etc. The aim of the study has been to increase our knowledge about how organizations that structure unemployed immigrants’ lives and the systems in which those organizations are embedded, can impede integration efforts.

ABSTRACT. Low employment rates of refugees have commonly been explained by institutional barriers (such as discrimination, lack of formal rights, etc.) or by a lack of migrants’ (adequate) formal professional skills. The low employment rates of Ukrainian refugees in some European countries are especially puzzling given their high level of education and the liberal labour market access. A common political response to boost the employment of immigrants, most recently in the face of populist pressures, is increased welfare conditionality, welfare retrenchment and coercion. Yet, the impact of different and changing combinations of social, labour market and integration policies on the refugees themselves and on their relations to public institutions are not well understood. Street-level bureaucracy research that is, in principle, interested in the encounters between the state and citizens has thus far neglected the client side as well. This paper adopts a bottom-up perspective to ask how Ukrainian refugees in Germany subjectively experience the system of labour market access and the public institutions governing it. In particular, we examine their perceptions of and experiences with job centers, language classes and processes of credential recognition. Based on 41 in-depth interviews, various informal talks and participant observation, we propose an empirically-grounded typology with five types that reveal how different the system is experienced by Ukrainians. We explain this heterogeneity with their work biography and the psycho-social relevance that individuals assign to employment (past), but also with their life situations (present) and aspirations (future). We also show how the system of labour market access produces a number of unintended consequences, including patterns of avoidance, inertia and discouragement that, in turn, prevent or delay labour market integration.

ABSTRACT. The literature on coping in frontline work often frames responsiveness as a discrete choice model: individual workers move toward some clients while moving away from others. We argue that this binary conceptualization does not do justice to the daily efforts in public services to both care for the individual citizen by showing responsiveness to their needs, and care for workers and the entire client population by dividing resources fairly and not overburdening workers.

Our argument is underpinned by a qualitative study of micro-practices of home care workers and managers in the superdiverse context of Amsterdam (140 h of shadowing and 15 interviews). To analyze how frontline workers and managers navigate the challenge of providing good care with limited resources, we used boundary work theory. This relational and processual lens helps us to capture how coping strategies are shaped over time through relationships and interactions between managers and colleagues in response to changing client situations. Analyzing the daily practices of home care through a boundary work lens, we identify three different "boundary work repertoires". Applying these repertoires, frontline workers and managers balance the need to uphold regulations with the need for responsiveness to citizens. The latter is particularly important in superdiverse contexts, where frontline workers encounter a greater degree of divergence between citizens’ life worlds and the system world of public services.

Theoretically, our paper contributes to the literature on coping strategies, by offering a conceptual framework that captures how frontline workers navigate tensions between the need for responsiveness and the need for policy compliance in specific organizational contexts. Empirically, the paper provides insight into how frontline workers use performative boundary work to win trust through responsiveness and communicate regulations to clients who are unfamiliar with the public services, in our case recently arrived older migrants.

ABSTRACT. Responsiveness to citizens has always been an important aspect of street-level decision-making (Lipsky, 2010). Recently, there is increasing political and policy emphasis across contexts that public services are tailored to citizen’s needs (i.e. Bernards, Schmidt & Groenveld, 2023; Raaphorst, 2021; Visser & Kruyen, 2021). This development emphasizes the work of frontline professionals, who are increasingly expected to think about ways to make public service delivery more responsive in organizations still characterized by a high degree of standardization and formalization. To date, different disciplines have studied this phenomenon. However, the research is still fragmented due a variety in the concepts and terms used to study responsiveness. Due to the limited interaction of different fields and concepts and the lack of definition of the term responsiveness itself, responsiveness remains a magic concept and lacks concrete conceptualization.

In this study, we aim to further our understanding of responsiveness and aid research on this topic by proposing a conceptualization of responsiveness at the interactive (micro), organizational (meso), and policy (macro) level. At the interactive level, we will focus on the work of street-level bureaucrats and how they listen and respond to citizens (Stivers, 1994). At the organizational level, we will delve into the organizational structure that either supports or hinders responsiveness. This includes an examination of the role of algorithms. At the policy level, we examine the role of governance structures and paradigms (Stensöta, 2012). Furthermore, we identify various dimensions of responsiveness, ranging from a policy goal, a course of action, and a provided service. We argue that such a multi-level conceptualization of responsiveness helps to integrate different studies and disciplines and therewith furthers our understanding of what responsiveness is, what challenges it brings to frontline professionals, and how it can be studied.

ABSTRACT. Responsiveness is – as Brodkin illustrates – most at risk when frontline staff have inadequate resources (including time, knowledge, and access to useful services), performance measurement focusing on selective benchmarks, and when individuals asserting claims are from marginalized and disadvantaged sectors of society (Brodkin 2013: 29). This call for research on how citizens in vulnerable positions experience responsiveness to their needs of social services.

In the European Horizon RESPONSIVE project, we focus on how to enhance the responsiveness of Europe’s social services. The project aims to increase the impact of citizen's voices on the approaches, organisation and delivery of three types of social service: disability and mental health, child protection and services for youth at risk, whilst recognising that citizens facing high levels of complexity in their lives often with multiple services.

This paper builds on qualitative data from the RESPONSIVE project from the Workpakage 2 focusing on the citizens voices and experiences (https://responsive-europe.eu/); 25 interviews with citizens (service users) in different vulnerable positions (youth at risk, mental health issues), four future workshops and citizen board meetings. The data and the analysis focus on the citizens´ experiences of responsiveness from the social services, including unfolding the concept of responsiveness from the citizen perspective and identifications of conditions that influence the responsiveness. In this analysis, the SLB perspective will be used to grasp how the relationships and interactions between public services and citizens are key elements in the experience of responsiveness. The results point out trustful relations, nearness, a holistic approach, acknowledgement, time, resources and options of services as key factors in the citizens´ identification of responsiveness. Further, the analysis illustrates how the vulnerability of the citizens plays a role in their own participation in achieving responsiveness from the frontline workers.

ABSTRACT. According to Stone (1984), welfare states generally operate with two distributive systems: self-sufficient people and people in need. With the establishment of the flexi-job scheme in Denmark in the late 90’s, we argue that a middle category was established to describe a person midway between self-sufficiency and permanently dependent on social aids as a flexi-job employee receives pay for the number of hours worked from an employer and additional subsidies from the municipality.

For citizens, the road to a flexi-job can be divided into two stages. 1) the public employment system (PES) must categorize the citizen as having a reduced work ability that is ‘substantial and lasting’ making him unable to function in the ‘ordinary’ labour market. Subsequently, the PES must determine if the citizen is a part of the target group for early retirement benefits, a flexi-job or other policy measures. 2) IF granted a flexi-job, the citizen must be available to the labour market with the associated demands and rights belonging to an ‘ordinary’ unemployed person.

In this study, we examine the two stages in obtaining a flexi-job from being granted a flexi-job to searching for one and how the PES translate the legislative categories in practice. To this end, we report on a document analysis combined with 18 interviews in three Danish job centers (N=21) and a national survey of 80 job centers (N= 511). In February, the empirical data is supplemented by interviews with citizens granted a flexi-job to examine how they experience the process. We find that a fundamental shift in the expectations towards the citizen takes place from the first to the second stage which is linked to the political categories in which the citizen is placed. The categories, however, are floating and left to both institutional interpretation and discretion by the individual SLB.

ABSTRACT. Background: In research and in policy, it is frequently claimed, but rarely shown, that integrated services have positive outcomes for target groups with multiple needs. Specifically, it is assumed that the effectiveness of service provision for long-term health beneficiaries depends on several frontline organisational factors, including staff resources and service budgets, caseworker flexibility and professional knowledge. Aim: This paper investigates to what extent such inner-organisational capacities of integrated employment and welfare services affect the participation in work-oriented activities and ordinary employment for long-term sick people, i.e., recipients of the health-related benefit Work Assessment Allowance (WAA). Theory: We draw on the conceptual framework developed by Heidenreich and Rice (2016) which, at the street level, have identified strategies to overcome service fragmentation and factors that promote or impede the integration of the variety of services needed to assist the “hard-to-serve”. Data and methods: This study combines caseworker survey data from Labour and Welfare offices in three Norwegian counties collected in 2015 with administrative data from several registries covering all beneficiaries of WAA in these counties spanning from 2015 to 2018. Multilevel models are estimated to assess the importance of organisational factors while accounting for individual-beneficiary level characteristics. We focus on two outcomes, firstly on participating in ALMP programmes and secondly on regular employment. Results: Preliminary findings indicate that budgets and resources in the Labour and Welfare office and the caseworkers’ discretion in regarding suitable service have an impact on the likelihood of participation in work-oriented activities. These factors are, however, not directly related to subsequent employment. The analyses also show that recipients with more socio-economic resources and better health are more likely to enter regular employment, after accounting for organisational factors. Conclusion: Local organisational factors derived from theory are linked to participation in an ALMP, but not to subsequent employment.

ABSTRACT. In recent years, collaboration between the public employment services (PES) and companies to integrate disadvantaged groups of unemployed individuals into jobs has significantly increased. This has been achieved through initiatives such as company internships and regular paid hours. This development represents a partial shift from the traditional Danish labour market model. Previously, the employment system primarily handled measures to integrate individuals outside the labour market, while labour market actors focused on retaining employees inside the labour market at risk of losing their jobs. Now, companies play a much larger role in efforts to include individuals from disadvantaged groups outside the labour market, necessitating a deeper theoretical understanding of companies' inclusion capacity. In this article, which is based on a recently conducted research review, we develop a new concept and a theoretical model for what inclusion capacity is and how companies can increase their inclusion capacity. We also offer a perspective on how practical-oriented work inclusion can contribute to the development of a more inclusive labour market.

ABSTRACT. Background: In the last three decades a support-side approach has been developed in the field of employment support services and vocational rehabilitation that combines supply and demand-side measures, while using workplaces as instruments of work inclusion of persons with disabilities (PWD). Support-side approaches include financial incentive, co-operative action and professional, long-term follow-up, and are based on voluntary agreements and commitments of employers. One example of such approach is Supported Employment (SE), briefly described as an intense and continuous support to PWD for securing and retaining an employment in the open labour market. The support is given by an employment specialist who supports both the individual and the recruiting employer through the employment process and addresses the individual needs of both the individual and the employer. The employer collaboration is thus a cornerstone in the SE approach although the collaboration in itself has not gained much particular research interest. The collaboration between employer and the support system can be seen as crucial, as this collaboration is a gateway to work inclusion and we need to better understand the mechanisms behind successful collaboration to improve employment opportunities for PWD.

Purpose: To explore the collaboration between employment support services and employers, focusing on contributing factors to a successful work inclusion of PWD. Method: Observations of meetings between employers and employment specialists, with follow-up interviews.

Findings: Preliminary findings show that certain exchange agreements, concerning e.g., responsibilities and supportive behaviors, are formed between employers and employment specialists. Through an in-depth dialogue a common understanding is developed, that binds to a particular course of action in the work inclusion process.

Conclusion: Employer willingness to be involved in work inclusion of PWD can be influenced by the kind of support the employer expect, and are given, from the employment support services.

ABSTRACT. The article explores how professionals in the voluntary third sector understand the changing landscape of public service delivery that mixes state (hierarchical authority and regulated standards), market (competition and competitiveness) and civil society rationales. Our research questions are: 1) How and with what consequences do different mixes of governance paradigms, create different pressures for co-creative collaboration among professionals in the third sector? 2) What coping strategies do third sectors professionals adopt to overcome these institutional pressures?

Based on interviews and focus groups, we compare three social service cases in third-sector organizations in Denmark, England, and Slovenia, focusing on their co-creative and collaborative efforts. We find that collaboration and co-creation are well-embedded in all our cases, even though the cases are grounded in different mixes of governance paradigms. Collaboration often run counter to the values associated with both market-driven and state-regulated approaches. When institutional pressures are perceived to strongly conflict, professionals employ a wider range of coping strategies, showing greater acquiescence (and less opposition) in contexts where market values wield significant influence, as seen in England. However, while coping with different mixes of institutional pressures, professionals in all our cases do not lose sight of their mission as third-sector organizations, showcasing the tenability of the third sector.

We contribute to the research agenda of collaborative governance and co-creation in the third sector by exploring the perspective of professionals and frontline staff, which is a relatively unexplored topic in the literature. The article also contributes to expanding our understanding of the relationship between the voluntary sector and the public sector in providing public services from a comparative perspective, with an emphasis on collaborative practices and co-creation.

ABSTRACT. The current case presents a process in which the Technocratic housing committees were defined in several Renewable buildings and underwent a conceptual change to a building residents' council intended to develop community resilience. This change was made Through a dialogue between the residents of the buildings and the community relations coordinators at the Urban Renewal Administration - bureaucrats at the street level. However, it is becoming part of the policy of the municipal authority. Ramat Eliyahu is a neighborhood in Rishon Lezion, Israel, where extensive urban renewal processes occur. These processes are physical. However, it can be used to strengthen the community's resilience. A survey conducted in the neighborhood showed that most residents show a significant level of belonging to the city but less to the neighborhood and even less to the building in which they live. As will be presented, one of the goals of the social process is to increase the sense of belonging and communal involvement. The case shown in this presentation was an attempt to promote the process of establishing housing committees while using infrastructure changes as a motivating factor. The program was promoted in the last three years by bureaucrats from community social work and community relations coordinators of the Administration for Urban Renewal. It was held in 13 railway buildings, each with approximately four entrances. Based on qualitative findings, we will first present the change in the discourse between the residents of the building and the bureaucrats during the process. Secondly, the definition of the housing committees changed from a technocratic body to a council of building residents. This change is now integrated into each renewal process in the neighborhood.

ABSTRACT. “Housing First” services are internationally recognized as being effective in tackling “homelessness” and have seen significant growth in Europe since the 2000s (Pleace, 2016). With this approach, “access” as “direct” as possible to independent housing is advocated (Padgett et al., 2016), so as to promote fairer support in accordance with the right to housing (Stadler and Collins, 2023). Based on an ethnography of public action carried out in France for years (Dubois, 2009), we will start from the observation of a an implementation trick (Dubois, 2015), given that street-level bureaucrats are given the responsibility of sorting the applications in order to select the beneficiaries. In comparison to the Canadian case where the selection is based on an eligibility “score” (Namian, 2020), the studied case allows for the description of deliberative practices through an critical examination of files (Boltanski and Thévenot, 2006). Therefore, our communication aims to question the sense of justice demonstrated by the actors, hypothesizing a targeting (Barreault-Stella and Weill, 2018), by the assumption of practices that deviate from the principles of equality and solidarity at the core of the welfare state (Bernheim and Commaille, 2012).

ABSTRACT. This paper introduces a novel approach for understanding trust in street-level bureaucratic encounters by foregrounding intermediators in trust shaping processes. Street-level bureaucratic encounters are essential for forced migrants’ future aspirations in the Nordics, also pivotally influencing trust shaping in the new host society. However, while trust has been argued as vital for societies and especially institutional systems to function well, recent research show trust shaping being a multifaceted and complex process, especially in a forced migration context. Against this backdrop, exploring trust shaping in street-level bureaucratic encounter complexities becomes interesting, especially in the wake of the ‘long summer of migration’ of 2015 in the Nordics.

The aim of the paper is to examine the role of intermediators in street-level bureaucratic encounters. Intermediators may include, but are not limited to, public service interpreters, lawyers, legal guardians and representatives of third sector organisations. By looking beyond the narrow understanding of encounter between the service user and the street-level bureaucrat, the analyses foregrounds the role of intermediators. The paper advances the need to study intermediators with whom street-level bureaucrats and structurally vulnerable service users interact in the street-level welfare state, to understand how intermediators influence trust shaping and locally enacted power relations. Empirically, the analysis draws on fieldwork conducted in Finland and Sweden from 2020-2022. It builds on 24 semi-structured interviews with street-level bureaucrats in employment and social service institutions, and 29 semi-structured interviews with service users with forced migration background. With forced migrants, we refer to persons who have migrated to Finland and Sweden and the primary reason for migration being flight.

ABSTRACT. The emergence of a new demographic reality involving the movement of people from increasingly diverse national, ethnic, linguistic and religious backgrounds is a rapidly expanding social phenomenon with major implications for the practice of SLB. Interculturalism and intercultural communication are often seen as appropriate tools to bridge cultural differences. But to what extent is it possible to live up to interculturalism in the work of street-level bureaucrats? The contribution of this paper is twofold: (1) to bridge the gap between intercultural communication and migrant assimilation, and (2) to address the lack of research and contributions in the field of street-level bureaucracy, which focuses primarily on resources rather than cultural aspects. Data are drawn from official documents and semi-structured interviews with social workers, public employment case workers and midwives. Empirical evidence shows that SLBs often reflect expectations/processes of assimilation, leading to limited or no room for negotiation on fundamental values such as gender equality, child rearing and the role of religion. This raises questions about the essence and significance of intercultural communication and how it relates to assimilation. It also highlights the role of SLBs in navigating these challenges.

ABSTRACT. Newly arrived migrant children and youngsters aged 6 through 17 are subjected to street-level bureaucrats’ discretion when it comes to the type of school programme they are placed in upon arrival during their schooling age years. Migrant students potentially face the Danish restrictive immigration policies or “welfare nationalism” (Suszycki, 2011), including bordering of social rights at the national level (Tervonen, Saara Pellander & Yuval-Davis). Because the Danish education system has a highly decentral character (de Coninck-Smith et al, 2005), the municipal level can develop other policies and, in this way, have logics that diverge from national developments (Jørgensen, 2012). Hence, the local level offers insights into what migrant children and youngsters encounter at schools. The discretion of street-level bureaucrats can potentially “produce disparities in provision” (Brodkin, 2013, p. 945), which is why I ask: how do street-level bureaucrats determine the appropriate schooling programme for migrant students?

Different parameters factor in when front workers make discretionary decisions regarding where to place children and youngsters. The paper explores how municipal civil servants and school staff place migrant students in one case municipality. The municipality has multiple programmes and sometimes change these programmes as the political context changes. The theoretical framework consists of street-level theory regarding the discretion front workers apply combined with theory on how temporal boundaries differentiate between migrant students (Lipsky, 2010; Cohen, 2018). The empirical material consists of municipal policy documents that supplement 17 interviews about and 4 1-week rounds of observations of street-level bureaucrats’ work with reception. The paper finds migrant students are differentiated by street-level bureaucrats who draw especially on students’ age, class, country of origin, and the geopolitical context. Furthermore, ongoing assessments of the individual student can adjust or alter what they receive, which emphasizes the importance of the temporal dimension in use of discretion.

ABSTRACT. This study looks into the Finnish integration training programme targeted at unemployed migrants, and particularly the career counsellors working in the programme. They are considered as street-level integrators doing integration policy through their practical duties. In this study, their work is considered as emotional labour (Hochschild, 2012), requiring the street-level workers to manage their feelings for the sake of their duties. The sudy is based on two datasets, collected in 2019-2020 in Finland. The first dataset includes video-recorded career counselling discussions between the career counsellors and migrants, and the second dataset semistructured interviews with the same counsellors and applying stimulated recall interview method. The counsellors verbalise very little emotional labour in the first dataset. In the second dataset they volunteer themselves to describe various emotions involved in their work, which in this study is interpreted as cues for emotional labour. The descriptions by the counsellors involve either issues related to their counselling relationship with the migrants, or directly to the migrants themselves. The results suggest there are various emotions involved in the counsellors’ work, but they manage and regulate them when meeting the migrants. However, when presented with a situation to deal with this side of their work, they use it willingly. This indicates that there is an emotional gap present in their work: the emotions are not discussed in their daily duties, but the counsellors would need and benefit in being able to address them in some organised way, instead of handling them individually. The emotional gap burdens these street-level workers and informs indirectly the way they are doing integration policy.

ABSTRACT. Although the literature on resettlement – the movement of refugees from their first country of asylum to a third country that can offer permanent residency and protection – is growing, we still know relatively little of how categories and criteria for selection of refugees for resettlement are implemented in practice. We propose that to understand how refugees are selected for resettlement, it is useful to consider various resettlement workers as ‘street-level bureaucrats’ (Lipsky 1980) who, through their discretionary use of available categories and labels in assessment of refugees, both implement and shape resettlement policy. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork among street-level bureaucrats selecting refugees for resettlement to Norway, we ask how the various institutional contexts influence how Norwegian street-level bureaucrats implement the available criteria to select refugees for resettlement. What makes resettlement an interesting case for street-level bureaucracy, is that resettlement workers operate in a larger system of bureaucracies. We are thus talking about bureaucracies in plural, consisting of international bodies, such as the UNHCR, local agencies in the host countries and often several agencies in the receiving country. In this paper we will focus on Norwegian practices of resettlement and the three Norwegian agencies involved – the Norwegian directorate of immigration, the Norwegian Directorate of integration and the Immigration policies. We ask how are decisions negotiated and legitimized among bureaucrats from the three immigration institutions? We argue that the three agencies involved in resettlement in Norway bring different institutional ethics, different mandates and also different perceptions of risk to the resettlement processes, which influences how they interact with refugees and each other.

ABSTRACT. How does deliberation in frontline organizations affect responsiveness to individuals in need in social service delivery? Møller (2021) suggests that organizational deliberation in child welfare agencies may have both positive and negative effects on street-level decision-making. However, little is known about why deliberation has such ambivalent effects on street-level decision-making. Focusing on the normative dilemmas that emerge at the street-level, this paper explores the mechanisms through which deliberation has multiple influences on responsiveness to individuals in need in frontline organizations. For this purpose, the study conducted fieldwork in a local government in Japan for nearly two years, observing formalized deliberations in a welfare office. By analyzing the qualitative data collected during the fieldwork, we sought to understand the variations in decision-making in the welfare office and the normative dilemmas underlying them. The results highlight that, in addition to being attentive and responsive to the needs and difficulties of individual clients, the sustainability of the organization's operations and human resources, and its reputation among local stakeholders serve as norms constraining decision-making in the welfare office. Although these norms are considered simultaneously in deliberations in frontline organizations, they sometimes conflict with each other. As a consequence, responsiveness to individual clients may take a back seat or even the optimal decision may be withheld. On the other hand, this study also shows that there are some devices and techniques to deal with such normative dilemmas and to be responsive to the needs and difficulties of individuals as much as possible.

ABSTRACT. Almost daily, major Swedish newspapers report on problems related to gang criminality, shootings, organized crime, what is in summary referred to as “parallel society structures,” and which is also a defining feature of “extra vulnerable neighborhoods” (“särskilt utsatta områden”), (Polisen 2023). Parallel society structures refer to a context where alternative sources of authority and loyalty, such as religious and cultural associations, ethnic and kinship groups, or even criminal organizations, have taken over functions that, in a well-functioning welfare state, are typically carried out by the state, for example welfare support or help in handling conflicts. Sweden is a highly segregated country, in which a large proportion of particularly the immigrant population live in areas into which the state “does not reach”, so called pockets of neglect (SCB 2023). The paper reports from a pilot study inquiring into how trust building processes proceed or are interrupted in the interaction between civil servants and citizens in immigrant-dense suburbs (Angered, Hjällbo and Södra Biskopsgården) in the Swedish context of Göteborg. Through informant interviews within law enforcement, social service, and school personnel the following research question is answered: How do frontline workers perceive trust building processes and obstacles that arise? The following propositions (or hypothesis) guide the analysis: Civil servants perceive of it as a) a new type of problem, b) an old problem but concerning a new group of citizens, c) as connected to a new type of state (neoliberal)?

ABSTRACT. Democracies demand responsiveness: the alignment between citizen demands and representative actions. However, the traditional understanding of bureaucratic responsiveness, linked to the strict separation of powers, faces limitations in addressing the complexities of street-level encounters, especially within contexts of weak institutional capacity. This paper draws on public administration scholarship, particularly street-level bureaucracy theory, to examine how this concept needs reconceptualization in such settings. It further argues against conflating responsiveness with accountability, highlighting their distinct temporal relationship. This qualitative study, based on municipal service delivery in a tier-2 Indian city, delves into the divergent perceptions of responsiveness held by citizens and frontline workers. While both groups generally associate responsiveness with informality and accountability, their nuanced understandings differ significantly. Citizens' perception hinges on the effort required to obtain desired services, with economically well-off citizens viewing responsiveness as potentially rule-breaking and beneficiaries perceiving it as responsible conduct. Frontline workers, navigating complex realities and weak institutional capacities, define responsiveness through a multi-faceted lens: accommodating justifiable citizen demands, implementing formal duties with context-specific benefits while upholding formal structures, and even fulfilling informal duties. Their perception is further shaped by the specific context and demographics of the citizens they interact with. By analyzing these divergent perspectives, the paper argues that bureaucratic responsiveness at the service delivery frontline encompasses timeliness, adequacy of response, and accommodation of citizen needs. It underlines the crucial role of dynamic citizen-worker encounters in shaping this complex phenomenon, especially within a challenging institutional environment. This reexamination expands the understanding of bureaucratic responsiveness and emphasizes the need for a more nuanced approach that considers diverse perspectives, the dynamic nature of street-level interactions, and the specificities of weak institutional contexts.