Dorte Caswell

Unemployed citizen or ‘at risk’ client? Classification systems and employment services in Denmark and Australia:

The paper explores recent developments in Australian and Danish unemployment policies with a special focus on the technologies used to classify and categorize unemployed people on government benefits. Using governmentality as our theoretical framework, we consider the implications of reducing complex social problems to statistical scores and differentiated categories — forms of knowledge that diminish the capacity to think about unemployment as a collective problem requiring collective solutions. What we argue is that classification systems, which are part and parcel of welfare state administration, are becoming more technocratic in the way in which they divide the population into different categories of risk.

Identity work and client resistance underneath the canopy of active employment policy

In the Danish employment system social workers have the important institutional task of trying to establish a labour market perspective for each cash benefit recipient, even when the client has other problems in addition to unemployment. The client’s ‘capacity for work’ must be documented and described. In this article we examine the dilemmas that occur in the interaction between clients and social workers. We show how clients try to evade the demands of labour market related identities in their negotiations with social workers. Our analysis focuses on two cases, selected from a vast qualitative material, that represent cases in which the client’s dissatisfaction becomes apparent. The results indicate that clients are active participants who resist, protest against and sometimes even avoid the identities offered by the employment system.

Comparison of Social Work Practice in Teams Using a Video Vignette Technique in a Multi-method Design

English This article focuses on the use of the vignette method in social worker teams and thereby collective or shared aspects of practice, which cannot be reached through a presentation of a vignette separately to the individual members of the team. A video vignette case was presented to four social worker teams in connection with a focus group session in order to compare the teams’ assessment of the client. The negotiations in the focus groups accentuate how teams interpret the same client in different ways and actualize questions as to where these differences stem from and what they are related to. The results support two methodological conclusions that we discuss in the article: that it is beneficial to use vignette in a multi-method design when comparing teams and that a focus group context is an advantage, when the characteristics of the team should be accentuated, while individual differences become secondary. Danish Denne artikel sætter fokus påbrug af vignettemetoden i socialarbejderteam og dermed kollektive aspekter af praksis, der ikke kan studeres ved at præsentere en vignette separat for enkelte medlemmer af et team. En videovignettesamtale mellem socialarbejder og klient blev præsenteret for fire socialarbejderteam i forbindelse med et fokusgruppeinterview med henblik påat sammenligne teamenes vurderinger af klienten. Forhandlingerne i fokusgrupperne synliggjorde, at teamene fortolker den samme klient forskelligt og førte til spørgsmål om, hvor disse forskelle stammer fra og hvad de er relateret til. Resultaterne understøtter to metodologiske konklusioner, som vi diskuterer i artiklen. For det første er det gavnligt at bruge videovignettemetoden i et multimetodedesign, når sigtet er at sammenligne teamenes vurderinger. For det andet er fokusgruppemetoden en fordel, når interessen er rettet mod at studere karakteristika ved teamene i stedet for individuelle forskelle.

Responses from the Frontline: How Organisations and Street-level Bureaucrats Deal with Economic Sanctions

Economic sanctions have gained more political legitimacy and are being more widely used as a tool to improve the willingness of unemployed welfare recipients to participate in activities within the framework of active labour market policy (ALMP). The focus of this article is the use of economic sanctions on cash benefit recipients in Denmark, Quantitative analyses show a substantial increase in the use of economic sanctions in Denmark, including sanctions on those who are categorised as having problems in addition to unemployment. In this article we will direct our attention to responses from both the organisational and individual level regarding the implementation of sanctions. Empirical material consists of interviews with managers and frontline social workers in municipalities with a high number of sanctions. We argue that organisations matter in shaping street-level behaviour, resulting in substantial differences in the use of sanctions from one municipality to another.

Disability Pensions and Active Labor Market Policy

ABSTRACT Danish active labor market policy, under the headline of flexicurity, has received international attention due to its claimed ability to curb unemployment while boosting employment. A strong belief in the positive effects of activation, in policy as well as practice, has had consequences for all client types, including those who are far from labor market participation due to social, mental, physical, or other problems. We analyze the application of active labor market policy measures used to support clients with substantial problems besides unemployment. This study utilizes Danish register data that encompass all people residing in Denmark. Using sequence analyses combined with qualitative data, the authors conclude that the intensive use of active measures does not correspond to lower awarded disability pensions. In fact, the analysis suggests that the intensive use of active measures may in some respects have negative consequences. Hence, future research should further explore the implications of different patterns of timing of active labor market measures for clients as well as for social service providers.

A new approach to helping the hard-to-place unemployed: the promise of developing new knowledge in an interactive and collaborative process

The reforms of the social and employment services that have swept across most of the developed world since the 1990s have enormously expanded the groups of citizens receiving active employment measures. Nevertheless, up until now, most countries have only seen limited results from enhancing the labour market participation of the most vulnerable groups. We argue that the goal of including a greater share of the harder-to-place unemployed in the labour market is not likely to be achieved through the tried and tested ways of developing knowledge, policy and practice. Rather, we propose a different approach to generating and exchanging the necessary knowledge for developing active employment policy and practice. As an alternative to the evidence-based knowledge paradigm, we set up a model for knowledge production that is made through co-operation between practice and research. This model investigates the potential for integrated services and for co-production by acknowledging the importance of the experiences of frontline professionals and clients in developing employment services.

Expanding or Postponing: Patterns of Negotiation in Multi-Party Interactions in Social Work

In this article, we examine patterns of negotiation in multi-party decision making in social work. We draw on Strauss’ theory of negotiated order and a discourse analytical approach, seeking to gain insight into the complex accomplishment of making a decision in an inter-professional and multi-party setting. Working with data from 97 team meetings in a social work setting, we identify two patterns of negotiation in talk: expanding and postponing. ‘Expanding’ covers a group of interactional actions involving turn-taking and closure, while ‘postponing’ includes a group of actions whereby assessments or topics are avoided or made irrelevant. Both are examples of the complex ways in which team members negotiate both the institutional order and the decision to be made in the specific case in situ.

Cash Benefit Recipients—Vulnerable or Villains?

This chapter investigates the current Danish unemployment policy regime from the perspective of the cash benefit recipient. The main goal of the policy is to move unemployed clients closer toward labor market participation. We question whether policy instruments, such as curtailing benefits and using economic sanctions in order to promote motivation and thereby enhance job opportunities, also present a risk to the livelihood of the most vulnerable unemployed.

No income of my own: paths towards integration for women who live as family-supported individuals in Denmark

Purpose – This paper aims to present new research on family‐supported immigrant women. Throughout the period 1994‐2005, around 11 percent of immigrant women aged 25‐66 from non‐Western countries in Denmark were family‐supported.Design/methodology/approach – The study applies a mixed methods approach integrating register‐based quantitative analysis with qualitative analysis of interview material.Findings – The paper finds that family‐supported immigrant women in Denmark can roughly be divided into two sub‐groups. One group of women from the former Eastern bloc who have arrived recently, who have a relatively high‐level of education and who often have a Danish husband; and another group of women from more typical “guest worker” countries, who have a lower level of education and who often have a husband with the same ethnic origin. A second finding is that for some women, being family‐supported is a permanent rather that a temporary state. Third, the paper finds that family‐supported women have a variety of ...