Collaboration and networking are ubiquitous, versatile features of social service provision in most Western countries. However, it is an open question whether networking means and entails the same across countries. Comparing regulatory frameworks in three jurisdictions representing distinctive ‘worlds of welfare services’ – Germany, Norway and Quebec – this article aims at eliciting the normative rationales that underpin and inform local service networks in child welfare and protection (CWP) systems. In Norway, where services are little diversified and largely insular, networking appears as a way of opening up for greater organizational plurality, within and beyond the public sector realm. In Germany in contrast, where services are highly pluralized and fragmented, networks are seen as an instrument for streamlining complexity. As for Quebec – an intermediate case in some respects – networking is envisioned as a catalyst for aligning two co‐existing service streams and mitigating the child protection–family support divide. Interestingly, in all three places, networking is now being enforced through similar highly formalized, top‐down regulatory provisions, even though the intended directions of change differ markedly. This has implications for CWP policy as well as research on networks at large.

International welfare trends are sweeping across the western world and have gained a lot of attention from researchers. However, few contributions have demonstrated the practical effects of these trends. This article will illustrate this using the individual plan as a case showing that some unintended forms of use can be regarded as traces of international welfare policy trends, and are not in line with the original ideologically based intentions.

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Roma individuals are struggling to access the formal labour market in Romania. Previous research occupied with this issue has traditionally been dominated by quantitative studies of socio-economic indicators that cling to the characteristics of the ethnic group. The study presented here, however, uses institutional ethnography as a method of social inquiry to demonstrate that this issue needs to be studied from a bottom-up perspective. The article illustrates that there are factors connected to how the system of occupational integration operates that must be taken into consideration in order to explain the difficulties Roma individuals face when trying to enter the labour market in Romania. We argue that these structural barriers create and reinforce processes of minoritising that increase marginalization and discrimination and thereby hinder work inclusion for Roma individuals.

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