Faced with increased global migration and a more ethnically diverse clientele, several studies stress the need for more culturally sensitive welfare services. Others warn that the focus on culture might lead to the culturalization and othering of clients from ethnic minority or migrant backgrounds. In the Norwegian context, cultural sensitivity is implemented in policy documents of the Norwegian Labour and Welfare Administration (NAV) to improve services for immigrant clients. However, the operationalization of cultural sensitivity into service delivery remains unscrutinized. Based on ethnographic fieldwork at a frontline NAV-office, this article unpacks the practical work embedded in being culturally aware, by exploring the circumstances in which street-level workers factor culture into their comprehension and consideration of a case. The article employs a processoriented approach to its analysis of caseworkers' discussion of cases. Findings show that caseworkers explicitly consider culture mainly when cases appear diffuse and intangible. The caseworkers discuss plausible explanations to make sense of these cases, only one of which is culture. Thus, the caseworkers distinguish culture from the client's ethnicity or migrant background. These findings refine the perception of street-level workers' inability to respond to questions of
Achieving equity in welfare provision depends on accurate understandings of the work of street-level bureaucrats. We explore the role of emotions when caseworkers prioritise cases. While creaming of clients whom street-level bureaucrats consider 'likely to succeed' is acknowledged as a way of rationing scarce resources, research tends to reject emotional involvement as bias, or neglect emotions in creaming-practices. This may produce inaccurate portrayals of how street-level bureaucrats prioritise cases. We challenge existing perspectives by bridging the literature on creaming and the sociology of emotions. We did ethnography and interviews with Norwegian caseworkers tasked with integrating migrant clients into the labour market. These caseworkers cream cases according to institutional/discursive understandings of 'star candidates' and rely on their emotions as embodied knowledge. We conceptualise such processes as emotional creaming, which unpacks a central, yet overlooked part of how street-level bureaucrats prioritise cases. This modifies the depiction of emotions as mainly personal bias.
Faced with increased global migration, there is a growing concern that social workers need more training in- and knowledge of culture and ethnicity. These understandings have come to influence research, education, practice, codes of ethics and organizational policy, constituting a multicultural discourse within the field of social work. Social workers are expected to have cultural competence, and exercise cultural sensitivity in their practice. However, a clear and consistent understanding of what it means to be culturally competent or culturally sensitive is missing, and there seems to be little consensus in how to define and apply these concepts, both within research and practice. The aim of this qualitative evidence synthesis is to synthesize what previous empirical research reports about social workers’ understandings and experiences when operationalizing the concepts into practice. Through data-based and a manual journal search, 12 qualitative empirical studies were included in the synthesis. Our analysis describes four main challenges in the studies’ efforts to operationalize the cultural concepts in social work practice: 1) Who to define as culturally diverse service-users; 2) What aspects of culture to consider in the encounters with culturally diverse service-users; 3) How to consider and approach these aspects of culture, and 4) the capacity to work in a culturally appropriate manner within the organizational context where this work is undertaken. The literature acknowledges these challenges to varying degrees. We summarize the four challenges in a model, and argue that the model can be useful in further awareness-raising, development and integration of our understandings of cross-cultural social work. By depicting the essential questions of who, what, how and where to employ the concepts into practice, we aim to assist scholars, practitioners and educators to help navigate the multifaceted landscape of culture and social work.
Utviklingen av institusjonell etnografi som forskningstradisjon har vaert preget av et arbeid med å utvikle og klargjøre grenser for hva som er institusjonell etnografi, og hva som ikke er det. Dette grensearbeidet har bidratt til en innkapsling av institusjonell etnografi som en tilnaerming som kun er for spesielt interesserte og innvidde. Dette bidrar igjen til å usynliggjøre nytteverdien av institusjonell etnografi i sosiologisk forskning og lukker også for teoretisk videreutvikling. Møtet med en formalistisk forståelse av institusjonell etnografi skaper to hovedutfordringer for sosiologer fra en nordisk, pragmatisk tradisjon: å forstå hva som skiller institusjonell etnografi fra «vanlig» problemorientert sosiologi og å ta i bruk oppskriftspregede beskrivelser av hva som er «riktig» måte å gjøre institusjonell etnografi på. I denne artikkelen tar vi utgangspunkt i vårt eget empiriske forskningsarbeid og bygger videre på en fremvoksende nordisk tradisjon innenfor institusjonell etnografi for å diskutere hvordan en abduktiv tilnaerming til institusjonell etnografi kan bidra i sosiologisk kunnskapsutvikling. I artikkelen bruker vi perspektiver fra institusjonell etnografi til å beskrive vårt arbeid med å forstå og ta i bruk institusjonell etnografi. Dette har vi gjort på to ulike måter: gjennom å bruke konsepter fra institusjonell etnografi som analytiske begreper og ved å bruke institusjonell etnografi som innledende analytisk tilnaerming. Vi beskriver hvordan forskningens sosiale koordinering har virket inn i dette arbeidet og diskuterer hvordan en åpning av institusjonell etnografi gjennom en abduktiv tilnaerming kan bidra til teoriutvikling på to nye og fruktbare måter: (1) aktiv bruk av institusjonell etnografi til å rekonstruere annen teori og (2) empiriske funn som virker som anomalier som kan bidra til videreutvikling av begreper innenfor institusjonell etnografi. På denne måten kan institusjonell etnografi styrkes som forskningstradisjon og aktivt bidra til sosiologisk kunnskapsog teoriutvikling. NøkkelordInstitusjonell etnografi, nordisk sosiologi, abduksjon, bakkebyråkrati
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