The concept of co-production suggests a collaborative production of public welfare services, across boundaries of participant categories, for example professionals, service users, peer-workers and volunteers. While co-production has been embraced in most European countries, the way in which it is translated into everyday practice remains understudied. Drawing on ethnographic data from Danish community mental health services, we attempt to fill this gap by critically investigating how participants interact in an organisational set-up with blurred boundaries between participant categories. In particular, we clarify under what circumstances the blurred boundaries emerge as believable. Theoretically, we combine Lamont and Moln ar's (2002) distinction between symbolic boundaries and social boundaries with Goffman's (1974) microanalysis of "principles of convincingness". The article presents three findings: (1) co-production is employed as a symbolic resource for blurring social boundaries; (2) the believability of blurred boundaries is worked up through participants' access to resources of validation, knowledge and authority; and (3) incongruence between symbolic and social boundaries institutionalises practices where participants merely act 'as if' boundaries are blurred. Clarification of the principles of convincingness contributes to a general discussion of how co-production frames the everyday negotiation of symbolic and social boundaries in public welfare services.
This article contributes to the sociology of care-relational justice by identifying, conceptualising and unpacking ‘imposed volunteering’ as a mechanism that shapes societal caring arrangements. Contemporary societies allocate care work disproportionately to women, ethnic minorities and working-class citizens, which exacerbates social inequalities. Distribution of caring responsibilities is a political question but often not recognised as such, because it is deeply immersed in everyday routines. Our study uses the context of the COVID-19 pandemic to dissect the distribution mechanisms that became unusually palpable when the lockdown of public welfare provision in Denmark relocated some forms of care work from professionals to volunteers. With the term imposed volunteering, we conceptualise the feeling of being coerced into taking on new caring responsibilities, which some women – and men – experienced during the lockdown. Drawing on a national, representative survey, we document that, compared to men, women carried out significantly more voluntary care work and organised voluntary work through informal personal networks rather than through formal civil society organisations to a significantly higher degree. We unpack the experience of imposed volunteering as it unfolded during the lockdown through qualitative case studies, and clarify how relational and institutional factors, such as gendered expectations and the sense of personal obligation, imposed volunteering. Our study illuminates the importance of public care, reciprocal caring relationships and care for carers, and demonstrates why the mobilisation of care work volunteers must take gendered implications into account if it is to be consistent with democratic commitments to justice, equality and freedom for all.
Current welfare policy encourages “coproduction” between citizens and welfare workers so that “lay expertise” effectively becomes part of the provision of services. Drawing on fieldwork from Danish mental health services, this article analyzes how expertise and authority are organized and performed in a network linking welfare workers and users as well as new participants (e.g., volunteers) and artifacts. Theoretically, the article employs Goffman's dramaturgical distinction between “frontstage” and “backstage.” The findings indicate that welfare workers coproduce services by covering their authority and expertise in “frontstage” meetings with users. However, relational and material resources in encounters “backstage” make welfare workers appear as accountable experts, which both fosters and threatens their credibility.
The shift towards recovery-oriented mental health care has led to the extensive growth of peer support in contemporary service delivery. When enacting peer support, peer workers (PWs) use their lived experiences of mental illness to provide support to individuals experiencing mental health difficulties. While PWs are increasingly an integrated part of mental health services, the way in which peer support unfolds in everyday practices remains understudied. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork from Danish mental health centres, this paper investigates how peer workers and users enact experiential knowledge and expertise to support one another.Theoretically, this paper draws on a micro-sociological approach that comprehends expertise as an interactional accomplishment enacted within institutional arrangements. First, the analysis shows how PWs and users develop affective relations based on shared illness experiences that enable the enactment of expertise. Second, it demonstrates how PWs and users engage in these relations by exchanging sympathy and knowledge according to different situational demands. Third, it shows how experiences of relational limitations make service users contest the value of experiential knowledge and PWs' position as valid experts. Centrally, this
This feature article explores how Danish authorities have worked to secure public health in cooperation with citizens, companies, and civil society organizations amid an unfolding pandemic.
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