The field of welfare work addressing “the immigrant”
– symbolic boundary work and the making of society
This sub-project is carried out by Trine Øland, associate professor in educational research, and the student research assistants Anne Sofie Trangeled Larsen, majoring in educational studies and sociology, and Louise Krogsgaard Nielsen, majoring in sociology.
The main objective of this project is to clarify and understand the social significance of the way different groups of welfare state professionals assess and facilitate processes around “the immigrant” on behalf of the public interest since in Denmark. The research question is:
- What characterises the variety of welfare work and welfare state professionals engaged in interventions targeting “the immigrant”, and what technologies, viewpoints, missions, judgements and justifications do these professionals promote when categorising both professional welfare work and “the immigrant”?
The project is a sociological interview study of the competing and conflating professionals’ welfare work vis-à-vis “the immigrant”. “Professionals” are understood as those who appear competent and entrusted to manage “the immigrant” on behalf of the public interest; those who want to improve the situation with “the immigrant” whether they call it to integrate, enlighten, treat, teach, mobilise, care for or discipline.
48 professionals are interviewed ‘qualitatively’ and have answered a structured interview questionnaire. The interviewees are divided between teachers, psychologists, social workers, police officers, preschool teachers, doctors, psychiatrists, nurses, health visitors, job consultants, teachers in adult education, and different so called street level workers and advisors specialised in “youth” and “integration”. In total, the interviewees cover a variety of profession, active period in the field since 1970/age, institutional anchorage (ranging from small-scale NGO-projects to well established and broadly-based institutions such as a hospital or a school), and geographical location/place of the institution.
The project’s main analytical focus is a focus on the symbolic boundary work of the professionals as regards both the definition of professional welfare work and ”the immigrant”. The project’s secondary analytical focus is a focus on the individuals’ (the professionals´) classified social and symbolic properties in a social space approach.
Publications
Ydesen, C. & Øland, T. (2015) Professional Interventions as a State-Crafting Grammar: Using a Sociological Concept of State in Historical Research. In: Heinesen, J.; Jørgensen, M.O.; Lytje, M. & Nielsen, T.K. (eds.): Challenging Ideas?: Theory and Empirical Research in the Social Sciences and Humanities. Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing (forthcoming)
Larsen, A. S. T. & Øland, T. (2015): Om samfundsmæssige betydninger af politi- og gadeplansarbejdets forebyggelsesprojekt rettet mod ’indvandreren’ – tillid og mistillid; civilisering og de-civilisering? Gjallerhorn nr. 22, Tema om tillid (forthcoming)
Paper presentations
Øland, T. (2015): Welfare work addressing immigrants and refugees: Analyzing and theorizing integrationist visions and beyond, International Research Seminar: Analyzing the practices of (organized) cultural encounters, Roskilde University, November 4th-5th 2015
Øland, T. (2015): Universalism and the Danish welfare state: 'Immigrant juvenile delinquency' and the effects of the making of appropriate behaviour through care and control: Paper for the panel Transforming Locally in a Multipolar World at the Geopolitical Economy Research Group (GERG) Inaugural Conference, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, September 25th-28th 2015
Ydesen, C. & Øland, T. (2015): Understanding Constructions of Danish National Identity across Historical Settings, European Conference on Educational Research (ECER), Budapest, September 8th-11th 2015
Moldenhawer, B. & Øland, T. (2013): Professional interventions as a state-crafting grammar addressing 'the immigrant', European Conference on Educational Research (ECER), Istanbul, September 9th-13th 2013.