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- Ahlberg [Alsarve], Jenny, 1980-
(författare)
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Efter kärnfamiljen : familjepraktiker efter skilsmässa
- 2008
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This dissertation is about post-divorce families. The central question is how family is constructed after divorce. The aim is to study how family relationships are negotiated, transformed and reproduced after the separation. The research is based on 24 in-depth interviews with twelve young adults, between the ages of 21 and 29, with divorced parents. Their narratives about their families are analysed using a theoretical framework inspired by the individualization theories (Beck & Beck-Gernsheim 2001; Giddens 1997, 1995) and the doing family perspective (Morgan 1996; Silva & Smart 1999a), especially focusing on the concepts of negotiation and family practices. More specific questions raised in the dissertation are how are family boundaries drawn by the young adults? How do the interviewees understand the new organization of their families, which has been renegotiated after the separation? What perception of motherhood and fatherhood can be found in the narratives? And, finally, to what extent are family relationships after divorce negotiated in the way that the individualization theories claim?The results show a quite complex picture of family life after divorce. While both parents are often described as participating parents, the family practices after divorce appear clearly gendered. The mother’s involvement in taking care of the child seems not to be negotiable in the same way as the father’s. Hence, motherhood appears natural and taken for granted to a much greater extent than fatherhood. The negotiations between the parents after divorce can be of both an explicit and implicit character according to the narratives, but yet another kind of negotiation are the indirect negotiations. In these negotiations, the child is used as a go-between or carrier, a position that seems to limit their own possibility to participate in the decision making. Another aspect that seems to diminish children’s participation is the principle of loyalty to both their biological parents. The results also show that the children’s living arrangements after divorce are characterized by changes and renegotiations rather than being permanent. The parents’ new partners are described in different ways in the narratives, however, they are often seen as turning points that have a major influence on the family relationships. The nuclear family as a normative ideal is present in all the interviews but in different ways. While some express an explicit critique of it, others regard it as something that they want for themselves in the future. What constitutes a family according to the narratives? Firstly, blood ties and formal relationships are pointed out. Secondly, the feeling of solidarity and closeness is viewed perhaps as the most evident element of family life. This feeling can be created by open communication as well as by spending time together on a regular basis. Thirdly, growing up together and/or sharing everyday life practices are also considered as vital to develop and maintain close family ties. This means that the family boundaries after divorce are renegotiated over time rather than permanent. These negotiations take place in a certain context, where gender norms, earlier experiences and other social relationships play an important role.
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| 3. |
- Amnå, Erik, 1950-, et al.
(författare)
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Our kids
- 2016
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Annan publikation (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)
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| 7. |
- Berglez, Peter, et al.
(författare)
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Pressen sviker sin roll
- 2010
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Ingår i: Nerikes Allehanda. ; :2010-09-17
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Annan publikation (populärvet., debatt m.m.)
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| 8. |
- Bruhn, Anders, 1953-, et al.
(författare)
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Dimensions of discretionary practices : Swedish social insurance officials assessing work ability in a highly regulative context
- 2021
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Rapport (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Frontline work is most often performed in direct encounters with clients. Several scholars have developed models and methods for analysing these encounters to explain the distinctive features of discretionary practices. Such an analysis must move between several layers of social reality, and therefore it requires the integration of several different types of data. In this article our main objective is to develop a ‘multi-level’ approach for understanding how discretionary practices grow in the interplay between conditions at institutional, as well as interactional and individual levels. We hope to contribute to an enhanced understanding of frontline work in today’s public sector. Our data comes from a group of officials in the Swedish Social Insurance Agency (SSIA) investigating the needs and rights of applicants to receive sickness compensation (sickness pension). It includes recorded phone conversations, qualitative interviews, and both administrative and regulative documents. In spite of being a strictly regulated business, and even in cases of very similar situational conditions, the analysis reveals important variations between officials in their approaches to clients, and in ways of acting in dilemmatic situations. Such variations are traced back to individual-level differences in moral dispositions and professional beliefs.
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| 9. |
- Bruhn, Anders, 1953-, et al.
(författare)
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Swedish social insurance officials struggling with the vagueness of the work ability concept : The case of sickness compensation
- 2017
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Rapport (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- In a research project – Practices of Frontline Interactions in the Swedish Social Insurance Agency (SSIA) – we are studying how goals and rules are shaped and handled in conversations between officials and clients. A central aim is to develop knowledge about what kind of room these officials have to develop policy in practice and how they make use of it. This is done by a multi-level research approach combining analyses on an institutional and interactional level (Bruhn & Ekström 2017). Data are collected via mixed methods: recorded interactions (official–client), qualitative interviews, and documents. In this paper, except for some minor changes identical with a paper originally presented at the 2nd Conference on Street-level Bureaucracy in Copenhagen 2017, we discuss officials’ room for and use of discretion when assessing work ability in investigations about sickness compensation (previously called sickness pension). To get sickness compensation the individual’s work ability must be permanently reduced (i.e. he/she shall not be able to take part in working life anymore). Work (dis-)ability is a diffuse and contested concept. It is a core concept not only for officials here in focus, but for several other organisational actors in the field of labour market and health insurance issues as well. Many actors with different missions and interests are recurrently involved in negotiations about how to interpret and take actions on the basis of this concept. The diffuseness of the concept often puts the investigating official – the Street Level Bureaucrat – in a position of having quite lot of room to assess and affect the outcome of the investigations at hand. Internal SSIA statistics also point to quite wide variations in outcome of investigations between different units in the organisation. At the same time there is also internal pressure on the investigators to “keep figures down”. The magnitude of such pressure is related to changes in pressure upon the authorities on the political level. This leads to fluctuations between different fiscal years. Last year (2016), 70% of the applications for this benefit were rejected. This is an increase from earlier years, and a hint of a growing restrictiveness in assessments of what is seen as permanently reduced work ability. In this paper, we discuss the work ability concept in relation to the room for assessment – the discretion – of these sickness compensation investigating officials. It is based on earlier research, official documents, qualitative interviews and speech recordings.
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| 10. |
- Bruhn, Anders, 1953-, et al.
(författare)
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Towards a Multi-level Approach on Frontline Interactions in the Public Sector : Institutional Transformations and the Dynamics of Real-time Interactions
- 2017
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Ingår i: Social Policy & Administration. - : John Wiley & Sons. - 0144-5596 .- 1467-9515. ; 51:1, s. 195-215
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This study develops a multi-level approach on frontline interactions in the public sector. Previous research suggests that detailed analyses of frontline interactions are essential to our understanding of how welfare services take shape when policies and rules are applied and negotiated in individual cases. The dynamics and performances of real-time interactions have, however, rarely been analyzed as such. This study shows how the methods developed in the field of Conversation Analysis can contribute to this research. Our multi-level approach integrates analyses of the policy- and institutional transformations that shape conditions for frontline interactions; and analyses of how policies and rules are evoked, negotiated and reshaped in the turn-by-turn organization and performances of interaction. The approach is applied on an analysis of how rules regarding financial aid are applied in an authority highly affected by changes in welfare policy towards standardization and detailed regulations. The empirical case is the Swedish Board for Study Support. The empirical study includes analyses of documents, interviews and analyses of taped telephone conversations. The study shows how institutional arrangements of standardization, detailed regulations, monitoring and depersonalization, structure the frontline work and shape narrow frames for officials’ discretion in interactions with clients. The study also shows how rules are invoked and negotiated in recurrent practices in the interaction: in the careful design of decisions; in the investigations of alternatives and exceptions from the rules in order to find solutions to the client’s problems. The analyses of concrete interactional practices clearly indicate that also a rule-governed work dominated by task discretion involves recurrent negotiations, flexibility and local policy-making.
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