Handlingsstrategier och maktsamspel i möten mellan handläggare och invandrarklienter : Studier av ett försäkringskassekontor : [studies of a social insurance office]

• To encounter immigrant clients is often perceived as problematic by officials of welfare bureaucracies. With this observation as a starting point, I studied face-to-face encounters between officials and immigrant clients, some of which acquire a `problematic' character. The aim of the dissertation is to illuminate aspects of the encounter between officials and immigrant clients; more specifically, it is to study why immigrant clients are percieved as problematic to deal with. The central questions are: What are the `institutionalized strategies' that are used by the officials in performing their occupational tasks? What kind of outcomes do these acting strategies have for immigrants as a client group? Which `arguments' are used by the officials in order to implement the `work-track' principle? What forms does the `power interplay' assume during encounters between officials and immigrant clients? How can the encounters be understood in a sociological context in which both social structural and cultural elements are involved?The empirical material was collected at a local social insurance office in the suburbs of a major city in Sweden, and consists basically of observations of client encounters, observations of events in the office, and interviews with officials.When the empirical material is examined in terms of institutionalized strategies and power interplay itbecomes apparent that certain immigrant clients are perceived as problematic to encounter by the officials. One of the reason for this is the officials' commitment to organisational rules and to the dominant idea of the value of work, ingrained in the Swedish soul. The question of who the problematic clients are, is elaborated in terms of a frame of analysis, based on an interpretation of Tönnies' concept pair Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft, and on Giddens' concepts of trust and trustworthiness in face-to-face encounters between layman and representatives of expert systems.

Subject headings

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Sociologi (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Sociology (hsv//eng)

Keyword

Sociology

Client encounters

immigrant clients

vocational rehabilitation

social insurance office

power relations

institutionalised strategies

Sociologi

Sociology

Sociologi

Sociology

sociologi

Publication and Content Type

vet (subject category)

dok (subject category)