Bagga Bjerge

In this article, we examine a group of older marginalized substance-using citizens and their relations to Danish health care. We offer empirical examples collected through ethnographic fieldwork, about how they handle their health situation and encounters with the Danish healthcare system. Analytically, we particularly draw on the concept of disposable ties, and suggest the term "brittle ties" to nuance the term and examine how perceived individual autonomy is weighted against health care trajectories and how these citizens often prefer to fend for themselves or lean on provisional networks rather than enter into health care trajectories and follow-up treatment.

Aim: To investigate the challenges and barriers in Danish care professionals’ work in relation to elderly citizens who use substances. Method: The study draws on data from a “going along” study of care professionals’ encounters with citizens as well as interviews with professionals. This was conducted in two smaller, rural municipalities in Denmark. Findings: Providing adequate care for elderly citizens who use substances can be highly challenging. This is due to a multitude of factors, especially (1) the complexity of their health conditions, (2) contradictory logics of care (autonomy vs. healthy living), (3) citizens often unpredictable behaviours, (4) lack of cooperation between welfare systems and, not least, (5) lack of knowledge and education among healthcare professionals. Conclusions: There is a need for more specialised procedures locally, the appointment of local “experts”, better cooperation between sectors and easier accessible training and information on the group on a national level.

Older marginalized citizens with severe substance use are presently a growing population in Denmark. They struggle with comprehensive and complex needs for care and treatment, which put high demands on health and care professionals working with them. Yet, the complexity of their needs for care and the care provided to them is highly understudied. We take our empirical point of departure in an anthropological pilot study of care work in private homes and retirement homes in two municipalities, where we followed care professionals on their shifts and interviewed them in order to identify challenging situations in daily care. Building on Mol’s concept of logic of care (Mol 2008), we examine how the care professionals in their everyday work with substance using older citizens faced dilemmas in the provision of care within the logics of on the one hand Danish standards for “correct” care and on the other respecting the autonomy of substance using citizens.

Guest editorial: Organizing the city - Author: Bagga Bjerge, Jonas Strandholdt Bach

Purpose: The authors investigate two contrasting, yet mutually constitutive strategies for regulating open drug scenes in the city of Aarhus, Denmark: A strategy of dispersing marginalized substance users from the inner city, and a simultaneous strategy of inclusion in a new, gentrifying neighbourhood.Design/methodology/approach: The authors apply a multi-temporal ethnography approach, including data from studies dating back to 2002. This enables us to scrutinize reconfigurations of processes of exclusion and inclusion in urban city life based on studies that in different ways feed into the broader picture of how socially marginalized citizens are included and excluded in urban space.Findings: The municipality of Aarhus sways between strategies of dispersion and exclusion and those of inclusion of marginalized citizens. Taken together, these strategies constitute a “messy middle ground” (May and Cloke, 2014) in responses to the street people rather than either clear-cut punitive or supportive strategies. Finally, we point to the limit of inclusion in more recent strategies aimed at including marginalized citizens in urban planning of a new, gentrifying neighbourhood.Originality/value: The article builds on studies that in critical engagement with the dominating focus on punitive or revanchist approaches to regulation of homeless citizens' presence in urban space have shown how such regulating practices are rarely punishing alone. We contribute to this literature by showing how seemingly contradictory attempts to exclude, disperse and include socially marginalized citizens in different urban settings are relational rather than in outright opposition. In continuation of this, we show how dispersal strategies both depend on and are legitimized by the promotion of alternative and more inclusive settings elsewhere.

Reflections on publishing ethnographic work - Author: Mike Rowe, Bagga Bjerge

From the previous editorial in March (2021), we have learnt some advice on how to write an article that is worthy of publishing. Among the advice was that a detailed description of methodology is a...

One of the core aims of NSWR is to show the diversity and the breath of Nordic social work research. This issue is no exception in the sense that it presents a broad variety of topics from labour m...