Ellen Parsland

Ojämlikhet och fattigdom utgör centrala utmaningar för den svenska välfärdsstaten i en tid av ökade levnadskostnader och skärpta villkor i trygghetssystemen. Denna artikel syftar till att utveckla ett praktiknära analytiskt stöd för att förstå hur ojämlikhet formas och reproduceras inom socialt arbete. Med utgångspunkt i två empiriska studier baserade på intervjuer med 38 yrkesverksamma inom kommunal arbetsmarknads- och bostadspolitik analyseras hur organisatoriska villkor påverkar socialarbetares handlingsutrymme och interventioner. Analysen tar stöd i Charles Tillys teori om beständig ojämlikhet och belyser mekanismerna exploatering, möjlighetsansamling, emulering och anpassning. Resultaten visar hur ojämlikhet produceras i mötet mellan medborgare och välfärdsinstitutioner genom kategoriseringar, resursfördelning och legitimerande berättelser. Artikeln bidrar med en begreppsapparat för kritisk reflektion och betonar behovet av ett gemensamt språk mellan forskning och praktik för att synliggöra och motverka ojämlikhet i socialt arbete och främja mer jämlika välfärdsinsatser framöver.

The aim of this article is to understand how a group of subsidised employees constructed a collective identity and symbolic community, and the role the municipal labour market programme played in that process. Further, it explores whether and how a shared collective identity and symbolic community may provide an explanation for how the ‘successful intervention/lock-in effect paradox’ occurs when using subsidised employment as an activation intervention. The article is based on a qualitative interview study with eight social workers and 11 subsidised employees from a Swedish municipal labour market programme that offered subsidised employment as its main intervention. The interviews were analysed using the concepts of social identity and symbolic community. The article shows that subsidised employment plays a crucial role in subsidised employees constructing their identity as ‘persons with a job’, as distinct from the activation interventions usually associated with social assistance. The labour market programme serves as a transformative space where receiving a salary becomes a symbol of distinction, marking a significant departure from past experiences of receiving social assistance. The article also highlights the role of social workers in subsidised employees’ identity processes. The social workers perceived the subsidised employees as participants with special needs, and subsidised employment as an intervention which could influence the planning and support provided during the subsidised employment. The collective identity developed by the participants fostered a sense of community, but also led to reluctance to leave the programme, driven by the fear of reverting to social assistance, and once again being excluded from the labour market. The article concludes that the subsidised employees risked getting stuck in a borderland between work exclusion and work inclusion and, therefore, that subsidised employment can potentially place participants in a state of ‘marginalised inclusion’ in the labour market, instead of supporting participants into regular employment.

In Sweden, Denmark and Norway, activation policies are used to speed up refugee’s entry into the labour market. Previous research on activation policy documents has shown that refugees are ethnicised in the framing, development, and design of activation, but research on activation practices are lacking on how activation practices targeting refugees are organized and conducted, and why that is. This article analyses how and why refugees and ‘general unemployed’ are activated in different interventions within a municipal labour market programme, and which implications such division may have for the refugees being activated in said labour market programme. The article draws on interviews with a manager, social workers and participants within the same municipal labour market programme. The findings show that unemployed refugees were differentiated from ‘general unemployed’ by placing refugees in a specific intervention. The theoretical analysis, based on Charles Tilly’s theorizations on social categorizations and stories, shows how the differentiation maintained an inequality between the refugee participants and ‘general unemployed participants in how resources were provided, connected to the organization emulating and adapting to surrounding society. The inequal organization was legitimized through the stories the interviewees told regarding the labour market programme which in the article is concluded as a standard story of ethnicising activation. The ethnicising activation is analysed as an exploitation of the unemployed refugee participants, who in turn hoards the opportunity of participating in the labour market programme, in hope to find paths towards the labour market.

This study aims to understand how goals of activation and gender equality interact in labor market programs directed towards activating unemployed participants. The study draws on interviews with 28 social workers and managers at four Swedish municipally governed labor market programs typically targeted towards poor, unemployed individuals with little to no attachment to the labor market or social insurance system. Our findings show that activation goals are understood to be clear cut and a dominant logic within the labor market programs. The gender equality goals are understood as fuzzy and subordinate to the activation logic. Our theoretical analysis, based on neo-institutional theory, shows that gendered activation as a hybrid logic is created within the four programs as a means of handling the competing logics of gender equality and activation. Gendered activation may be reasonable on an individual level, where women in long-term unemployment can sustain a higher income through work and become financially independent. In the context of the gender segregated labor market, gendered activation reproduces gendered inequalities when an increasing interest for activation policy among welfare states overshadows claims of gender equality. Furthermore, our study exemplifies the systemic reproduction of racist discourse within social- and labour market policies. Within the logic of gendered activation, migrant women become singled out as specifically problematic for Swedish society to handle when unemployment is given gendered and cultural explanations. Through the logic of gendered activation, gender equality goals become no-matter-what employment rather than employment leading to equal outcomes.