UiS Open Journals (Univ. of Stavanger)
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Rethinking Vocational Rehabilitation through Institutional Ethnography
Get PDFIn Norway, vocational rehabilitation for people with support needs involves complex inter-professional and inter-organizational processes that do not have clear institutional boundaries. Every process involves a new constellation of actors, representing divergent practices, ideas and objectives. This article argues that much of the current research on the implementation of activation policy inadequately captures the mechanisms and processes that influence vocational rehabilitation practices. The article proposes the use of institutional ethnography (IE) to empirically examine vocational rehabilitation, and argues that IE provides methodological concepts and tools that enable researchers to link and make visible the everyday practices, the social relations and the institutional contexts that make up vocational rehabilitation processes
The Norwegian Ombudsman for Children on child participation: Perceptions, impacts and dilemmas
Get PDFThe adoption in 1989 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) has seen a quantum leap in the recognition- and expansion of initiatives to uphold children’s participation rights. The Ombudsman for Children plays an important role in promoting children’s rights, thus stressing the importance of authorities taking children’s opinions and experiences into consideration when making decisions which affect them. This article examines how the staff at the Ombudsman for Children in Norway understand and experience child participation through expert meetings and expert groups, in which children are regarded as the experts. The findings suggest that the existence of a consultative approach, where children’s views influence decisions, depends on the effectiveness of the Ombudsman’s representative function. While there is evidence of the recent growth of platforms for children to express their views, the core elements of participation largely remain monopolized by adults. We argue that active participation should be deliberately promoted beyond adult-led realms, and extended to ordinary contexts in which children interact with the society
Social work in the public services in Brazil - disclosing ruling relations in a local context
Get PDFThis article about social workers in the public social services in Brazil explores professional social work practice through the subjective standpoint of the social workers. Inspired by institutional ethnography, this approach explicates how understandings of social work are interpreted and implemented in various contexts. The findings show that the formalization of the relationship with the employer through contracts of employment implicate that the disciplinary normative definitions of social work succumb to institutional regulations, which are not necessarily discipline specific. In addition, the temporary character of the contracts of employment makes the social workers align their practice to institutional frameworks and demands, as they are personally interested in renewal of the contracts and the maintenance of their professional careers. With this approach, disciplinary, political, ideological, legal and moral definitions of social work are not viewed as the essences of social work, but rather as contextual processes that are locally activated in different contexts. At the same time, it underscores social work as a political profession which should naturally include interventions on political, juridical, economic and organizational levels. Consequently, professional social work is not one thing, nor only one profession, but rather professional practices adapted to a variation of contexts. This perspective is significant to help detect areas of intervention for social change
A Matter of Politics: The Effects of the Political Context on Social Work in Norway and Bolivia
Get PDFTo which extent do dysfunctional political systems lead to everyday challenges for social workers? Moreover, how do social workers benefit from working in well-ordered democracies? The purpose of this paper is to gain insights into how the interplay between the political context and social work actually operates. Our main question is: How do accountability and state capacity levels affect daily social work? This interplay frequently becomes associated with levels of democracy and redistribution. We also draw attention to how social workers’ are dependent on the capacity of the state to implement policies.
We compare social work and the political and legal contexts in two widely different polities – Norway and Bolivia.
Our primary findings indicate that the effects of generally unfavourable political conditions permeate the possibilities for effective social work in previously unforeseen ways. Coordination problems, clientelism and political rivalry lead to everyday challenges on the ground, as many problems seem to reflect the overall institutional system and political culture. In well-ordered political systems, these problems are hardly an issue.
In our concluding discussion, we address how the nature of the institutional system and political culture apparently might call for a differentiated approach towards reform strategies. For instance, progressive politicians, citizens and social workers advocating a policy transfer could face severe hindrances in polities, thus comprising weak state capacities
Exploring the social relations of Roma employability: The case of rural segregated communities in Romania
Get PDFThe article reports on a qualitative study of Roma employability in Romania. Being the largest ethnic minority group in Europe, the Roma population is the object of profound marginalization in most of the countries where they reside, by measures such as spatial segregation and exclusion from the formal labour market. This article focuses particularly on the Roma living in rural segregated communities. Inspired by institutional ethnography, the aim is to explore the social organization of rural Roma employability from the standpoint of the Roma themselves. The main obstacles to employment, as they are known and shared by our interviewees, are a lack of available jobs within reach, their own lack of education and a rejection by employers on the grounds of them being Roma. As the analyses show, these obstacles, and the individual’s experiences and knowledge about them, are shaped and maintained by extended translocal relations of administration and governance, thus making the rural Roma dependent on a precarious secondary labour market of low-paid day work for neighbouring farmers. The uncertainty of this work, and the organization and work of everyday life it implies for the people inhabiting these communities, further increases the distance to formal employment. It is this complex set of relations coordinating people’s doings that produce the employability of Roma inhabiting the rural segregated communities
