On the Margins Exploring the Phenomenon of Social Marginalization and the Social Work for Socially Marginalized People Aarhus BSS Aarhus University Center for Drug and Alcohol Research August 2018 Ph.d.-dissertation Louise Christensen On the Margins: Exploring the Phenomenon of Social Marginalization and the Social Work for Socially Marginalized People PhD Dissertation Centre for Drug and Alcohol Research Department of Psychology and Behavioral Sciences Aarhus University © Louise Christensen Handed in for assessment: August 4, 2018 Public defense: November 16, 2018 Supervisor: Associate Professor Bagga Bjerge, Center for Drug and Alcohol Research, Aarhus University Co-supervisor: Associate Professor Nina Holm Vohnsen, Department of Anthropology, Aarhus University Assessment Committee: Associate Professor Esben Houborg, Center for Drug and Alcohol Research, Aarhus University Professor Kjeld Høgsbro, Department of Sociology and Social Work, Aalborg University Research Fellow Marie Jauffret-Roustide, Inserm, Paris Descartes University Funded by Independent Research Fund Denmark In dedication to the state, the workers of the state and community Acknowledgements At first I thought this section might be irrelevant and I would leave it out. Not that I don’t have a wealth of people and places to be grateful off but who reads these prefaces anyway? Then I realized that I manytimes actually do and that they often provide rich detail into some of the many inspirations the individual author has drawn on and sometimes ideas of where to read more. So here goes in length actually: First of all, thanks to the Center for Drug and Alcohol Research, which have housed me for these 3 years of PhD-studies and to the Danish Independent Research Fund which provided funding to the research proJect. Thanks to many wonderful colleagues at the Center for Drug and Alcohol Research and in particular my main supervisor Bagga BJerge who gave so generously of her time, for great arguments, humour and spirit throughout. Also thanks to my co-supervisor Nina Vohnsen at the Anthropology Department at Moesgaard and my colleauges on the research project; Jeppe Oute, MaJ Nygaard-Christensen and Oskar Enghoff. Thanks to the expert group for providing inspiring comments and insightful ideas throughout the proJect period; to Steen Guldager, Betsy Thom, Richard Jenkins, Henrik Thiesen, Wouter Vanderplasschen, Ulrikke von Tangen Rothe and Katrine Schepelern Johansen. Thanks to the PhD-study group and PhD students at the Center for Drug and Alcohol Research: Marie FJellerup Bærndt, Lea Trier Krøll, Mie Birk Jensen, Tobias Kammersgaard, Kirsten Frederiksen og Mads Madsen. Thanks to librarians at Aarhus University and Copenhagen University for helping me in the search for many a thing during these years and discussions on the ways of getting to that knowledge. Special thanks to Erik Schwägermann at Copenhagen University for providing insight into the wonders of reference-systems with great humour and spirit and to Michael Qvotrup at Aarhus University for providing details about systematic literature searches and its problems. A very special thanks to Bhrigupati Singh from Brown University’s Department of Anthropology and The Watson Institute for providing a greatly inspiring and warm stay there in the winter of 2017. A special thanks to Irene Glasser at Brown University for inspiring talks on the concept and phenomenon of homelessness and for generously sharing of her years of knowledge and for taking me along to the local shelter in Providence. To Sam Tsemberis for an eloquent and inspiring talk (and for his years of hard political and academic work into building a new humane perspective on how to house the most socially marginalized people which we benefit from in Denmark as well). I owe a great thanks to Anna Meuwisse and colleagues at the Department of Social Work at Lund University for welcoming me at the end of my PhD and for giving me the opportunity of presenting my material so late in the process. Thanks to Marcus Knutagård, Håkan Jönsson and Hans Swärd for taking the time to discuss their research in social work and the role of social work from a contemporary perspective. A very special thanks to study-comrades YenJoin Kim for generously sharing insights into the social work practice in another context and inspiring talks, and to Karl Erikson for truly interesting and thought-provoking dialogues; making English the necessary language of choice in spite of our shared Scandinavian roots. And of course; most importantly, a great amount of thanks to the workers and people that this dissertation revolves around; the socially marginalized people whom, despite their often- times difficult situation, took time off for interviews and participation in the proJect, and thanks to the many social workers who daily provide services to the socially marginalized people in Denmark. Thanks especially to the social workers in the two municipal units I participated in and thanks to managers of the two units and managers in the central municipal departments as well. I know form experience the kind of work pressure social work and social policy can be and am grateful that you took time off for interviews and for openly and courageously sharing your workday with me. And on a further note; thanks to the people who kindled my interest in the phenomenon of social marginalization to begin with: the many inspiring, emphatic and knowledgeable colleagues at the Ministry of Social Affairs and the Council for Socially Marginalized People (in the years of 2007- 2009). Also thanks to former colleagues at the National Board of Social Services (2014), Copenhagen Municipality (2013) and Høje-Taastrup Municipality (2012) who so tirelessly worked to better the conditions for socially marginalized people. A warm thanks to my dearest friend; Preben Brandt for years of friendship and interesting talks. And finally and importantly to my friends and family, who have been there in the tough and difficult times as well as the fun ones. A wealth of gratitude to my mom and grandfather. I wish you could have stayed longer. Content Chapter 1 Introduction 1 Situating the empirical field 3 Situating the dissertation within existent research 6 Sketch of studies in social marginalization 6 Sketch of studies in social work 7 Governmentality studies 7 Interactionist focused studies 8 Chapter overview 9 Chapter 2 Delineation of key concepts 9 Historically different categorisations 10 Ideologically inclined categorisations 12 Geographically varied descriptions 13 Theoretical delineations of social marginalization 14 Critiques of representation 16 A ’good-enough’ category; social marginalization broadly construed 18 Defining social work 21 Tracing the roots of social work 22 Social work as professionalised or de-skilled? 23 Social work methods and models 25 Social policy, welfare state models and research in social work 26 Chapter 3 Methodology 30 Situating the empirical data 31 The specific setting 32 Access 33 Participant observation 34 Interviews 35 The construction of data 35 Document analysis and analysis of context 37 Data analysis 38 Ethics 39 Chapter 4 Analyses 40 Article A overview Article B overview Article C overview Chapter 5 Conclusion 41 Bibliography 48 Appendixes Article A Article B Article C Appendix A Overview of fieldwork Appendix B Interviewguides –professionals and users Appendix C Original project description Chapter 1 - Introduction - “I am a sick man. I am a wicked man. An unattractive man. I think I am liver sick. However, I don’t know a fig about my sickness, and am not sure what it is that hurts me” (Dostojevski 2012 [1864]) ““It could be so good, if […] you could open a gate and then the solution was there, right? But we always lack that. There is never an easy solution […] for these [kind of citizens] where you think… well, actually you are dealing with people where I think: ‘‘Shit man, I wonder if they survive the weekend’’. That is how it is” (Interview with social worker, winter 2016) This dissertation engages with social work for socially marginalised people. Two concepts; social marginalisation and social work; a societal phenomenon and a practice, that are elusive, slippery and hard to comprehend or delineate clearly. They are at once geographically diverse yet geographically alike, and they are ever-changing yet resemblant and recognisable through time. They are difficult to pin down, and they are difficult to deal with. Social marginalisation is, in a general Danish context, most often described as a phenomenon that relates to the part of the population which experiences a mix of so-called social problems such as homelessness, drug/alcohol addiction, mental illness, (long-term) unemployment, and less frequently, connected to people involved in prostitution or criminality. In a Danish context, the social work practice towards socially marginalised people is, therefore, aimed at these target groups and organised around various forms of help to these groups. In this dissertation, I explore the social work for socially marginalised people in order to extend our understanding of this practice and enable a rethinking of the social work practice and the questions of power (Article A), context (Article C) and changeability in social work (Article B). I argue that contemporary analyses of the social work practice have been heavily influenced through the dominant themes and analytical lenses of: governmentality (power), interactionism and social constructivism. Drawing on extensive fieldwork and qualitative interviews with social workers and receivers of social services, I seek to circumvent or suspend these themes in order to analyse what characterises social work more basically (Article A and Chapter 2), how we study a social work practice that is changing (Article B) and how to understand social work practices in a world that is invoking its influence on the practice itself (Article C). On a more general level, the three articles contribute to the ongoing debates and discussions in social science about 1: the role of context (for example in contemporary debates put to the fore by (Duff 2016, 2011; H.