The politics of insufficiency: ambivalence and boundary work in the co-production of welfare services

ABSTRACT

In the public and scientific discourse on welfare innovation and new public governance, community coproduction is thought to combine the best elements of the public and voluntary sectors, hence creating better and more efficient responses to social need. However, coproduction also blurs sectoral boundaries, potentially mixing incompatible practices, values and goals. In this paper, we investigate how volunteers and public sector employees experience and handle the coproduction ambivalence that results from cross-sector incompatibility. The paper is based on interviews and ethnographic fieldwork on welfare coproduction among managers, employees and volunteers in a large Danish municipality.

KEYWORDS:

• Community coproduction
• welfare coproduction
• welfare innovation
• new public governance
• coproduction ambivalence
• voluntary sector

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the The Velux Foundation [14400].

Notes on contributors

Morten Frederiksen

Morten Frederiksen, PhD (Sociology) is Professor at the Department of Sociology and Social Work, Aalborg University. His main areas of research are values, trust and welfare. He is currently heading a research project on boundaries and boundary work in cross sector collaboration and co-production and a comparative research project on cultural notions of social justice in US, China and Scandinavia. He is head of research in Center for Inclusion and Welfare at Aalborg University and National Program Director for The European Values Study – Denmark. His research has been published in journals such as Current Sociology, Acta Sociologica, British Journal of Sociology, Time and Society, and Voluntas.

Ane Grubb

Ane Grubb, PhD (Sociology) is Assistant Professor at the Department of Sociology and Social Work, Aalborg University. Her main areas of research are civil society, civic engagement, cross-sector collaborations and welfare. Ane is currently working on two research projects; the first project concerns boundaries and boundary work in cross-sector collaboration and co-production, the second investigates recruitment and retainment of volunteers in voluntary social work. With three international scholars she is co-editing a special issue on inequality in volunteering for the journal Voluntas. Her work has been published in Voluntas, Public Management Review and in various Danish journals.