Speaking on behalf of the vulnerable? Voluntary translations of citizen needs to policy in community co-production

ABSTRACT

Vulnerable citizens often depend on volunteers or others to translate their needs into relevant concerns for policy makers. This is particularly so in the context of co-production of public service provision. However, knowledge of how this translation works in practice is scarce. Based on a qualitative study of co-production activities targeting vulnerable elderly citizens and refugees, this paper explores volunteers’ translations of citizen needs and identifies two forms of failure: entangled translations fail because municipal staff suspect volunteers of justifying volunteer interests as citizen needs, while restricted translations fail to justify citizen needs as collective concerns because volunteers draw excessively on anecdotal formats.

KEYWORDS:

• Co-production
• volunteers
• new public governance
• engagement theory
• vulnerable citizens

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed at https://doi.org/10.1080/14719037.2021.1945665.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Velux Foundation under Grant number [14400].

Notes on contributors

Ane Grubb

Ane Grubb, PhD (Sociology) is Postdoc 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 and in various Danish journals. She has presented papers at ESA, ISTR, ASA and at the SICI-Harvard conference.

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 at the Center for Inclusion and Welfare at Aalborg University and National Programme 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.