The bureaucracy's voices in Norwegen client interviews

Abstract

This article concerns a sociological study of face-to-face interaction taking place in social welfare offices in Norway. Qualitative data from interpreted dialogues between Norwegian social workers and their clients from minority groups of refugees and immigrants, bureaucratic voices and discourses are examined.

For the social worker, face-to-face interaction is a matter of a professional performance characterized by an ambiguity between impartiality on the one hand and participatory involvement and understanding on the other. Power and control prevails significantly within the interactions as they strive to perform communicative actions between equals. Through some specific examples from my own observational studies, I have attempted to describe issues that can illustrate how the bureaucratic voice and prevalent discourses can be expressed in a variety of ways. For the social worker, it is a matter of a professional performance which is characterized by impartiality, counselling, objective verbal actions, the exercise of discretion, information distribution, etc.

Keywords:

• face-to-face interaction
• social welfare
• bureaucratic voices
• discourse
• ambiguity

Notes

¹ As used by Bakhtin, the concept of populated entails that every statement, both in verbal and written communication, is the result of others' words, voices, attitudes and intentions. The words, voices, etc. are expressed through what we might call micro-dialogues (Holquist, [1990] 2004). G.H. Mead (Strauss, 1977) was among the first to present an inner dialogue with a non-physically present person.

² These are social welfare payments made to the parents of children aged 1–3 who either never, or only partially, use day care facilities that receive state support.