Balancing the line — the relation between waiting and activity among people in need of food in Sweden

ABSTRACT

At a food bank in Sweden, people stand in line, waiting to receive donated food, which can easily be interpreted as passively receiving hand-outs. But this line is full of activity, and it is very demanding to keep holding the line. However, a common perception of people in need of help from the social services and other authorities is that they need activation. This article aims to explore the relation between waiting and activity among the people visiting a food bank in Sweden. The line is used as an analytical tool to explore how people are balancing on a line between food insecurity and having food for the day, but also standing in a very concrete line, waiting for donations. The empirical material is based on a one-year ethnographic study of a food bank. It is argued that the people waiting are aligned to reach, in this case, the donated food, but consequently also aligned away from other possible solutions. This can be interpreted as a way of keeping people in line. Herein lies a challenge for social work: it risks reproducing social inequalities rather than working towards social justice and social change.

ABSTRAKT

Vid en matutdelning i Sverige står människor i kö och väntar på att få donerad mat, något som lätt kan tolkas som ett passivt mottagande av gåvor. Men den här linjen är full av aktivitet och det krävs väldigt mycket för att kunna fortsätta hålla linjen. En vanlig uppfattning av människor som behöver hjälp från socialtjänsten och andra myndigheter är dock att de behöver aktiveras. Syftet med denna artikel är att utforska förhållandet mellan väntan och aktivitet bland de människor som besöker en matutdelning i Sverige. Linjen används som ett analytiskt verktyg för att utforska hur människor balanserar på en gräns mellan matfattigdom och att ha mat för dagen, men hur de också står på en mycket konkret linje och väntar på donationer. Det empiriska materialet bygger på en ettårig etnografisk studie av en matutdelning. Artikeln argumenterar för att de som väntar riktas mot att nå, i det här fallet, den donerade maten, men följaktligen också därför bort från andra möjliga lösningar. Häri finns en utmaning för socialt arbete, att det riskerar att reproducera sociala ojämlikheter snarare än arbetar för social rättvisa och social förändring.

KEYWORDS:

• Waiting
• food bank
• activation
• social work
• hope

NYCKELORD:

• väntan
• matutdelning
• aktivering
• socialt arbete
• hopp

Introduction

This article is based on an ethnographic project performed at a food bank in Sweden where people stand in line, waiting for their turn to receive donated food, which can easily be interpreted as passively receiving hand-outs. However, as will be evident, this line of people is full of activity, and it is very demanding to keep holding the line. Most of the people visiting the food bank have contact with the social services and other authorities, and some also receive additional financial and social help, some even work. Despite this, they all have in common that they still must wait in line to receive donated food to get by.

A common perception of people in need of help from the social services and other authorities is that they need to be activated. As a result, the support offered to these people is individualised and aimed towards activating them. Since the 1990s, there has been an increase in demand for activation within Sweden's social services (Samzelius, 2020). Activation policies are considered a ‘standard solution’ by the OECD and the European Union (Lindqvist & Lundälv, 2018). In a Swedish context, research has indicated that the requested activation is weakly connected to the actual obstacles people face within their everyday lives (Nybom, 2011). Instead, the individual is expected to be on standby, be motivated, flexible, and employable (Bengtsson, 2014). Much research discusses the activation policy and its effects, but these activity requirements are seldom analysed concerning the everyday activities of people in need of social support.

This article focuses on one specific everyday activity, people waiting in line to receive donated food. Research on food banks and donated food is sparse in a Swedish context (see however Bergström et al., 2020; Hanssen et al., 2014; Karlsson, 2019). One possible reason why there is little research on food banks is that the Swedish welfare state is often considered generous, with well-established social security support (Bergström et al., 2020). International research on food banks in a neoliberal welfare system shows that people in need of donated food tend to be framed in terms of the ‘passive’ and ‘active’ citizen, accentuating responsibilities rather than rights (Garthwaite, 2017). All in all, there is a great need for more research on food banks and food insecurity in Sweden.

At this specific food bank, people wait in line to receive food that others — companies, food stores, and people, have donated. The food bank is run by the Swedish Church and attracts people with different reasons why they require donated food. Some are working, and others are unemployed. Some have a home, and others do not. There are those with a pension and those with social allowances. Some have lived their entire lives in Sweden, and others have migrated to Sweden. Both men and women, families and singles, visit the food bank. There is a disparate group of people on the line between food insecurity and having food for the day. They all, however, have in common that they live in an often-considered generous welfare state, still lacking food for the day.

Another field of research being actualised concerning people waiting and being put on hold by authorities is the field of migration research. Although everyone visiting the Church is not a migrant or asylum seeker, many have migration experience. Migration research has long problematised time, forced waiting, and how states govern through time. On the one hand, migrants seem to get stuck in time, not able to move forward, nor back (Donnan et al., 2017; Khosravi, 2017; Tazzioli, 2018), on the other hand, authorities and states govern by controlling time for migrants (Anderson, 2018). In this article, the control of time is crucial to understanding the tension between waiting and activity.

The aim of this article is thus to explore the tension between waiting and activity among people visiting a food bank in Sweden. The people all wait in line for food, a wait full of activity, at the same time as they are expected to become activated when they need help from the welfare state. This contradiction risk putting people in a situation where they get stuck. They are all stuck in activities to survive. Still, the authorities do not value this activity, putting people in a position expected to opt-out of their survival. The line will be used as an analytical tool to explore the relation between waiting and activity when in need of donated food. The people in line are balancing between poverty and survival. But they are also standing in a very concrete line, waiting for donations of food to survive.

The article is structured as follows. First, I discuss food security in a Swedish context and some changes implemented within the welfare state. Second, the theoretical concepts are introduced and discussed. Next follows a section on methods and research design. The first empirical section deals with waiting in a concrete line of people. The second, discusses how this wait is full of activity, both in and outside the line. The third empirical section focuses on how people are being referred to the line and are also kept in line. Finally, in the concluding section, the threads are brought together to discuss the activity of waiting and its possible implications for social work.

Food insecurity in a ‘Welfare paradise’

As mentioned, one reason food banks and food insecurity seldom are discussed in a Swedish context is the notion of a solid and well-established welfare state (Bergström et al., 2020; Hanssen et al., 2014). Sweden is often considered somewhat of a moral superpower when talking about social welfare, migration policies and equality (Dahlstedt & Neergaard, 2019). But the Swedish welfare state has gone through massive changes over the years, adapting to a neoliberal welfare state (ibid.). Of course, this shift towards neoliberal management of welfare has impacted social work and social welfare in general. For instance, there has been a transfer of functions and responsibilities from municipal and state social work towards civil society (Öhlund, 2016). This transfer is not the least evident within the fields of providing basic social needs to people far from the labour market or people lacking the fundamental rights to receive social support. As such, the image of the Swedish welfare system as universalistic must be considered a myth.

It is in relation to this transfer of functions and responsibility, this food bank must be placed. The food bank is financed by the Swedish Church and through the donations it receives. At the food bank, paid staff works together with volunteers. They have no cooperation with the municipalities or other authorities but are working together with other food banks. Traditionally, the Church and other organisations have provided social services in Sweden long before any state welfare system. Olsson and Nordfeldt (2008) argue that civil society's social work can be understood as part of a ‘tertiary’ welfare system designed to reach people falling through the cracks of the ‘first’ and ‘second’ welfare system. The first welfare system handles long-term structural social issues, and the ‘second’ deals with local and individual issues. Although this still can be argued to be the case, the conditions for civil society in Sweden have changed, pushing many organisations towards taking on essential welfare services (Harding, 2012; Hedling & Meeuwisse, 2015). Civil society has become more professionalised, hiring more salaried staff and using scientific claims that what they do work. These changes have created an increasingly unclear difference between the public and the civil sector (Harding, 2012). This professionalisation is evident at the Church as well, where more tasks are being moved from the volunteers to the staff. The staff are continuously forced to assess who is getting what kind of help, leading to an increase in documentation.

The notion of Sweden as a country with a solid and generous welfare state echoes when food banks are discussed since food insecurity is often considered not an issue in Sweden (cf. Bergström et al., 2020; Hanssen et al., 2014). But it does exist, although still low in international comparison. Sweden is facing an increase in food insecurity (WHO, 2020), similar to most of the wealthiest nations in the world (Bowe et al., 2019).

Although no secure sources cover exactly how many food banks are presently open in Sweden, nor how many people need donated food to manage the day, there are some indicators. The National Board of Health and Welfare in Sweden argue that people today are affected by multiple forms of social vulnerability (Socialstyrelsen, 2010). That is, people are increasingly living under precarious conditions in several parallel areas of life. The Swedish city missions, one of the largest organisations in Sweden providing social care and support, publishes an annual report. These reports provide some indications of the need for basic social rights among people in Sweden and how their situation has changed over time. For instance, it is possible to see how a large group receives monetary support from the municipalities but that this help is no longer enough to survive. Another group should be able to receive help from the public welfare system but are for some reason not getting the help they require (approx. 11%). The reports also bear testimony of a change in how the municipalities approach people in need. Where the city missions previously could send people to the social services for help, it is now the other way around (e.g. Sveriges Stadsmissioner, 2019).

This paper is placed within a context where it appears to be a growth of food banks in Sweden and how people increasingly seem to balance the line between food-insecurity and having food for the day.

Waiting, activity, and glimmers of hope

In some form or another, all visitors are waiting for food, but also for receiving support or decisions from authorities. Within public service organisations, waiting has long been used to discourage people from using welfare services (Hasenfeld & Steinmetz, 1981). Bourdieu (2000) argued that people are being put on hold, that they are forced into waiting, and that this wait is imbued in power. The power of being unpredictable and of denying people any reasonable expectation. As such, putting on hold can be considered a way to keep people from expecting or demanding more and, thus, to keep societal power relations intact. Waiting is also related to the issue of delaying. Delaying is too part of the exercise of power since it is used in a way where hope is not entirely shattered among the ones forced into waiting. Should the delay eradicate hope, it would also kill the wait itself and risk changing the power dynamic all together (Bourdieu, 2000). As such, waiting, delaying, and keeping enough hope alive can be a political strategy to keep people in place or in line.

I would argue that the line itself plays a vital role in understanding the participants’ intricate motions of activity and hope. According to Ahmed (2006), our bodies are oriented in space by ‘lining itself up with the direction of the space it inhabits’ (p.13). How our bodies are oriented is based upon the accumulations over time, creating a line dividing and making space simultaneously. The lines available to us that are in front of us make certain things available while other things are not. Ahmed (2006, p. 14) writes: ‘When we follow specific lines, some things become reachable and others remain or even become out of reach’. Waiting in line, thus, makes some things reachable and others not. If things are within reach — for instance, food, we can hope to receive it.

Elena Fontanari (2017, p. 35) claims that waiting combined with ‘glimmers of hope’ constitutes a technique of governmentality. Within neoliberal governance, the individual is the primary place of governing. The individual is called on to be active, reflexive, keep hope alive, to be held responsible for their future (Miller & Rose, 2008). This neoliberal hope involves inducing people to keep hoping for a possibly better, individual future, regardless of whether this future is ever fulfilled or not (Petersen & Wilkinson, 2015). Making people wait in line and providing them with ‘glimmers of hope’ can be considered a way to keep people in line within a perspective on neoliberal governance.

This brings us to another concept introduced by Ahmed (2006), how lines also work as an alignment, where bodies can be seen as being in line or out of line. Individuals, or bodies, can, according to their orientation and alignment, be differently valued. One common way to assess this in neoliberal welfare states is whether people are considered active or passive. Today, the concept of the active citizen is used almost synonymous with reducing social services and the welfare state, creating a focus on individual responsibility and demands rather than on rights and needs (Garthwaite, 2017; Verhoeven & Tonkens, 2013).

In this article, the concepts of waiting and hoping, or specifically waiting in line aligned in a certain way to make some things reachable while others are not, are considered part of neoliberal governance. It is a way to keep people in line, where people are urged to hope for change and stay active per the demands of the neoliberal welfare state.

Method

This article is based on a longitudinal project carried out during 2018–2021 where different aspects of migrants’ experiences of hope were analysed. This project consisted of several parallel ethnographies within different social contexts, such as young people re-flighting through Europe, or organisations working with asylum-seekers. In this article, the context in focus is a food bank, visited by many people with migration experience and by people without such experiences. The material used in this article consists of ethnographic data collected by myself during 2018–2019 at the food bank.

Regarding data collection, ethnography is understood as an inclusive collection of methods related to what data is presented to the researcher at the time. As a researcher, this meant participating in the day-to-day work within the foodbank for an extended period, listening to people, and watching what happens, employing a relatively open-ended approach and research design (Hammersley & Atkinson, 2007).

The food bank was placed in a suburb of one of Sweden’s larger cities. Although there are several food banks available in the city, and at least two in the same suburb, people travel from around the city to the food bank. The food bank was open one day a week and was visited by approximately 50–100 individuals/households per occasion. I talked to as many of the visitors as possible. I also kept in touch with ten visitors outside the food bank, talking to them when they waited for food and in their homes or over the phone.

All the visitors, volunteers, and staff were aware of my identity as a researcher. I presented the research by informing the volunteers and staff, and then the visitors. The staff also introduced me as a researcher and reminded people of my role at the food bank. Participation was voluntary, confidential, and included either verbal or written informed consent. Whenever I sat down to talk to someone privately, they once more were reminded that they did not have to speak to me or participate and that they could cancel their participation at any time. Field notes were taken before, during and after being at the food bank, sometimes using the toilet or a room in the back of the Church, other times by going outside to take notes. These approximately 250–300 pages of field notes consisted of observations, conversations, and initial thoughts on what had happened or been said.

The participants could themselves control what we talked about. A lot of the issues raised were in some way or another related to the need for food, housing, money, or other social support. The themes discussed were their background, why they visited the food bank, contacts with authorities and other civil society organisations, family life, work, and housing. The observational notes were analysed using a qualitative data analysis software, QDA miner. The data were fully anonymised before doing a thematic analysis. In this article, I specifically have focused on themes related to the issues of waiting and activity/passivity.

Formal ethical approval was secured from the Regional Ethical Review Board of the University of Linköping (Ref. No. 2018/239-31). However, some information that was given to me by the participants is especially sensitive. For instance, some participants are not allowed to be in Sweden, making information on where they reside especially sensitive and potentially threatening. In these cases, I have not included such information to avoid putting people in danger.

Reaching and standing in line

When I first arrived at the food bank, I had trouble grasping the extent of how many people needed donated foods to manage their everyday life. On my way to this food bank, I passed at least three others, as far as I know. I felt tension among the people waiting, where they worried about getting enough food. In this section, I will focus on the time spent waiting for food.

Three women living approximately 22 kilometres from the Church exemplify the time spent. It takes them almost two hours of travelling through the night to reach the Church.

‘It's quite the trip. I guess you must get out of bed early then’, I ask them. They all laugh. One of the women tells me about their night of waiting in line. `We've waited a long time to get inside. Can you ask them to open the Church earlier? So, we don't have to sit outside. It gets cold here’, she tells me and points towards her behind. All women laugh again. (Observation note)

These women have migrated to Sweden from Syria and are only but a few of the people visiting the Church to get food. They exemplify the amount of work and time put into getting to the Church in the first place. They must travel throughout the city in the middle of the night to reach the line. As such, they must work hard even to reach the line. Then they wait.

After standing in line to get into the Church, another period of waiting begins. This time, the visitors all receive a queue ticket when entering the Church. Then, they all sit down and wait until the staff or volunteers call them up. This Church has a system, discussed between the staff, volunteers and visitors, where the visitors voted on what kind of system they preferred. The visitors are being split up into two groups. One group has previously been assessed that they do not have enough money for food. This group receives yet another queue ticket, a red one. The other group has either never visited the Church before, has not been assessed yet, or has been assessed to have enough resources themselves. They instead get a blue queue ticket.

I sat down next to one of the older men there. He uses two canes to walk and is clothed to the teeth. He tells me how he's from Iraq and that he's been in Sweden for 22 years. Furthermore, he's one of the visitors with the lowest number. He's usually one of the earliest there, this day he arrived at 4.30 am. ‘Another one was here at four’, he tells me. I ask him if it doesn't get cold. ‘I don't mind’, he answers. He has four sweaters under his jacket and proper shoes on. It's suddenly his turn. He gets up slowly and walks up, equally slow, to the front of the Church. There, he shows the staff his number and a card stating that he has been assessed. He then receives a red queue number and moves on into another room. Behind me, a woman has sat down. Her number's a bit over 80, and she's not yet been assessed. Her waiting time has just begun. (Observation note)

As with the women above, the older man must prepare and work hard to reach the line in time. Much later, after standing in line outside Church and waiting inside Church, the visitors either receive the red or blue queue ticket. They then enter a room where they are served breakfast. After breakfast, there is often some information to take part in, and then a joint prayer. When all this is done, the visitors with red tickets are called up five at the time. After all the red ones are done, the blue ones get called up. The visitors pass through a door into a room where all the food is located to get some bags of food each, sometimes more, sometimes less. For the women at the beginning of this section, the long journey back home begins. Approximately 13 h from when they started at home in the middle of the night, they are back home.

These 13 h are filled with preparation and waiting, from leaving home to waiting outside the Church, waiting inside the Church and then again in the room next to the Church. The visitors are all waiting in line to get food. But they are not the only ones waiting. The staff and volunteers are also waiting. They wait for the food to get delivered. They wait to know how much food they will get, what kind, and what condition the food is in. The visitors, staff, and volunteers are all put in waiting without any possibility to know what to expect (cf. Bourdieu, 2000). They never know how much food will arrive and how much food will be left when it is your turn on the line.

This insecurity creates a situation where there is nothing else to do than wait in line and keep holding the line, but the wait is also intricately connected to glimmers of hope (Fontanari, 2017). The visitors wait in line because they hope their individual future includes having enough food for the day (cf. Miller & Rose, 2008). The glimmers of hope get especially evident when every so often a rumour arises that there has been a second delivery of food, making some visitors wait outside the Church after receiving their bags of food, hoping to get more food. The rumour sparks hope, making people stay. This rumour is never true during my time at the Church, and the visitors eventually leave the Church.

Standing in line can also be interpreted as an activity where people are aligned towards the same goal, getting enough food to manage the week. They are oriented towards the donated food, and as such, this food is kept within reach, to use Ahmed's (2006) vocabulary. However, it also means that other things are being kept without reach. The time used to prepare for the wait, reach the line, and then wait for food could be spent on other things if they had access to enough food. These people are oriented towards the line since they lack other options and are thus expected to invest their time to withhold a precarious situation. Since people are expected to wait for hours to receive their food, other things in life are kept out of reach.

However calm and inactive, and full of waiting, the line can be interpreted to be, the line is treacherous. The line is full of activity, and it is very demanding to keep holding the line, which will be discussed in the next section.

Balancing the line

The line has its set of rules. You do not cut the line, and you do not leave the line to take your position in the line back later, you stay calm in the line and do not make any fuss. As Ahmed (2006) puts it, you must stay ‘in line’ and not step ‘out of line’. However, during my time in the line, it is evident that there is a balance between staying in line and stepping out of line.

There's a grunt about cheating. Those who can queue the entire night look askance at those who mark their place. Once, it got so chaotic that two older men fell when entering the Church. They got pushed. Everyone wants to get into the warmth and to do that fast. (Observation note)

Standing in line means taking on the position of someone queuing. Queuing does not just mean waiting; it means that others also can see what you do. Others judge, they keep an eye out so that they are not being disadvantaged in the line. As such, queuing has a disciplining side, aligning people towards the accepted direction (cf. Ahmed, 2006). People are either in line or out of line. However, some falling out of line can still be tolerated. This is the case when a community of ‘queuing people’ arises sharing the same goal of arriving. This happens when someone holds a place for someone else, temporarily helping them step out of line.

Queuing, by definition, means having to wait for your turn. It is against this background that it is possible to understand how important staying in line becomes. It can determine how much food you get. Therefore, it is crucial to stay in line and not step out of line.

One of the women tells me how she usually uses her bag to mark her spot. She's a single mother with two daughters, and she works full time with a precarious job. To get her daughters out of bed, get them to eat breakfast and get them to school, she temporarily must leave the line to return home. As a result, she puts her bag down to hold her place, returns home and then gets back to wait in line with the others until the Church opens. (Observation note)

Waiting tends to be considered passive. You wait for things around you to arrive. As such, the line can be interpreted as a passivating activity. However, as with the mother above, this seldom is the case. The visitors do wait, but they are also involved in many activities within the line and outside the line. Juggling everyday life, work, children, in parallel with spending a long-time getting food for the week, demands its activity. Another example of activities is how two women use their time in line to provide emotional support to each other since they both lost a child. Others use their time to learn Swedish, with each other, with the staff, with me, or with a retired teacher volunteering at the Church. The line is full of activity.

Most people visiting the Church also use their time in line to manage their contacts with the social services and other authorities.

‘Marcus, I need help’, a woman shouts to me. We sit down, and she explains to me that she has no money and doesn't know what to do. Her bag was stolen. She shows me the police report. It got stolen in a car during her internship, which the social services have demanded that she participate in. ‘I study Swedish, I do my internship, I seek employment, but it's not enough. The social services aren't interested in helping’, she tells me. She borrows money and eats at a friend's place. I ask her whether she’s applied for temporary emergency aid from the social services. She tells me that she's done it but that they won't help her because she's entitled to aid from the employment services because of her internship. She pulls out another paper and shows me. It's the decision regarding aid from the employment service. She's entitled to support, but that money will be paid to her from next month.

What for myself would probably be solved in a heartbeat after talking to my insurance company takes a lot of effort and time to be solved for this visitor. Without the ability to survive between payments from the different authorities, she is stuck to fend for herself. On the one hand, she must put time into applying for aid and support from the social services. She must also be in touch with the employment service and the school where she studies the Swedish language. On the other hand, she must also survive during this stressful time, meaning borrowing money, finding a friend to eat at, and receiving enough donated food to survive another week. In many ways, she is an example of how people remain active and take responsibility according to neoliberal activity demands (cf. Garthwaite, 2017; Miller & Rose, 2008), even when waiting in line.

This story is far from unusual among the people waiting in line. In some way or another, they all need to balance the line between what is accepted behaviour and not when in line for food and balance the line between different demands put on them by various Swedish authorities. It is a line full of activity and full of demands to keep staying in line. Activities are present simultaneously as people are stuck waiting on assessments, decisions, money, a place to sleep or food.

Keeping people in line

Most people at the Church are in contact with several authorities to get more permanent help. These authorities all demand different things from them, and most importantly, they place the responsibility for the social situation on the individual by demanding them to prove their activity. In this section, the focus will be on how the visitors are expected to activate while they are put in waiting. They are, as such, delayed from their rights and kept in line.

This tension is evident among those experiencing troubles with their housing. Adam is one of them, he is on a disability pension, and his apartment is awaiting a forcible renovation with higher rents as a result. When in contact with the social services, he is urged to be active on the open housing market and search for a new home, but he is also asked to prove his activity by submitting lists of searched flats (see also Samzelius, 2020). As such, Adam is considered responsible no matter how the housing market works in his favour or not. He should be active and keep hoping for a permanent solution through the open housing market, regardless of if this ever will be the case or not (cf. Miller & Rose, 2008; Petersen & Wilkinson, 2015). In addition, this activity is expected to take place while Adam is actively trying to get food for the day. Adam sighs when he tells me that he probably must move, ‘move where?’, he asks me rhetorically.

Amina and Salim, who have a temporary residency in Sweden but want to stay permanently, is also demanded to be active. The migration agency demands they get a steady job to stay in Sweden. With help from the employment service, Salim got subsidised employment. That is when the employment service pays an employer to provide a job. This job is, however, not enough for the migration agency.

Salim’s talked to his boss and the boss agreed to hire him permanently as a favour. Salim turned in all the paperwork and awaited the decision but has encountered yet another problem. The Migration agency now requested financial documents from the employer because the company's in what's considered a vulnerable industry. Salim tells me that his boss doesn't want to provide them with their financial records. (Observation note)

For Salim and Amina, the authorities constantly delay a final decision, and they are repeatedly introduced to new requirements as soon as they meet a previous one. Their time is governed by the authorities framing what becomes possible and not (Andersson, 2018). The family can only wait. However, this delay also includes glimmers of hope that they permanently would be able to stay in Sweden if they fulfil the next requirement (cf. Fontanari, 2017; Petersen & Wilkinson, 2015). They are stuck between new demands and a possible future (cf. Donnan et al., 2017; Khosravi, 2017; Tazzioli, 2018).

Faven is yet another example. She was 65 and homeless when I first met her. After receiving her final refusal of asylum in Sweden, she was supposed to leave the country but could not because she lacked paperwork from her country of origin. During this period, she tries to get help from the social services to get somewhere to live and something to eat. Occasionally, she gets some emergency aid for food and a place to sleep at an organisation, but the social services often refuse her applications. The reason for rejecting her is that Faven is supposed to leave Sweden and that she must turn to the migration agency for help. The migration agency, however, only provides help up until the last rejection. Although sometimes giving Faven some aid, the social services also keep delaying decisions by not notifying her of a decision right away, making it difficult to appeal promptly (cf. Bourdieu, 2000). Faven keeps waiting at the social services, she waits outside an organisation providing beds a night at the time, and she waits in line at the Church to get some food. Faven's everyday life is packed with waiting in line, trying to fulfil the demands put on her, without getting any help to change her social situation. However, by sometimes getting her some help, she is provided with glimmers of hope (Fontanari, 2017). As such, Faven adapts to the time-logic of the authorities and is stuck in line until deportation (Anderson, 2018; Khosravi, 2017).

Others have a full-time paid job but can still not manage without donations. Roya, mentioned above, is one such example. She works full-time, but as a single mother with two children, living on one salary, it is not enough. I talk to her when the Church is temporarily closed. She tells me how she usually freezes bread to make it last longer but that there is no more bread left now. As a single mother, her precarious living situation, working a precarious and low-paid job (see Khosravi, 2017), creates a situation where she needs donations to get by. Roya has no choice. She cannot turn away from her job, her family or the aid provided by the Church. She is, as such, stuck.

All these people have in common the need to receive donations to manage their every day and how they are aligned in a position where they can keep hoping for a solution to their precarious social situation should they follow the line and activate accordingly. According to the social services or other authorities ‘ logic, this activation could include making the right choices on the labour market and housing market, or when migrating. At the same time the visitors are kept in line by the same authorities by being delayed and put in waiting. Their time is thereby being tied up to receive temporary aid and by navigate the demands from different authorities. It is an individualised solution where they are supposed to make the right choice, keep hope alive, and be active for a possible better individual future (Miller & Rose, 2008). By providing glimmers of hope, people can be kept in line through time management, and no resistance is possible as this may penalise them from any future help (cf. Bourdieu, 2000).

The activity of waiting in line

When people wait in line to get food, they are aligned in a specific direction, making certain things reachable. The food is ahead and is getting more and more within reach as the line moves (cf. Ahmed, 2006). Being within reach makes it possible to hope for. However, as Ahmed (2006) points out, this also means that other things are being kept out of hand. The time used to reach the line and then wait cannot be used for other things, such as seeking employment, a home, or a more permanent solution.

This reasoning is relatable to Bourdieu (2000), who considers waiting as imbued in power. People waiting are being put on hold. They are aligned to reach specific goals to keep them from reaching other goals. People are thus kept in line. This is especially visible in how the people standing in this particular line all are in contact with the welfare state, social workers and other authorities without getting the help they need to manage their everyday lives. As such, the reason people stand in line must be related to how, for instance, the social services or the migration agency govern people in need of food (cf. Anderson, 2018). People often bear witness of being promised a possible future, should they submit to a particular logic, where they prove themselves worthy, active, and responsible as individuals (cf. Miller & Rose, 2008). Salim and Amina, for instance, are being promised a potential future that keeps slipping away since new requirements are constantly put upon them.

This leads us to the requirement of activity. As mentioned, neoliberal governance puts more responsibility on the individual for her social situation, demanding that she should be active and responsible (Garthwaite, 2017). There are indications in this article that there might be racialised, gendered, and classed aspects of who is being kept in line and not and who is considered passive or not. These issues were not possible to examine in detail, and further research is therefore needed regarding these issues. Regardless, however, the people in line are all very active and are forced to balance the line between different demands, rules, and authorities. Thus, a demand for activity would be misleading. Verhoeven and Tonkens (2013) and Garthwaite (2017) mentioned that such demands have more to do with reducing social services and the welfare state than people being passive about their social situation, and that it push the focus towards individual responsibility rather than towards social rights.

This push provides a challenge for social work, both within the public sector and within civil society. If the demands for activity put more pressure on people already being as active as possible, social workers risk reproducing social injustices. Especially if actively trying to survive does not count as being active enough. This is in line with previous research suggesting that the requested activation is weakly connected to the actual obstacles people face (Nybom, 2011). It is, thus, important to highlight and appraise the activity put into upholding precarious lives. To be able to create a social work with effects in people's everyday lives, it is essential not to rely on the false perception of the passive person waiting for hand-outs. Instead, I would argue that the daily life of activity among people and all the time spent to receive their fundamental social and human rights, such as food for the day, must be valued and considered within social work.

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank the staff, volunteers, and people visiting the food bank for everything they shared with me. I would also like to thank my colleagues Torun Elsrud, Philip Lalander, and Jesper Andreasson. Finally, I would like to thank the reviewers for taking their time to comment and helping me make a better article.

Disclosure statement

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

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Vetenskapsrådet: Swedish Research Council (2017-01562).

Notes on contributors

Marcus Herz

Marcus Herz, PhD, is an associate professor of social work at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. His main research interests concern different aspects of power connected to social work and how social work can be developed concerning gender, ethnicity, race, and social class. His research and publications include the areas of migration, youth studies, masculinity, gender, and social work.