“Their husbands were sneaking around in the bushes”The need for anti-racist social work in Swedish activation programmes

ABSTRACT

This paper aims to provide an analysis of a project-based activation programme, called the Vista project, under the authority of the social services and run in a local community in Sweden. Research has shown that people with a migrant background, in all age groups and especially women, are overrepresented in unemployment rates. The argument presented in the paper is that an anti-racist framework is of great relevance for these provisions and would provide a strong theoretical foundation with clear implications for practice. The Vista project’s main objective was to find new matching strategies to increase labour market integration and to increase the number of people engaged in a full-time activity, such as employment, education or field practices. The findings show that the flexibility that characterizes this kind of organization has a negative impact on clearly defining its identity and work processes, something that could undermine its legitimacy. This study exemplifies how the flexibility leads to ambiguity and struggles in mediating a clear picture of the purpose of the project. Some core values of anti-racist practice are included in the foundation of the Vista project, for example, the resources addressed to a so-called disadvantaged group. Projects such as the Vista contribute to racial oppression, just as other more traditional social work organizations do. However, the form of the post-bureaucracy may create possibilities to both make such structures visible and find ways to give the participants exposed to the program greater influence on its design and to define their own needs.

KEYWORDS:

• Project-based social work
• migrant background
• anti-racist perspective
• post-bureaucracy
• activation programme

Introduction

The traditional bureaucratic organization has been accused of being rigid and ill-equipped to support the efforts of social workers as they work to meet individual demands, especially when it comes to providing services to what are sometimes considered ‘new’ groups. Thus, the call for flexible and tailor-made solutions has led to a broad array of project-based provisions offering solutions to (complex) societal problems (cf. Fred 2018; Larson and Morén, 1988).

Due to its history of a relatively open migration policy, Sweden has long experience with attempts to facilitate labour market integration, often in project-based forms (SOU 2010, 16). Despite stricter border controls since 2015 and fewer approved asylum applications, Sweden is still among the countries receiving the greatest share of refugees in relation to population (ec.europa.eu/eurostat), and the labour market integration projects are continuing. Even though the formal goal for these projects is to provide work opportunities, this cannot be isolated from the requirement that participants be prepared to be employment-ready and thus to be ‘Swedish’ enough to obtain employment. Hence, the activation arena is also a place in which ‘Swedish-ness’, and necessarily otherness, is being constructed, reinforced and mediated (e.g. Vesterberg 2016; Larsson 2015; Söderqvist, 2017).

Research has shown that these kinds of projects often involve a clear aspect of power and strategies to exercise this. Participants are forced to take part in these projects if they are to be granted financial support. Panican and Ulmestig (2011) call for more flexibility and creativity, and for tailor-made solutions based on individual needs; they also call for more equal relationships between the participants and the professionals.

People with a migrant background in Sweden, in all age groups, and women in particular, are overrepresented in unemployment rates (Forslund et al. 2019; Giertz 2004). Some explanations for this could be traced to the fact that new arrivals do not have time to get the qualifications they need, for example, in cases of low educational levels. This aside, language barriers, lack of social networks and discrimination also pose considerable obstacles for labour market integration (Ek, Hammarstedt, and Skedinger 2020). Compared to the general population, people with a migrant background are also overrepresented among those receiving social assistance, especially those not qualified for unemployment insurance funds. Even though the unemployment rate decreases over time, it is still, after 15–20 years, significantly higher than for Swedish-born people (Forslund and Åslund 2016).

This paper aims to provide an analysis of one project-based activation provision under the authority of the social services and run in a municipality in the south of Sweden (here called the Vista project or simply the Vista). The aim is, further, to emphasize the construction of anti-racist social work within the context of such an activation program. The argument presented in the paper is that an anti-racist framework is of great relevance for these provisions and would provide a strong theoretical foundation with clear implications for practice. While discrimination is shown to be a crucial explanation for the higher unemployment rate, awareness of those mechanisms that reproduce categories and hierarchical divisions between groups should be a fundamental part of the work ethos. Furthermore, since some provisions (such as the case in focus) presume that a categorization on ethnic grounds has taken place before even entering the provision, acknowledging the identity claims coming out from this and resisting the potential colonization from racist discourses and practices of othering (e.g. Said 2003) would be of utmost importance.

Sweden’s previous comparably liberal migration policy should not be taken as an indication of a racism-free community. Historically, discrimination towards minority groups, such as Sami and Roma people, was commonplace, and the Institute for Racial Biology (1922–1958) sought international recognition for studies about genes and differentiations on racial grounds. These experiences are hard to reconcile with the anti-racist approach often associated with the Swedish self-image (Lundström 2018; Dean 2001), in which racism is placed somewhere else, and exists far from oneself. The underlying assumption excludes racism from Sweden and Swedes in general (Pred 2000; Sawyer 2000; Mattsson and Tesfahuney 2002), something that could get support from the official policy claims of being a multi-cultural society (Pringle 2010). A flawed inclination, or the denial that racism occurs and is sustained in one’s own society, gives rise to entrenched positions on whether or not racism exists, which makes it difficult to deepen understanding of how it is expressed and what consequences it has for individuals and groups (Habel 2008).

The Vista project

The project, here called ‘The Vista’, is a local project-based program under the umbrella of a broader agreement funded by the municipality aiming to increase employment and improve integration. The project was organized within the social services, was developed and mainly run by trained social workers and had the employment agency as its closest collaborative partner.

The project is located in a smaller countryside village with approximately 2500 inhabitants (the population has grown by 16% since 2010). About 30% have a foreign background and the employment rate is about 70%, which is lower than the average in Sweden. The location was chosen due to the successful small and middle-scale construction industries, which were thought to provide good job opportunities even for those whose work experience was limited to manual labour. The idea of a mismatch was crucial and emerged as a co-presence of job seekers and work opportunities that would but in practice did not fully connect. Hence, the Vista project’s main objective was to find new matching strategies to increase the labour market integration, with the aim of increasing the number of people engaged in full-time activity such as an employment, education or field practices.

The participants were recruited from economic assistance units at the social welfare office. Different activation strategies were used that were more or less connected to the matching processes, such as job-seeking classes, but also bicycle training and courses in how to grow plants. The participants’ responsibility was to be active in job-seeking or job-related activities, while the municipality would provide a level of job training that would meet the demands of the labour market.

Even though the aim was to facilitate labour market integration, attention was also given to the participants’ overall life situation and not exclusively to work-related issues. This was an expression of the idea of working in untraditional ways to find unidentified pathways. How this intention was to be realized in practice was not clearly stated when the project started, but it would evolve during the process. Clearly this openness could mean a diffuse identity, an experimentation with different methods and an indistinct sorting of what discourses would be influential. As Hirvilammi et al. (2019) point out, participating in activation programs usually involves both demands and controls, explained in the Vista project as the participation was a requirement form being allowed welfare relief. The organizational frame will be discussed using theories about post-bureaucratic organizations (e.g. Heckscher 1994), and the influential discourses will be elaborated using theories about an anti-racist perspective.

Post-bureaucratic organization (PBO)

What most scholars seem to agree upon is that PBOs could be understood in terms of their differences from Weber’s ideal-typical bureaucracies (Heckscher 1994; Styhre 2008; McKenna, Garcia‐Lorenzo, and Bridgman 2010; Hodgson 2004). Crucial differences are that the bureaucratic organization presumes a separation between individuals and their job assignments and also uses formal control mechanisms (such as formalized routines, clearly defined working tasks and hierarchical structures of communication). The purpose of such organizations is to achieve predictability, transparency and accountability (Styhre 2008; Weber 1947/1997/1997).

Furthermore, instead of the strict hierarchies defining the bureaucracies, including rational and dispassionate employees, PBOs are characterized by flexible boundaries and a great amount of autonomy that supposedly functions to increase the employees’ engagement in their work (Grey and Garsten 2001; Heckscher 1994). Personal influence is taken into consideration and organizational hierarchies are not based on a preconceived system of positions. The PBO thereby presents another perspective on management and the need for control to reach effectiveness and organizational aims, which are built more on consensus and a flatter organizational structure (McKenna, Garcia‐Lorenzo, and Bridgman 2010; Vie 2010).

The PBO is further described as an organization that can adapt more readily to a changing environment and provide employees with more challenging work tasks (Heckscher 1994). In comparison to traditional bureaucracies, the relative shortage of formal rules and job descriptions can come out as both advantages, in terms of freedom and wider discretionary space, and disadvantages, in terms of lower job security and employees on short-term contracts. The end product is also more influenced by personal beliefs, more or less reflected ideas and in-situ assessments (Styhre 2008).

Hodgson (2004) defines two typical forms of PBOs. The first clearly distinguish themselves from traditional organizations by escaping their regulations, controls and distinct hierarchies, while the others are hybrid organizations. In the latter, new ways of control work together with traditional bureaucratic ways and form the hybrid. The Vista project most resembles the hybrid version, partly left to construct its own organizational rules and processes and partly being closely linked to the municipality’s traditional bureaucracy.

Anti-racist perspectives on social work in Sweden

Several scholars have argued that anti-racist perspectives need to be much more visible in social work practices as well as in research and education in Sweden (Eliassi 2017; Kamali and Jönsson 2018; Paradies 2016; Flem et al. 2017; Heron 2004). A compilation of earlier research within the activation field shows that very limited attention was paid to aspects related to ethnicity (Panican and Ulmestig 2019), and therefore there was little to no interest in an anti-racism approach. However, addressing racism within the social work organizations in general could threaten social workers’ professional identity as good people who hold social justice as a central value. Yet it is a profession in which whiteness is the norm and where professionals of colour are in the minority (Badwall 2014). Colonial tendencies in which a rigid understanding of culture put individuals in a hierarchy depending on the origin of birth have been revealed by researchers looking at such processes in different parts of the welfare sector in Sweden (e.g. Elsrud 2020; Djampour 2018; Vesterberg 2016; SOU 2005). Less has been done, however, regarding anti-racism and project-based social work. Specific integration projects cannot avoid making judgements about people, for example, about whether a person fits the inclusion criteria, which needs they have and whether these would be satisfied through the provision. Likewise, it is also unavoidable that assumptions about ethnicity and culture will be a part of this processing of people (cf. Vesterberg 2016).

Ferguson and Lavalette (2014) argue for the importance of recognizing how patterns and racist discourses and othering are also reproduced in social work practice, despite good intentions. Therefore, there is a need for a self-critical awareness of social work’s embeddedness in cultural and social contexts (in which racism does play a part). Combating cultural essentialism and post-colonial mechanisms implies scrutinizing multiple dimensions of power relations and recognizing unheard voices and advocating for their impact on policymaking (Eliassi 2015, 2017; Go 2013; Jönsson 2013). Kamali and Jönsson (2018) emphasize that social work as a profession is part of the structural, institutional and individual racial oppression. They claim further that a main task for social work is to put human rights into practice and fight for social justice regardless of ethnicity, gender or class.

The ‘culturizing’ of social problems draws attention to differences rather than similarities between people. Without critical examination about what is meant by culture, whose culture is being discussed and what is seen as normal and deviant, this notion could conceal discriminatory and otherization processes, neatly packed in an idiom an idiom that is hard to resist (Dean 2001; Harrison and Burke 2014; Gruber 2016; Kamali 2002).

Anti-racist social work as a framework

There is no simple way to define the concept of racism, and there is an ongoing debate concerning its actual meaning. To define it, one might focus on reasons for racism, on its relation to political and social divisions or on a structural basis related to ideologies that have an impact on interpersonal relations (e.g. Collins and Solomos 2011:3; de Los Reyes, Molina, and Mulinari 2002; Solomos and Back 1996). Dominelli (2017) argues that the concept of ‘race’ is socially constructed and changes over time. Thus, the aspect of power is a central component in the meaning of racism (cf. Harrison and Burke 2014; Dominelli 2017). When traits are put into a hierarchical order distinguishing dominant and subordinate positions with unequal access to different resources, power and autonomy racism enact. Anti-racist practices focus mainly on ‘race’ or/and ethnicity. However, Dominelli (2017) emphasizes the importance of acknowledging how other categories of power intersect, for instance, gender, class, age and sexuality, in understanding racial oppression. Both biological attributes and social-cultural features are used in the construction of ‘race’. The processes of racialization take place when groups or individuals are made into stereotypes based on prejudice related to both biological and social features (Miles 1991). Even though ‘race’ is argued to be socially constructed, it is still real in its consequences for those who are exposed to people’s perceptions about the meaning of ‘race’ (de Los Reyes, Molina, and Mulinari 2002; Alexander and Knowles 2005).

Racist discourses are thus not solely or primarily a matter of understanding the extreme or out-of-the ordinary, but of understanding how discourses based in colonial power penetrate the globe and define, divide and give meaning to people, groups and relations – and how this is expressed in everyday knowledge and is eventually transformed into common sense (e.g. Fanon 1967; Said 2003; Young 2001). Therefore, knowledge about how racism is expressed, and its consequences, should also be sought in arenas where resistance takes place and in everyday interactions (Essed 1991; Mattsson and Tesfahuney 2002). To be or to act in relation to an anti-racist approach means taking an active stance against racism. The practices of anti-racism need to be visible in the choices made, thus it’s not enough to argue against racism as action is required (Dominelli 2017; Kendi 2019).

Materials and methods

The empirical data in this paper consist mainly of individual interviews with the board members of the Vista project, supported with observations of daily activities and meetings. The board consisted of eight members: the project leader, four representatives from the social welfare office, two other people with supervisor positions at the social welfare office and a manager from the labour market office.

The author of this paper conducted all the interviews together with the two other participants in the research group. The interviews were semi-structured (e.g. Patton 2002). They included aspects of general interest concerning the project, such as its purpose, the structure and the process and current state, and they also contained specific questions to get respondents’ professional and personal reflections on the project and its adequacy in meeting participants’ needs. Seven interviews were carried out; they lasted about 1–2 hours and were recorded and later transcribed verbatim. Data were also collected through observation of the daily activities at the Vista, and of the regular management meetings. We visited about 10 times to do observations; each lasted about 1–3 hours, depending on the types of meetings or activities being observed. During the observations, we tried to take a passive role, participating in conversations only if asked to. The observations provide valuable inside knowledge of the practice and have been of importance in validating the analysis of the interviews (e.g. Fine 2003).

The data were analysed by applying a qualitative content analysis. The analytic work was divided in three main phases: preparation, organization and reporting (Graneheim and Lundman 2004). In the preparation phase, both the latent and the manifest data were used, focusing both on what was verbalized and the possible meaning behind these words. The themes were developed during the organization of overall data set and was based on a search for common patterns and tensions, for example in respect to how the participants were labelled, the social worker’s role and the aim for the activation program. The quotes/observations are chosen to be representative for the data set, and spell out the patterns and tensions searched for in a clear way.

This study was sent to and approved by the regional ethics vetting board of Linköping (3178–51).

Findings

The ambivalent provision

An important part of the practice was the meeting between the project participants and the staff from the project group. Scanning the educational and labour market background as well as discussing future plans were recurring activities. Below is a sequence based on the observations..

After the meeting, we sit down and talk to the project leader. S/he says that they have now started to meet new participants. During the first meetings, they will meet to find out what they want to do. The project leader continues by explaining that there are three of them. One is motivated, one is not interested in participating due to previous experiences of the same kinds of activities, and the third wants to try it to find out if this is something for her. The project leader says that the greatest challenge will be to find something new to do besides writing CVs as they have probably done that a thousand times before. (Field notes)

The project leader within the Vista was clearly ambivalent when describing the project. This included the overall aim of facilitating integration, and how narrowly or broadly that should be understood, showing the hybridity between the overall aim, and openness when achieving it (Hodgson 2004). Was it supposed to be a comprehensive project of concern for the whole community, or was it rather a labour market project targeting just the specific group of participants – or maybe both? The same ambivalence was seen among the other board members. Some argued that putting emphasis on labour market integration tended to send a more positive message to the participants and to the public. Such positioning was important to avoid the risk of nurturing negative connotations stemming from less successful ‘integration’ attempts. Successful integration depended also on how the project or more specifically the migrants were welcomed by the inhabitants, which then became an argument about why they should make efforts to involve the local community. The difficulties in finding a united way of defining and understanding the purpose of the project within a relatively small group of people needs to be understood in relation to the PBO (Vie 2010). Even though the Vista project has a leader who takes full responsibility for running the project, there is room for the other project members to express their views on the purpose of the project and declare what vison they tend to work towards, to reconstruct the project as it goes. Having different opinions about the core of the project seemed thus not be an obvious problem for either the project leader or the other board members. The quotes below are examples of two ways of defining and relating to the core of the project, expressed by board members at different times when asked about how they would describe the Vista project.

It is just a labor market policy project.

(Elin board member)

It’s the integration issues we’re working on.

(Hamid, board member)

The definition of the character of the project concerns both different views upon what integration is and how the project would gain legitimacy. The first relates to tension about what integration should be: individual skills and network building in order to adapt to the pre-existing community, or mutual adaptations by double-sided transforming actions to negotiate the interface between the migrants and the local community. It may be of interest to understand this from a post-colonial perspective. The overall understanding within this framework stresses the relics from a colonial era and its consequences for the modern society (Fanon 1967). Mudimbe (1988) emphasizes the construction of the other related to an ethnocentrism that puts individuals with a minority background in an inferior position. In the case of the Vista project, that is taking place on a group level, meaning that the involved board members seem to be well aware that the group of migrants and projects related to integration are received with scepticism by the local community. Thus, they have to find a way to present and legitimize the project and the participants. The best way to do that is difficult to determine, and there are different opinions on how to promote the project and what activities could be offered. The definition of the project seems important in relation to Mudimbe’s (1988) demand for the reconstruction of knowledge of ‘the other’ as well as the fight for discursive power. Legitimacy is an aspect of this.

The flexibility

A distinct room for flexible manoeuvres, or discretion, was important for making the project to run, the project group told, however not without ambivalence since this also put a lot of pressure upon the employees to develop something new without a prefigurative model (e.g. Heckscher 1994; Hodgson 2004). The Vista project leader had great power to decide on the content and set the overall frames of the project, but this person was also pressured by having to do this a lot on his/her own. One example of the possibility to fill the program with content was the women who were asked to form a group and meet once a week to discuss issues related to what they themselves found interesting. The informants thus used their informal contacts to construct this group that later came to be called ‘the women’s group’. Topics of discussion during these group meetings were not necessarily connected to labour market issues but rather based on the women’s interests, such as make-up classes etc. This specific activity was a way to get the practices started before the intended participants arrived. The high level of flexibility is one of the most obvious characteristics in the understanding of a PBO (Heckscher 1994; Hodgson 2004) in contrast to the bureaucratic ideal that builds on rationality, formalization and maintaining order (Weber 1947/1997/1997). The flexibility could be perceived as a positive freedom with a great amount of autonomy, but also as a source of pressure from having to be very active if anything unexpected should happen. Compared to the more traditional organization of, for example, the social welfare office, this specific project opened the possibility to form the project and fill it with content.

Further in the Vista project, the possibility to be spontaneous and act spontaneously was seen as necessary in order to adapt and match the participants’ individual conditions and the surrounding community’s needs and willingness to be involved. One of the board members described this flexibility:

Some days I do not have anything in particular planned. We get here and I ask, “What would you like to talk about today?” (Maria, board member)

In this quotation, Maria expresses both an advantage and a disadvantage with working in such project. On one hand, the lack of both structure and content that sometimes occurs opens up the possibility to be spontaneous and take the day as it comes. On the other hand, it raises the issue of actually finding meaningful content and ensuring that the participants get the most out of the day. This flexibility differs somewhat from the more traditional bureaucracy (cf. Weber 1947/1997/1997). The ambivalent feeling expressed by the board member regarding the flexibility was mainly related to the project participants. However, considered in relation to the understanding of the anti-racism social work, it might also be possible to elaborate on it in terms of the professional identity. Ferguson and Lavalette (2014) argued for the importance of recognizing patterned and racist discourses as well as having a self-critical attitude towards oneself and one’s own practices. In the Vista project, the board members are not necessarily bound to established organizational norms and structures, which may raise awareness of how ethnicity is acted upon. Also, as Badwall (2014) points out, it presents an opportunity for the board members to better understand problems from an individual level, by not only focusing on what should be done in terms of activities for the participants but also taking time to reflect upon their own professional identity.

The level of ambition of the person leading the activity needed to be adjusted to fit into a specific moment. Having a lot of freedom was not considered purely as an advantage, nor solely as a source of pressure, but also in terms of being left on their own and unnoticed.

You get a great amount of freedom, but the downside is that it also means that you do not get much attention. (Lena, board member)

The lack of attention was seen as especially problematic because of the lack of interest from key actors in the labour market arena (potential employers) and also generally among Swedish inhabitants in the community. Therefore, a great effort was made to create relations by introducing the participants as potential employees to the local industries and inviting the inhabitants to visit the venue. Only a few people took up the invitation and stopped by, curious about what was happening. The project seemed to be something concerning ‘others’, working with a specific group that already established inhabitants would not automatically make contact with. Vesterberg (2016) has shown that terms such as non-Nordic background, immigrant and foreign born are common in defining those targeted in labour market projects and discusses how these tend to categorize project participants as different. Further, he shows that this othering can frame different provisions more broadly – in this way hindering the establishment of potentially fruitful networks. From a post-colonial perspective, the lack of interest reflects the division between ‘the west’ and ‘the rest’, implying a superior position (Fanon 1967).

The lack of attention, and also overall legitimacy, was also coming from the project organization internally. The need for the project was severely questioned by the representative from the labour market office, who found the whole idea counterproductive. By creating these kinds of projects, politicians and the municipality created a symbolic action that inhibited the labour market office from taking responsibility for their main task, argued one of the board members. Counterproductive or not, project-based enterprises are often suggested as solutions to ‘wicked problems’, those that seem difficult to solve otherwise (Fred 2018).

Needs innovations

The findings illustrate how the informants oppose generalized stereotypical pictures of the ‘migrant’ in relation to the project participants, but also that the Vista project in fact holds these kinds of discourses as a profound feature of its foundation. A self-critical reflection from one of the informants reveals this.

To put everything under the same roof and claim that all of them need this extra support, it is the same as saying that just because you happen to live within this area you will not manage. That is why you need this extra support. (Hamid, board member)

This kind of reflection seems to mirror what researchers have pointed at about not hiding behind a mask of professionalism, but trying to see patterns of stereotyping working even behind good intentions (e.g. Ferguson and Lavalette 2014; Badwall 2014; Eliassi 2015). Thus, this demands systematic reflections and questioning of one’s own position to make sure that one is not taking part in a stereotyping practice. Here Go’s (2013) idea regarding how historical ways of thinking appear in other forms and challenge us in the modern time becomes important.

A common goal for the informants was to give attention to more than work-related issues. When identifying their own position, the informants made the difference clear compared to how other governmental organizations usually work with the same group. As one informant stated:

An employment will give you the key into the society, but just partly.

They [other organizations] had real difficulties with dealing with the participant’s life apart from work-related issues. (Henric, board member)

The above quote implies that the participants in the Vista project are regarded as more than prospective employees; that other aspects of their lives and experiences are taken into consideration. This project aims at a more comprehensive approach related to an ethos of social responsibility addressing integration not only in relation to the labour market but also to the society in broader terms. This could be exemplified by the attempts to establish contacts with local sport clubs. Therefore, even if labour market integration was The Vista’s primary objective, as typical for PBOs, there was considerable discretionary room for personal ideas to form the actual content of the project. While the structural hierarchy was freer, the realization of the daily practice was also unrelated to specific merits and positions but could come from any of the staff (e.g. McKenna, Garcia‐Lorenzo, and Bridgman 2010). The interesting part seemed, however, to be that it is difficult to get hold of what that different focus consisted of apart from the work-related issues. Neither the interviews with the board members nor the observations gave a hint of what that could be. Even though the informants talked to the project participants about leisure activities and experiences from their countries of origin, it was still difficult to tell what such knowledge was used for apart from trying to connecting it to some kind of work-related activity fitting the Swedish labour market.

Needs assessments are central in human service organizations, both when defining the status of the service users and directing change efforts to specific life areas. Needs provide, in this respect, an interface in which the person is transformed into an organizational object. In the traditional bureaucratic organization, this interface is regulated by norms and assignments indicating who is or is not eligible to use the available services (cf. Hasenfeld 2010). In PBOs, this boundary is much more up to the involved persons and thereby what they find as meaningful discourses applicable to the situation at hand.

The needs of ‘the other’

Contemporary welfare organizations require new ways of meeting challenges presented in a rapidly moving society. Still, different objectives and discourses can sometimes stand in opposition to each other, making joint understanding and dialogues difficult (Fred 2018). Tensions of this kind arose in the Vista project when intentions to provide individualized support were confronted with notions of gender, such as the needs of and relations between men and women (cf. Hodgson 2004; Brodkin 2016). Gender was an important indicator in the description of the participants in the Vista project. Talking separately about men and women and their plans for the future, different needs were assigned to them, and the informants described how these needs could be met within the frame of the project. By recognizing and stressing the importance of differences, the informants claimed to be able to individualize the support based on gender, which was argued to be especially important when working with people with a migrant background. Based on that, specific activities were planned for women to address their needs to meet with others and also to get familiar. The informants also said that these gender-based activities related to women were a sign of success in persuading some of the women to participate in the activities despite their husbands’ controlling manner. One of the informants shared previous experiences that he thought confirmed these suspicions:

[…] and the women have difficulties with getting away from home. We realized that in the initial part of the project, when the husbands were sneaking around in the bushes while we had appointments with the women. (Noa, board member)

The quote above stresses a pervasive tension for the project between being solidaric with the participants without culturally stigmatizing them or their network. Hall (1992) discusses the construction of the cultural identity and how that can be understood in different ways, either as static or in a more social constructivist way that develops and reformulates over time. In the above conversation, it is not the ethnic background that mainly seems to be the problem but rather a gender issue, which requires specific actions in relation to the group resulting in separate meetings and activities for men and women respectively. Gender is, however, closely connected to this informant’s ideas of the ethnic background. Within the post-colonial theory, the understanding of a cultural background is described in a way that disagrees with the idea that there is some kind of essence in relation to culture. A more interactive understanding of how the cultural background may have an impact on the individual makes it more difficult to make broad generalizations on a group level (Hall 1992; Fanon 1967). Dominelli claims that culture changes constantly and is influenced by what takes place in the interaction between people in local contexts. From the understanding of superiority follows elements of power and specific privileges, while those excluded are distinguished as deviant and inferior, that is, as ‘the other’ (Dominelli 2017). Again, a critical social work calls for an inspection of what ideas and power structures are nurtured on very different levels of society, and also of those that are held as natural or common sense by the professional group (Anis 2005; Jönsson 2013).

Discussion

The aim with this study was to analyse one project-based activation provision and to emphasize the construction of anti-racist social work within the context of such an activation program run by the municipality. An argument in this paper claims that an anti-racist social work framework is of great relevance for this provision and that it would provide a strong theoretical foundation with clear implications for practice. The analysis served further to understand the ambivalence that both signified how the overall project was explained and how present and presumptive participants were categorized by the professionals.

At first, it could be argued that some core values of anti-racist practice are included in the foundation of the Vista project, namely, the resources addressed to a so-called disadvantaged group and the intention to build bridges between different community groups – and in the long run work towards a more just and equal society. However, these aspects do not exclusively belong to an anti-racist framework but form the basis for the anti-oppressive practices that are part of the core of social work (Dominelli 2017; Dalrymple and Burke 2008; ifsw.org). Professionalism and addressing issues of racism are sometimes put in opposition to each other. Being a professional social worker is often automatically related to an absence of racism, which Badwall (2014) argues is not necessarily the case. Social work practice can include processes of culturalization of the service user and thereby reproduce discourses of cultural otherness (Eliassi 2015; Jönsson 2013).

Before moving further in the discussion, some attention is given to the actual outcomes of the project as described by the informants. From a post-colonial perspective, it is clear that some of both the actual activities and the discourse about the participants could be understood as having elements of racism and thus working against the principle of the anti-racist practice. An example of that is the way the participants in the Vista project are sometimes portrayed by the informants. Look, for instance, at the description of the challenge of getting the women involved in the activities offered by the program, and how the participants were categorized in that case. The women were constructed as dependent and the men ‘hiding in the bushes’ as patriarchal, controlling and having nothing better to do then hang around. It is not difficult, based on a post-colonial analysis, to assume that what Hall (1992, 1999) discusses as static cultural identities applies within the practices of the Vista. It is also a distinct example of othering processes relating to an ethnocentrism that results in people with a minority background getting stuck in inferior positions (e.g. Mudimbe 1988).

It must be understood that the Vista project was set up to address the actual difficulties faced by people – especially women – with a migrant background trying to enter the labour market (c.f. Forslund et al. 2019; Giertz 2004). The Vista is a staged project created to respond to the needs of this specific heterogeneous group of people. The project aims to address such challenges that make entry into the labour market more difficult, such as language barriers, discrimination, and the lack of social networks (e.g. Ek, Hammarstedt, and Skedinger 2020). With examples of structural oppression as discussed above, it would be misleading to claim that this is the only outcome of the Vista project. For instance, during our observations of the ‘women’s group’, several participants expressed their satisfaction and gratitude for being part of the group and they said that it allowed them to get to know people and fill their lives with meaningful content. This side effect does not necessarily decrease the level of unemployment, but it may bring meaning on an individual level. Important to add is that such project-based practices exist somehow based on stereotypical ethnicized categories. Without an explicit definition of the project’s purpose and some kind of homogenization, the incitement to sponsor a program such as the Vista would disappear (e.g. McGlinn 2018).

Like many integration provisions in Sweden, the Vista is organized in the form of a project, here discussed in terms of the PBO. The flexibility that characterizes this kind of organization precludes having a clear definition of its identity and work processes (Heckscher 1994; Hodgson 2004), something that could undermine its legitimacy (e.g. Styhre 2008). This study exemplifies how this flexibility leads to ambiguity and struggles in mediating a clear picture of the purpose of the project; as a result, the purpose of the organization shifted depending on who was asked.

A potential contradiction between the aim of the activation program versus the social work values can be recognized. As a consequence the aim of the Vista project shows ambivalence between on the one hand take an individualized understanding as the departure point, and on the other having to administer (register and report)compulsory participation for the participants if their income support would be granted by the social services. . However, this blurred picture contributed to difficulties in identifying and defining the present and prospective participants. It is a picture that was impossible for the participants to take control of but rather one they just had to accept.

A PBO could be described as a hybrid organization, in that it borrows from both traditional and more modern types of organizations (Heckscher 1994). Features that exist in the traditional bureaucracies are also recognized in the PBO, but here they could play a more crucial role and are developed in a more refined way. For example, the management’s dialogue-oriented approach and a supportive and informal kind of leadership style figure in other organizations as well (e.g. Vie 2010). However, control and leadership are not as regulated as in traditional welfare organizations but rather emerge from processing the purpose of the goals of different activities and depend on the personal engagement of different employees (McKenna, Garcia‐Lorenzo, and Bridgman 2010). Finding a specific purpose or a clear definition of the participants may not even be desirable within this type of organization. The lack of obvious control or what McKenna, Garcia‐Lorenzo, and Bridgman (2010) call self-managing may be part of facilitating a continuation of constructing organizational identity, including professional roles and categories for the service users. This could make a good foundation for a self-critical and critical social work needed for an anti-racist practice. The problem is that there is nothing per se that tells what discourses will provide the material for these continuous reconstructions. A limitation for obtaining anti-racist social work practices within a PBO seems, based on the experiences from the Vista project, to be the risk of such racist discourses being allowed to flourish without any regular controlling mechanisms such as institutional codes that declare the vision and apparent leadership serving as the agent for ethical awareness.

Based on the discussion of anti-racism in social work it seems that some of Weber’s (1947/1997 components for the optimal bureaucratic organization – predictability, transparency and accountability – may be understood as both advantages and limitations with respect to a PBO. The flexible character of the latter could result in momentarily and individually customized solutions that comprehensively recognize and take the participants’ life contingencies and biographies into consideration. This is something that could be harder where pre-set regulations, routines and predictability govern (cf. Panican and Ulmestig 2011). However, the lack of some components that stabilize the organization in ideologies and potentially professional ethics could also give room for ill-considered ideas to form a breeding ground for constructions of ‘the other’, which can become unchallenged within a project-based solution such as the Vista.

Conclusion

To conclude, projects such as the Vista contribute to racial oppression, just as other more traditional organizations in the social work arena do (e.g. Badwall 2014; Eliassi 2015). However, the form of the PBO may create possibilities to both make such structures visible and find ways to give the people who are exposed to the program greater influence on its design and to allow them to define their own needs. Further, I would argue that such a shift in balance of power would give better conditions for a switch of dominant positions, a re-evaluation of knowledge and also the share of interpretive precedence with the participants (e.g. Mudimbe 1988; Young 2001).

Disclosure statement

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