Leena Eskelinen, KORA, Det Nationale Institut for Kommuners og Regioners Forskning

1. Short narratives as a qualitative approach to effects of social work interventionsPresentation at IIEMCA 2013, Wilfried Laurier University, Waterloo, August 7th 2013 Leena Eskelinen, KORA, Det Nationale Institut for Kommuners og Regioners Forskning Søren Peter Olesen, Aalborg University

2. ABSTRACT In a study of the perspective of cash benefit recipients on employment policy efforts we analysed changes in narratives about work identity. The narratives appeared in talks between cash benefit recipients and representatives of the employment system as well as in interviews, where the cash benefit recipients were asked 3-5 times over a year how they saw themselves as regards participation in work life and being self-financed. The study was based on ethnomethodology and actor-network theory. The narratives were analysed in detail as identity work and contexts referred to and further as regards the cash benefit recipients’ experiences with the employment system and their view on connections between interventions and consequences in their life. Also three categories of cases were compared related to agency and work identity – cases characterised by reciprocal action, by powerlessness or, on the opposite, a sense of purpose on behalf of the cash benefit recipients. We argue that short narratives as approach to social work interventions could be applied to other fields of social work as a way to capture the knowledge of the primary producers of social work, that is clients as well as social workers.

3. REFERENCES Olesen, S.P. & Eskelinen, L. (2009): Korte narrativer i analyser af beskæftigelsesindsatser. Tidsskrift for Arbejdsliv 11(4): 38-51 Eskelinen, L. & Olesen, S.P. (2010): Beskæftigelsesindsatsen og dens virkninger virkninger set fra kontanthjælpsmodtagernes perspektiv. AKF Workingpaper. København: AKF Olesen, Søren Peter and Eskelinen, Leena (2011): Effects of social work: A qualitative approach. Nordic Social Work Research, 1(1)

4. INTRODUCTION • Aim of the paper: To introduce some attempts at formulating a qualitative approach to effects of social work interventions • Based on reflections on a study of Danish cash benefit recipients’ knowledge of and perspective on the consequences of employment efforts • Focus: Social work rather than social problems  i.e. on action and interaction in social work practice rather than on problematic aspects of social life • Theoretical perspective: Actor-Network-Theory (ANT) rather than EMCA • Latour (2007), however characterises ANT as half Garfinkel and half Greimas (literary narrative theory)

5. THE STUDY OF CASH BENEFIT RECIPIENTS’ PERSPECTIVE • Initial emphasis: Unemployed people with ‘other problems’ in addition to unemployment and specifically: What works for whom, and under which conditions? • Increasingly the focus besame: Interventions (or treatment) in the form of employment efforts and consequences (or effects) as seen from the perspective of cash benefit recipients and as dynamic and emerging entities

6. DESIGN AND DATA • Following cash benefit recipients (N=19) in two municipalities (different parts of the country; one researcher in each) over time (3-5 times over approximately one year) • Joining their encounters with social workers at jobcentres and at other places and collecting their accounts of, how they saw themselves in relation to the labour market • Collecting case files, sound recordings of their encounters with system representatives and first of all interviews with them (in most cases in connection with their contacts with the employment system)

7. SHORT NARRATIVES ABOUT WORK IDENTITY (SNWI) • Responses from the cash benefit recipients seen as a number of short narratives (narrative accounts) about work identity (SNWI) • Reference to the development in narrative analysis from grand over big to small narratives • The small narrative approach, drawing among others upon Sacks (1992) and Schegloff (1997) is close to EMCA • Analysing small narratives implies a shift of emphasis from narrative structure (Waletsky & Labov 1967) to narratives in social interaction (NSI; de Fina & Georgakopoulou 2009)

8. PERFORMANCE AND SOURCE AS REGARDS THE KNOWLEDGE AND PERSPECTIVE OF ACTORS • SNWI analysed as performances but also with regard to content, i.e. as sources to the knowledge and perspective of the cash benefit recipients and other actors at the street-level (Lipsky 1980) of employment policy implementation

9. FRAME OF ANALYSIS

10. THREE DYNAMIC CATEGORIES OF CASES • Powerlessness on behalf of the cash benefit recipient • Mutual interaction between citizen and representative of the employment system, negotiating a balancing of the ideas of the cash benefit recipient with the demands on the labour market • Purposefulness on behalf of the cash benefit recipient • Ten Have 2005, Ragin 1994

11. EXAMPLES – 1 (man, 32 years old) • ’It is more motivating to find a job, but I have just had some problems, so it simply hasn’t been possible for me to do it.’ • …that’s because of my self-confidence and my self-respect, which has been spoiled during the last several years simply by being dependent on the welfare system and feeling yourself unwanted, or what to say… • It is almost like you have been growing. You are much more pleased and content with yourself. • And then you get double amount of money, that’s almost the most important. So, it has caused quite a lot of things – like reviving again, so to speak. It gives you much more freedom. You even get other habits. You can buy the food you like and not necessarily the cheapest every time. And you can buy a bicycle, or you can travel, if you like. • Earlier I had headache and pains in my neck, but it’s totally gone now. Maybe it was because of my toothache. • ’If I now lose my job, I will be too proud asking for cash benefit: I would try to manage on my own until I get a new job.’

12. EXAMPLES – 2 (man, 48 years old) • ‘At that time <by the beginning of the mandatory activation> I had no ideas about on-the-job training. That about remittance of debts was the thing that inspired me to, that now it made sense to get out of the system.’ • If it should follow my way of thinking, then if I could get a job at reduced hours up there <where KJ is in on-the-job training> but, damned, I don’t know; I don’t know if it is possible, and if it’s going to happen’. • As I said before, my teeth falling out of my mouth; I haven’t got the same clothes like the others; I don’t even get wages’ <During the activation period, while in prolonged on-the-job training.> … but I have gone though with it <the practice placement> so, I must even find it interesting, somehow ... It is healthy to come out and get something to do … • <as regards the activation project> I can put it in two ways: the course of events has been fine. It has been a little bit rough, of course, but you get accustomed to it. But it has done me well to come out, also because the place where I came to, it was people like me … You can choose among a lot of thing. That’s if I look at it from the outside. However, if I look at myself personally, then I found it tiresome. It was simply too rough. This was too much, because now I have been walking around taking care of my son. He suffers from schizophrenia, but he is not dangerous or something. I have been allowed to take care of him for five years. • She <the caseworker> is perceived like a peer. You thoroughly feel that she wants the best for you and that it is corresponding to, what you want yourself.

13. IMPLICATIONS OF THE STUDY • Input to a study of qualificational and professional challenges of street-level activities at Danish jobcentres (Baadsgaard, Jørgensen, Nørup & Olesen, 2013) • Invited input to The employment indicator project • (http://www.jobindikator.dk/) • The study of cash benefit recipients’ perspective on employment efforts has been ‘invited’ to join a major Danish large scale experiment addressing the development of indicators of progression in relation to active participation at the labour market

14. DISCUSSION • Different perspectives on effects of social work interventions: • As input (‘method’ used by social work) causing output (effect): i  o • As framed, shaped or even determined by policy and institutional logic, e.g. problem identities and solution strategies • As consequences (outcomes) of generative mechanisms in a contextualised practice: • c  m  o • As translation, interaction or recontextualisation of policies (to this place, this time, this occasion)

15. QUESTIONS FOR DEBATE • The aim of this presentation has been to introduce some attempts at formulating a qualitative approach to effects of social work interventions: • What is it actually? – How to conceptualise or construct the meaning of effects in qualitative terms? • How is this supposed to be done? – How could this be thought methodologically, and are their any data collection and analytical methods available for this? • What is the relation to – and the possible ’conversation’ with other, specifically with quantitative measures? • Simply put: What is treated as effects or consequences by actors in social work practice?

16. COMMON SENSE LANGUAGE GAMES • Common sense rhetoric might appear confusing, especially where and when interventions are emerging in time and space as well as where and when consequences are dynamic • Given the very strong common sense understanding of interventions, professional methods and effects as taken-for-granted or unproblematic parts of social work practice, there is a need for empirical investigation and theoretical conceptualisation of what constitutes good practice (in a broader sense than EPB – Evidence Based Practice, i.e. basing social work practice on knowledge generated through critical reviews of randomised controlled trials)

17. BROADENING THE NOTIONS OF EFFECTS AND CAUSALITY • This need may lead to a broadening of the notion of effects and causality to include transformation and translation • In the case of our study it was a question of how employment policy (including human capital as well as work first strategies) is applied in social work practice  • Our analytical focus was on short narratives of work identity (SNWI), which could be characterised as small monologues initiated by questions from caseworkers (in institutional talks) or from researchers (in research interviews)

18. ACTOR-NETWORK-THEORY – DIFFERENT TYPES OF ‘REASSEMBLING THE SOCIAL’ • With some reference to Actor-Network-Theory (ANT) – i.e. a relational versus realist ontology – • A matter of following the actors (actants) and their translations when ‘reassembling the social’: • Fights versus co-operation • Compliance versus helping interventions • (Latour 2007)

19. CONCLUSION: EMCA/ANT AND SOCIAL WORK • Ethnomethodology/CA/ANT might be perceived as having specific relevance as approach to social work practice … •  in our case in the form of collecting and analysing SNWI • Methodologically this meant descriptions of narratives, contributions, positioning etc. of cash benefit recipients