Public Social Services’ encounters with irregular migrants in Sweden : a preliminary outline of reframing of recognisability

This paper involves Public Social Services’ encounters with irregular migrants in Sweden and outlines an understanding of on-going processes in terms of being not only a differing recognition (Honneth 1996; 2004) of irregular migrants enacted in practice but also a suggested re-framing of their recognisability (Butler 2009) implying an egalitarian way of recognizing precariousness. The point of departure in the empirical studies is an unclear legal situation and a general exclusion of irregular migrants in legislation as well as in social policy. Staff within Public Social Services might thus face contradictory demands concerning international and national regulations, which leads to legal ambiguities open to discretionary powers when encountering irregular migrants. The aim of the paper is to explore the handling of cases and actual experiences. In addition, the interest concerns the considerations made by street-level bureaucrats with an interest in the values that are invoked when enacting discretion. The material in the study was obtained using web-based questionnaires. The analysis confirms that the Public Social Services encounter irregular migrants and that handling seems to differ and that staff applies different approaches. Differing reference points appear to be invoked when enacting discretion: some related to social work and others to controlled migration. The social work values invoked by some respondents might imply an appreciation of a right to services and control of migration as independent processes and jurisdiction and that social work is not to be subordinated to policies of migration. Please contact the author at carin.cuadra@mah.se if you want a copy