An example of street-level study in Belgian social assistance policies. “Integration agents” and the definition of the “right to social integration”.

This paper focuses on social workers’ interpretation of Belgian activation policies, which bring about the logic of an active welfare state (Etat social actif) in the field of social assistance. Indeed, activation policies have spread over many countries, under different names and by means of a variety of measures. This diversity makes it very difficult to define either their nature, their aims or even the tools used for their implementation. As theoretical definition is made so hard, it is necessary to turn to practice to analyse how activation is shaped through the implementation of social policies at street-level. This study thus applies a street-level bureaucracy perspective to the analysis of social workers’ definition of activation through their practices and their discourses.The empirical data come from a six-week ethnographical study conducted in a “Public Center for Social Action” (CPAS) in Brussels. CPAS are local welfare agencies created to guarantee human dignity to all, not only by means of cash benefits but also by means of other services such as debt mediation or help for looking for a dwelling. I have focused on the “socio-professional integration service” (service d’insertion socioprofessionnelle), in which social workers called “integration agents” (agents d’insertion) help recipients to define their professional project and to reintegrate the job market. I have observed their practices during their face-to-face interactions with the recipients and during their team meetings, in addition to conducting semi-directive interviews with those workers and their hierarchy.The results presented in this paper show the agents’ efforts to deal with the contradictions of a law which came into force in 2002 and which created a “right to social integration”. The main goal was to create a right that could not only be achieved by means of cash benefits, but also by means of a job or an individualised contract. This law grants a very wide autonomy to the street-level agents in charge of its implementation in order to guarantee an individualised follow-up of recipients. In the socio-professional service studied in this research, integration agents are in charge of its socio-professional aspects, without being in charge of delivering cash benefits.More precisely, in this paper, I analyse how the integration agents informally interpret and implement the central concepts and goals of the 2002 law, such as the use of individualised contracts or the developments of recipients' autonomy. Indeed, activation measures can be understood and implemented either in a disciplinary or in an enabling way In order to shed light on the organizational context shaping the range of their discretion, I will also analyse the part of the hierarchy in workers’ definition of the law, thus showing that, contrary to what Lipksy was stating, the managers are not necessarily opposed to street-level agents and that several hierarchy levels must be taken into account.