Doing Everyday Justice: labour, resources, and emotions in the community legal sector

Community legal centres (CLCs) emerged from social movements organising for increased access to justice for disadvantaged Australians. Over the past decades, however, CLCs have become increasingly integrated into the mainstream legal system and derive the majority of their funding from state and federal governments. This has generated tensions between their frontline services in assisting clients with legal matters and their goals of systemic advocacy, law reform, and community education, particularly as conservative governments continue to limit the political activities of CLCs and threaten ever-impending funding cuts. This turbulent relationship between governments and CLCs has an impact on the everyday realities in these organisations, including the values, identities, activities, and actions of the people who work, manage, and volunteer in CLCs. This thesis will argue that everyday realities of work in the New South Wales CLC sector have a structural impact on the provision of services for clients and the community. By employing critical sociological perspectives on everyday life, organisations, social movements, and law and justice, this thesis will consider how CLC work practices aim to navigate tensions between resource scarcity, the chaos this produces in the sector, and organisational goals of expanding access to justice. This thesis will ultimately argue that to understand CLCs, we must examine how labour is recognised and alienated in the sector, how CLCs become fragmented as a result of government policy, and how CLCs mobilise power in intriguing, multi-faceted ways. This thesis expands the scholarship on social movement and legal organisations and reaches a sociological understanding on the relationship between labour, resources, emotions, power and the ‘doing of everyday justice