Europe

Refugees are no longer treated as clients but as ‘participants’. They no longer receive social benefits but a salary for learning Norwegian and jobtraining. All recognised refugees in Norway have ‘the right and duty’ to attend a two year full-day Introductory Programme. Anthropologist Oddveig Nygård did fieldwork in one of these introductury centers in a small town in Western Norway.

She found that the new program on the one hand had positive effects on the relationship between refugees and the caseworkers – partly because the introductory programme allows the caseworkers to focus on other things than merely payment of benefits:

The fairly cold and bureaucratic environment of the social security office, in which the caseworkers are placed behind their desks and the refugees come to receive their social benefits, now belongs to the past. Instead, the refugees daily attend a centre where they see the caseworkers on a frequent basis. (…) The new framework has created a better basis to see the individual behind the refugee label and to obtain a more contextual image of the client. (…) The frequent encounters in more than just one setting have led to a more subtle relation between the two parties.

But the closer relationship between caseworkers and refugees creates ambiguity. There is a short step to the caseworkers being conceived of as a helper or a provider. Careworkers have to balance between care and control:

My study demonstrates how the motivation/sanction intersection of the introductory programme involves an element of control. Yet, the authority role tends to be diverted by the ‘fellow-being’ as they seem to have some empathy for the participant and his personal situation.

A drawback of the program is its focus on future planning and job acquirement, she writes. The role refugees seem most familiar with and accustomed to is the student role:

The majority of the refugee informants said they found it somewhat difficult to plan their future. (…) The main reason seems to be an expressed scepticism towards what they regard as limited job opportunities. (…) Several referred to their poor chances of getting a desirable job because they were ‘foreigners’, and some pointed to how even Norwegians face difficulties on the current labour market. Other spoke with resignation of the long process it would take to complete possible re-training and higher education. (…) As a result, the vagueness of the future planner role is likely to curb the overall role as ‘the active participant’.

She also describes her research process. As often the case, the anthropologist’s role is unclear to people in the field:

My mingling with both the caseworkers and the refugees certainly involved some challenges, probably causing some confusion as to “where I actually belonged”. I attempted to balance my involvement with the two groups by spending most time with the caseworkers during the refugees’ daily classes, and socialising with the refugees before and after classes, and in their lunch breaks. As a result, I sometimes had an unusual feeling of being a ‘social butterfly’ trying to be everyone’s ‘friend’.

At the same time, I may have been perceived as a somewhat curious element, primarily among the refugees, in the sense that that I was a young woman apparently having lots of time, and being more than willing to talk to people. I believe my relatively young age and my perceived student role may have made me less “threatening” and arguably made it easier to get in contact with people.

>> read the whole paper by Oddveig Nygård: “Between care and control: Interaction between refugees and caseworkers within the Norwegian” (pdf) (Working paper 32, Sussex Centre for Migration Research)