Short narratives as a qualitative approach to
effects of social work interventions
Presentation at IIEMCA 2013, Wilfried Laurier University, Waterloo, August 7 th 2013
Leena Eskelinen, KORA, Det Nationale Institut for Kommuners og
Regioners Forskning
Søren Peter Olesen, Aalborg University
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.
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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)
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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)
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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
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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)
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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)
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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
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FRAME OF ANALYSIS
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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
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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.’
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EXAMPLES – 2 (man, 48 years old)
•
•
•
•
•
‘At that time <by the beginning of the mandatory activation> I had no ideas about on-thejob 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-thejob 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.
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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
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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)
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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?
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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)
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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)
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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)
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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
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