Blend Gaps through Papers and Meetings? Collaboration between the Social Services and Jobcentres

The policy word “collaboration” is a political buzzword omnipresent within human service organisations in Sweden and other countries. Collaboration stands for services working together toward a common goal. It is understood as the solution for a multitude of problems, putting the client at the centre and involving the services needed for making them financially self-sufficient. Public service collaboration assumes gaps between entities, whether they are organisations or professionals holding a particular kind of knowledge or available resources. Gaps are seen as omissions and pitfalls in activities which should be removed. My thesis is that putting the gap at the centre reveals not only the disjuncture of the gaps but also the productiveness of the gap in collaborative projects between organisations. The article demonstrates how documents and meetings work both as makers and blenders of gaps between social services and jobcentres. If gaps are productive spaces, what does it denote for collaboration between organisations? The article is placed ethnographically in documents and meetings set to enable collaboration between social workers and job coaches. I will focus on the gap, the space between documents and organisations, as productive spaces in collaborative projects

"The EU’s Nomads: national Eurocrats in European policymaking"

The paper focuses on the EU bureaucrats – Eurocrats – and their work. Special attention is placed on the Eurocrats’ work in EU Committees, working groups and council meeting. I have followed and observed their work first, through a trainee position at the Commission and second, by following the Swedish delegation to the Employment Committee meetings. The ethnographic study of the Eurocrats brings them to life as people of flesh and blood – beyond the stereotype. It shows that going by the book and forming technocratic EU decisions is not an option for these bureaucratic elites. They have to be flexible in handling their multiple roles and knowing when to play – and when to stop playing – the game. The paper shows that the roles Eurocrats play shift through the process: pendulum between articulating and defending ‘national’ positions and acting in the interest of the EU swings back and forth. In this way, the Eurocrats’ shifting roles contribute to the process of europeanisation. Sooner or later, playing the game in Brussels forces them to put on the hat of a ‘European’ formulating postnational EU decisions. These Eurocratic practices fashion that which we identify as the EU. We may debate if these EU policy decisions are changing the member states’ policies in any significant sense. Regardless, these Eurocrats are through their practices forming EU decisions that go beyond the nation state in a sense forming, if not to its fullest than at least, an embryo towards a postnational European community

Eurocrats at Work : Negotiating Transparency in Postnational Employment Policy

In the European Union political visions of a ‘Social Europe’ are being fuelled by the creation of common EU employment and social policy. The aim of the study is to investigate the workings and dynamics of policy-making in the area of employment, as an integral part of the fashioning of the European Union. Policies are channels for the cultural flows of ideas and notions and are in this way a part of forming ‘society’. The study is an ethnography of the work of bureaucrats in the European Union institutions and the member state governments, in particular in the European Commission and the Swedish government. In this bureaucratic culture of policy-making the Eurocrats move between different EU meetings to negotiate, discuss and decide on common ‘EU’ positions, in this way creating a postnational EU. At the core of the study is the tracing of the policy process of framing the vision of ‘Social Europe’ by the notion of ‘quality in work’. Particular focus is placed on turning this idea into ‘quality in work’ indicators. More specifically, the study explores the processes of making policy decisions quantifiable and transparent, and the assumptions underlying these processes. The development of indicators may be seen as part of a general global trend responding to demands for accountability, transparency and control over policy processes, a trend labelled audit society or audit cultures

Eurocrats at Work : Negotiating Transparency in Postnational Employment Policy

In the European Union political visions of a ‘Social Europe’ are being fuelled by the creation of common EU employment and social policy. The aim of the study is to investigate the workings and dynamics of policy-making in the area of employment, as an integral part of the fashioning of the European Union. Policies are channels for the cultural flows of ideas and notions and are in this way a part of forming ‘society’. The study is an ethnography of the work of bureaucrats in the European Union institutions and the member state governments, in particular in the European Commission and the Swedish government. In this bureaucratic culture of policy-making the Eurocrats move between different EU meetings to negotiate, discuss and decide on common ‘EU’ positions, in this way creating a postnational EU. At the core of the study is the tracing of the policy process of framing the vision of ‘Social Europe’ by the notion of ‘quality in work’. Particular focus is placed on turning this idea into ‘quality in work’ indicators. More specifically, the study explores the processes of making policy decisions quantifiable and transparent, and the assumptions underlying these processes. The development of indicators may be seen as part of a general global trend responding to demands for accountability, transparency and control over policy processes, a trend labelled audit society or audit cultures