Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-jkksz Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-25T05:00:13.390Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Failing, writing, litigating: daily practices of resistance in Belgian welfare bureaucracies

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 July 2022

Sophie Andreetta
Sophie Andreetta*
Affiliation:
FRS-FNRS Research Fellow, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Liège, Belgium
*
*Corresponding author. E-mail: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This paper builds on ethnographic fieldwork in Belgian welfare administrations to identify daily practices of resistance among Belgian ‘welfare bureaucrats’ who interrogate the new welfare and immigration law reforms that further restrict migrants’ access to social assistance. The contestation strategies are used to circumvent and sometimes break the formal and informal policy guidelines while still allowing them to perform and remain loyal to the state and to higher principles such as a commitment to the fundamental right to human dignity. Three main contestation strategies are identified: failing to provide certain services to demonstrate the absurdity of certain guidelines, writing reports against the administration and in favour of the user, and encouraging litigation against the federal agencies that employ them. These strategies show Belgian welfare workers’ commitment to providing a form of public service that aligns with their professional ethos rather than enforcing specific government policies.

Keywords

welfare lawanthropologyethnographybureaucracymigration
Type
Special Issue Article
Information
International Journal of Law in Context , Volume 18 , Special Issue 3: Politicised Bureaucrats: Conflicting Loyalties, Professionalism and the Law in the Making of Public Services , September 2022 , pp. 317 - 332
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Alpes, MJ (2017) Papers that work: migration brokers, state/market boundaries, and the place of law. PoLAR: Political and Legal Anthropology Review 40, 262–277.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Andreetta, S (2019) Writing for different audiences: social workers, irregular migrants and fragmented statehood in Belgian welfare bureaucracies. Journal of Legal Anthropology 3, 91–110.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Andreetta, S and Kolloch, A (2018) Money, morality and magistrates: prosecuting and judging in the Republic of Benin. The Journal of Legal Pluralism and Unofficial Law 50, 145–166.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ataç, I (2019) Deserving shelter: conditional access to accommodation for rejected asylum seekers in Austria, the Netherlands, and Sweden, Journal of Immigrant & Refugee Studies 17, 44–60.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Ataç, I and Rosenberger, S (2018) Social policies as a tool for migration control. Journal of Immigrant & Refugee Studies 17, 1–10.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bierschenk, T (2008) The everday functioning of the African public service: informalization, privatization and corruption in Benin's legal system. Journal of Legal Pluralism 57, 101–139.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bierschenk, T (2014) Sedimentation, fragmentation and normative double-binds in (west) African public services. In Bierschenk, T and de Sardan JP, Olivier (eds), States at Work: Dynamics of African Bureaucracies. Leiden/Boston: Brill, pp. 221–249.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bierschenk, T and de Sardan JP, Olivier (2014) States at Work: Dynamics of African Bureaucracies. Leiden: Brill.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Blundo, G and de Sardan JP, Olivier (eds) (2007) État et corruption en Afrique: Une anthropologie comparative des relations entre fonctionnaires et usagers (Bénin, Niger, Sénégal). Paris: Karthala.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Blundo, G and Le Meur, PY (eds) (2009) The Governance of Daily Life in Africa: Ethnographic Explorations of Public and Collective Services. Leiden : Brill.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Borrelli, LM and Lindberg, A (2018) The creativity of coping: alternative tales of moral dilemmas among migration control officers. International Journal of Migration and Border Studies 4, 163–178.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Borrelli, LM et al. (2021) (Un)conditional welfare? Tensions between welfare rights and migration control in Swiss case law. Swiss Journal of Sociology 47, 93–114.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brodkin, EZ and Majmundar, M (2010) Administrative exclusion: organizations and the hidden costs of welfare claiming. Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory 20, 827–848.Google Scholar
Budniok, J (2015) When judges feel misjudged: encountering doubt in Ghanaian courts. In Berti, D, Good, A and Tarabout, G (eds), Of Doubt and Proof: Ritual and Legal Practices of Judgment. London: Ashgate.Google Scholar
Commaille, J and Dumoulin, L (2009) Heurs et malheurs de la légalité dans les sociétés contemporaines. une sociologie politique de la ‘judiciarisation’. L'Année sociologique 1, 63–107.Google Scholar
Das, V and Poole, D (2004) State and its margins: comparative ethnographies. In Das, V and Poole, D (eds), Anthropology in the Margins of the State. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 3–34.Google Scholar
Dubois, V (2010) The Bureaucrat and the Poor: Encounters in French Welfare Offices. Aldershot: Ashgate.Google Scholar
Eule, TG, Loher, D and Wyss, A (2018) Contested control at the margins of the state. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 16, 2717–2729.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Eule, TG et al. (2019) Migrants Before the Law: Contested Migration Control in Europe. London: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
Evans, T (2010) Professional Discretion in Welfare Services: Beyond Street-level Bureaucracy. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Evans, T (2011) Professionals, managers and discretion: critiquing street-level bureaucracy. British Journal of Social Work 41, 368–386.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ferguson, J and Gupta, A (2002) Spatializing states: toward an ethnography of neoliberal governmentality. American Ethnologist 29, 981–1002.Google Scholar
Gabarro, C (2012) Les demandeurs de l'aide médicale d’État pris entre productivisme et gestion spécifique. Revue Européenne Des Migrations Internationales 28, 35–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gabarro, C (2017) L'attribution de l'aide médicale d'Etat (AME) par les agents de l'Assurance maladie: entre soupçon de fraude, figures de l’étranger et injonctions gestionnaires. Sociologie. Université Sorbonne Paris Cité.Google Scholar
Hansen, TB and Stepputat, F (2001) States of Imagination: Ethnographic Explorations of the Postcolonial State. Durham: Duke University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hirshl, R (2008) The judicialization of mega-politics and the rise of political courts. Annual Review of Political Science 11, 93–118.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hirshl, R (2011) The judicialization of politics. In Goodin, RE (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Political Science. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Holm, Vohnsen N (2017) The Absurdity of Bureaucracy: How Implementation Works. Manchester: Manchester University Press.Google Scholar
Hull, MS (2012) Government of Paper: The Materiality of Bureaucracy in Urban Pakistan. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Humphries, B (2004) An unacceptable role for social work: implementing immigration policy. British Journal of Social Work 34, 93–107.Google Scholar
Infantino, F and Rea, A (2012) La mobilisation d'un savoir pratique local: attribution des visas Schengen au Consulat général de Belgique à Casablanca. Sociologies pratiques 1, 67–78.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Laszckzkowski, M and Reeves, M (2018) Affective States: Entanglements, Suspensions, Suspicions. New York/Oxford: Berghahn Books.Google Scholar
Lentz, C (2014) ‘I take an oath to the state, not the government’: career trajectories and professional ethics of Ghanaian public servants. In Bierschenk, T and de Sardan JP, Olivier (eds), States at Work: Dynamics of African Bureaucracies. Leiden: Brill, pp. 175–204.Google Scholar
Lipsky, M (1980/2010) Street-level Bureaucracy: The Dilemmas of the Individual in Public Service. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.Google Scholar
Martens, J (2019) La dignité humaine comme mesure de l'aide sociale. In Bedoret, C and Gilson, S (eds), Les contours de l'aide sociale. Limal: Anthémis, pp. 27–52.Google Scholar
Mathur, N (2016) Paper Tiger: Law, Bureaucracy and the Developmental State in Himalayan India. Delhi: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Miaz, J and Achermann, C (2021) Bureaucracies under judicial control? Relational discretion in the implementation of immigration detention in Swiss cantons. Administration and Society, 1–31.Google Scholar
Nakueira, S (2019) Governing through paperwork. Journal of Legal Anthropology 3, 10–28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Oumarou, H (2014) ‘We make do and keep going!’: inventive practices of ordered informality in the functioning of the district courts in Niamey and Zinder (Niger). In Bierschenk, T and de Sardan JP, Olivier (eds), States at Work: Dynamics of African Bureaucracies. Leiden: Brill, pp. 145–75.Google Scholar
Perna, R (2018) Re-bounding EU citizenship from below: practices of healthcare for (il)legitimate EU migrants in Italy. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 44, 829–848.Google Scholar
Perna, R (2019) Bound between care and control: Institutional contradictions and daily practices of healthcare for migrants in an irregular situation in Italy. Ethnic and Racial Studies 42, 2103–2122.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pfirter, L (2019) Constructing ‘unteachability’ through menacing warnings: the coupling of welfare benefits and migration control in Switzerland. Journal of Legal Anthropology 3, 29–49.Google Scholar
Ratzmann, N (2021) Deserving of social support? Street-level bureaucrats’ decisions on EU migrants’ benefit claims in Germany. Social Policy and Society 20, 1–12.Google Scholar
Rubbers, B (2007) Retour sur le ‘secteur informel’: l’économie du Katanga (Congo-Zaïre) face à la falsification de la loi. Sociologie du travail 49, 316–329.Google Scholar
Rubbers, B and Gallez, E (2015) Réformer la ‘justice de proximité’: Une comparaison entre les tribunaux coutumiers et les tribunaux de paix à Lubumbashi (R.D. Congo). Critique internationale 66, 145–164.Google Scholar
Schweitzer, R (2019) Health care versus border care: justification and hypocrisy in the multilevel negotiation of irregular migrants’ access to fundamental rights and services. Journal of Immigrant & Refugee Studies 17, 61–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shapiro, M and Sweet, AS (2002) On Law, Politics, and Judicialization. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Spire, A (2008) Accueillir Ou Reconduire: Enquête Sur Les Guichets de l'immigration. Paris: Raisons d'agir.Google Scholar
Thelen, T, Vetters, L and von Benda-Beckmann, K (2014) Introduction to stategraphy: towards a relational anthropology of the state. Social Analysis 58, 1–19.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Titeca, K and Flynn, R (2014) ‘Hybrid governance,’ legitimacy, and (il)legality in the informal cross-border trade in Panyimur, North Uganda. African Studies Review 57, 71–91.Google Scholar
Tuckett, A (2018) Rules, Paper, Status: Migrants and Precarious Bureaucracy in Contemporary Italy. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Van der Leun, J (2006) Excluding illegal migrants in the Netherlands: between national policies and local implementation. In Guiraudon, V and Lahav, G (eds), Immigration Policy in Europe. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Verheul, S (2013) ‘Rebels’ and ‘good boys’: patronage, intimidation and resistance in Zimbabwe's attorney general's office after 2000. Journal of Southern African Studies 39, 765–782.Google Scholar
Vetters, L (2019) Administrative guidelines as a source of immigration law? Ethnographic perspectives on law at work and in the making. Journal of Legal Anthropology 3, 70–90.Google Scholar
Weber, M (1921/1995) Économie et société, tome 1: Les catégories de la sociologie. Paris: Uge Poche Pocket.Google Scholar