Denmark has one of the most digitalised public sectors in the world. Being a social worker within a digital public organisation requires the use of vast information and communication technologies. Being enrolled in such an organisation as a client implies being able to navigate, for example, an array of digital self-help solutions, systems such as digital ID, complete online applications, and digital mailing systems. In this increasingly ubiquitous digital society, research interests tend to overlook the mundane technologies that support and govern our everyday lives and activities. The PhD thesis thus foregrounds these mundane technologies by investigating their role in social work with vulnerable clients and in vulnerable clients’ agentic practices.
The thesis uses qualitative methods for this investigation. It builds on qualitative interviews with social workers (n = 24) and vulnerable clients (n = 17) enrolled in Danish job centres and takes a constructivist grounded theory approach to the investigation, combined with a symbolic interactionist theoretical approach.
This thesis is comprised of three articles.
- Article one explores social workers’ use of a digital CV tool. The study shows how social workers may collect and use information strategically through mundane technologies such as the CV tool. This article has been published in The British Journal of Social Work.
- Article two examines the identity negotiations of vulnerable clients in response to the digital requirements of job centres. It examines how clients may reconcile contrasting demands to their positions by performing agentic vulnerability. This article has been accepted in Symbolic Interaction and will be published soon.
- Article three investigates social workers’ and clients’ role performances in welfare encounters via phone where non-verbal cues of interaction are absent. The study shows that phone mediation may visualise the consequentiality of welfare encounters for both social workers and clients, which may otherwise be taken for granted in routinised face-to-face encounters. The article is in review in Qualitative Social Work.
The overall argument of the thesis is to demonstrate how mundane technologies partake in the social worker–client relationship. It also shows that such technologies can both enable and constrain social work practices and clients’ agentic practices and provide opportunities for everyday resistance. This thesis suggests extending the focus from new and spectacular digital technologies to the mundane in the digital.
The full thesis can be accessed HERE
The doctoral student who is the author of this thesis, Alexandrina Schmidt, will be continuing her research at the Danish Centre for Social Science Research.