Search

The purpose of this paper is to explore the relation between territorial stigmatization and community work in Denmark. In the paper, we firstly explore territorial stigmatization, relating it to the Danish context. We show how territorial stigmatization in Denmark happens via a complex amalgamation of bureaucratic practices which identify particular areas as problematic ‘ghettos’, and how this leads to top–down interventions upon many local residential areas, including local community work. Following this, we draw on participant observations in practices of local community work, and interviews with local community workers, to explore how they practically negotiate these particular political constructions of their work. We argue that local community workers come to take on interstitial roles—that is, they come to be in-between the state and authorities and the local communities themselves. This complex double role is what we call an interstitial position, meant to signify how Danish local community workers are both part of territorial stigmatization and simultaneously trying to escape from and undo this very role. The purpose of this paper is to explore the relation between territorial stigmatization and community work in Denmark. In the paper, we firstly explore territorial stigmatization, relating it to the Danish context. We show how territorial stigmatization in Denmark happens via a complex amalgamation of bureaucratic practices which identify particular areas as problematic ‘ghettos’, and how this leads to top–down interventions upon many local residential areas, including local community work. Following this, we draw on participant observations in practices of local community work, and interviews with local community workers, to explore how they practically negotiate these particular political constructions of their work. We argue that local community workers come to take on interstitial roles—that is, they come to be in-between the state and authorities and the local communities themselves. This complex double role is what we call an interstitial position, meant to signify how Danish local community workers are both part of territorial stigmatization and simultaneously trying to escape from and undo this very role.

The present deliverable contributes to the European discussion on territorial cohesion. It does so by firstly analysing expressions of territorial cohesion at national policy levels and governance structures in across-country manner, drawing on background reports from consortium partners from Austria, Denmark, Greece, Italy, Lithuania, Polandand United Kingdom. The deliverable touches upon five policy dimensions central to territorial cohesion: Active labour market policy, (pre-school) childcare, economic growth, area regeneration andvocational education and training.Policy documents and agreements made the last fiveyearsare included. Second, on this basis of this overview, the deliverable highlightsmethodologicalimplications for the future local cases to be studied in COHSMO.

I artiklen tages udgangspunkt i den rurale case om Lemvig, der nægter at være udkant. Det diskuteres, hvordan casen udfordrer gængse sociologiskeforestillinger om relationen mellem center og periferi og mellem metropol og det lokale. Vi argumenterer for, at det netop er karakteren af, hvad vi til dennelejlighed betegner som »mikropol« – den internationale orientering og en lokal social kultur, som kobler sig til globale flows – der tilsammen skaber detlokales resiliens. Analysen af Lemvig begrebsliggør den modstandskræft, der er med til at sikre lokal udvikling på trods af de urbaniseringskræfter, somskaber en stærk affolkningstendens i lignende områder. Artiklen trækker på en del af det empiriske materiale fra et igangværende Horizon 2020-projekt,COHSMO – Inequality, urbanization and territorial cohesion: Developing the European social model of economic growth and democratic capacity. Projektethar omdrejningspunkt i en europæisk sammenligning af forholdet mellem urbanisering, ulighed og territoriel sammenhængskraft. Fortællingernefra Lemvig viser, at den lokale kultur ikke kun er et spørgsmål om nødvendighedens politik i et område, der er strukturelt udfordret, men derimod, atstedskulturen er produkt af det særlige samspil mellem erhvervsstrukturen, størrelsesforholdet, historiske kulturelle stiafhængigheder og et aktivt lokaltmiljø.

The article illustrates how existing policies and new technologies in the social work with people with functional handicaps are based on new forms of potentialization which fundamentally change the view of humans, social problems, and social work. Social work and management is no longer seen as a question of providing stability in a changeable world, or in the lives of people who are vulnerable and exposed . Today the problem is the inherent tendency to provide too much stability, habitual behavior and inertia. My argument is that the vision of potentialization is currently expressing itself through a series of concepts in social work. The vision of potentialization is in part 1: an organizational and management tool, a management technological vision that is expressed in the political plans, in diagnostic tools, in referrals and that is implemented in social work with the citizens, and 2: a notion of what the citizen’s problem is, ontologically speaking, and how the problem and the condition can be altered. Temporal, dynamic, in-determinate aspects of human and social problems are given priority at the expense of factual, substantial aspects of social, societal and human conditions. Potentialization is defined by others as “the effort to continually transgress existing realities and perhaps even potential ones” (Costea et al, 2012; Staunæs, 2011). With the effort to transgress existing realities social workers and people with severe illnesses are expected to ignore the present problem through a focus on “the healthy part”, resources, empowerment, and the will to imagine “the future of the future” and “the desirable present of the present” (Andersen & Poors, 2016). The aspiration to abolish previous understandings of welfare as they have developed in Denmark over the past 40-50 years is central to this development. But what is the news in relation to social work? In the article I approach this question by showing 1: how potentionalization influences the perception as well as the concrete distribution of social problems. 2: how potentionalization influences the concrete practices of welfare services and welfare professionals in the encounter with citizens