The enactment of multiple return-to-work bodies in labour and welfare administration: a qualitative study of compulsory stakeholder meetings

ABSTRACTThis article explores how caseworkers in a Scandinavian street-level labour and welfare administration run their return-to-work program. Observations and interviews from compulsory meetings between the welfare administration, the person on sick leave, the employer and the sick-listing GP are analysed. The analysis draws on the philosopher Annemarie Mol’s theory of multiple bodily enactments and renders visible how the stakeholders enact different bodies and how these bodies are negotiated and coordinated to make sure that they are handling the same situation and condition. Four bodies are enacted in the meetings: a suffering body, a diagnosed body, a working body and an active body. An in-depth analysis of selected cases demonstrates the negotiations that take place between the individual, the workplace and the health and welfare institutions based on their interests and understandings. The analytical approach of this article is founded on Mol’s theoretical approach on multiple bodily enactment and the translation of it from the hospital setting into the predominantly linguistic practices of the welfare administration. The aim is to broaden the understanding of dialogical practices in this type of meeting and to expand the knowledge base of professional work in return-to-work processes – processes which are often confused by unclear roles and responsibilities.