What the street level can teach us about the social investment state – Insights from encounters between caseworkers and vulnerable unemployed clients in Denmark

Abstract

This article offers a street-level perspective to the ongoing scholarly discussions over the social investment state. Hitherto, the social investment state literature has been dominated by macro-level studies, while evidence from street-level caseworker–client encounters is very rare. As one of few to provide such evidence, this article analyses how frontline public officials adapt to social investment thinking as they process the cases of some of the most vulnerable people in the Danish society: hard-to-employ unemployed persons in job centres. Based on focus group discussions with 78 public officials of Danish job centres, this article examines what challenges street-level workers face in practice as they are expected to conduct their work in accordance with social investment thinking. It concludes (a) that adding a street-level component to the social investment literature is needed, because it emphasizes the importance of studying ‘how’ social investment policies are delivered; (b) that caseworkers under the canopy of social investment logics face a distinct set of challenges; and (c) that a street-level perspective can shed new light on some of the main assumptions of the social investment literature.