Conflicting demands and emotional labour: Balancing and swapping at the front line of the welfare state

Abstract

This article combines insights from the sociology of emotional labour with works on conflicting demands facing employees to analyse how frontline staff conduct emotional labour in contexts marked by multifaceted demands facing them. It demonstrates the usefulness of this combination through an analysis of group interviews with frontline staff within Danish job centres, who are currently explicitly instructed to display sincere belief in the job prospects of clients, while also representing a disciplining activation system marked by conditionality. The article contributes to existing literature through an elaboration of two concepts – ‘balancing’ and ‘swapping’ – describing forms of emotional labour conducted by frontline staff in a work setting characterized by conflicting demands. The former is about striking a balance between the wants of the client and the wants of the system while sustaining clients’ feelings of motivation. The latter is about enabling oneself to encounter clients in ways which are personalized and informal, within the contours of a system marked by bureaucratic logics and language.