This paper investigates the factors that influence Swedish welfare workers’ attitudes towards migrants and how these attitudes are associated with their encounters with migrant users. Due to increased migration over the last decade, Sweden is now considered an immigrant nation. Migrants with the right to reside in Sweden are included within the larger welfare system. This paper argues that preconceived notions about migrants can affect the welfare services that they receive. Results from an online survey with a sample of 1,319 welfare practitioners reveal that welfare workers’ attitudes play a significant role when it comes to how they perceive their encounters with migrant users. The findings demonstrate that more favourable attitudes towards migrants were predicted mainly by personal contact with migrants and that different organisational contexts result in different experiences of encounters with migrant users. Less favourable attitudes towards migrants were primarily predicted by a strong ethnic national identity. Most importantly, the findings show that welfare workers’ who have more favourable attitudes towards migrants are less likely to perceive their encounters with migrant users as difficult. This paper contributes to welfare and migration research in two ways. First, this study provides additional support for previous claims from qualitative research by supporting the assumptions that preconceived negative ideas about migrants have meaning for practical welfare work. Second, this paper integrates two streams of research—attitude formation theory and street-level bureaucracy theory—thus expanding existing assumptions about what determines welfare practices with migrants.

Migration influx in Western countries resulting in increasingly diverse societies results in more complex situations for bureaucrats in their client interactions in welfare organizations. The role of discretion for services to clients has received much attention in the public administration research and therefore this study explores the relation among perceived workload, anti-immigration attitudes, perceived discretion, and perceived difficulty in working with migrants. The paper examines the function of perceived discretion as moderator or mediator variable in this constellation. The relations are examined by using structural equation modelling based on a survey among Swedish welfare bureaucrats (N = 1,319). The results show that heavier perceived workload increased the likelihood of experiencing work with migrants as difficult and that greater perceived discretion decreased the likelihood of experiencing work with migrants as difficult. The results suggest that perceived discretion functions as a mediator for the relation between perceived workload and difficulty in work with migrants: potentially functioning as a 'buffer' for organizational pressure. We also found that bureaucrats who hold negative attitudes towards migrants were more likely to express their work with migrants as more difficult. This paper contributes to the public administration literature by increasing our knowledge on how discretion 426

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Colour blindness is a concept that is established in the US context, and it has gained increased attention among European scholars. Yet we find less studies in the European context that measure colour-blind attitudes and show its prevalence among different groups. Therefore, this paper examines the prevalence of colour-blind attitudes among Swedish welfare professionals' and how these attitudes are associated with anti-immigration attitudes but also social desirability. To this end, survey data is examined with a regression analysis. Welfare professionals who report greater levels of colour-blind attitudes are simultaneously more likely to report greater levels of anti-immigration attitudes. This paper thereby tests how colourblind attitudes, a concept from the US context, can be applied to a Swedish welfare institutional context and finds convergent results.

Discretion is a central topic in the literature on service delivery of frontline professionals, especially in the light of neoliberal transformations in all welfare states. Previous studies have focused on exploring “discretionary space” and its meaning for service delivery, but these studies have not been able to clearly identify single determinants of perceived discretion. This study aims to contribute to the discussion by investigating factors that influence perceived discretion. To this end, data were examined from a nationwide survey of Swedish frontline professionals (N = 1319) within two major welfare organizations: the Public Employment Service and the Swedish Social Insurance Agency. Hierarchical OLS regression was applied, resulting in the identification of two major influencing factors. Frontline professionals who reported higher levels of work pressure showed less perceived discretion, and frontline professionals working at the Public Employment Service showed higher levels of perceived discretion than those working at the Social Insurance Agency, highlighting the importance of organizational context for discretion. Greater work experience also proved to increase the feeling of having discretion at work. The results of this paper add to the existing literature by proposing a model of factors that are important for perceived discretion by frontline professionals.