Agency and clientship in public encounters: co‐constructing ‘neediness’ and ‘worthiness’ in shelter placement meetings

Abstract

This article seeks to develop our understanding of the agency of vulnerable groups who at first sight may not seem to have much agency in their lives. It explores the co‐constructed nature of agency in three Danish homeless shelters. Unlike earlier interview‐based studies, our research is based on naturalistic data drawn from 23 video‐recorded placement meetings. Using concepts from Goffman, we examine how versions of the neediness and worthiness of homeless people are negotiated verbally and bodily between staff and clients. We find that homeless people have to juggle two partly contradictory roles when they are given or take the roles of either a (active) citizen or a (passive) client. Clientship is actively negotiated by both parties and demonstrates the agency of homeless people: they can collaborate with (as clients) or challenge (as citizens) the staff’s attempts to formulate solutions to their troubles. We further examine how the professional ideology of client centredness affects the meeting between the two parties. However, we show that, like any discourse, client centredness has no intrinsic meaning and is played out by actors in very different ways. In work with the homeless, the discourse of client centredness is related to discourses of ‘neediness’, ‘worthiness’ and ‘value for money’ that define agency in different ways and make three different client positions available: the resolute client, the acquiescent client and the passive client.

Disengaging with the cancerous body

“…As implied in the above, there is, however, also a growing need for a commitment to understand health in socio-political terms in neo-liberal landscapes of the Global North. As others and we have argued, political-economic forces are increasingly implicated in the extent to which health problems manifest and are experienced by those living at the margins of 'welfare' (Merrild and Andersen, in press;Mik-Meyer and Silverman, 2019). In terms of cancer, this is backed by epidemiological evidence, showing that 'multi-morbidity' is more prevalent among people living with cancer than among those who have not had cancer, a tendency that increases with social disadvantage (Hovaldt et al, 2015).…”

“…This is also reflected in the institutional sentiments in Denmark, where public discourse and policy in subtle ways frame vigilance and awareness as proper ways to embody citizenship (Offersen et al, 2016). Also, once people have fallen ill, it is increasingly difficult to access long-term social benefits, perhaps suggesting how the poor and the sick are gradually made more responsible for their own misfortune (Mik-Meyer and Silverman, 2019).…”

The performance of citizen’s and organisational authority

“…Eight of the 19 men are from Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Morocco, Somalia, Syria and Greenland and the rest of the participants are ethnic Danes. We use video data to give informal expressions in the encounters, such as body language, equal attention as speech (Mik-Meyer et al, 2018; Mik-Meyer and Silverman, 2019). Video data provide a rich visual source of how organisational members display authority through body gestures and other more informal ways of interacting.…”

“…Citizen’s authority today finds its in-principle expression in public service through client-centeredness, which means autonomy in life choices (Hammell, 2013; Mik-Meyer and Silverman, 2019; Parsell and Parsell, 2012; Rogowski, 2010). However, in the case of homelessness, research shows that the homeless are perceived by professionals as categories of persons who have failed due to ‘wrong choices’ (Farrugia and Gerrard, 2016; Parsell, 2011; Parsell and Clarke, 2018; Parsell and Parsell, 2012).…”

Making home or making do: a critical look at homemaking without a home

“…Women almost certainly tend to react differently than men to their experience of homelessness, alongside encountering differing systemic responses (Bretherton, 2017). There is also evidence of image manipulation, the presentation of the self as 'service worthy' (Liddiard and Hutson, 1991;Marvasti, 2002;Mik-Meyer & Silverman, 2019) by homeless people using their agency to access support, or what one popular author has called the art of being defined as homeless, i.e. as within the 'deserving' homeless population (Shriver, 2016).…”