ABSTRACT

This article explores how municipal care managers negotiate tensions in policy logics and state discourses in encounters with ethnic minority families in Denmark. It focuses on the “self-appointed helper arrangement”, an option in the Danish Social Service Act under which municipalities can employ family members to care for older citizen at home. Based on ethnographic fieldwork, I examine the consequences of this care arrangement from the perspective of care managers, focusing on gender dynamics and state-family divides in need assessments and care provision. I demonstrate how care managers slip in and out of their roles as administrators, health professionals and morally concerned citizens in encounters with different caregivers. While they focus mainly on equal access to care for all older citizens, sometimes they shift perspective and focus more on the wellbeing of the self-appointed helper in question. These shifts in moral registers are triggered by empathetic encounters with young ethnic minority women. However, care managers’ empathy is double-sided and ambivalent. Although striving to undo difference and include these women in a community of independent Danish female citizens, they also tend to place them and their families in a different category than the majority population and thus risk further marginalizing them.

摘要

本文探讨市政护理管理人员如何在与丹麦少数民族家庭的接触中协商政策逻辑和国家话语中的紧张局势。它侧重于“自任命帮手安排”，这是《丹麦社会服务法》中的一个选项，根据该选项，市政当局可以雇用家庭成员在家中照顾老年公民。基于人种学实地调查，我从护理管理者的角度研究了这种护理安排的后果，重点关注性别动态和需求评估和护理提供中的国家-家庭分歧。我展示了护理经理如何在与不同护理人员的接触中进入和退出他们作为管理人员、卫生专业人员和有道德问题的公民的角色。虽然它们主要关注所有老年公民平等获得护理的机会，有时，他们会转变观点，更多地关注有关自封帮手的福祉。这些道德记录的转变是由与年轻的少数民族妇女的同情相遇引发的。然而，护理经理的同理心是双面的和矛盾的。尽管努力消除差异并将这些女性纳入独立的丹麦女性公民社区，但她们也倾向于将她们及其家人置于与大多数人口不同的类别中，从而有进一步边缘化她们的风险。