Danish University Colleges
"Sometime we lie a little"
negotiating sustainability, when temporality disturbs social work with refugees.
Poulsen, Stinne Østergaard
Publication date:
2021
Link to publication
Citation for pulished version (APA):
Poulsen, S. Ø. (2021). "Sometime we lie a little": negotiating sustainability, when temporality disturbs social work with refugees.. Abstract from FORSA 2021, Reykjavik, Iceland.
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Download date: 24. Mar. 2022
“Sometimes we lie a little”. Negotiating sustainability, when temporality disturbs social work with refugees.
Stinne Østergaard Poulsen
VIA University College, Institute of Social Work.
Since 2015 Denmark has passed a number of asylum laws aimed at limiting refugee protection to a human rights minimum. As a result, all residence permits granted to refugees are now temporary. Refugees can no longer ensure their access to permanent stay through education, employment or family ties. Refugees are therefore facing temporality and uncertainty as a fundamental condition.
However, this fundamental temporality is not reflected in Danish integration procedures. Refugees are still presented to integration systems with a main focus on employment for adults, and a long-term understanding of integration for children. Accordingly, the refugees are facing a contradictory imperative: “Integrate and leave!”, but they seem to be left somewhat alone with this contradiction, as the welfare professionals they meet, still focus on a (legally outdated) understanding of integration in a long-term perspective. In other words, the welfare-state refugees encounter in their everyday life is rarely acknowledging the excluding legal conditions, that the same state is granting.
Based on a research project with 27 social workers, this paper will explore the logics among social workers who in their daily practice negotiate, ignore or lie about the temporary legal condition for the refugees they work with in order to carry out their main assignment: Integration. They all describe how the temporality cause stress, anxiety and anger among the refugees, but express different understandings of integration, equality and power relations in social work in order to explain why they often ignore or conceal the reality of the new temporary legal order.
Key words: Refugees, asylum law, temporary protection, social work, community sustainability.
