Danish Center for Social Science Research

AimSocial investments are strategic allocation of resources to welfare programs, such as education or health care, expected to generate social and economic returns. In Europe, social investment has become a well established policy paradigm, yet research has rarely examined how it impacts how state–citizen relationships are understood. This article explores how the social investment discourse functions as a frame of interaction within welfare programs for young people with drug problems in Denmark.DesignTheoretically, the article draws on Foucault's concept of discourse, Goffman's theory of frames and Hacking's notion of looping effects. Empirically, it presents two contrasting cases of young people with drug problems who position themselves as, respectively, good and bad investments.ResultsThe social investment discourse provides some youths and their relatives with means to legitimize requests for help; it enables a selfpresentation as “a good investment”, which can strengthen their sense of entitlement to welfare. In contrast, others come to view themselves as “bad investments”. For them, the discourse frames programs as a waste of money, which risk to undermine the sense of entitlement among individuals who fear they might fail to benefit from welfare programs.ConclusionsSocial investment is a policy paradigm; it is not designed as a frame of self-presentation. Nevertheless, once its rationality enters public discourse, it produces new interactional frames and subject positions. An unintended but significant effect is that the discourse may stigmatize marginalized citizens, undermine their sense of entitlement to welfare, and weaken the universal, normative and rights-based principles underpinning the Nordic welfare states.

Perinatal loss is rare in high-income countries. In Danish neonatology, the psychosocial approach to neonatal care has been to acknowledge the personhood of the newborn infant with the goal of enabling grief and healing. However, one question is how the family lives with the memory of a child they hardly had time to know. Mothers of 40 newborn infants who died in hospital more than 15 years ago were invited. Five couples, seven mothers, and one father were interviewed. The focus was on the remembrance of the child and the significance of the death for the life of the parents. Recorded interviews were analysed thematically. Most children died within days. The children were regarded as family members. Physical tokens and birthdays played a central role in remembrance practices. Although the process of grief was described as long and painful, it was also described as an existential experience and a source of better priorities in life. After 15 years, the dead newborn child was still considered a family member. There was little expression of regret about what happened at the time. Due to the low response rate, it is possible that diverging lived experiences may be common.

ABSTRACTAimAlthough evidence supporting mother‐newborn couplet care continues to grow, its clinical integration remains inconsistent due to ongoing barriers. This study aimed to describe current practices of mother‐newborn couplet care in Danish obstetric and neonatal departments.MethodsA national cross‐sectional survey was conducted in all Danish neonatal and obstetric departments. An online questionnaire identified organisational structures, collaboration between departments, and interprofessional education. Quantitative data were analysed descriptively, while qualitative responses were evaluated using content analysis.ResultsThe response rate was 91% (n = 31/34). Maternal treatment and care provided in neonatal departments were reported as “always” by 33% of respondents, “often” by 44%, and “sometimes” by 17%. Neonatal treatment and care provided in obstetric departments were reported as “always” by 22% of respondents, “often” by 33%, and “sometimes” by 28%. The clinical integration of couplet care depended on the level of medical needs for both. Key barriers included organisational and structural challenges and a lack of formalised interprofessional education.ConclusionThe findings highlight the current situation of reducing mother–newborn separation through couplet care. Most Danish departments report that mothers and newborns can often be cared for together. However, organisational and structural barriers still prevent the integration of mother–newborn couplet care.

Abstract Affective polarization among citizens is often attributed to the harsh rhetoric and personal attacks that politicians direct at one another. However, the influence of elite rhetoric on affective polarization may work in both directions. We theorize that politicians can reduce affective polarization by making positive or respectful statements about their political opponents. A preregistered survey experiment with 2,000 citizens provides strong support for this expectation. Politicians’ congenial messages about their opponents significantly reduce affective polarization on two distinct measures. Specifically, the experimental treatments reduce citizens’ negative emotions toward outpartisans, as well as their desire to socially distance themselves from such outpartisans. The depolarizing effect of such messages does not depend on the political alignment of either the politician or the citizen, nor does it necessarily require high levels of political trust.

In Denmark, as in Europe, the concept of immigrant integration is highly contested, undergoing continuous policy changes and potentially being interpreted differently at various levels of governance in the multilevel state. To understand the complexity of integration policy, an understanding of how local stakeholders working with integration on the municipal frontline of the welfare state interpret government policies is needed. Based on 19 qualitative interviews with local stakeholders in 11 Danish municipalities, we explored how they interpret what integration is and should be in working with newly arrived young refugees. Drawing on post-structural policy analysis (Bacchi 2009; Yanow 2015), our analysis shows that local stakeholders articulate five interpretive ‘translations’ of integration, elucidating different local assumptions about the problems of and solutions to integration. Across the five ‘translations,’ we analytically identify two overarching ‘translation regimes,’ a national policy regime and a social justice regime, which we connect to competing understandings of the relationship between refugees and the Danish state, human rights, and citizenship. The analysis provides a deeper understanding of the complexity of local frontline work and the inherent fundamental dilemmas and ambiguities within integration policy implementation, reflecting paradoxical tensions within the Danish welfare state and Western liberal democracies between national border management and global–local solidarity.

We study the long-term health and human capital impacts of local economic conditions experienced during the first 1,000 days of life. We combine historical data on monthly unemployment rates in urban England and Wales 1952-1967 with data from the UK Biobank on later-life outcomes. Leveraging variation in unemployment driven by national industry-specific shocks weighted by industry's importance in each area, we find no evidence that small, common fluctuations in local economic conditions during the early life period affect health or human capital in older age.

ABSTRACT Despite policies in Nordic countries advocating ageing-in-place and holistic, person-centred care, fiscal constraints have pressured homecare services to prioritise physical and somatic care at the expense of social care provision. This has limited professional caregivers’ roles, with practical and emotional aspects of care being largely removed from their remit. This study examines how home care workers use coping strategies to navigate high workloads and the diverse, shifting needs and personal behaviour of clients. Such coping involves both socially negotiated ‘collective rules’ and embodied forms of ‘emotion work'. Our study comprises ethnographic data from Danish and Norwegian home care services. Through shadowing care workers, we observed how they adapt coping strategies to their informal categorisations of clients. In doing so, care workers often prioritise meeting the emotional and social needs of vulnerable clients at the expense of clients perceived by care workers as more resourceful or ‘demanding’. The marginalisation of social care and the necessity for informal prioritisations due to time constraints place significant moral burdens on care workers. This not only diminishes recognition of their vital contributions to client well-being but also obscures unmet care needs and moral dilemmas that should warrant open discussion.

People with intellectual disabilities (IDs) face health issues and barriers to physical activity. Health promotion programmes targeting this group are often short-term. Few programmes have been designed for people with IDs who live in supported housing staffed by social care workers (SCWs). The potential that SCWs hold as health promoters has recently come into focus within literature with a setting approach. Drawing on an ethnographic study, this article explores how SCWs articulate health promotion and enact health promoter roles at supported housing for adults with moderate to severe IDs. Our findings show that SCWs perceive sport and diet as health promotion activities. Because of their background within social education and not health promotion, few perceived themselves as health promoters. However, using the holistic concept of active living, which focuses on everyday lifestyle rather than short-term programmes, our ethnographic data reveal the more unspoken and unconscious practices that SCWs enact to 'build' customized active living routines among residents. Our results suggest that this 'silenced' capacity of SCWs to build healthy routines adds to previous findings by emphasizing that, rather than lacking a health promotion ethos, employees may have the potential to promote health by adapting a more holistic approach to health promotion. We argue the active living approach can contribute to building such a holistic health approach. Such an approach may help SCWs identify with and strengthen their enactment of health promotion roles.

Reablement has been positioned as a superior care ideal distinct from home care. Drawing on cross-national ethnographic data, this article instead demonstrates how the continuity and interdependency between reablement and conventional home care is more significant than suggested by policy rhetoric. Findings highlight the continuities and overlaps between activating and compensatory care, for example, how compensatory care might take the form of psychosocial reablement, activating and enabling even the frailest clients to age in place. The article concludes by pointing to the dangers of a narrow conception of reablement and argues for the benefits of more focused attention on clients’ psychosocial well-being.