Welcoming atmospheres and interdictory spaces: the loud and silent politics of social work architecture

Summary: Places, architecture, and materiality matter for social work. We aim to start a conversation between critical geographical and actor-network theory perspectives through an empirical analysis of two Danish job center sites to get a better understanding of the agency of social work architecture. Critical geographical perspectives offer conceptualizations of how place is produced and how this production is shaped by changing relations of dominance and power. However, they risk ending in a somewhat unsatisfying totalizing perspective when attempting to understand interventions performed and acted out by social workers. Actor network theory concepts of connections, scripts, and plug-ins are useful for understanding the enactment of social work practice in particular architectures, but they lose sight of how connections are molded by relations of power and political rationalities. Findings: We explore the silent politics of an enabling and welcoming environment and the loud politics of interdictory spaces in two job center locations. We show that the social work architecture shapes professional roles, induce forms of conduct and interactions between social workers and young unemployed people. We highlight how the enactment of social work architecture is filled with ambivalences when social workers navigate political place production. We argue that taking into account the complementarity of critical geographical perspectives and actor-network theory might succumb the limitations of both. Applications: We lack conceptualizations of the role of social work architecture in social work. The article aims to start a reflection on this in social work research and professional social work practice.