A hybrid job center: Composite client experiences with employment services between enforcement and care

The present study introduces the concept of forms of hybridity as a tool to analyse welfare claimants’ composite experiences with public employment services. In such experiences, the job centre is depicted both as an enforcing and a caring institution. The present study demonstrates the usefulness of this conceptual tool by analysing qualitative interviews with Danish social assistance recipients. It shows how the employment system assumes several hybrid forms from the perspective of welfare claimants. The first, the actor − based hybrid form consists of numerous actors where care and enforcement stem from those who participate in the processing of cases. Second, the system/actor-based hybrid form, makes a distinction between an enforcing system and its more caring employees. In the third, a phase-based hybrid form, the participants differentiate between temporal phases of enforcement and phases of care. Our explication of hybrid forms complements the literature by providing a novel means to understand the lived experience of welfare recipients and adds nuance to discussions of social work in activation settings as either enforcing or caring.