Danish and Norwegian hospital social workers’ cross-institutional work amidst inter-sectoral restructuring of health and social welfare

Starting in the 2000s, Denmark and Norway have undergone extensive restructuring of their health-related social benefit programmes, including how they are governed. Several reforms have sought to enhance inter-sectoral collaboration. Aiming at ensuring patients’ faster return to work, policy-makers have instituted economic incentives to both individuals and the health and welfare organisations who handle them. Through an institutional logics approach, this paper explores how hospital social workers in these countries are experiencing these changes. The ‘social’ part of post-treatment care and rehabilitation receives more attention in the Norwegian institutional set-up than in the Danish, and whilst challenges are experienced in both countries, in group interviews Danish social workers in particular express concerns about the implications of the accelerated return-to-work focus. In both countries, they report increasing difficulties in ‘making their way through’ the state-municipal bureaucracy. However, by drawing on the formal health knowledge derived from medical settings and the symbolic capital it bestows on them, they often manage to negotiate the work-and-welfare services, thereby transforming the social context for the patients.     

Inclusion of persons with disabilities in mainstream employment: is it really all about the money? A case study of four large companies in Norway and Sweden

This study investigates how large companies respond to public policy measures to ensure the inclusion of persons with disabilities in mainstream employment based on a case study of four companies in Norway and Sweden. The qualitative interviews, which were conducted with company managers, government representatives in Norway, and non-governmental organisations in Sweden, revealed three overarching themes: (1) ‘legitimacy’, (2) ‘financial interests’ and (3) ‘non-financial support’. The results indicate a more proactive response from the Swedish companies, especially regarding persons with intellectual and learning difficulties. The Norwegian companies reveal a high commitment to their own employees. These findings cannot be explained solely using neo-institutional theory, which holds that organisations demonstrate ‘conformity with powerful institutional myths to strengthen support and secure survival'. The results indicate that inclusive targeted corporate policies and programmes, advisory support, and the agency and value choices of the management might matter more.     

Organising for Donor Effectiveness: An Analytical Framework for Improving Aid Effectiveness

Donors have lagged behind aid recipients in adhering to the principles of aid effectiveness. Explaining the reasons for this demands greater awareness of organisational attributes within donor entities. To date, there have been only limited attempts to relate donor organisational factors to aid‐effectiveness goals. This article elaborates on a number of such relationships based on an empirical examination of donor dynamics in Norway, the UK and Canada. Donor effectiveness provides an important lens through which to build a robust post‐Busan global partnership.     

Work-related drinking and processes of social integration and marginalization in two Norwegian workplaces

The aim of this study was to investigate the role of drinking in two Norwegian workplaces, focusing on how the drinking may contribute to both social integration and marginalization of employees. The two workplaces were a division of a multinational oil company and a public library both located in one of Norway's larger cities. Data were collected through ethnographic fieldwork, including using participant observation, qualitative interviews, and brief surveys. Work-related drinking was found to be common in both workplaces and played a significant role in a wide range of social situations in the twilight zone between normal working hours and leisure. Drinking was regulated by dominant workplace alcohol cultural ideals, but also involved opposition to these ideals. The results of this study have demonstrated that different forms of drinking (and non-drinking) may lead to both social integration and marginalization – or even exclusion of groups of employees or individual employees.     

Micro‐level dynamics of social assistance receipt: Evidence from four European countries

This study investigated the monthly dynamics of social assistance benefit receipt – in particular the incidence of long‐term benefit receipt – in four European countries: Luxembourg, The Netherlands, Norway and Sweden. The analysis is based on four separate administrative panel data sets, each covering the 96‐month period from January 2001 to December 2008. Benefit dynamics were found to vary considerably across countries. In the two Nordic countries, long‐term benefit receipt was found to be a rare exception. Most recipients, however, had multiple spells and the majority of benefit leavers returned to benefits within a few months of leaving. In Luxembourg and The Netherlands, long‐term benefit receipt was frequent, but benefit leavers were much less likely to return to benefit receipt after exit. The total duration of benefit receipt per individual across spells was two to three times as high in The Netherlands and Luxembourg as in Norway and Sweden.     

挪威民间精灵故事概观

挪威民间故事中的精灵故事非常多,其中对精灵的描写很有特色。精灵和人类婚配故事,反映了男权社会的特征。故事中的土地神,和我国民间信仰中的土地神,有不少相似之处。     

The Role of the Housing Allowance for the Elderly in Norway: Views of Recipients

This article concerns the housing allowance, an economic benefit provided to low-income households and the elderly in Norway. Ensuring a high quality of housing for the elderly has been a priority in the development of the Norwegian welfare state. This article is based on results from a qualitative study among elderly recipients of a housing allowance. The study shows that while these recipients viewed the financial support the allowance offered as crucial, they still felt impoverished. The study raises some questions about whether the housing allowance scheme encourages high-quality housing.     

Why It Is Bad to Be Kind. Educating Refugees to Life in the Welfare State: A Case Study from Norway

In Norway, as elsewhere in Europe, the aim of policy‐making is to ensure the integration of immigrants into mainstream society. This paper focuses on one of the most concrete and practical measures Norwegian authorities have ever taken in this field, namely the recent establishment of a compulsory two‐year introduction programme for newly arrived refugees. This is an activation‐style programme involving both a financial and an educational component, where out‐payments depend on participation in a full‐time training programme aimed at enabling participants to become self‐sufficient members of Norwegian society. In the first part of the paper the establishment of this policy is located within a broader context of integration crisis, before it moves on to look more specifically at the background for the programme and the problems it is set up to address. The latter part of the paper addresses the implementation of the introduction programmes in one medium‐sized Norwegian city. The local discourse here is one of before and after, where the failings of previous policies have been overcome and new and productive practices have been established. Connections can be made between public and political discourses on integration crisis and the local discourses of implementation through the notion of kindness and the idea that kindness has hampered the integration efforts of the state. Herein lies a story not only about views on immigrants and diversity, but also about how immigration has challenged the Norwegian welfare state model.     

The child's – or the state's – best interests? An examination of the ways immigration officials work with unaccompanied asylum seeking minors in Norway

This article questions the way in which Norwegian immigration officials apply the principle of the child's best interests in cases concerning family reunion for unaccompanied asylum seeking minors in Norway. It is claimed that the official definition of child migrants and the interpretation of what is in their best interest does not take the child's background and circumstances into account with sufficient detail and sensitivity. This paper further discusses the bureaucratic procedures that turn an individual child with individual interests into a judicial and generalized prototype that appears to have the same interests as the immigration authorities. Thus the combination of a culture‐blind and context‐free consideration of an abstract child's best interests primarily serves to justify increasing restriction of family reunion for child migrants, and thereby serves the state's best interest at the cost of the individual child.     

Spanish Influenza Mortality of Ethnic Minorities in Norway 1918–1919

Previous studies into SpanishInfluenza mortality have reported thatindigenous populations were the prime victims.The explanations put forward in those studieswere not convincing, however, as no controlshad been made for possibly confounding factors.The multivariate analysis in this paper showsthat areas of Norway with high shares of theSami population (Laps) had high SpanishInfluenza mortality, net of such confoundingfactors as wealth, poverty, crowding, and occupationalstructure. The cause is probably a lack ofinherited and acquired immunity againstinfluenza among the Sami. Another ethnicminority, Kven (Finnish immigrants and theirdescendants), however, did not differsignificantly from the ethnic Norwegianmajority population with respect to SpanishInfluenza mortality. This is explained by arelatively high degree of economic and culturalassimilation of the Kven in the Norwegiansociety, as opposed to the Sami in the late1910s.