Back to the future? : a job well done : an exploration of the reproduction of state discourses and policy in the everyday practices of social workers in a government run open centre for asylum seekers in Brussels

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BACK TO THE FUTURE? A JOB WELL DONE.

An exploration of the reproduction of state discourses and policy in the everyday practices of social workers in a government run open centre for asylum seekers in Brussels.

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Master Thesis for International Relations – Conflict Resolution and Governance (June 2014) Faculty of Social and Behavioral Sciences – University of Amsterdam

Title: Back to the Future? A Job Well Done: An exploration of reproduction of state policy and discourses in the everyday practices of social workers in a government run open centre for asylum seekers in Brussels.

Author: Tom Vandenberghe Student number: 6372023 E-mail: sluukes@hotmail.com Word count: XXXXXXXXX

Supervisor: dr. P.E. (Polly) Pallister-Wilkins Reviewer: dr. B. (Barak) Kalir

Declaration: I have read and understood the University of Amsterdam plagiarism policy [published on http://gsss.uva.nl/about/rules-regulations/plagiarism-and-fraud.html] I declare that this thesis is entirely my own work, all sources have been properly acknowledged, and that I have not previously submitted this work, or any version of it, for assessment in any other paper.

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Acknowledgements

Thank you papa, mama, Anneke en Wimpie Woef for being there in the back of my head, advising me to take it step by step. Thank you Julie, Jasper and Carwash for being funtellectual friends.

Thank you everyone at Petit Château for welcoming me back with so much kindness and openness. Thank you Michelle for embracing me in your team once again. Thank you social workers. Your work and competences are underappreciated and I admire both your pragmatism and idealism. Continue giving the management and Fedasil a hard time. Ils ne savaient pas que c’était impossible, alors ils

l’ont fait.

Thank you Youssef for being my twin brother and Véronique for your ceaseless energy. Thank you Sven for the lively debates and Kobe for your hospitality, critical self-reflection and appreciated comments. I thoroughly disagree with both of you and that’s fine. Thank you Bob for your seasoned reflections.

Praise Zac, for your exzactlyness.

Thank you Polly for being radical and critical quicksilver. For bearing with me and having faith in my capacity to complete this thesis until the end. For supervising my chaotic thinking with alleviating and jocular precision. Let there be more Polly’s.

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“Endless talk about the general becomes boring; there are exceptions. If they cannot be explained, then the general also cannot be explained.” Sflren Kierkegaard

“A migration policy can only be carried out when you don’t have to look people in the eye.” Louis Tobback, former Minister of Domestic Affairs 1989 – 1994

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1 Introduction

1.1 An introduction to qualitative reception and returns

There was a time when asylum seekers in Belgium could present themselves at the public service of any local community and get access to basic assistance. Those days are long gone and applicants are now dispatched to one of the reception centres, spread around the country and coordinated by Fedasil, the government agency responsible. Fedasil’s initial assignment was “reception and integration” but nowadays this has changed to “reception and returns”. This shift implied that one of Fedasil’s core assignments, as part of a global and integrated Belgian migration policy, was to stimulate the voluntary return and on a street-level of their organization, this involved social workers.

The assignment for social workers concerning returns is concise: mention the option of voluntary returns to your client upon arrival and mention it again every time a request is denied and chances decrease that a resident will obtain a residence permit. Social workers need to inform their residents that their stay in the centre is temporary and that the majority will not be granted a residence permit and will be requested to leave the territory. This assignment is now a legal obligation subscribed in Belgian and European law and controlled by Fedasil to facilitate compliance (Fedasil Managaementplan 2012: 8, 12).1

The general perception lives that social workers find it very difficult to address the topic of a voluntary return and Fedasil acknowledges this sensitivity. Fedasil persists but provides support. At the Fedasil-level the Cell Return & Departure was created to support the implementation of the return policy. Special open return centres were established and in every centre there are social workers that specialize specifically in returns. Furthermore, Fedasil

1_{"DIRECTIVE 2008/115/EC OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND OF THE COUNCIL of 16 December 2008 on common}

standards and procedures in Member States for returning illegally staying third-country nationals", European Commission, 16/12/2008. (http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=OJ:L:2008:348:0098:0107:EN:PDF, visited 19/05/2014) and “19 JANUARI 2012. - Wet tot wijziging van de wetgeving met betrekking tot de opvang van asielzoekers” Belgische Overheid, 19/01/2012.

(http://www.ejustice.just.fgov.be/cgi_loi/change_lg.pl?language=nl&la=N&table_name=wet&cn=2012011913, visited 19/05/2014)

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offers trainings to expand the qualitative skill-set of social worker and developed administrative tools to remind social workers of their duty and to assist them in addressing the topic.

As a former social worker in Petit Château, an open centre for asylum seekers in Brussels, Belgium that is run by the government. A social worker’s job is to accompany and orient a number of residents administratively, legally and psychosocially. Their professional code of conduct tells them to stay neutral and a-political. For social workers it is important to work client-oriented and to look at what residents want. At the same time, social workers have the duty to provide information and empower their clients to make an informed decision. It is clear that this profile clashes with Fedasil’s political desire to stimulate voluntary returns and this leads to tensions between social workers and the organization.

The number of actual voluntary returns in Petit Château is small. Since 2010 is was between 15 and 61 people and half 2014, 9 people have signed up for voluntary returns. The cell returns of Petit Château explains that it mainly concerns “young and dynamic men”, that “once they’ve made up their mind, want to leave as soon as possible”. This observation makes the entire practice seem quite innocent. However, the incredible amount of resources invested and organizational routines and expertise developed require continued scrutiny. It left me wondering how my former colleagues were dealing with the changing political context. Had it affected their work experiences?

When the time arose to choose a research topic for my masters’ thesis, it did not take me long to turn towards Petit Château as a location to look at how social workers dealt with the European and Belgian policy and how it becomes increasingly integrated in their jobs in an integrated way. During my curriculum I was already interested in migration flows and the political responses. Which ideas about state, sovereignty and territory are they supported by or are reproduced? To what kind of spatial practices do they lead? Are all people involved responsible for the outcome?

1.2 Research question

The European and national climate is increasingly restrictive and suspicious towards asylum seekers. Policy and bureaucratic practices are developed with and praised by widespread popular support. In the period of one administration arrivals of asylum seekers dropped significantly and returns, whether forced or voluntarily, received increased policy attention.

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For me this signals that the Belgian and European migration policies require continued vigilance and discussion and street-level practices are a pre-eminent location to find out what is actually happening.

The way social workers are affected by the increased politicization of the reception of asylum seekers, is relevant for several reasons. Firstly, there is a personal relevance to this research. Being a former social worker, I know how unsettling it can be to execute imposed policy that has a radical impact on peoples’ lives. I know colleagues that were fired for resisting policy, got depressed or burned out. In analysing their work, I aspire to offer insights in the street-level bureaucracy that could aid social workers in centres for asylum seekers in dealing with some of the harsher aspect of their job. Secondly, embracing the assumption that government policy and planning can be quite imperceptive or even insensitive to the potential human suffering resulting from that policy, I consider exploring the practices at street-level bureaucracy crucial to expose the possible threats of the impact of policy on human integrity. Scrutinizing the street-level of bureaucracy is critical to expose possible inconsistencies in the Belgian government’s discourses and practices as to call it to account. Consecutively, it is valuable to investigate how new political discourses on migration become part of everyday practices, conceptions and routines. Finally, it allows us to examine the practices that result from policy and therefore enables us to explore the underlying assumptions concerning local and global power relations in society and the governmental framework.

In my research I wish to avoid the preliminary assumption of states, governments and bureaucracies as reified entities or amoral juggernauts of biopower. By looking at social workers that work for the government and are part of its bureaucracy, I aim at representing the complexity of practices, ideas and experiences within the government “apparatus”. The government agreement, policy plan of the state secretary, Fedasil’s management plan and the bureaucratic practices at street-level all put different emphases and are based on particular conceptions on migration in relation to territoriality. Only by acknowledging that state, government and bureaucracy consist of different reflexive agents that function in different contexts, we can truly attempt to grasp its potential biopolitical dynamics and assess its characteristics. As Rozakou warns us, it is crucial not to frame biopower as a “universal, agentless, impersonal, homogenous, and culturally neutral power exercised outside and beyond subjects” (Rozakou 2012: 565).

Furthermore, literature on camps and centres tends to approach street-level bureaucrats of government-coordinated spaces as accomplices of the often-loathed policies and practices. The proposed research will allow me to look at the struggle of social workers and their

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continuous evaluations when being caught between the demands of their employers and the needs of the people they work with. How would we be able to explain why social workers systematically distance themselves from taken decisions, negative as well as positive ones? How else can we make sense of the social worker that sees it as her duty to do her utter professional and personal best for a resident that desires a residence permit while the government agreement, the minister, the state secretary, Fedasil and the centre manager don’t agree? How can we understand that the same social worker works alongside a colleague that approaches voluntary returns as a durable solution?

Observing the increased politicization of Fedasil, I am curious to explore how social workers in Petit Château deal with the government’s decisions. My guiding research question to explore this reads: what are the positions and practices of social workers in the open reception centre Petit Château in dealing with the political context they work in and do they reproduce state policy and discourses in the process? This question leads to further sub-questions that are indicative of the outline of this thesis. Firstly, what defines social workers as professionals and how does this relate the organization and the wider policy. Secondly, how do social workers engage in borderwork and do they reproduce dominant state policy and discourses in the process? And finally, how does social worker’s envolvement in borderwork come about, while persistently claiming to be apolitical and professional social workers that work client-oriented?

1.3 The making of: methodology and access

This paper is based on field research conducted from end March to mid-May of 2014, at Petit Château in Brussels, Belgium. Petit Château opened in 1986, was the first and is the largest of its kind in Belgium and is situated in the heart of Brussels. At its peak it hosted around 840 asylum seekers but currently the capacity is reduced to 520 with 120 buffer places in order to handle sudden influxes. Residents include single adults, families with children and non-accompanied minors. The centre provides work to approximately 107 staff-members with professional profiles ranging from receptionists, to nurses, cleaning personnel, social workers and management.

In order to grasp how social workers deal with the increased policy focus and if they reproduce dominant notions of territoriality in the process, my main research methods were participant observation, informal interviews, semi-structured interviews and group

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discussions. The participant observation entailed that for six weeks I immersed myself in one of the four multidisciplinary teams consisting of one coordinator, two social workers, one nurse and two educators. I participated in the morning briefing, attended social workers’ visiting/office hours and appointments with residents on a regular basis, shared breaks and lunches and joined informal moments outside work on several occasions. This short but intense and quite immersed period of participant observation gave me the opportunity to inquire what I observed on the spot. At times; I would inquire afterwards if that were more appropriate. This was especially the case during visiting/office hours when residents were present. Furthermore, to make efficient use of my limited period of fieldwork, I scheduled eight semi-individual structured interviews with social workers and two groups-interviews with respectively two and three additional social workers.

On the centre level I also performed semi-structured interviews with two team-coordinators, with the deputy-managing director and with the managing director. On the level of Fedasil I interviewed two people from human resources, one responsible for designing the new professional sociaal werker profiles for social workers and another responsible for the recruitment-procedures. Finally, I talked to the deputy general director of operational services. Outside the network, I interviewed two former social workers and the former managing-director of Petit Château, also former managing-director-general of Fedasil. Since I’m interested in the impact on street-level social workers of the increased policy focus on returns, I read and analysed European and Belgian legislation and directives, Royal decrees and policy plans; internal management plans, procedures, trajectories and regulations; and informational tools like flyers, posters and checklists as an additional source of data.

Since some social workers expressed concerns about the confidentiality and the possible impact of my research findings on their jobs or careers, I’ve decided to refrain from providing detailed accounts of any of the social workers’ personal or professional identity, even those that didn’t mind. I’ve decided to protect the identities of the direct coordinators of social workers for similar reasons. I will only refer to my respondents by name if the people explicitly agreed, if I estimate that mentioning them wouldn’t damage their integrity in way unanticipated by the respondent and if the interview was formally conducted and the interviewee was officially speaking on behalf of Petit Château or Fedasil. All interviews were conducted either in Dutch or French. Dutch being my mother tongue and French being a language I master sufficiently to understand, analyse and interpret.

Initially, my access was the least of my problems, especially since I wasn’t researching residents but staff members. As a former social worker that was merely taking a

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career break, I expected to get access to my former colleagues easily. Luckily, I decided to verify my assumption before actually going into the field. I had forgotten that bureaucracy takes its time and that “Of course you can come! Drop by anytime to sign the documents.” meant that I had to fill out a research proposal that had to be approved by the centre’s manager and three people in the Fedasil administration, of whom one was on a holiday, which caused a delay of nearly two weeks.

There were three other aspects that I had neglected to take into account that could have and partially did compromise my access. Firstly, there was the sensitivity of the political climate. Elections were approaching and “our” state-secretary Maggie De Block was one of the most popular politicians in Belgium.2 Therefore high-ranking staff members were careful to avoid bad press or scandals in the final stretch before the elections, which led to careful deliberation and regular denial of external applications, conduct guidelines for centre managers.

Secondly, due to persistent reorganizations the topic of my research turned out to be quite sensitive. I anticipated that social workers had varying ideas and practices, which is hardly in line with Fedasil’s desire to thoroughly harmonize their reception network, design the professional profiles and increasingly prescribe and control specific procedures and trajectories. In the process, Fedasil had encountered some resistance from social workers at Petit Château and my thesis could pour oil on the simmering fire. The social workers, in turn, expressed concern as to what would be done with the information. Colleagues had been pressured to “adapt or leave” in the recent past and a certain level or total discretion was deemed necessary by some social workers to avoid their jobs being at risk. Furthermore, the discretion was deemed crucial to be able to perform social work in the way they envisioned it. The social workers wanted to know whom I reported to internally and who else would get access to the information.

At the same time, all this initial scepticism was contrasted by a heart-warming openness. My first day at Petit Château, a coordinator provided me with my own desk amidst colleagues, a technician copied keys instantly and IT provided me access to the network and a printer. The managing director told me to feel at home and insisted I would eat in the cafeteria with all the other colleagues. Soon people in different positions started sharing things “off the record” and “to keep to yourself” and colleagues asked my opinion on professional issues concerning other colleagues or residents. Hence, after the mainly discursive initial scepticism,

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people seemed to approach me as one of them again, although I was a researcher now. I tried to take this paradox at heart and dealt with it in several ways.

On the one hand, the worry that I had allegiances to “the top” made me decide to formalize my contact with certain colleagues from the higher echelons that I used to be on friendly and laughing terms with. The worry of what would happen with the information, made me become very careful and considerate about confidentiality to the point that certain colleagues made fun of it and one insisted she doesn’t believe in “the conspiracies”. However, I tried to uphold a high standard of confidentiality throughout the research period and towards everyone to avoid compromising access to those colleagues that were genuinely concerned about it and to avoid unanticipated consequences since my results show a certain variety in practices and ideas that could be considered problematic to the centre management or Fedasil. The impact on my research methods was that it hindered documentation, written or recorded, further prevented by the required discretion towards residents and institution.

Formerly “one of them”, I found my new role as researcher particularly challenging. The formal way of dealing with confidentiality helped me in renegotiating my position as a researcher in light of the overwhelming and initially confusing openness and degree of participation granted to me as former colleague. The fact that a lot of colleagues kept asking how my internship was going, was for me an indicator that they still saw me more as a kind of collaborator rather than a researcher, so I corrected them politely. During interviews my role was clear and during my participant observation my role as researcher grew on me and was accepted. I tried to walk around with my green notebook all the time as a visual reminder. When an interesting topic came up during informal moments, I marked my role by saying things like “this is also interesting for my research” or by showing my notebook saying “aha!” which became a handy running joke. I left it to the colleagues if that talk resulted in more formal research or not.

Some colleagues hoped that my thesis would make a difference and I didn’t like the fact that I appeared for a while and left after I had collected enough information. Until the end I struggled with the dilemma of either hiding or disclosing my motives and personal, professional and academic sympathies or assumptions. My former position allowed me to use my already established rapport and affinity and knowledge about the topic to move beyond a general level of inquiry relatively comfortably. I felt the desire to skip the politically correct “right” answers or scepticism of social workers, wrongly discarding them as veiling the truth rather then being a crucial part of it. Furthermore, I often caught myself thinking critically in lines of dominant discourses. It was a bias that I became increasingly aware of when looking

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at my notes, that seemed to filter a lot of other information that might conflict with my preconceived assumptions. It forced me to make an interviewing manual with sensitizing concepts to try and correct my bias. I couldn’t move too fast and had to leave space for the unexpected. Especially during interviews with managers or people at Fedasil, I was surprised by my “suspicion” towards them, fed by some of the social workers and by the information I had read.

I find it hard to assess the extent to which my association with higher-ranking staff-member with a certain reputation lead to a bias towards conformity with official policy, procedures and directives or to which extent the academic character and research method, particularly the interviews, of my research resulted in an inclination towards politically correct rationalizations. I find it equally hard to assess whether my attempts to gain trust resulted in honesty or if my personal, professional and academic assumptions biased my observations and questioning. In the process of becoming a researcher I tried to strike a balance between my (known) subjectivity and an attempt at objective scientific distance. This role partly convened with my refusal, in the past, to get too tied up in “clans” and to remain “multilingual” in the sense that I consciously maintained ongoing communication with direct colleagues and bosses alike. My middle-class high-educated family background helped me in speaking “employer” and the social professional trajectory I ended up following, against my parents’ expectations, enabled me to speak “employee”. I don’t have the illusion that this infused my persona with objectivity. This was proven by a colleagues surprise when I was critical about the management and lead her to ask “when I had changed sides”. That being said, the fact that there wasn’t consensus about where I “belonged”, could also have facilitated my shifting in the field, through different “camps” and across hierarchy.

To be able to analyse how social work and policy interact, the reader must be attentive to the limits of my research. Its conclusions are based on brief participant observation in combination with the discursive construction by social workers or others involved. Taking the above matters into account, my argument is modest in its ambition and should be considered indicative rather than representative. However, aiming to be convincing rather than persuasive, the limitations of my methodology don’t discard the observed practices and discursive constructions and requires me to engage in their analysis and interpretation to try and make sense of them (Geertz 1983: 55-58). If that interpretation turns out to be simple, so be it but faced with ideological simplifications, prejudice, ignorance and bigotry, in politics, academia or society, it might be our role as a researcher “to make the world more complex rather than simplifying it” (Eriksen 1995: 313).

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1.4 Theoretical framework and outline of the thesis

The theoretical concepts below will be useful to identify and categorize myriads of ideas, practices and experiences that I encountered when researching the impact on social workers of and their dealing with policy in their work. The theoretical notions will equally be useful to organize the complex ontology of human inequalities and to tie them back to social relations of power and assumptions about social and political reality as they are challenged or reproduced.

In my analysis, considerable attention will be spent on how social workers perceive themselves as professionals. Their identity and practical sense will be assembled in a “patrimony of dispositions” (Lahire: 2003). This notion is Bernard Lahire’s more differentiated, interactive and contextual take on Bourdieu’s notion of habitas (Bigo 2014: 2010, Lahire 2003: 351-354). The “patrimony of dispositions” will allow us to inform about the actors’ aptitudes and competences in relation to the context, which can activate or inhibit certain dispositions depending on the context (ibid.). By exploring the newly introduced professional profiles, the history of social work and techniques of modern management I will attempt to establish social workers’ relatively shared self-perception that emerged dialectically in relation to the centre management, Fedasil and the wider work context and in rejection of their categorization. To reflect on their identity, I will us Jenkins’ insight on categorizations (2000).

In the third chapter, I will demonstrate four different forms of borderwork that social workers engage in. The border shouldn’t just be perceived as a line that demarcates territories but as practices of territorial control that can be performed away from the border and can be moved beyond the formal institutions of the state (Guiraudon and Lahav 2000). Using Foucaults’ notion of apparatus (Foucault 1980: 194-228), I will look at social workers’ borderwork as new expressions of international territorialism in the context of social work in a reception centre that, like the general migration policy, emphasizes and differences between people form differing origin. Finally, in trying to make sense of how social workers are lured into borderwork, we will explore the seductive ambiguity of migrant discourses using Verkaaik’s conventionalized self (Verkaaik 2010).

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1.5 The political process of voluntary returns spirals down

Since the “return”-aspect is such a prominent notion in contemporary reception generally and for our subject under inquiry specifically, and will appear throughout the thesis as a clear example and indicative of the appearance of policy, I find it useful to look at what the notion of voluntary returns is based on.

On April 14 2014, the Council of the European Union adopted the financing programmes in the area of home affairs 2014 – 2020 including the Asylum, Migration and Integration Fund and the Internal Security Fund.3 The first aims at efficient management of migrations flows and a common European policy on asylum and migration. It wants to support legal migration, effective integration, effective return strategies and burden sharing. The second fund aims at increased external border control on the one hand, facilitating legitimate crossings and tackling illegal migration, and pursuing a high level of security in the EU by preventing, managing and combating cross-border crime on the other. This increased focus on controlling migration flows and limiting access of illegal migrants while promoting the return of those present, is not a recent phenomenon but has been subject to academic scrutiny for several years (Baldaccini et al 2007, Huysemans 2000, Andreas and Snyder: 221-224, Pace 2010). Furthermore, the European Commission aims at improving the practical implementation of the Return Directive on the level of the Member states and the primary commitment to the promotion of voluntary returns and the avoidance of unclear legal statuses.4

On a Belgian level there is not a lot of resistance towards these European trends. Belgium even decreased its own standards of reception and procedures to the European minimum. The coalition agreement of the Di Rupo government is clearly aimed at decreasing the number of immigrants and asylum seekers (Regeerakkoord: 129-136). Particular attention goes to the detection of fraud and the stimulation of voluntary returns if possible and forced if necessary (ibid.: 132). This mandate enabled Maggie De Block, State Secretary for Asylum and Migration, Social Integration and Poverty Reduction, to resolve the so-called asiel- en opvangcrisis (asylum and reception crisis): de-clogging administrative arrears and relieving the pressure on the reception infrastructure’s capacity.

3_{“Council Adopts financing programmes in the area of home affairs 2014 – 2020”, The Council of the European Union,}

14/04/2014. (http://www.consilium.europa.eu/uedocs/cms_data/docs/pressdata/en/jha/142203.pdf, visited 15/05/2014)

4_{“Mededeling van de Commissie aan de Raad en het Europees Parlement; betreffende het EU-terugkeerbeleid”, The}

European Commission, 28/03/2014. (

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This was achieved by evicting all residents in the infrastructure that didn’t have the required legal position; stricter, accelerated and equally applied procedures with increased restriction for multiple or renewed applications; and a maximum commitment to return, voluntary if possible and forced if necessary.5 In order to facilitate the latter, Maggie added the coordination of voluntary returns to the core assignments of Fedasil. Fedasil, which stands for Federal Agency for the reception of asylum seekers, is a public interest organization created by the programme law of 19 July 2001 and operational since May 2002.6 Since December 2011, Fedasil falls under the political responsibility of the Belgian State Secretary for Asylum and Migration, Ms Maggie De Block. Although this government agency was originally established to coordinate and improve the reception of asylum seekers and to facilitate their integration, this federal agency is now responsible for coordinating reception and return.7

Concerning the reception of asylum seekers, Maggie De Block wants maximal attention for the promotion of return. Since 2012 it is inscribed in the law that all asylum seekers should be sensitized extensively and systematically about the option of voluntary return and with increased emphasis as the chances of legal residence decrease (Terugkeertraject 2012). In her beleidsnota for 2014, Maggie De Block wants to optimise the return trajectory by organizing courses for employees and to create a network of professional return companions (terugkeerbegeleiders).8_{The increased focus on returns is visible in the}

organizational chart of Fedasil as well as Petit Château. In the government agency the Cell Voluntary Returns is booming. It was originated in 2006 and from the start was part of Operational Services with five employers, finances by the European Union for 50%. Eight years later, the Cell Voluntary Returns’ fulltime equivalents tripled to sixteen. Currently the EU financed 75% of their expenses. In Petit Château, in a unit of three social workers that focuses on all kinds of departures, two social workers, amongst a variety of other tasks, specialize in informing about and accompanying voluntary returns. It is to these two specialized social workers that the other social workers can send the residents they accompany for more information on returns and for arranging it practically.

5_{“Algemene Beleidsnota Asiel & Migratie”, Maggie De Block, 03/12/2013. (}

http://www.deblock.belgium.be/nl/asiel-migratie-opvang, visited 15/05/2014)

6http://fedasil.be/en/content/about-fedasil_{(visited 12/04/2014)} 7_{http://fedasil.be/nl/inhoud/onze-missie}_{(visited 14/01/2014)}

8_{“Algemene Beleidsnota van de staatssecretaris voor Asiel en Migratie; Deel Opvang”, Belgische Kamer van}

Volksvertegenwoordigers, 07/11/2013.

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Finally, we end up at the level of social workers. They are expected to mention the option of voluntary return during the intake that has to take place within four days of the resident’s arrival. The social workers are equally expected to repeat the option of voluntary return at every step taken in the procedure. Especially at the end of a procedure that didn’t result in a residence permit, the voluntary return option has to be mentioned as an alternative to a forced return or life on the territory as an extra-legal. At the same time it is stressed that the final decision lays in the hands of the person involved. The responsibility of the sociaal werker is to support every resident in developing a plan for the future. Enabling a realistic reflection on the future is deemed crucial to facilitate the smooth transition of the final reception phase, namely the departure from the reception centre (Fedasil, Individueel Begeleidingsplan).

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“We aim to strike a balance between the competences and expectations of the individual employees and the needs of the organization.”

Fedasil, Managementplan: 26

2. Social work: perception of the professional self

Fedasil’s Managementplan states their ambition to be part of a global migration policy. In his introduction Jean-Pierre Luxen, Director-general of Fedasil, explains that this implies on the one hand that the way Fedsail functions should be in line with general government policy and the state-secretary’s policy plan in particular (Fedasil Managementplan 2013: 3). On the other hand, global refers to the Managementplan’s ambition to make the migration policy penetrate all levels and sections of the organization and to be executed by each and every employee (ibid.). This involves developing the right profiles and skills to realize the set goals. Furthermore, in order to learn from the past and to avoid future crisis situations, Fedasil needs to “mature” as an organization, which implies the deployment of “modern methods of management and control” (ibid.).

What the Managementplan talks about are not just words but these intentions are being operationalized and become part of the everyday experiences of social workers, as intended. In this chapter I will illustrate that a tension exists between social workers on the one hand and Fedasil and management on the other. This tension arises mainly from different perceptions of social work. It is important to consider this tension and the dynamics it arises from in order to understand the impact on social workers of an increased policy focus on returns.

Generally speaking, Fedasil approaches social workers as employers first and as professionals second. In their view social workers are expected to execute their tasks, approach their jobs as neutrally as possible and stay emotionally detached from asylum seekers. Rapport between social worker and resident should be functional and enable the

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social worker to do the prescribed tasks. In that sense, the skill-set of a social worker should be at Fedasil’s disposal to reach both their own and the government’s policy targets.

The social workers, from their side, also want to be neutral, but understand this neutrality differently. They fear that executing policy might interfere with their desired neutrality. They aim at “shielding” the professional relationship between them and their clients from the centre, Fedasil and the government’s policy. Their neutrality obeys firstly their professional code of conduct and secondly Belgian and international law. In social workers’ perception, the government, Fedasil and the centre merely create the conditions in which they practice their profession. In that context, the social workers see themselves as guardians of the interests of their clients and they do not necessarily approach the government, Fedasil or the centre management as an ally in providing the asylum seekers access to their basic rights. Social workers are even quite wary and skeptical towards the practices and intentions of Fedasil and the management and the feeling is mutual.

In this chapter I will show that different actors deal differently with the tension between social workers on the one hand and Fedasil and the management on the other. I will start my analysis by exploring the debate that surrounds the new professional profile of sociaal werker that was introduced while I was doing my fieldwork. This particular event will introduce the friction between social workers on the one side and policy and organization on the other. The colliding positions will elicit recurring, central and multivocal themes like loyalty, autonomy, professionalism, harmonization and neutrality, around which an interesting interplay erupts between organizational demands and social workers’ professional identity.

In a second section, I will look at the history of social work at Petit Château. Since the past was so prominent in respondents’ reflections on the present, I cannot imagine an analysis of current relations between and particular positioning of Fedasil, management, social workers and residents, without a historical understanding. I will identify the past as a vivid context that strengthens prudence and skepticism towards hierarchy, a sense of identity as a social worker and a sense of responsibility towards residents; to shield them from changing organizational and governmental policies and guarantee their access to their basic rights.

The third section will focus on the relatively recent Taylorist governmentality. Fedasil’s desire to professionalize, harmonize and control social work is an important aspect of the work context. Its convergence with social work is important to highlight since extensive managerial rationality has a significant impact on the everyday experiences of social workers and is very prominent in current social worker’s perception of themselves as professionals.

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The characteristics of Taylorist governmentalism will help further understanding of social workers’ positioning of themselves as professionals in the organization they work for/in.

Finally, I will tie the different elements together to assemble social workers’ general perception of themselves in the organization. I will argue with Jenkins that social workers identify themselves as a group and that this results from an internal-external dialectic of co-constitutive self-identification and categorization (2000). I will further argue that the resulting self-identification assumes a relatively stable, shared and affiliated character built on certain themes. This will eventually allow us to approximate the social workers’ “patrimony of dispositions”, which is Bernard Lahire’s more differentiated, interactive and contextual take on Bourdieu’s notion of habitas (Bigo 2014, Lahire 2003: 351-354). Without mutilating our empirical findings by confining them to an analytical model, the “patrimony of dispositions” will be a useful conceptual tool in understanding firstly the detected commonalities amongst social workers, while acknowledging individual differences. Secondly, it will enable us to incorporate how certain dispositions are affected by socialization and the surrounding dynamics to reflect on what defines social workers in relation to their context and what positions and practices result from the patrimony of dispositions as a result of policy. But as announced, let us first look at Fedasil’s take on social work.

2.1 From social worker to sociaal werker

From the very beginning of my fieldwork, social workers talked about the new professional profiles that Fedasil had introduced. This one-and-a-half page document explains two things. It spells out what the objective of a social worker is and states five “fields of core result” (kernresultaatsgebieden). Sociaal werker (travailleur social) is the name that Fedasil decided to give to the function that was originally called sociaal assistant (assistant social). The original function was designed specifically for maatschappelijk werkers, while the new profile allows a wider group of social professionals, or other interested, to be recruited for social work within the Fedasil centres. A variety of profiles (opvoeder, gezinswetenschapper, sociaal cultureel werker, orthopedagogen, assistent psychologie…) are considered “social” and all allow applying for the job of sociaal werker, as do many master degrees that are remotely social, like journalism.

I do not insinuate that these profiles are inadequate to do the job of maatschappelijk werker. What I’m saying is that asking people to do the job of a maatschappelijk werker who

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are professionally trained to work strictly on a psychosocial level, or on a behavioral level, or with large groups, or to organize cultural events… is bound to have an impact on the way the job is done much like anthropologists, political scientists, historians and psychologist all try to understand humans in their social context but their training, objectives and approach to social reality lead to quite distinct ways of researching, which impacts findings.

The current social workers at Petit Château are still primarily maatschappelijk werkers, fitting the original profile.

“Social workers [maatschappelijk werkers] promote social change, problem solving in human relationships and the empowerment and liberation of people to enhance well being. Utilizing theories of human behavior and social systems, social work intervenes at the points where people interact with their environments. Principles of human rights and social justice are fundamental.”

International Federation of Social Workers (cited in: Hare 2004)

They work mainly on an individual basis with their clients and the mentioned environment can involve family, neighbourhood but equally society with a strong focus on facilitating access to public services and institutions. Social workers learned to analyze a request for help and to accompany their clients in their search for answers, solutions and alternatives. They developed a methodological, psychosocial, administrative and legal skill-set in order to do so.9

On paper the newly developed job profile of sociaal werker does not necessarily conflict with the profession of social worker. Human resources explains that the profile is kept relatively general to enable local interpretation and adaptation and serves the limitation and confinement of the myriad practices since it “basically concerns one type of job with a lot of things in common” and is thus an organizational reflection on how a social worker should perform their job in a Fedasil centre. The opening up to other professional profiles is explained as a strategic choice to deal with government cuts and facilitate internal mobility from one position to another.

The new profile of social worker was presented to every social worker in the Fedasil network and they signed for approval. At least, that is what happened in most Fedasil centres.

9_{“Maatschappelijk Werk”, Thomas More, 2014. (}_{http://www.thomasmore.be/maatschappelijk-werk}_,

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At Petit Château social workers did not fully agree with the new profile of sociaal werker. They organized internal meetings and consulted the unions to assess the legality and desirability of the document first in order to formulate a common opinion. A major concern for the social workers was the potential negative effects on their clients.

There were a couple of social workers that did not understand what the fuss was about and they just signed the document, which they considered “reasonable” and “sufficiently general” to allow for personal interpretation. Since in most centres the profiles nearly passed unnoticed, or were even appreciated, and since certain social workers in Petit Château had already signed, Fedasil and the management pushed forward: there would be no more discussion, every social worker had to sign. Christophe, who cunningly wrote “signed for reception” instead of “read and approved” was made aware that this was unacceptable. Since the profile would serve as a basis for the social worker’s evaluation, he made his own evaluation impossible and would risk losing the financial bonuses that are attached to the evaluation. That final argument worked and Christophe signed the profile anyway.

But what was considered problematic about these profiles if they are general and allow for personal interpretation? The simple answer, given by a great number of social workers would be the addition of the single word “shared” to the notion “professional secrecy”, which is deemed a contradiction in terms. By agreeing with the a priori shared character of confidential information, the social workers estimate that their professional deontology would be breached and the rapport with their clients compromised. Even though the social workers were absolutely in favor of constructive collaboration with other colleagues and the centre, this demand was considered a bridge too far; it would undermine an indispensible aspect of their jobs.

The consequences of breaching professional secrecy could lead to legal prosecution of the social worker since the binding character of professional secrecy for doctors, nurses and social workers is inscribed in the penal code under article 458 and in a ministerial decree designed specifically for staff members of federal reception centres.10 The only exceptions are in cases of imminent and serious danger (duty to talk), when called in front of a tribunal (right to talk) or when parents ask information concerning their minor children deemed essential for

10_{“Ministerieel besluit tot vaststelling van de deontologische code voor de personeelsleden van de}

opvangstructuren voor asielzoekers. - Addendum.” België. Staatsblad, 2014.

(http://www.etaamb.be/nl/ministerieel-besluit-van-19-december-2013_n2014011248.html, visited 09/06/2014)

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fulfilling their educational tasks. Furthermore, the ministerial decree ends with a list of conditions which must be fulfilled before a social worker can share any kind of information, making it clear that the professional secrecy can only be breached a posteriori and in very specific circumstances.

This professional secrecy, inscribed in the law, serves to protect the confidentiality between professionals and their clients, which is firstly based on a client’s legal right to privacy. Additionally, for social workers it is considered indispensible in order to establish a rapport to facilitate good social work. All social workers regard their professional deontology and rapport as incontournable; regardless of the context; every social worker I spoke to defends these two elements as an inextricable part of social work that is oriented towards their clients first and to the organization second. In other words, social workers estimate that there are certain characteristics within their profession that are so intrinsically connected to doing their job that they are nonnegotiable and this all revolves around their clients.

Remarkably enough, one of Fedasil’s main targets is, equally, to work client-oriented (Fedasil Managementplan: 20). However, they identify three different clients, the asylum seeker (the beneficiary), the government (the patron) and society at large (the stakeholders). Fedasil wonders what their clients expect of them and how they should deal with their different clients in accordance with their general mission. The different client perspectives seem hardly compatible but the Managementplan does not deal with the matter explicitly.

Despite an unclear position in the Managementplan, noting that their mission statement entails a “commitment to qualitative reception and voluntary return” (emphasis added) insinuates that Fedasil’s primary customer is the government. The three clients will generally agree that reception of asylum seekers needs to be qualitative but also that the return-aspect of the general mission does not convene with the average desire of asylum seekers. When I asked operational services, human resources and the centre manangement about their point of view on the three clients, they all agreed: the social workers work for Fedasil and the government first and for the asylum seekers second. It is argued that all social workers applied to work for the government themselves and as a consequence they work in a sector that is sensitive to policy changes that need to be adhered to.

This perspective is not shared by the past and present social workers. In particular, the social workers who left the position along with colleagues with a long service record are especially outspoken about the fact that the residents come first. They even take it a step

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further and state that any loyalty towards organization, management, Fedasil, government or society should be subjected to the interest of the asylum seeker:

“Social workers have an obligation to do choose the resident’s side. Even if a doctor works in a concentration camp he has an obligation to save lives and can’t start torturing. […] As social workers we have our professional deontology. It is part of our profession not to pass on any information about our clients to others, not even other governmental institutions like DVZ, CGRA or the police. We have to obey the law and according to the law we are tied to our professional secrecy.”

-Fabienne, former social worker-

Even though not every social worker has a position that is so uncompromising, all of them agree in a more or less committed way that as social workers, they abide by human rights and the law and make those rights and law accessible to the residents. A professional social worker aims at promoting justice with and on behalf of their clients. Social workers perceive the residents as people that need to be informed of their legal rights in a new and complex environment and in as neutral a way as possible. The purpose of this is to enable the resident to make an informed decision. The social worker is the guardian of that flow of information, adapted to the specific, context-related and therefore changing needs of the person. The informed decision will increase the person’s empowerment in an attempt to protect and liberate them from possible arbitrariness of the system. In this sense, at least discursively, they stand by their professional identity, in relation to an organization that discourages them to focus too much on procedures and “leave the legal stuff to lawyers”.

The professional profile of sociaal werker shows a line of friction between the organization and the social workers. The government is increasingly restrictive towards asylum seekers and wants quick processing and detection of fraudulent cases while Fedasil houses them and encourages them to return. At the same time, all social workers I spoke to are in support of a more tolerant processing with more recognitions by the state an increased focus on integration. They all chose to work with asylum seekers consciously and support the idea that people should be facilitated in a chance to a new life.

This discussion illustrates firstly that Fedasil and the management have their idea how social work should be done and don’t agree with the indisputable characteristics of social work if it interferes with the way they envision the job of social worker. This position is defended as follows: the social worker is employed by an organization that wants to reach its

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operational targets and in order to reach these targets, requires every social worker to execute their tasks as prescribed, if necessary at the expense of the strict interpretation of their professional deontology and the rapport with their clients.

Hereby, Fedasil reverses the default position of social workers, which results in a second conclusion, namely that social workers are employees first and social workers second, implying that Fedasil comes first and the residents are second in line. A third and related conclusion is that the “neutrality” of social workers is established in relation to the organization and not in relation to the professional code of conduct, nor in relation to the residents. The message from human resources, operational services and the centre management is clear: you stay loyal to the government and if you can’t accept what you are asked to do, “you can draw your own conclusions”. To guide social workers the profile is complemented by countless procedures, checklists and local routines that prescribe social work in detail. Furthermore, the sociaal werkers are expected to report on their work processes continuously, which leads to time-consuming administration. Not complying with these demands could result in financial losses or even discharge if evaluation after monitoring shows non-compliance. This illustrates the final point I would like to make here, namely that Fedasil disciplines the social workers into abiding by the profile.

The profile of sociaal werker makes clear that Fedasil expects their social workers’ loyalty. The consideration of keeping the profiles “general to allow for local interpretation and adaptation” is starkly contrasted by the number of procedures, the monitoring and the necessity to comply at the risk of sanctions. It becomes clear that Fedasil is more interested in applying the skill-set of social workers in fulfilling organizational targets, and therefore governmental policy directly rather than by taking professional characteristics into account. The opening up of the job profile of social workers to sociaal werker equally illustrates that for Fedasil the specific professional approach and attitude of the original maatschappelijk werker is not indispensible.

The recently introduced profile of sociaal werker is one example that enabled me to uncover part of the organizational context in which social workers perform their jobs allowing a taste of many elements and dynamics that are part of the current positioning of social workers in relation to the organization. So while the straightforward critique against the “shared” professional secrecy in the profile of sociaal werker can be justified by itself, I read the objections of the majority of social workers at Petit Château as symbolic for and symptomatic of the underlying co-constitutive dynamic that boils down to a tension between

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organizational targets and the social workers’ perception of the professional self in relation to their primary client, the resident. A friction between a professionalizing government agency wanting to implement policy and social workers that want to be professional in their own way by staying neutral and detached from policy to work client-oriented by following their deontological code and respecting the rapport between them and their clients. The way this tension is expressed might be new in form but is old in its dynamics, as the following section will illustrate.

2.2 A history of social work at Petit Château

Since a phenomenon can only be properly analyzed and understood when being attentive to history (Wolf 1982), I want to incorporate a brief history of social work in Petit Château that focuses on the role of social workers in relation to their own work and work-context. This is especially significant since “past” and “change” were prominent notions whenever people talked about social work in Petit Château in general and reflected on the increased prescriptions and control specifically. Furthermore, I want to point out that from the very start social workers felt a professional responsibility to protect their clients from a politicized organization. This shaped their professional identity and shaped the organizations attitude towards them as a specific group of professionals. Being the first centre for asylum seekers in Belgium, their history starts at the origin of government-organized reception.

Until 1986 reception was mainly coordinated by non-governmental organizations, while local communes provided additional support for those asylum seekers that had no livelihood. That initial help consisted of material, social, medical and psychological aid. In the early eighties, local communes started talking about a reception crisis and complained about the number of asylum seekers, their concentration in a limited number of communes and the late reimbursements of costs by the national government (Pleysier 2011: 11-12). Inadequate emergency funds and emergency reception lead the local social services to take emergency measures; the social services put all arrived asylum seekers on busses and threatened the State Secretary for Environment and Social Integration to transport them to the four richest communes of Belgium: Knokke, Koksijde, Thuin and Profondeville. While the engines were running, the government held an emergency-meeting on October 29 1986 to open the old military barracks called Petit Château as centre for asylum seekers. Nonetheless,

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soon the government was confronted with a lack of places and started opening other centres themselves and in collaboration with non-governmental partners (ibid.: 11-14, 24).

As asylum seekers arrived in Petit Château, the government started patching up the building, designing an organizational chart and negotiating the staff and working conditions under coordination of the Ministry of Public Health. The initial staff at Petit Château reflected the fast transition from a military function to the reception of asylum seekers. It was a mix of retired military, military in training, and also conscientious objectors (those that refused Belgian’s military draft), plus some hastily recruited contractors. People that were there at the start or in the first years melancholically tell romanticized “myths of origin” about Le Petit Village.

“We didn’t just give them a ticket and told them to leave, we prepared their departure and made sure they had everything they needed. We stuffed everything in the van and drove people to their new house… anywhere really. […] You still knew the people, you shared more.”

-Henri, former social worker-

When people talk about the turbulent start they talk about idealism, direct action, a village. Job profiles were not defined in a detailed way, which gave staff members a lot of freedom in defining and negotiating their own job. However, for the social and procedural accompaniment, the management hired social workers (maatschappelijk werkers). Their professional profile was estimated to match the requirements of social accompaniment of asylum seekers since it involved legal and administrative skills de deal with the procedures and psychosocial skills to deal with the particularities of people from a different cultural origin that fled from a troubled past.

Since nothing had yet been established, social workers felt responsible for the social aspect of reception, had ideas on how to organize it and received relative freedom and professional trust to do so. They were considered the team of experts and were managed by a coordinator who was also a social worker. From the start their loyalty lay with the asylum seekers. It was embedded as such in their professional identity and defined itself even stronger in relation to the organization. Their initial more humanitarian idealism lay their loyalty with the residents not the institutions:

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“But of course!! We were social workers!! The asylum seekers needed help and Petit Château should allow social workers to do their jobs. […] We knew how to work with the different people [residents] and allocated the arrivals amongst ourselves to help them as best as we could. The manager just didn’t have a clue.”

-Fabienne, former social worker-

The core assignment of current and past social workers at Petit Château hasn’t really changed. They are considered responsible for offering social and administrative support and psychosocial guidance to residents on an individual basis to help them deal with the context they find themselves in. The social workers provide information on the life in the centre and on the procedures. They manage and coordinate the asylum applications, stimulate the resident’s autonomy and monitor and work towards their general wellbeing. They are expected to strike a balance between a particularized and an equal-for-all approach.

From the start however, friction arose between government, policy and management on the one hand and the social unit on the other. Bob Pleysier, attributing his decision to become managing-director of Petit Château in 1991 to staff members who “put their heart and soul in their jobs”, soon discovered that “few things could be implemented without passing the social unit” who systematically expressed their opinion, organized meetings, and the occasional strike, by their own initiative, and leaked information or refused to cooperate outright (ibid.: 30, 40, 53, 65, 77, 103). Often the fiercest reactions from social workers erupted when top-down decisions to deal with the continued asylum and reception crises risked having a negative impact on residents (ibid.: 30). A former social worker remembers one period very vividly.

“We [social workers] don’t owe loyalty to other governmental institutions, not now and not in the days when we [social workers] first started introducing the 26bis. That wasn’t allowed by the former manager Bob Pleysier because we [social workers] couldn’t appeal against other government officials. So we [centre] delegated the appeals to NGO’s but that was hard since the residents only had three days. Finally we [centre] decided to prepare the appeal ourselves and send it to the NGO’s so they could introduce the appeal and in the meantime we [social workers] organized our own informal meetings to share how best to appeal. Pleysier had some weird ideas and the social workers resisted which lead to an OK compromise, I guess.”

-Fabienne, former social

The former managing director of Petit Château remembers another period where social workers were not content with imposed decisions and tried to stop them from happening.

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“The centre population didn’t flow as intended and started clogging up the system. The average stay was rising to more than half a year, which turned the centre gradually into a residential centre. To break that dynamic we introduced the first-in-first-out principle and sent the old residents on to the Red Cross centres. This infuriated the social workers. All of a sudden, their familiar clients and families had to go. The meetings they organized ended in tears and with doors being slammed. Nonetheless, the system worked and that year we had a flow rate of nearly six thousand asylum seekers. Eventually the social workers accepted the situation but everyone realized they had a point. It interrupted social work and probably didn’t benefit the asylum seekers.”

-Bob Pleysier, former manager of Petit Château and later manager of

Fedasil-The creation of Fedasil in 2002 had an impact on the organizational structure in reception of asylum seekers and slowly but surely impacted the social workers. While initially, they were still able to negotiate certain changes or decisions internally, all of a sudden Fedasil was taking decisions above their heads and excluding them from the process. This did not lead to a situation where social workers accepted everything passively. They scrutinized whatever Fedasil tried to impose on them and further developed, or re-established, their professional identity in relation to Fedasil.

“In the beginning we didn’t notice much but then, out of the blue, a decision was taken. And then nothing. And another decision. And it started making me reflect on the base of my job. My professional identity changed because of it. I became more alert to the minimum standards that the people [residents] needed access to. […] We didn’t just accept whatever they told us, we still don’t. […] Our position hindered normal contact with Fedasil [because] from their perspective we were disloyal.”

-Amina, social

worker-This difficult relationship continued and social workers increasingly had the impression that they were not heard and had no efficient means for internal communication. Nevertheless; since they felt obliged to try and make a difference in the interest of their clients, they resorted more and more to the syndicates, which troubled relations between social workers and the organization even more.

A period that is recalled systematically and vividly is the arrival of Michael Kegels in 2007. Mr. Kegels became managing-director with a temporary assignment at Petit Château,

Back to the future? : a job well done : an exploration of the reproduction of state discourses and policy in the everyday practices of social workers in a government run open centre for asylum seekers in Brussels

BACK TO THE FUTURE? A JOB WELL DONE.

Contents

Acknowledgements