Between the Client and the Institutional System: Street-level Bureaucrats’ Discretion, Positioning, and Trust in Institutional Encounters with Forced Migrants in Finland and Sweden

Abstract

This article examines street-level bureaucrats’ positions between the institutional system and their clients with a forced migration background in their sensemaking of trust. Situated at the frontline of the institution, street-level bureaucrats are crucial agents for forced migrants settling in Nordic welfare states. Drawing on individual interviews with street-level bureaucrats in Finland and Sweden and theoretically leaning on street-level bureaucracy, positioning theory, and trust, this article explores how street-level bureaucrats navigate these encounters. By identifying five non-exclusionary ways in which street-level bureaucrats position themselves between the migrant client and the institutional system through their sensemaking of trust, I propose a typology of positions: resisting warrior, empathic carer, neutral mediator, pushing steerer, and critical questioner. Further, these positions reflect ambiguous narratives of being simultaneously an agent of the citizen and an agent of the state.