Paper short abstract:

In this paper, I argue that, by convincing so-called Care Avoiders to accept available services, and by convincing service providers to accept clients they previously refused, frontline social workers in the Netherlands carry out the labour of temporarily stabilizing an otherwise unstable world

Paper long abstract:

In the Netherlands, policy makers take so-called Care-Avoiders to be both ‘at risk’ and ‘risky’: at risk because they are prone to suffering and a premature death, and risky because they cause nuisance and may turn violent towards the people around them, including professionals. In 2023/2024, I conducted fieldwork in a team of social and mental healthcare workers charged with convincing care avoiders to accept the services made available to them. I found that, while trying to seduce, pressure, and coerce their clients into becoming care-accepting citizens, they were careful not to pathologize them. Instead, they presented clients as the victims of a ‘careless’ and ‘out of control’ system, while theorizing the use of violence by both care avoiders and police and healthcare professionals as the logical consequence of that system. In fact, reading the situation as such, they spent much of their time urging fellow frontline workers to become 'caring' and 'controlling' professionals, while also trying to undo the current mental healthcare system, in favor of a system rooted in existing ecologies of care. I describe these efforts to suggest that to classify is to temporarily stabilize an otherwise unstable world, or, in other words, to establish a social order.