Paper short abstract:

This paper asks after marginalisation in the social services. Set in the sector that addresses mental illness in culturally 'diverse' groups, it begins with a public complaint made by a woman from such a group, and tracks this complaint's affects to broader organising (but paradoxical) processes.

Paper long abstract:

In the social services sector - the 'shadow state' (Wolch 1990) - certain roles, particularly those assigned to people from more marginal groups, tend to reproduce marginality. What compels compliance with such roles? In this paper, I approach this question by considering what kind of engagements and affects non-compliance stirs up. My work is set in the sector that addresses mental unwellness amongst Sydney's more marginalized service-users (described, by some, as 'culturally and linguistically diverse'). It is a field characterised by sincere striving for health equity but beleaguered by deeply rooted inequalities. Complaints, particularly from those that this sector aims to serve, are acts of non-compliance. To complain is to refuse to partake in the narratives assigned to you. This refusal seems to result in a kind of abandonment (Povinelli 2011). Yet, this abandonment occurs in the same space the humanitarian project's tiers of efforts to 'reach out'; it is abandonment at the site of ardent engagement. This paper will consider how, despite best intentions, such a paradox occurs. It will track the affective aftermath of a public complaint to the confluence of historical and bureaucratic processes that help produce the conditions for this abandonment and these gaps. Ethnographic attention can help make sense of the situation, but, I also ask, can it help it?