Linguistic Vulnerability and Slow Bureaucratic Violence in Institutional Welfare Borderscapes
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 3948575 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Camilla Nordberg (0000-0001-6448-8891, Faculty of Education and Wefare Studies, corresponding author), Paula Merikoski (0009-0002-1346-7913, Faculty of Social Sciences) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Volume | 30 |
| Issue | 5 |
| Pages | 2023-2046 |
| Publication date | 2025-10-20 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Geopolitics (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1465-0045 • E-ISSN: 1557-3028 |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/14650045.2024.2444648 |
| OpenAlex | W4406330617 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 2 |
| References cited | 74 |
Despite the fact that public services in contemporary societies are increasingly marked by language diversity, research on language as a vantage point for understanding social (in)justice in human service work is still scarce. The logic of the neoliberal welfare state emphasises an individual’s responsibility and thus produces a situation where one has to actively claim services, such as interpretation. Drawing on conceptualisations of bureaucratic and slow violence, we examine language barriers as a site for oppression that is intimately linked with other material and symbolic disadvantages. Empirically, we build on a set of qualitative interviews collected in Finland, addressing the role of language in migrants’ experiences of welfare encounters. The analysis shows that language barriers dehumanise and isolate structurally vulnerable non-speakers of dominant languages and produce practices of silence. In this article, we demonstrate that linguistic and structural vulnerabilities and intersectional power asymmetries often create concrete harm and, ultimately, obstacles for substantive citizenship. Moreover, we ask what kind of agency is being produced when complaining actively is not possible and where non-native speakers turn to assistance if their needs are ignored in public welfare service encounters
Bureaucracy · Computer security · Linguistics · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Welfare · Computer Science · Law · Migration, Refugees, and Integration · Philosophy
The Oxford Handbook of Language and Society
Linguistic Diversity and Social Justice
Border as Method, or, the Multiplication of Labor
A Caring State for all Older People?
Afterword
Responsibilisation at the Margins of Welfare Services
Vulnerability and Young People
Uncertain citizenship
Imagined Societies
The sexual politics of border control
Profiles and Critiques in Social Theory
Autonomy of Asylum
Linguistic Diversity as a Challenge for Street-Level Bureaucrats in a Monolingually-Oriented Organisation
Deserving of Social Support? Street-Level Bureaucrats’ Decisions on EU Migrants’ Benefit Claims in Germany
Greater local supply of language courses improves refugees’ labor market integration
Lingua franca and linguistic territoriality. Why they both matter to justice and why justice matters for both
Discretion for whom? Local policies and the agency problem between politicians and care managers in Swedish social service
Waiting in the welfare lines. Exploring everyday racism as waiting in the migration and unemployment complexes in England and Sweden
Engaging with children as co-researchers
The slow violence of state organized race crime
It is E nglish and there is no Alternative’
Minding the Gaps
Bordering practices in the UK welfare system
Digital by default? A qualitative study of exclusion in digitalised welfare
Violent Inaction
Working for Protection? Precarious Legal Inclusion of Afghan Nationals in Germany and Switzerland
Neo-Liberalism and Responsibilisation in the Discourse of Social Service Workers
Constructing citizenship in the shadow state
Agency in deskilling
Refugees and the violence of welfare bureaucracies in Northern Europe
The neoliberal welfare state and its discontents. Slow violence against irregular migrants in Norway
Exploring the Critical Potential of the Borderscapes Concept
Migrants’ Relational Experiences with the Welfare State at the Street Level
Deserving citizenship in Germany and The Netherlands. Citizenship tests in liberal democracies
The Many Faces of Vulnerability
Social Policies as a Tool of Migration Control
Finland kills with a pen' - asylum seekers' protest against bureaucratic violence as politics of human rights
Reconceptualising language tests for citizenship as raciolinguistic border regimes
A Sisyphean task of qualifying for digital citizenship? The precarious learning processes of disadvantaged migrant women in the context of inordinate expectations
Afterword
We don't worry that much about language
Discrimination in migration and citizenship
Welfare state bordering as a form of mobility and migration control
Multiple sources of precarity
From Territoriality to Borderscapes
Political and educational springboard or straitjacket? Theorising post/human subjects in an age of vulnerability
Everyday Bordering in the Nordic Countries
Invisibilised Visions
Street-Level Engagements
Race and Disability
Conceptualising the Agency of Migrant Women Workers
Theory Construction in Qualitative Research
Austerity as Bureaucratic Violence
Necropolitics and the Slow Violence of the Everyday
Dominant Language Acquisition in Destination Countries
Everyday Bordering, Belonging and the Reorientation of British Immigration Legislation
When the Name Matters
Writing Against Integration
| Unique citing works | 2 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 2 |
| Citation span | 2025 - 2026 (2) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 2 |