To recognize or to moralize : the influence of politicization of social workers and volunteers in the treatment of migrants

Discretionary power in migration policies is well documented by social science scholarship. The way actors in charge of the implementation of migration policies adapt their practices, negotiate some rooms for manoeuvre, or practice preferential treatments has been an issue treated by sociology and political science (Lipsky 1980, Spire 2008, Halluin-Mabillot 2012). But little work has been done about actors who are not directly involved in the application of migration policies but whose decisions and practices are more or less guided by these policies. It is about these actors that we intend to focus in this communication. By comparing three structures with different status – a famous association fighting exclusion (Secours Populaire français), a “Maison des Solidarités”: departmental structure with social workers and a house for the unemployed which also has the status of a social center – we want to highlight the different practices of social workers and volunteers towards people with migration trajectories they have to receive. This qualitative investigation has been realized for a PhD work in the process of being written. It includes 60 interviews with some volunteers, social workers, secretaries, and users (or helped people) of the institutions studied. And a participant observation which lasted for four years. We aim to analyze our data by a Foucault’s relational approach of power which take into account the disciplines and the Bourdieu’s field theory, careful to the struggles between actors. Our research questions are the following: How some actors, non directly involved in migration policies, participate nonetheless to the normative injunctions linked to this type of policies, by using discretionary power? How politicization influences the way these agents use their discretionary power and the way they non directly apply the migrations norms/rules? The way they contest or the way they accommodate migration rules? We noticed that actors with a high level of politicization, and especially the ones with a left-wing politicization, are more likely to contest and disagree with the migration rules. These contestations are characterized by giving some advice to migrants using public services or associations - such as hiding from the police when one's residence permit has expired, indicating illegal squats to take refuge in - but also by a politicization of the injustices experienced by the users and an indignation about migration law. On the contrary, actors with a low level of politicization, or with a right-wing politicization, and actors with a marked left-wing politicization but who have experienced a Catholic socialization that brings them closer to a charitable logic of assistance, are more likely to coping with the law. Their practices are characterized by some pragmatic logics which consist in notify the beneficiaries about their (non)rights, especially when they are in an irregular situation. These agents are also more likely to engage moral considerations in the interaction with the migrants. The attitude of the latter is judged in the light of the logic of the deserving poor (Castel 1995, Katz 2015), which often implies some considerations of class, race and gender (Kergoat 2021).