Institutionalized strategies in face-to-face encounters: focus on immigrant clients

The aim of this article is to explore how officials' institutionalized patterns of acting can be useful for understanding encounters between immigrant clients and representatives of a welfare organization. The data indicate that there are two fundamental social mechanisms at work: the materialization of the organizational ideology, and the cultural filter. Both have an impact on the type of action strategy chosen by an official in handling client problems. An analysis of the strategy outcomes according to the social mechanisms shows that: 1) The outcome will depend on the client's consent to the organizational ideology. Immigrant clients more often than other clients are assumed to have different views on, for example, sickness, work capability and retirement age; 2) Comparing clients to the image of an ideal-typical long-term sick person can lead to the definition of clients with different cultural backgrounds or those of immigrant status as deviant, and therefore problematic to deal with; 3) The cultural filter through which the officials interpret their clients' situation can be an important obstacle in understanding the responses of immigrant clients. The study was conducted at a local social insurance office in a suburban area of a major Swedish city. Immigrants represented approximately 60% of the long-term sick people. The empirical material consists of observations of encounters and interviews with the officials working with rehabilitation of the long-term sick.