Street-level Bureaucrats and Macro-Level Policies - The Structure-Agency Debate and the Integration of Newcomers
(2025) SOAM21 20251School of Social Work
- Abstract
- The structure-agency debate in the social sciences is pervasive in policymaking; in recent policy paradigms and in their consequent macro-level policies. The present study attempts to study how in the latest two policy paradigms, neoliberalism and social investment respectively, the structure-agency debate has undergone changes in Swedish Government Official Reports, which investigate the integration of newcomers. These changes are suspected of affecting street-level bureaucrats and their prospective clients on a micro-level. It does this by presenting three research questions, two of which are descriptive and investigate the extent of agency phrases and structure phrases in the study’s nine analyzed reports, dated from 2003 to 2024 (N=9).... (More)
- The structure-agency debate in the social sciences is pervasive in policymaking; in recent policy paradigms and in their consequent macro-level policies. The present study attempts to study how in the latest two policy paradigms, neoliberalism and social investment respectively, the structure-agency debate has undergone changes in Swedish Government Official Reports, which investigate the integration of newcomers. These changes are suspected of affecting street-level bureaucrats and their prospective clients on a micro-level. It does this by presenting three research questions, two of which are descriptive and investigate the extent of agency phrases and structure phrases in the study’s nine analyzed reports, dated from 2003 to 2024 (N=9). The study’s longitudinal research design allows it to conduct a quantitative content analysis over the indicated time-span. Operationalization of the study’s two dependent variables - agency and structure - is done using lexical and theoretical definitions, which allows the quantification of phrases containing these two variables in the analyzed reports. In the study’s third research question, a correlation showing how the two dependent variables might be connected to welfare state transformations throughout the indicated time-span is suspected. In light of the study’s theoretical framework, which uses Mills’ The Sociological Imagination and the Mertonian and Portesian frameworks of unanticipated consequences, as well as the existing literature, the study sets out to test three hypotheses that are related to the study’s research questions. It finds that 60.61% of the counted phrases used in the nine analyzed reports are agency-related, whereas 39.39% are structure-related. Correlation analysis using Spearman’s Rho shows that the usage of structural phrases has decreased over time, with a negative correlation of -0.733 (p < 0.05). This poses the question of whether an overabundant emphasis on personal agency risks aggravating future social problems and potentially endangering the social work profession’s discretionary abilities. (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
http://lup.lub.lu.se/student-papers/record/9208090
- author
- Gafor, Pavel LU
- supervisor
- organization
- course
- SOAM21 20251
- year
- 2025
- type
- H2 - Master's Degree (Two Years)
- subject
- keywords
- newcomers, immigrants, integration, migration, welfare chauvinism, deservingness, structure, agency, street-level bureaucrats, personal trouble, public issues, unanticipated consequences, the sociological imagination, neoliberalism, social investment, social work
- language
- English
- id
- 9208090
- date added to LUP
- 2026-02-25 11:29:55
- date last changed
- 2026-02-25 11:29:55
@misc{9208090,
abstract = {{The structure-agency debate in the social sciences is pervasive in policymaking; in recent policy paradigms and in their consequent macro-level policies. The present study attempts to study how in the latest two policy paradigms, neoliberalism and social investment respectively, the structure-agency debate has undergone changes in Swedish Government Official Reports, which investigate the integration of newcomers. These changes are suspected of affecting street-level bureaucrats and their prospective clients on a micro-level. It does this by presenting three research questions, two of which are descriptive and investigate the extent of agency phrases and structure phrases in the study’s nine analyzed reports, dated from 2003 to 2024 (N=9). The study’s longitudinal research design allows it to conduct a quantitative content analysis over the indicated time-span. Operationalization of the study’s two dependent variables - agency and structure - is done using lexical and theoretical definitions, which allows the quantification of phrases containing these two variables in the analyzed reports. In the study’s third research question, a correlation showing how the two dependent variables might be connected to welfare state transformations throughout the indicated time-span is suspected. In light of the study’s theoretical framework, which uses Mills’ The Sociological Imagination and the Mertonian and Portesian frameworks of unanticipated consequences, as well as the existing literature, the study sets out to test three hypotheses that are related to the study’s research questions. It finds that 60.61% of the counted phrases used in the nine analyzed reports are agency-related, whereas 39.39% are structure-related. Correlation analysis using Spearman’s Rho shows that the usage of structural phrases has decreased over time, with a negative correlation of -0.733 (p < 0.05). This poses the question of whether an overabundant emphasis on personal agency risks aggravating future social problems and potentially endangering the social work profession’s discretionary abilities.}},
author = {{Gafor, Pavel}},
language = {{eng}},
note = {{Student Paper}},
title = {{Street-level Bureaucrats and Macro-Level Policies - The Structure-Agency Debate and the Integration of Newcomers}},
year = {{2025}},
}