The importance of discretion for welfare services to minorities: Examining workload and anti-immigration attitudes.

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Abstract

Increasingly diverse societies result in more complex situations for bureaucrats in their client interactions in welfare organizations. This study explores the relation between perceived workload, anti-immigration attitudes, perceived discretion, and perceived difficulty in working with migrants. The paper examines the function of perceived discretion as moderator or mediator variable in this constellation. The relations are examined by using structural equation modeling based on a survey among Swedish welfare bureaucrats (N = 1,319). The results show that heavier perceived workload increased the likelihood of experiencing work with migrants as difficult and that greater perceived discretion decreased the likelihood of experiencing work with migrants as difficult. The results suggest that perceived discretion functions as a mediator for the relation between perceived workload and difficulty in work with migrants; potentially functioning as a ‘buffer’ for organizational pressure. We also found that bureaucrats who hold negative attitudes toward migrants were more likely to express their work with migrants as more difficult. This paper contributes by increasing our knowledge on how discretion has significance in relation to when bureaucrat’s behavior is determined by specific organizational and personal factors.

Authors

• Carolin Schütze, Lund University

• Hakan Johansson, Lund University