Bureaucrat and the Poor

Welfare offices usually attract negative descriptions of bureaucracy with their queues, routines, and impersonal nature. Are they anonymous bureaucratic machines or the locus of neutral service relationships? Through showing how people experience state public administration, "The Bureaucrat and the Poor" provides a realistic view of French welfare policies, institutions and reforms and, in doing so, dispels both of these myths. Using Goffman's framework to demonstrate the complex relationship between welfare agents, torn between their institutional role and their personal feelings, and welfare claimants, this research analyses the face-to-face encounters that occur. Through placing these relationship within the broader context of social structures and class, race and gender relationships, the reader will understand both the social determinations of interpersonal bureaucratic relationships and their social functions. Increasing numbers of welfare claimants, coupled with mass unemployment, family transformations and the so-called 'integration problem' of migrants into French society deeply affect these encounters. Staff manage tense situations with no additional resources - some become personally involved, while others stick to their bureaucratic role; most of them alternate between involvement and detachment, assistance and domination. Welfare offices are now, more than ever, a place for 're-socialisation', where people can talk about their personal problems and ask for advice. On the other hand, bureaucratic encounters are increasingly violent, symbolically if not physically, and are often used as a means of regulating the poor.