Frontline discretion from a Bourdieu-inspired field perspective: an ethnographic case study of a Norwegian activation measure for sick-listed employees

ABSTRACT Frontline work is increasingly undertaken in multi-stakeholder settings, indicating a need to revisit issues of frontline discretion. This ethnographic case study, based on an activation measure for sick-listed employees in Norway, applies a Bourdieu-inspired field analysis of frontline discretion. We approach frontline discretion in the Norwegian Labour and Welfare Administration (NAV) as comprised by ‘position-takings’ in an available space of possibilities in the field of work reintegration. A key feature of this field is that stakeholders employ opposing forms of capital: the NAV caseworker employs activation capital; sick-listed employees use individual or client capital; client employers draw on economic capital; and the clients’ general practitioners employ medical expertise capital. We find that NAV caseworkers undertake three specific position-takings in manoeuvring the other forms of stakeholder capital: nudging and negotiating with and between stakeholders; legitimising NAV’s interests and demands; and making other stakeholders accountable. Notably, frontline discretion is constituted in the configuration of the forms of stakeholder capital, including that of their own organisation, which requires administration and compromises between them. Our theoretical contribution is that an administrative form of capital becomes symbolic, potentially incorporating frontline workers’ future professional habitus.