‘I have carte blanche to solve things’: The fiery soul bureaucrat and the exercise of authority towards ‘newly arrived refugees’

Abstract This article examines how municipal ‘integration workers’ in Denmark indirectly partake in effectuating the country’s restrictive immigration and integration policies. It draws on Dean’s notion of authoritarian governmentality, Rothberg’s concept of the implicated subject, and interviews with thirty integration workers from six Danish municipalities which identify the interventions and the complex integration practices that transpire locally. The article contributes to the literature by introducing the integration worker as a fiery soul bureaucrat and teasing out three forms of authority they use to legitimize their role in authoritarian government: first, as an administrative authority who invokes political orders and reinforces the restrictions and sanctions; second, as a practical authority who uses their skills and experience to seek social order; and, finally, as a personal authority with personal agency and fiery soul qualities that assume an ethical order. It is concluded that the fiery soul bureaucrat interlocks the oppression of ‘integration’ by strengthening the restraining policies and making space for socializing and caring practices as well as themselves as the organizing agent, and it is considered what the socializing and fiery soul practices mean within authoritarian policy regimes.