Unfolding the Broader Trust Landscape of Institutional Encounters Between Forced Migrants and the Welfare States of Finland and Sweden: The Role of Third-Party Actors

This article investigates the broader landscape of trust in institutional encounters between forced migrants and the welfare state. It foregrounds different actors who are positioned at differing proximities to the actual encounter and have more direct and indirect influence on the street-level bureaucratic process. The paper advances the need to study the ambiguous role of third-party actors in order to understand the broader trust landscape beyond the dyadic service user and street-level bureaucrat (dis)trusting relations. Empirically, the analysis draws on fieldwork conducted in Finland and Sweden, building on 24 interviews with street-level bureaucrats in two key sectors of integration work—employment and social service institutions—and 27 interviews with forced migration background service users. The analysis shows how actors outside the core institutional encounter function in different ways as enablers and preventers of trust, and thereby ultimately reinforce or counteract structural disadvantage in a forced migration setting. Hence, they influence service users’ and street-level bureaucrats‘ trusting relations and consequently how service users are included in bureaucratic processes that support their integration.