The affective organisation of social infrastructures

Recent discussions of social infrastructures provide rich insights into the ways health and social care organisations deliver services in the care economy and the value and impact of these services. Social infrastructures are regarded both as means of providing social support, particularly in disadvantaged communities, and as outcomes of this support in that effective social care is known to promote social cohesion. This suggests that services may themselves function as social infrastructure, although the circumstances in which this occurs are far from clear. Indeed, little is known about the ways human services contribute to the organisation, maintenance or repair of social infrastructures, or how service users contribute to these activities. This article adds to these discussions by indicating how service delivery facilitates the material and affective organisation of social infrastructures with a focus on the role of formal and informal labour. I ground this discussion in analysis of qualitative data collected within housing assistance, community mental health and substance use treatment services in New South Wales, Victoria and Tasmania. My findings identify links between the formal work of case-management, in which support is oriented towards the goals of recovery and inclusion, and the largely informal labour of a growing peer workforce that promotes relations of community belonging and attachment. Taken together, these activities connect sites of service delivery with practices of social inclusion in the work of maintaining and repairing social infrastructures capable of sustaining common lives.