Jydebjerg, Camilla

In my presentation, I investigate how social law, as it is practiced in a Danish municipality, allows gendered bodies to be and become. Law has material consequences for the people encountering it. In order for a problem to exist legally, it must be recognized as legal, which means that the socio-materiality of the person encountering the law must be articulated into a legal framework of understanding (Olsen et al 2016). My interest particularly lies in the way that discretionary powers opens up for a creative potential that makes the process of law-making never ending. This means that laws does not really become the law before they meet practice. It also leaves a space for professional agency, responsibility and obligation. Exploring “the discursive, sensory, affective and material aspects” of law, I investigate how caseworkers utilize this space in practice and how this matters for the people encountering the law (Coffey and Ringrose 2016:176). I have a particular interest on if creative, diffractive and affirmative readings of the law can open up for possibilities of law’s agency to participate in creating ‘more liveable worlds’ for the bodies it encounters (Haraway, 1994:60). The empirical material analyzed to investigate this includes written case materials, interviews and observations conducted in the municipality. Theoretically, I draw on Karen Barads agentic realism. I understand the legal meeting between caseworkers, people receiving assistance and the law as an onto-epistemological process in which some forms of socio-materiality can take shape within law, whilst others cannot (Barad, 2007)

Camilla Sabroe Jydebjerg is a lecturer at University College Absalon and a doctoral student at Roskilde University, Denmark. Camilla is doing research and teaching within the field of social law and administrative law. Her current research is concerned with social work and social assistance due to unemployment and health related issues. The research concerns how social workers and people receiving assistance negotiates the law when a case about assistance is being investigated and a decision made. As well as how this negotiation matters for the person receiving assistance and his or her being in the world. The theoretical foundations for her research is vulnerability theory, feminist legal theory, post-structuralism and new materialism.

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