Language, Policy and Problemrepresentations: Analyzing Front-Line Workers' Talk on Minors Injecting Drugs in Sweden, Switzerland and Wales

A significant amount of research highlights the discrimination, stigma and exclusion facing people who use drugs in contemporary welfare practices across the world. This presentation shares findings from a cross-national study comparing welfare policy and practices aimed at legal minors injecting drugs. Focus group interviews are used to analyze how front-line workers in three high-income EU countries - Sweden, Switzerland and Wales – discuss the needs of and make assessments regarding interventions for minors who inject drugs.

Harm reduction (the prominent drug policy approach in Switzerland and Wales) is often rhetorically cast an emancipatory and inclusive approach to drug use and contrasted with a prohibitionist, exclusionary system (represented by Sweden). This paper set out to explore if and how the values embedded in distinct drug policy contexts and child protection systems appear in front line workers’ talk regarding children who inject drugs, and whether articulated values might be associated with differential institutional responses.

Our vignette-based comparative analysis reveals significant differences between countries regarding the perception of the problem and how it should be addressed. In Sweden, the focus was squarely on drug use and injecting, a behavior assessed as very serious and alarming, irrespective of the child’s social situation. Swiss front-line workers also focused on the minor’s drug use, but with a firm medicalized harm reduction approach guiding their needs assessments. In Wales, on the other hand, drug use was seen as secondary in all three cases, with social context and relational dimensions being at the forefront of discussions. These different perceptions were in turn linked to diverging institutional reactions across settings. Issues regarding communicative aspects of the research process will also be discussed.