ABSTRACT
Introduction Vulnerable citizens are increasingly supported, treated and regulated in the community, in normal housing and in neighbourhoods. Inclusion and normal life in the community are also often an individual’s first priority and wish (Sayce 2000; Davidson et al. 2001; Padfield and Maruna 2006). This “return to the community” has been due to the major deinstitutionalisation process launched in the Western world during recent decades, which has resulted in a reduction in institutional services and an increase in home-and community-based services: a shift of professional support and control from institutions to the community. The transformation process is supported by human rights (a move from institutionalprofessional control to increasing self-determination and self-management), cost saving and recovery arguments (Fakhoury and Priebe 2002; Priebe et al. 2005; Ramon 2008; Davidson et al. 2010). Those citizens who experience severe mental difficulties and those who have to deal with the criminal justice system are among the most vulnerable and stigmatised people in our society (Hartwell 2004). They commonly face great challenges in the re-entry process from institutional care or prison to the community due to the common and complex concurrence of substance abuse, mental difficulties, unemployment, homelessness and discrimination (Sayce 2000, 2003; Hartwell 2004; Serin et al. 2010: 62; Rowe and Baranoski 2011). As Turner (2012: 322) states, “the prisoner is often determined as the ‘other’ and at a distance, metaphorical as well as physical, from the citizen majority”. Isolation, (self-)stigmatisation, poverty, loneliness and a lack of fitting education and work are common experiences among vulnerable citizens. They do not easily experience belonging and membership in the community (Amado et al. 2013: 360; Turner 2012). Full citizenship and life in the community is thus a struggle for vulnerable citizens, and requires resilience and resistance against discrimination and social exclusion (Sayce 2000; Mezzina et al. 2006a; Rowe and Baranoski 2011; Ponce et al. 2012; Hamer et al. 2014). This hardship of living in the community highlights the need for adequate community-based support and treatment services (Davidson et al. 2001; Serin et al. 2010: 62). For example, a home visit is often a preferred community-based
working technique to enhance vulnerable citizens’ everyday life in “normal” settings such as homes, public venues and social events. Also, different representatives from prison, probation, police, (mental) health and social services, together with the client, are expected to plan, coordinate and implement the provision and delivery of a range of services and programmes to support citizens’ successful return from the institutional setting to the communal one (Frazier et al. 2015). Successful return to the community is linked in political, academic and professional discussions to active citizenship and participation (e.g. Turner 2012). Living in the community is seen to require active membership in local networks in work, study and leisure (Rose 1996). Active citizenship and participation thus implies an ideal and recovered individual. In this chapter, we scrutinise how the discourse of active citizenship is reflected and resisted in client-worker interaction in mental health home visits and in prison pre-release conferences. By a close analysis of the data, we demonstrate how workers construct clients as active and responsible members of the community and how clients contribute to or resist this making of an active citizen. Making active citizens is shown to be based on the specific working techniques: (1) planning, (2) questioning, (3) going along, (4) coaching and (5) networking. Before the data examples, we introduce active citizenship discourse and how it interprets participation, recovery and risk related to the idea of the “return to the community”. Both enabling and coercive meanings embedded in the discourse are described. It is discussed especially how the discourse constructs division between an “active citizen” and a “non-active citizen” and thus justifies the workers’ efforts to strengthen and govern clients’ abilities to be active members of the community. We argue that citizens – especially those who confront the task of re-entering the community from institutional care and control settings – are governed by the requirement to become active and responsible members of the community.
