Exploring parents’ repertoire of everyday resistance in child welfare services — Towards a power-sensitive understanding of resistance

Tension between help and control is characteristic of many welfare services. Although resistance is a common reaction to control, it has received less attention in the social sciences than does power. This paper draws on the concept of everyday resistance to empirically and theoretically study how parents in contact with the Norwegian child welfare service (CWS) resist the well-meaning power of the service. The analysis demonstrates that parents in contact with the service draw on a vast repertoire of everyday resistance: avoidance, the involvement of persons outside the service, constructive resistance, objection and pretending to accommodate. Parents’ resistance and the contexts in which it occurs reveal that relationships between child welfare workers (CWWs) and parents are not simply straightforward power dynamics in which all parents are equally subordinate to the service. Rather, these relationships are fluid, evolve over time, and are shaped by both material conditions and discursive frameworks—factors that are closely tied to the parents’ class background. Recognising resistance as a natural phenomenon within child welfare services (CWS) is a crucial first step toward becoming more attuned to everyday acts of resistance, particularly subtle acts, which marginalised families more often play out. By listening closely to parents’ resistance, we recognise them as knowledgeable subjects whose insights can contribute to more reflexive and sensitive services.