Bureaucratic Hustling and Knowledge Shuffling – Informality within Swiss Public Administration

Abstract

States retain (socio-political) tools to govern the lives of their population and beyond. Such governing takes place in various offices, where frontline staff need to implement policies that are created at higher levels of the administrative and political hierarchy. This chapter proposes an in-depth view on work that is being done in Swiss resident registration offices, through an ethnographic lens. Following caseworkers in their daily work routines over an extended period allowed me to trace their practices and (in)formal approaches to their work. This chapter delves into longer field note extracts that allow for deeper contextuality. Two key themes that will be engaged with, hustling and shuffling, explore the presence of informality and the consequences that such informal practices have for institutional functioning. First, insights show that a high workload combined with a lack of resources, creates an air of hustling that pushes frontline staff to make up for shortcomings in resources by inventing new and more efficient ways to implement their work. Hustling goes beyond individual coping mechanisms; often embedded in collective routines and practices that are, however, not codified. Second, given the high amount of information, policies and laws frontline workers need to be familiar with, they shuffle around with knowledge and devise productive ways to communicate with each other while remaining able to process cases. As such, informality is neither the opposite to formality nor simply uncodified but can range from spontaneous solutions to established sets of practice that blur the boundary between formal and informal.

Citation

Borrelli, L.M. (2024), "Bureaucratic Hustling and Knowledge Shuffling – Informality within Swiss Public Administration", Garner-Knapp, L., Mason, J., Mulherin, T. and Visser, E.L. (Ed.) Informality in Policymaking: Weaving the Threads of Everyday Policy Work, Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 67-80. https://doi.org/10.1108/978-1-83797-280-720241005