The politics of insufficiency: ambivalence and boundary work in the co-production of welfare services

In the public and scientific discourse on welfare innovation and new public governance, community coproduction is thought to combine the best elements of the public and voluntary sectors, hence creating better and more efficient responses to social need. However, coproduction also blurs sectoral boundaries, potentially mixing incompatible practices, values and goals. In this paper, we investigate how volunteers and public sector employees experience and handle the coproduction ambivalence that results from cross-sector incompatibility. The paper is based on interviews and ethnographic fieldwork on welfare coproduction among managers, employees and volunteers in a large Danish municipality.