“We need another form of dialogue” : A qualitative case study of civil servants’ experiences of organizing citizen dialogues in socio-economic vulnerable neighborhoods in Sweden

Sammanfattning: With the widening socio-economic gap and growing social exclusion in the global north as a backdrop, this study seeks to address the topic of citizen participation in the context of socio-economic inequality by contributing to a deeper understanding of the relatively unexplored perspective of the civil servant organizing and facilitating citizen dialogues. The aim of the study is to describe the lived experiences of civil servant citizen dialogue facilitators/organizers in three Swedish municipalities regarding the implementation of “citizen dialogue on complex issues” in socio-economic vulnerable neighborhoods. Through semi-structured interviews, a focus group discussion and a supplementing document analysis, their perceptions of aim and outcomes, their own position/role, and the type of communication taking place between dialogue participants are explored and analyzed using Bickford’s “political listening”, Freire’s “theory of dialogical action” and Quarry and Ramírez’s “champions in context”. In this way, the study aims to contribute new empirical data to the field of citizen participation in socio-economic vulnerable neighborhoods in Sweden.The results demonstrate how the civil servants challenged the municipality to try a more participatory dialogue form by avoiding “banking” style communication, enabling “reflection” and explicitly considering how to “power equalize”. However, focus on the form and on non-polemic joint problem solving overshadowed their reflections on the aim and placed any conflict line outside the dialogue, not fully addressing inherent struggles arising from socio-economic inequality. Furthermore, the study suggests a re-think of the “neutral” facilitator concept since it might obscure power relations, as well as highlights the risk of leaving deeper social justice issues unaddressed as frustrations manifested in the dialogue are affected by structures beyond the local municipality and don’t always lead to “action”.