Emotional capital in citizen agency: contesting administrative burden through anger

Abstract

Abstract The literature on administrative burden has focused on cognitive, material, and social resources, leaving emotional strategies and processes largely unexplored. This study begins to address this research gap by elaborating the concept of emotional capital in the context of citizen agency. The article uses the concept of emotional capital to analyze claimant anger in response to administrative burdens examining the question: how do citizens understand and maneuver the potential benefits and risks of expressing their anger when experiencing administrative burdens? The article is based on ethnographic fieldwork in Danish job centers involving interviews with seventy-one claimants and observations of ten conversations between caseworkers and claimants. The article contributes to theorize the role of emotions in citizen-state encounters by showing that emotional capital works as a resource moderating the experience of and coping with administrative burden.