Insights from the Frontline of German Welfare Policy: The Under-Recognised Role of Brokerage in Street-Level Practice

Abstract

This article argues that immigrants’ distinctive and obstacle-filled experiences of claiming social minimum benefits in Germany, despite their legal entitlements, have opened a space for a role that has been under-studied in street-level scholarship: the role of welfare brokerage by non-profit street-level organisations (SLOs). Based on 103 qualitative interviews with representatives of such nongovernmental welfare advisory organisations, supplemented by interviews with intra-EU migrants and social administrators receiving mediation services, this article examines how resources matter when social bureaucrats and foreign claimants meet at street level, how this might produce exclusion, and what types of strategies brokers use to bridge resource constraints at the street level (horizontal brokerage), an under-recognised function compared to their more visible political advocacy work (vertical brokerage).