How Social Policy Is (Not) Created: An Ethnography of Social Work in A Serbian Town

This article explores how social policy is created through the everyday labor of social workers in a Serbian town, challenging assumptions about the absence of the state in post‐socialist welfare regimes. Drawing on rich ethnographic material, I argue that social policy is not merely implemented or absent, but actively constituted through the moral, bureaucratic, and relational work of frontline professionals. Rather than viewing the state as absent or dysfunctional, this ethnography reveals its presence as fragmented, negotiated, and affectively charged. Through the lens of double‐embeddedness, social workers’ simultaneous entanglement in institutional structures and community networks, I show how social workers navigate both bureaucratic expectations and community obligations that produce social policy. By situating social work within broader debates in the anthropology of the state and policy, the article contributes an understanding of the way in which governance is lived and shaped in the post‐Yugoslav context.