Social work and neoliberalism: the Trondheim papers

In November 2018, The Guardian newspaper reported that vulnerable children were being ‘treated like cattle’ since many councils, responsible for their care, were inviting private companies to compete for contracts to look after them through an online bidding system (Greenfield & Marsh, 2018, p. 5). This online tendering process was associated with one council publishing adverts including the personal details of children: dates of birth, family histories and even accounts of sexual abuse. The same newspaper later revealed that around three-quarters of English children’s homes are now run for profit. More fundamentally, confided an editorial column, local councils, having to deal with the crisis generated by a lack of adequate funding from central government are having to reinvent themselves as shoppers ‘seeking a bargain’ (The Guardian, 13 November, 2018). Within this framework, social work values dissolve and children become mere commodities to be traded.

Perhaps the UK reflects more pervasive international trends, with this instance helping to illuminate some of the focal concerns and preoccupations in this themed issue. Reflecting on neoliberalism’s dominance, social activity and exchange become ‘judged on their degree of conformity to market culture’ with ‘business thinking migrating to all social activities’ (Holborow, 2015, pp. 34–35). More theoretically, building on Foucault’s analysis, Brown (2015, p. 10) maintains that neoliberalism ‘transmogrifies every human domain and endeavour, along with humans themselves according to a specific image of the economic. All conduct is economic conduct; all spheres of existence are framed and measured in economic terms and metrics’.

However, in recent years, neoliberalism has become a contested term across a range of academic disciplines (Dunn, 2017). Indeed, as core concept, it has been suggested to have ‘failed analytically’ and to be ‘hopelessly confused’ (Mair in Venkatesan, Laidlaw, Eriksen, Mair, & Martin, 2015, p. 917). Some commentators even assert that the term constitutes an obstacle and should simply be dropped (Laidlaw in Venkatesan et al., 2015). More recently, it has been suggested that that neoliberalism is in ruins. According to Nancy Fraser, as a ‘hegemonic project, neoliberalism is finished; it may retain its capacity to dominate, but it has lost its ability to persuade’ (in Fraser & Jaeggi, 2018, p. 222). Certainly the articles in this issue suggest that neoliberalism – able to ‘persuade’ or not – continues to adversely impact on social work.

Moreover, as revealed in the scathing report by the United Nations (UN) Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, the UK furnishes a paradigmatic example of how mass impoverishment is now found in even in the most prosperous parts of Western Europe:

14 million people, a fifth of the population, live in poverty. Four million of these are more than 50% below the poverty line, 1 and 1.5 million are destitute, unable to afford basic essentials. The widely respected Institute for Fiscal Studies predicts a 7% rise in child poverty between 2015 and 2022, and various sources predict child poverty rates of as high as 40%. For almost one in every two children to be poor in twenty-first century Britain is not just a disgrace, but a social calamity and an economic disaster, all rolled into one (Alston, 2018, p. 1).

In having regard to such statistics, it is now important to recall that the UK is the world’s fifth largest economy and that the hardship reported by the UN official is wholly avoidable and a direct consequence of a bundle of political and economic choices now governed by an encompassing neoliberal rationality. Furthermore, being in

employment does not magically overcome poverty. In-work poverty is increasingly common and almost 60% of those in poverty in the UK are in families where someone works. There are 2.8 million people living in poverty in families where all adults work full time. (Alston, 2018, p. 17; see also Dukelow & Kennett, 2018)

Readers of the UN report are presented with a striking tableau of a country in which there has been an

immense growth in foodbanks and the queues waiting outside them, the people sleeping rough in the streets, the growth of homelessness, the sense of deep despair that leads even the Government to appoint a Minister for suicide prevention and civil society to report in depth on unheard of levels of loneliness and isolation. (Alston, 2018, p. 1)

This is also an economic and social landscape in which the social work profession is charged with promoting the ‘empowerment and liberation of people’ with the principle of ‘social justice’ being foregrounded (International Federation of Social Workers, 2014; see also Hyslop, 2016, 2018).

Troubled by the inroads made by neoliberalism within social work, the idea for this themed issue was sparked by an international seminar taking place at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim in April 2016. A number of social educators and practitioners began to grapple with some of the difficulties confronting the profession. Indeed, Trondheim provided a welcoming and critically reflective foundational space for our ensuing project. In short, we envisioned a special themed issue as a forum to encourage contributions that would:

• Examine how neoliberal imperatives are continuing to impact on, and shape, social work as a disciplinary ‘field’;

• Draw on new empirical work to highlight how neoliberal imperatives are impacting on social work practices ‘on the ground’;

• Stimulate international debate on toxic impact of neoliberalism and social work;

• Prompt practitioners and educators to consider ways in which neoliberalism can be resisted.

This resulting themed issue of the EJSW brings together a rich array of authors from Europe, North and South America and Australasia. We are, of course, immensely grateful for their participation in our project. We recognise, however, that the issue does not include contributions from Africa and Asia and does not engage with relevant core concerns, such as forced migration and the coercive, neoliberal management of displaced populations (see Garrett, 2015), or the rise of the neo-Fascism. These and possibly other important matters are unfortunately beyond the scope of this issue. What, then, will readers find in the following pages?

In the first article, Paul Michael Garrett maintains that neoliberalism remains an analytically useful concept if social work educators and practitioners are prepared to try and define it, teasing out its complex meaning (see also Schram & Pavlovskaya, 2018). He suggests that those aiming to comprehend neoliberalism should take into account six intermeshed facets: the overturning of ‘embedded liberalism’; the re-configuration of the state in order to better serve the interests of capital; new patterns of income and wealth distribution to benefit the rich and super-rich; insecurity and precariousness; the rise in mass incarceration; a strategic pragmatism. In conclusion, Garrett, tentatively proposes that we may be witnessing the emergence, in some quarters, of what he terms ‘rhetorically recalibrated neoliberalism’ (RRN).

Next, located in Australia, Uschi Bay also dwells on theoretical questions related to neoliberalism. Drawing on the work of Foucault, she argues that neoliberalism constitutes a specific ‘art of government’ (see also Garrett, 2018). Central to this ‘art’ is the notion that individuals are governed through – in Foucauldian terms – technologies of self-responsibilisation and the freedom to choose. Social work practitioners can be perceived as part of ‘enabling’ networks assisting individuals who are considered self-excluded due to their irresponsible choices to work on themselves so as to constitute ‘entrepreneurial’ selves. However, this does not rule out forms of oppositional activities and forms of ‘counter conduct’.

Sweden was formerly something of a social democratic beacon with one of the most developed welfare states in the world. Nevertheless, retrogressive neoliberal transformations are occurring. In the next contribution, Jessica H. Jönsson usefully explores the impact of this development on social work. Crucially, she argues, that the traditional ‘solidary role’ fulfilled by practitioners is being undermined. Grounded in empirical work, the article points to the growing and widespread worry about ‘new’ professional roles and the neoliberal organisation of public social work. Importantly, it is argued that social workers are far from passive actors, but have the ability to craft their roles in order to foster solidarity amongst themselves and with those for whom they provide services.

Having ‘visited’ northern Europe, the fourth article takes readers to England and Spain with María Inés Martínez Herrero and Helen Charnley furnishing empirical research exploring social work educators’ understandings of, and strategies used in, learning and teaching human rights and social justice. Their findings show that prevailing neoliberal ideology has pervaded social work in both countries (more pervasively in England), placing pressure on social work educators to convey narrow understandings of human rights and social justice and to adopt bureaucratic and ‘distant relationships’ with students. Nevertheless, spaces remain for bolstering a human rights and social justice orientation (see also Fenton, 2018).

Our fifth article, is a collective contribution from Eunjung Lee and her colleagues located in Canada. It examines how governing forms of neoliberal rationality serve to generate the specific ways in which social workers interact with ‘clients’ in moment-to-moment interactions. This fascinating article is part of a more encompassing project exploring cross-cultural social work practice in outpatient community mental health settings in one particular city. In the sixth article, Anne Juberg and Nina Schiøll Skjefstad focus on how ‘substance misuse’ disorder and youth unemployment are discursively assembled in contemporary Norwegian policy documents. Their specific interest is the situation of young adults (18–30) who are not in employment, education and training (NEET) and who have problems with alcohol or other drugs. Three predominant discourses tend to be to the fore: a medicalisation discourse, a stigma discourse and one circulating around a social investment discourse. Significantly, all of these can be associated with the neoliberal tendency to individualise and medicalise ‘social problems’. However, there appears to be little evidence in epidemiology and other research that substance abuse determines the NEET status among young people. Neither is there any manifest evidence that problems with alcohol and drugs among young adults will, in the long run, negatively impact on their capacity to work. Nonetheless, the three identified discourses are still likely to perpetuate myth-making.

Remaining in northern Europe, Suvi Raitakari, Kirsi Juhila and Jenni-Mari Räsänen focus on Finland in order to analyse two state-level policy documents preoccupied with an ‘activation’ initiative called inclusive social security (ISS). The authors are interested in how social workers and clients are constructed as ‘responsible subjects’ within this documentation. Here, they argue that an advanced liberal mode of governmentality aims to strengthen citizens’ abilities to self-govern through various techniques including enmeshed elements of surveillance and ‘empowerment’. Enrique Pastor Seller and his colleagues next shift the focus to Spain revealing that neoliberal policies have led to sizable cuts in the public social welfare systems, prompting an increase in demand and unwarranted public hardship. The article summarises the glaringly adverse impact on families. Concerned by social services’ limited capacity to respond to this ongoing crisis, the General Council of Social Work carried out research illuminating the serious consequences that so-called ‘austerity’ measures have had on the population, social welfare systems and social workers.

For anyone wanting to comprehend the neoliberal project, the events in Chile are of major significance (see also Grugel & Riggirozzi, 2018). In an important article, Gianinna Muñoz Arce reminds readers that the right-wing dictatorship (1973–1990) implemented the first neoliberal ‘experiment’ in the world. More than 40 years after the coup, the legacy of the dictatorship continues to function as an obstacle to discussion and to the expression of critical perspectives in social work. The introduction of the Social Protection System in 2000 has served to embed depoliticised and individually oriented approaches within the profession. Despite this, practices of resistance to this apparent hegemonic order can still be identified (see also Ishkanian & Glasius, 2018).

In the more recent past, the Greek working class has been targeted for a ‘gigantic disciplining operation – a huge experiment in violent downward social mobility and neoliberal adjustment and restructuring’ (Stavrakakis, 2013, p. 315). In the tenth article of the issue, Maria Pentaraki and Konstantina Dionysopoulou refer to a qualitative study of mental health social workers working in the non-profit sector. Their findings evoke a picture of social workers experiencing precarious conditions as they also become part of the growing working poor. On occasions, many practitioners are even unable to pay for their commuting expenses to and from work.

Remaining in southern Europe, Cristina Pinto Albuquerque’s article dwells on the neoliberal induced transformation of social work in Portugal (see also Papadopoulos & Roumpakis, 2018). Potentially, can this development create a ‘phoenix’ ‘moment’ or is the profession destined to be enclaved in a ‘black hole’? In order to examine this question, the author investigates data derived from interviews with social workers. Florin Lazăr and his colleagues next explore the trajectory of the profession in Romania. The ruling Communist administration disbanded the profession in 1968, but it was reinstated after in 1989. Subsequently, social work has evolved within a neoliberal paradigm which has promoted both state withdrawal from welfare provision and individuals taking responsibility for their own welfare. Utilising a qualitative approach, the article explores how practitioners risk being left with little room for manoeuvre in creating more progressive forms of policy and practice.

In our penultimate article, Marcus Lauri investigates some of the ways in which neoliberalisation may be sustained by shaping social workers’ subjectivity so as to render them compliant with neoliberal endeavours. From interviews with social workers in Sweden, it is suggested that governing technologies aim to create practitioners lacking the capacity to stand ‘shoulder to shoulder’ with both co-workers and clients. Fittingly, the special issue concludes with an article from Edgar Marthinsen, the convenor of the Trondheim initiative, in which he focuses on the challenges facing social work. The author also furnishes an outline of the history of resistance in social work against neoliberalism and goes onto analyse the coupling of neoliberal policy and social investment policy (see also Laruffa, 2018).

We hope that you will welcome this special themed issue – Now read, organise and resist!