Contextualizing social workers’ problem-solving strategies: Fostering personal emancipation and enhancing employability in clients’ activation trajectories

ABSTRACT

Contemporary welfare policies emphasise activation of those outside the labour market. Research has criticised the rationales underpinning activation processes – highlighting client responsibilities – as a threat to the emancipatory aim of social work. Studies also have established that social workers have ethical reservations when exercising activation practices. Yet, we lack knowledge about the interrelationship between the policy rationales of activation processes and the emancipatory mandate of social work as clients encounter them in street-level practice. This article investigates how policy rationales and social work’s emancipatory aims impose requirements on clients throughout activation processes. Data consists of case-files for 16 clients over 1,5 years and interviews with the clients’ social workers. Utilising Foucault’s concept of governmentality, the study distinguishes three discourses that combine to create individualised problem-solving strategies, highlighting both clients’ personal challenges and responsibilities in enhancing their employability. The results posit a need for re-actualising problem-solving strategies in social work, which can integrate the contextual dynamics that contribute to clients’ situations and thus can facilitate labour-market entry.

KEYWORDS:

• Activation
• emancipatory aims
• governmentality
• employability
• welfare services

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.