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The transformation of family solidarity through basic social services in Spain This article analyzes how the daily practice in social services frames new forms of family solidarity, taking into account a broader context of individualization of family relations and of socioeconomic transformation. The case study is based on 17 interviews and 8 focus groups with social workers who deliver public social assistance in the city of Tarragona. Institutional action in Spain assumes that the extended family should be responsible for supporting low-income households. Nevertheless, the extension and intensity of the recent economic crisis has brought to light that these social policies can be ineffective and also undermine family networks. Although economic familism is still dominant in social services, it coexists with other emerging practices. Social workers may try to help clients to connect with the extended family to benefit from affective support and sometimes the exchange of favors (relational familism). Furthermore, social services might act against situations in which the autonomy and well-being of clients is at risk because they depend economically on family members (contrafamilism). This article concludes that social services at the local level could be partly framed as a type of institutional capital for low-income households to establish fair and quality relations with their family and communitarian environment. Moreover, this type of public action should be accompanied by a guaranteed minimum income.

This case study analyses some of the processes that are restructuring public social assistance in the inequality regime that emerges from the recent economic recession in Spain. It shows how social workers turn what could be an inefficient public program into an active social policy through a cognitive, normative and emotional approach. A highly qualified and vocational workforce compensates meagre institutional support and lack of opportunities by instilling in the new poor new knowledge, abilities and attitudes to access basic informal resources from the local context. However, social workers’ agency could eventually contribute to confine clients within the material and symbolic limits of an expanding grey zone with scarce opportunities and diminished well-being, between inclusion and exclusion. This research is based on semi-structured interviews (17) and focus groups (8).

Este artículo analiza algunas de las ineficacias y deformaciones que pueden producirse en el sistema de bienestar español. Es un estudio de caso de los servicios sociales de Atención Social  Primaria en la ciudad de Tarragona  durante la reciente crisis económica. A partir de las 12 entrevistas en profundidad a personas usuarias, se identifican sus experiencias de injusticia y privación de los derechos sociales. El análisis vincula estas experiencias constrictivas con las condiciones organizativas de los servicios sociales básicos. Los resultados exponen que la falta e inadecuación de recursos en los servicios sociales de Atención Social Primaria han favorecido unos mecanismos discriminatorios en la selección de personas beneficiarias, así como unos desajustes en la implementación de prestaciones y servicios.De esta forma, la gestión de la pobreza que realizan los servicios sociales básicos puede penalizar la población empobrecida de forma ineficaz, injusta y dolorosa. Finalmente, el artículo plantea algunas recomendaciones para que los servicios sociales básicos sean más eficaces en la consecución de sus objetivos de bienestar y justicia sociales.