Talkin’ Bout iGeneration: A New Era of Individualistic Social Work Practice?

Abstract

<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title> <jats:p>This article considers the impact of generational changes on the new cohort of social work students most of whom were born post-1995, and therefore belong to ‘iGeneration’ (iGen).</jats:p> <jats:p>This article is especially concerned with the finding that the generation before iGen is more right-wing authoritarian than all post-war generations and what this might mean for the future of social work should that trajectory continue. A study was undertaken to examine the attitudes of 122 iGen students in first-year university course in Scotland. Results show that mean attitudinal measures were right-wing authoritarian in relation to crime and punishment and to unemployed people. Social work students aligned more in their attitudes with their primary education colleagues and less with their less authoritarian community education colleagues, and, overall, the iGen cohort was significantly more right-wing authoritarian than their older colleagues. In essence, there was evidence to suggest that an individualistic, self-sufficiency neoliberal narrative had been quite profoundly internalised by the iGen cohort of students. Implications of a new individualistic practice are considered, and suggestions for social work education programmes are made.</jats:p>

Radical challenges for social work education

“…It is my passionate belief that a radical approach to social work education is needed now more than ever. My own research suggests that our current generation of students appears to have internalised a neoliberal narrative of individualisation and personal blame (Fenton, 2019a). Adopting the position that a service user is solely responsible for the difficult circumstances they find themselves in, and thus responding with behavioural or 'correctional' solutions is simply not doing social work.…”

“…I have highlighted this because it appears to echo Nancy Fraser's ongoing concern that attention to issues of 'recognition' (identity features such as race and gender) as a source of injustice have eclipsed attention to economic matters such as poverty (distribution) (Fraser, 2003). My own and others' research (Fenton, 2019a;Grasso et al, 2017;Twenge, 2018 for example) has also highlighted that the current generation of students are much better at thinking about diversity and are more tolerant than previous generations, but are more punitive in terms of poverty, unemployment and economic hardship. This makes the dearth of class or poverty based analyses concerning.…”

‘You Can’t Say That!’: Critical Thinking, Identity Politics, and the Social Work Academy

“…Yet, there is evidence to suggest that social work has lost further ground in achieving the balance between recognition and redistribution. Fenton [63], for example, found that the newest generation of social work students appear to have internalised a neoliberal ethos of individualism-recognising individual 'rights' to identity while expressing punitive attitudes to the poor, unemployed and 'undeserving'.…”

“…In summary, contemporary society confronts us with disincentives to good thinking, including increasing regulation, standardisation, and the pressure not to offend imposed by the rise of particular identity group orthodoxies, which foreground the interests of particular groupings and contribute to a closing down of debate on key areas of relevance to social work. These disincentives may be felt particularly acutely in the field of social work due to increasing regulation and traits in the new generation of social workers, including weak critical thinking skills, weak assertiveness skills, and a desire to protect people from offence as paramount [63].…”

‘Four’s a Crowd’? Making Sense of Neoliberalism, Ethical Stress, Moral Courage and Resilience

“…The 'undeserving' service user is most easily subjected to those simple, blaming attitudes (Fenton, 2019). As Storr (2017, 330) says:…”