The political identity of social workers in neoliberal times

Abstract

Neoliberalism has achieved a hegemonic position within social work, with consecutive governments extending the role of the market in welfare provision. This article explores these developments from the perspective of the political identity of 14 qualified social workers who are members of one of the UK’s parliaments and councils, as well as engaged in political activism. It delineates the development of their social reformist political identity from their earliest days and considers the impact of facing the neoliberal dilemma in social work. The participants engaged in biographical interviews that traced the development of their political identity throughout their life course to date. The findings include: how embeddedness in politically engaged families forged strong political identities; how the skills acquired in social work were extremely useful in their political careers; and how the participants have managed to maintain a strong social work identity and resisted neoliberal austerity measures in their political careers.

Social workers in politics–a qualitative analysis of factors influencing social workers’ decision to run for political office

“…Similar results have also been reported by preceding studies on the political engagement of social workers (e.g. Gwilym, 2017). Furthermore, the results of this study show that university lecturers who are politically active themselves also aroused the political interest of some of the respondents in the first place.…”

“…The results show how most respondents decided to transform their passive party membership into an active party-political involvement (running for and holding political office) because of their professional experience as social workers. As also reported in the study of Gwilym (2017) and McLaughlin et al (2019), they often recognized that service users' problems cannot be adequately addressed within the context of individual case work and have therefore decided to run for political office to help changing structures, not people.…”

“…Subsequent studies have used qualitative research methods. Gwilym (2017) interviewed fourteen social workers who are members of one of the UK's parliaments and councils or who are politically active to explore their political identity. The findings of his research show that being embedded in politically engaged families as well as early experiences, e.g.…”

“…In summary, there is little international academic work to date that addresses the electoral participation of social workers. In Europe in particular, only one study has been conducted on this topic (Gwilym, 2017). Our article addresses this research gap and aims to contribute to the developing research efforts in this field by applying the following two research questions: (1) What factors influence the decision of social workers to run for political office?…”

Strategien parteipolitischen Engagements von Fachpersonen der Sozialen Arbeit

“…Die empirische Auseinandersetzung wurde von Shannon Lane (2008Lane ( , 2011 im Rahmen ihres quantitativ angelegten Promotionsprojekts in den USA initiiert (siehe auch Lane & Humphreys, 2011. Ergänzende Studien mit qualitativem Forschungszugang liegen aus Großbritannien (Gwilym, 2017), Kanada (Greco, 2020;McLaughlin et al, 2019) und der Schweiz (Amann 2017, Amann & Kindler 2022 vor.…”