The precarious helping hand – a systematic review of precarity faced by social workers

Abstract

Precarity as an academic concept started with researching the working-class in marginal positions (e.g., construction workers). It extended its focus to ontological insecurity and skilled workers such as journalists. The problematic working conditions featured by insufficient funding and overloads by the social work (SW) profession have been one type of skilled work under the threat of precarization. Yet, there is insufficient dialogue between the two concepts. Studies (n = 14) were selected by searching through five social science databases using the search terms combination of “precarity” OR “precarization” OR “precariousness” AND “social work” OR “social worker”. Findings suggest a large 61-item precarity occurred to the SW profession, such as job insecurity and alienation from professional roles, across the dimensions of contextual factors driven precarity, employment conditions, job content, skill reproduction, and outcomes on client relationships. This review shows that four sub-groups of SWs face deeper precarity: those employed in private settings, younger SWs, SW placement students, and bilingual SWs. SW educators are also found to be in a precarious position, threatening the skill reproduction of the industry. The review summarizes that SW precarization has been seriously understudied, and therefore we recommend that more research, with multiple types of data and longitudinal design, in Asian and African regions, should be conducted by adopting the theoretical lenses of lived experience and collection of multiple types of data with a longitudinal perspective taken into account.