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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.
This discussion examines the complexity of the social work profession in the neoliberal era. Government austerity policies and a market and corporate neoliberal state have effectively trapped social work in an ideology that increasingly furthers the authoritarian nature of the profession. This will be discussed by looking at the broader policy, political and economic contexts. It will focus in detail on one specific Conservative government policy document, namely, ‘Regulating social workers’ (DoE and DH, 2016).
This article addresses the paucity of social work political biographies by suggesting a novel approach of combining constructivist grounded theory and biographical inquiry methodologies as a recommended way of exploring the neglected field of social work political biographies. Both approaches have their roots in the democratic turn in social sciences research in the 1960s, which should increase their appeal to radical social work researchers. Political biographies of social workers are increasingly important at a time of neoliberal hegemony and the desire to see more social work politicians (). It is hoped that the article will help to generate further interest in the neglected field of social work political biographies and encourage other researchers to engage with this field.
The foodbank symbolises a changing landscape of social insecurity and welfare conditionality. Attending to decision making within the foodbank system, this article argues that foodbanks, and their referral-system creates a bureaucratic ‘moral maze’ identifying people as ‘deserving’ or ‘undeserving’ of help. Maintaining a moral distance, organised religious foodbanks are reliant upon a complex outsourcing of moral decisions and walk a fine balance between supply (donations) and demand (use). Within this article, we argue that the foodbank landscape is akin to navigating a moral maze, and that this creates, and justifies decisions of deservingness.
