Pandemic and Social Work in Chile: Precarity, Precariousness and the Quest for Resistance in an Uncertain World

Abstract

Abstract In Chile, the Covid-19 pandemic overlapped with a socio-political crisis that arose in response to the neoliberal model imposed during Pinochet’s dictatorship. Social workers have been key to addressing the multiple vulnerabilities the population has faced during the political uprising and pandemic. From a critical perspective that analyses precarity, precariousness and resistance as a continuum, this article examines SWs’ employment and intervention conditions during the pandemic and the resistances that have emerged in this context. Drawing upon a mixed sequential study that included an online survey (N = 872) and forty-two semi-structured (online) interviews, we identified that precarity and precariousness affecting professional interventions have persisted. However, findings indicate that (i) younger and less educated frontline SWs were most affected by worsening employment conditions; (ii) the shift towards tele-intervention has not only led to transformations in professional roles but also in the emergence of new surveillance mechanisms and (iii) new types of professional resistances emerged that have been identified as individual and spontaneous but nevertheless explicit in nature. We conclude that the pandemic and the on-going political crisis present social work with an opportunity to advocate for dignified working conditions as well as changing the historical subordinate position of the profession.