Contesting Neoliberal Reform of Statutory Social Work in Switzerland and England: Discretionary Spaces, Collective Resistance and Ethico-Political Professionalism

Abstract

Abstract This article reports findings from a qualitative study of the impacts of, and practitioner responses to, neoliberal social work reforms in Switzerland and England. The article highlights commonalities, and contrasts, in how neoliberalism has restructured social work across the two jurisdictions. Social workers responded to neoliberalisation in a variety of ways, often through adaptation but sometimes by challenging reforms. This resistance primarily involved individualised forms of agency promoting social justice in practice, such as carving out discretionary spaces within casework. However, in Switzerland, collective agency also emerged in the form of anti-cuts campaigning alongside service users. The literature tends to counterpose these micro and macro levels of agency, theorising discretion and resistance to the contradictions and value tensions generated by neoliberal reform as largely a product of practitioners’ individual ethical dispositions. However, we argue that enduring legacies of social justice values and relationship-based practices within social work institutions are also relevant in shaping how social workers navigate reforms. These enduring features offer institutional and normative resources of solidarity which can strengthen the possibilities for practitioner agency, at both individual and collective levels, to resist neoliberal reconfigurations and promote more liberatory and transformative forms of practice. We call this orientation ‘ethico-political professionalism’.