Social work and neoliberalism: the Trondheim papers

Abstract

In November 2018, The Guardian newspaper reported that vulnerable children were being ‘treated like cattle’ since many councils, responsible for their care, were inviting private companies to compete for contracts to look after them through an online bidding system (Greenfield & Marsh, 2018, p. 5). This online tendering process was associated with one council publishing adverts including the personal details of children: dates of birth, family histories and even accounts of sexual abuse. The same newspaper later revealed that around three-quarters of English children’s homes are now run for profit. More fundamentally, confided an editorial column, local councils, having to deal with the crisis generated by a lack of adequate funding from central government are having to reinvent themselves as shoppers ‘seeking a bargain’ (The Guardian, 13 November, 2018). Within this framework, social work values dissolve and children become mere commodities to be traded. Perhaps the UK reflects more pervasive international trends, with this instance helping to illuminate some of the focal concerns and preoccupations in this themed issue. Reflecting on neoliberalism’s dominance, social activity and exchange become ‘judged on their degree of conformity to market culture’ with ‘business thinking migrating to all social activities’ (Holborow, 2015, pp. 34– 35). More theoretically, building on Foucault’s analysis, Brown (2015, p. 10) maintains that neoliberalism ‘transmogrifies every human domain and endeavour, along with humans themselves according to a specific image of the economic. All conduct is economic conduct; all spheres of existence are framed and measured in economic terms and metrics’. However, in recent years, neoliberalism has become a contested term across a range of academic disciplines (Dunn, 2017). Indeed, as core concept, it has been suggested to have ‘failed analytically’ and to be ‘hopelessly confused’ (Mair in Venkatesan, Laidlaw, Eriksen, Mair, & Martin, 2015, p. 917). Some commentators even assert that the term constitutes an obstacle and should simply be dropped (Laidlaw in Venkatesan et al., 2015). More recently, it has been suggested that that neoliberalism is in ruins. According to Nancy Fraser, as a ‘hegemonic project, neoliberalism is finished; it may retain its capacity to dominate, but it has lost its ability to persuade’ (in Fraser & Jaeggi, 2018, p. 222). Certainly the articles in this issue suggest that neoliberalism – able to ‘persuade’ or not – continues to adversely impact on social work. Moreover, as revealed in the scathing report by the United Nations (UN) Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, the UK furnishes a paradigmatic example of how mass impoverishment is now found in even in the most prosperous parts of Western Europe: