Abstract
The relationship between the emergence of political populism and social work has not been well investigated. This article reports the results of research conducted by means of in-depth interviews and questionnaires on a sample of 90 social workers employed by municipalities governed by populist parties in Italy, where the phenomenon of xenophobic politics has recently grown to particularly worrying proportions. The article describes the effects of populist programmes on social work and highlights the different reactions of social workers in response to the new scenario.
Introduction
In recent years, the debate on changes in social work has concentrated mainly on the effects of globalization and on the reorganization of social services in neo-liberal terms (Dominelli, 2010). However, in many European countries the principles of the welfare state have been called into question by another phenomenon. Since the mid-1990s there has been a progressive growth of populist political ideologies which has been paralleled by an increase in prejudices against immigrants and members of marginal groups like Sinti and Roma. In Italy, this phenomenon has assumed particularly striking proportions with the rise to power of the Northern League and the centre-right coalition headed by Silvio Berlusconi. The Italian case is emblematic of the challenges raised by the emergence of these new political ideologies for social work at the international level. This article reports the results of an empirical survey conducted on a sample of 90 social workers employed in local administrations governed by declaredly populist coalitions. The study highlights how social workers are directly affected by the advent of populist politics, what their reactions to this new scenario are, what types of behaviour they adopt to cope with the new political and normative framework, and what risks and what opportunities they foresee for the profession.
Populism and xenophobia in Europe
In the past 10 years, migratory flows to Europe have been characterized by an intensity only slightly attenuated by the effects of the world economic crisis (Eurostat, 2011). Also in the last century, immigrants to the European countries encountered resistance from public opinion, but the climate of intolerance has recently exacerbated.
There are various causes for the increase in intolerance. The date which marks the symbolic watershed between, on the one hand, the European society of the post-Cold War period based on the principles of universalism and citizenship, and on the other, contemporary society, has been identified by many authors as 11 September 2001. The terrorist attacks on the Twin Towers of New York, which were followed in Europe by an increasing series of episodes of ethno-religious violence has had two effects. The first has been the declaration of war on Islamic terrorism and the symbolic construction of an imminent clash of civilizations which has exacerbated hostility towards Muslims. The second effect consists in the onset of what Bunyan (2010) has called the ‘surveillance society’ characterized by the proliferation of social control measures which have heightened the public’s sense of insecurity. The political debate has ridden this wave of public fear, and many countries have seen radical revision of the universalist discourse and the democratic principles on which the societies of the second post-war period were constructed.
In many countries, the political agendas of the parties in government have been characterized by a concern to reassure citizens in regard to the control of migratory flows. A recent report by Amnesty International (2011) has signalled an increase in Europe of legislative measures intended to curb immigration and to demonstrate to public opinion that governments are determined to keep the phenomenon under control.
This has happened, for example, in France with the repatriation of Roma immigrants ordered by President Sarkozy and in Germany with Chancellor Angela Merkel’s speech on the failure of multiculturalism. As Castles has pointed out (2006: 760), it is by now evident that immigration policies have returned to their objective of 40 years ago: that of ‘importing labour but not people’.
The new political climate in the old Europe, the ‘cradle of the welfare state’, is therefore changing the ideas of the ‘open society’, universal citizenship and social rights, while the worsening of the economic crisis has furnished further grounds for criticizing the old concept of universal rights (Fetzer, 2011). Amid cuts in social expenditure and increased unemployment, public opinion often perceives immigrants as competitors. Politicians are thus encouraged to emit populist messages intended to assert the legitimacy of a new model of social protection based on the idea that social rights have ethnic and cultural bases as well, and that citizens who have lived longer on a particular territory, and who have common cultural origins, are more deserving of protection than others. Betz (2001) has called this ideology ‘exclusionary populism’, thereby underlining the discriminatory character of this rhetoric, and warning of the danger that it represents for the democratic bases of the institutions of the modern European countries.
Populism and xenophobia in Italy
Italy is one of the countries in which the success of populist parties has been greatest (Ruzza and Fella, 2009). The largest populist party is the Northern League, which was created in the 1980s with the objective of increasing the political and economic autonomy of the northern regions from the central government, accused of privileging the southern regions in the distribution of resources. Since the mid-1990s, the political agenda of the Northern League has been characterized by outright xenophobia towards immigrants and minority groups such as Sinti or Roma (Beirich and Woods, 2000).
In 2002 and 2006 the European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI), composed of independent experts of the Council of Europe, denounced a ‘particularly intense use of racist and xenophobic propaganda’ by the leaders of the Northern League. Populist pressure radicalized after 2007, when the Northern League for the third time formed part of the national government headed by Silvio Berlusconi. The exacerbation of the xenophobic campaign has recently culminated with the expulsion of refugees from North Africa.
The influence of populist policies is not restricted to the approval of laws discriminating against immigrants; it has contributed to creating a climate of widespread hostility in public opinion against immigration (Transatlantic Trends, 2010). In the recent regional elections of 2010 the Northern League profited from this climate of increasing intolerance by gaining election to government in all the largest industrial regions of the North – where the highest rates of immigration are recorded – obtaining more than 35 percent of votes in Veneto and Lombardy. Italy is therefore today the European country in which populism has achieved the greatest success and has exerted the strongest influence on national policies. Also after the fall of the Berlusconi government and the inception of the new one headed by Mario Monti, a large number of local regional administrations and municipalities have been governed by the Northern League with its populist propaganda.
Social work in Italy
In Italy, social work is undertaken by a specific practitioner known as an assistente sociale (Campanini, 2007). Exercise of the profession of assistente sociale requires a tertiary-level qualification; and its exercise in the public sector requires the passing of a specific state examination. Since the 1970s, the main source of employment for social workers has been the public sector after the creation of a nationwide network of social services. Recent surveys report that around 85 percent of the social workers in service are employed by public services, and particularly by local municipalities (Facchini, 2010)
The professional culture of Italian social workers is therefore closely centred on the principles of universalism, the protection of social rights and respect for the law. These values are widespread among social workers, and they contribute to defining their professional identity (Fargion, 2008).
The universalist values of social work were strongly endorsed at the end of the 1990s by enactment of the first national framework law on social policy (Law 328/2000) consequent upon a strong reformist drive by centre-left governments. The advent of centre-right coalitions and of the Northern League brusquely interrupted reformist policies in the welfare sector and drastically reduced the state financing of social services. Besides budget cuts in the regions governed by the Northern League, social workers have also had to deal with the change of political climate at local level and the introduction of measures discriminating against immigrants and members of ethnic minorities like Roma or Sinti.
Empirical study of the Northern League’s policies reveals that local welfare policies are characterized by radical changes in regard to social rights (Redattore Sociale, 2011). Access to social services by immigrants has often been restricted, and budget appropriations for integration programmes have been invariably disputed. The restrictive criteria for access to welfare often concern essential services like social housing, family allowances, and early childhood services. In some regions, initiatives against immigrants have assumed explicitly racist tones through the start-up of initiatives with a strongly symbolic impact: for instance, anti-immigration counters where citizens can report irregularities by immigrants, or the institution of the so-called ‘Padana ronde’ consisting of voluntary vigilantes who patrol neighbourhoods to prevent crime by illegal immigrants.
How have these profound changes affected the profession of social worker? How do social workers perceive these changes? How is their work conditioned by the new political programmes? What strategies do they adopt to pursue their profession in the new scenario?
The research
The survey conducted to examine the impact of populist policies on social work consisted of interviews and questionnaires administered to 90 social workers employed by local authority.
The research was divided into two phases. The first phase of the survey was carried out between January and May 2011, and it consisted of in-depth interviews of a duration varying between one hour and two and a half hours. All the interviews were conducted outside the workplace, the purpose being to restrict the risk of distortions in replies to questions about job satisfaction asked during working hours. Given the sensitive nature of the survey, to avoid problems of participation in the research, a written guarantee of anonymity was given to the interviewees. Moreover, this guarantee also stated that when the interviews had been transcribed, they would be sent to the participants to obtain their consent to treatment of the data.
The second phase of the research was conducted in the summer of 2011 on the same sample of interviewees. It consisted in the distribution of a questionnaire with standardized questions asked in order to compare and measure the main results obtained by the interviews in relation to the topics investigated. All the participants in the first phase of the survey answered the questionnaires distributed in the second one.
The sample was constructed by randomly selecting 100 municipalities administered by the Northern League (25.4 of the 354 administrations in Italy were governed by the Northern League in 2011).
Municipalities were divided by size: 5 percent of them had more than 100,000 inhabitants, 5 percent between 100,000 and 50,000, 20 between 50,000 and 10,000 while the rest had fewer than 10,000 inhabitants. In each municipality, telephone contacts were made with the heads (or referents) of the social services in order to explain the research and to obtain the names of possible interviewees. The overall number of social workers employed in the municipalities covered by the research was equal to 381. Of these, 90 were randomly selected for interview, and they were contacted by telephone so that the research could be explained to them and their involvement requested. One social worker for each municipality was contacted with a view to participating in the research, or more than one in the cases of larger sized municipalities (more than 15,000 inhabitants). Around one-third of the social workers contacted refused to be interviewed and their names were replaced with those of others.
In the end, the composition of the sample was as follows: more than 90 percent (81) of the interviewees were female; 51.1 percent (46) of the subjects in the sample were aged between 35 and 45 years old; 27 percent (24) were aged under 35; and 22 percent (20) were aged over 45. The social workers with management or coordination roles were represented by 12.2 percent (11) of the sample, while those with operational or front-line roles amounted to 87.8 percent (79).
The overall picture
The results of the survey are presented according to the topics explored by the interviews and the questionnaires. First described are the perceptions of the social workers in regard to changes in the organization and delivery of services due to the advent of populist policies. The following sections instead describe the interviewees’ different conceptions of the principles of social work and the different strategies that they adopted in response to the new working conditions.
In regard to the perception of changes in the organization of services and local social policies, the majority of the interviewees reported a substantial impact on work practices that had consolidated before the advent of the new populist political class.
The new administrators had a ‘very’ or ‘quite’ negative effect on local social policies and the organization of social services for 25.5 percent (23) and 37.8 percent (34) respectively of the interviewees, and a ‘positive’ effect for 8.8 percent of them (8). Some 27.5 percent (25) of the interviewees instead judged the situation as similar to, or the same as, the one before the election of the populist local government.
Some 77.8 percent (70) of the interviewees stated that social programmes for immigrants, Sinti or Roma had been reduced since the advent of the Northern League. Some 48.8 percent (44) reported the elimination of programmes for these categories of users (compared with the 18.8 percent [17] who reported the elimination of social programmes addressed to the local population as a whole); 61.1 percent (55) said that access to services for immigrants, Sinti and Roma had been restricted (compared with the 30 percent [27] who said that that access had been restricted for the entire local population). Finally, 38.8 percent (35) of the interviewees declared that the new political situation had blocked new projects or ones already ongoing in the sector of services for immigrants, Roma or Sinti, whilst only 17.7 percent (16) spoke in general of a block on projects for the population as a whole. Moreover, 24.4 percent (22) of the interviewees said that the Northern League administrations had halted projects for the territorial coordination of public and private services to immigrants.
The majority of the interviewees considered the policy directions of the populist governments as exacerbating an already difficult economic situation. Many interviewees stressed, however, that cutbacks in financial resources for municipalities had heightened discriminatory measures against immigrants and ethnic and social minority groups which were already in place before the crisis.
Our town has been governed by the League for seven years. Initially, there was none of this hostility against immigrants, but childcare for immigrant families was immediately cut. Of course, the politicians now do everything they can to reassure people, and immigrants become the scapegoats. ‘It’s the immigrants that get the public money, but we want to give it to our own people first’, so they think about gaining votes, and people back them because in this period of economic crisis. . . But foreigners were disliked also previously.
The restriction of social programmes for immigrants was often based on an attempt to distinguish rhetorically between schemes for regular immigrants – the so-called ‘good workers’ – and illegal ones, as well as ‘socially irrecoverable subjects’ like Sinti or Roma. In reality, this distinction served mainly to give numerous administrations an aura of institutional legitimacy towards public opinion, but it was often disavowed in everyday practice.
They say that they differentiate between workers and illegals, that they want to guarantee law and order, but they’re not racist. But in the past two years the school integration projects for foreign children haven’t been renewed. And these are the children of regular immigrants. Some of their families have been living here for ten years.
Various interviewees also emphasized the systematic use of episodes involving a minority of immigrants to exploit residents’ fear of new arrivals.
There was a serious crime committed in a town near here last year, a very brutal murder by a gang of Slavs, and it was a turning point. The mayor immediately seized on people’s fears and began to make speeches about the municipality’s responsibility to halt the flow of immigrants who come to live here and exploit the services provided by the municipality.
The anti-immigration propaganda of Northern League administrators was therefore not rhetorical in nature. An aspect repeatedly stressed by the interviewees concerned the media impact of Northern League programmes on the local community. The insistence on a ‘threat of an invasion’ by immigrants had bred intolerance of immigrants among many members of the local community. The effect was that in many peri-urban or peripheral districts it had become more difficult to activate informal support networks to help immigrants or the members of minority ethnic groups.
It used to be much easier to set up reception schemes. People were willing to help immigrants as well. You now feel the intolerance growing day by day. During the last electoral campaign the mayor kept on saying that Middle Easterners took jobs away from local people and that he would stop the invasion. So he only stoked fear, and minor episodes of racism multiplied.
This increase in discriminatory decisions by many of the new politicians of the Northern League was matched by increased attention paid to the needs of the native population. Numerous administrators showed great concern to satisfy the social demands of residents. In the sector of local social policies, however, this often led to increased interference by politicians in decisions relative to the allocation of resources and services. According to many interviewees, the effect of the political application of the principle ‘Our own people first’ was an intensification of clientelism intended to favour residents closest to the administrators in their political ideas, or to gain their electoral support.
Moreover, interference by the new administrators was often perceived as an arbitrary attempt to limit the professional autonomy of social workers. More than one-third of the interviewees declared that the advent of Northern League administrators had reduced the level of a social worker’s professional autonomy.
The perception of social workers that they can exercise autonomous control over their work is one of the most important motivational factors in their professional commitment (Giffords, 2009). Various interviewees felt a strong sense of frustration at the increase in political clientelism, which had negative effects on their work motivation.
The reactions
The social workers interviewed had developed diverse strategies in response to the new scenario. Four main categories can be identified (Table 1): the supporters, the frustrated, the pragmatic and the activists.
The social workers interviewed.
The supporters
A first group of interviewees (nine individuals) consisted of supporters of the new policy direction. These were mostly social workers with less experience and training who often worked in small municipalities with few contacts with colleagues.
Some interviewees believed that immigrants, especially if Muslim, were damaging to the resident population because they made undue use of the welfare system and did not contribute to its funding with their labour. Several interviewees attributed the overall worsening of their working conditions to an excessive increase in immigrant users.
Indeed, the proportion of immigrant users of social services is much higher than the total proportion of immigrant residents. This mainly happens because requests for assistance in the form of welfare benefits, educational support for children, and so on, are more frequent among immigrants than among the rest of the population.
In recent years, family reunifications have greatly increased in Italy, and this has fostered the spread of integration problems especially among immigrant children. Also as a result of recent measures enacted to curb public spending, many social workers have heavy workloads, and they see the Northern League’s anti-immigration programmes as a source of reassurance in regard to the increasingly difficult management of their work commitments.
I must say that the service has recently had to deal with some very difficult cases. The last one was a couple with four children. The father had previous convictions for drug-dealing, the mother was unemployed and didn’t speak Italian. They lived hand to mouth in a caravan on benefits from the municipality or the parish. Now the mother is expecting a fifth child. And they came to ask for social housing. But I ask myself whether it’s right to give a house to people who live off the community without giving anything back, or whether it wouldn’t be better to give the house to one of us, who works and can’t make ends meet.
Moreover, several interviewees belonging to the group supporting the new political administration admitted personal and professional difficulties in relating to immigrants. In some cases, interviewees explicitly declared that they felt outright prejudices towards certain categories of immigrants, such as Muslims or members of minority groups like the Sinti or Roma. Others instead complained that, as service workers and professionals, they were unprepared to handle the complex issues raised by immigration, such as cultural and religious diversity, scant social integration, and so on.
The frustrated
A second group of social workers (24 interviewees) was instead critical of the new methods used to manage local welfare policies, and it expressed both personal and professional animosity towards the new scenario.
These interviewees accused the new administrators of indifference towards the social services. The institutions and the administrators were often accused of treating social work as a ‘second-class’ profession, underestimating its complexity and importance. The perception of unfair treatment is always a cause of severe stress among social workers (Dierendonck and Schaufeli, 2001). Many interviewees therefore expressed severe frustration at the scant recognition afforded to their profession. This frustration was heightened by increased political interference at the professional-technical level which reduced the autonomy of social workers. The discriminatory measures against immigrants and minority groups caused a twofold sense of discouragement.
On the one hand, several interviewees considered such measures to be ethically reprehensible, and as contrary to the principles of welfare and the social work profession. On the other hand, these measures were also perceived as an arbitrary attack on professional autonomy by persons not authorized to interfere in technical-operational decisions. The predominant attitude of this group of interviewees was one of ‘passive victimism’. They felt themselves to be victims of a change whose rationale they did not share, and which they deemed injurious to their professionalism. At the same time, they were so demoralized that they desisted from actions to alter the situation, and some of them thought that they would quit their jobs in the near future.
Working in this way has become too frustrating. Social work isn’t respected anymore. When I hear councillors and managers sneering out loud at our users, I feel completely out of place. I don’t see a future for my profession.
The pragmatic
The third group of interviewees (26 individuals) can instead be called more ‘pragmatic’. These were usually social workers with several years of professional experience, accustomed to working in teams, and some of them had coordination and management roles in their municipality’s social services department.
Unlike the frustrated interviewees, the pragmatic ones continued to be committed to their work even though they perceived the influence of the new political class as damaging. However, they adopted a ‘harm reduction’ stance: they acknowledged the limitations imposed on their work with particular types of users, and they concentrated on exercising their profession as well as possible with traditional social service clients such as disabled minors.
An example of this pragmatic attitude is provided by the following interview extract: We social workers are overloaded with cases but we try to find a dignified solution for all those that reach the services. If then someone on high decides that certain services can no longer be delivered to some categories of people, so that they have to look after themselves or receive less, it’s certainly not our fault. The job that I do personally I try to do as well as I can, and I think the users realize this.
These social workers therefore still found their work motivation in furnishing services to people in difficulties. They compensated for their perception that the founding principles of social work were being violated at macro-level with the satisfaction of being able to respond to social needs at the micro-level amid organizational and managerial difficulties.
The activists
Finally, the fourth group of interviewees (31) consisted of social workers critical of Northern League policies and who had developed strategies of active resistance against the new political situation.
The activists were generally social workers with greater professional experience and more advanced specialist skills, who usually worked in teams and who had more direct contacts with the local community. The majority of the activists worked in urban municipalities where the networks of associationism and the third sector are denser, and the culture of the population is more open.
One strategy employed to oppose populism was exploitation of the margins of discretion typical of so-called ‘street-level bureaucrats’. Coined by Lipsky (1980), this expression refers to public professionals who work in direct contact with citizens and have the task of putting decisions taken at political level into practice. The criteria for access to services are often not defined unequivocally, and social practitioners can use their discretion to identify solutions that respond to the needs of citizens with formal difficulties in accessing services. In these cases, social workers exploit a mismatch between the formal and substantial levels of policies, assuming the role of democratic guarantors of rights of access to social services for all citizens in need. In Italy, these social workers most frequently work in municipalities of medium to large size, where hierarchical control by politicians and managers appointed by politicians is less strong.
A second strategy consisted in an increase of trade union political commitment. In reaction to discriminatory measures against particular categories of people, some social workers used their greater technical-legal abilities to hinder or obstruct the implementation of political decisions. In this case, the role of the social worker was expressly political and highlighted the difference in objectives and values between the professional mandate, with which the profession must comply, and the mandate of the institutions in open conflict with it. In other cases, the social workers assumed the role that Noble (2007) has called as that of ‘activist social-worker practitioners’. These perform functions of advocacy and defence of minority groups. Their commitment takes concrete form in, for example, free consultancy to immigrant associations to advise them on their rights; or it consists of first-person participation in organizations conducting awareness-raising campaigns on integration and social rights.
The third strategy to resist populist policies consisted in the construction of alliances with the third sector and civil society. In areas with a strong presence of associationism, the social workers could often find important allies in serving the needs of people discriminated against by the public services. In some cases, relationships with the third sector had already been established before the advent of the new political class. In others, the formation of alliances was obligatory for professionals who found themselves unable to respond to social demands because of the restrictions in the organizational contexts in which they worked. A worsening of working conditions in the public services had therefore obliged social workers to recast their role by recovering a space for action that an excess of bureaucratization had often led to being considered marginal or unnecessary.
The final strategy adopted to oppose populism consisted in an attempt to establish dialogue with the new political administrators in order to separate the symbolic dimension of discriminatory politics from the practical one. Some interviewees had been able to establish trust relations with politicians which enabled them to persuade the latter that the integration of immigrants and members of minority groups was preferable to their exclusion. In other cases, once the new administrators had been furnished with information and explanations with which to appraise the positive social impact on the local community of certain services, they partially modified their perceptions of the problems concerning the social integration of immigrants or members of minority groups.
Concluding remarks
The research described in this article was exploratory in its nature, and the sample of social workers analysed was not statistically representative of the universe of practitioners working for municipalities governed by populist parties. The results of the research must therefore be extended and verified with further investigations. Despite this limitation, the research has yielded findings which should induce reflection on the future of social work in a context of increasing xenophobia and populism.
The diffusion of populism has a direct impact on the practice and culture of social work. Populist ideology challenges the founding principles of social work and the traditional conceptions of universalism and social rights by increasing political interference in professional practices for long-term residents, to the detriment of immigrants and marginal social groups.
If not countered with solid preparation and professional ethics, populist doctrine exhibits an unexpected capacity to influence the culture of social workers. Some practitioners merely continue to do their jobs well without openly opposing the populist programmes, which in some services have lesser impact on everyday work practices.
Other, less prepared practitioners indeed perceive the destructive potential of populist doctrine for the values of social work, but they regard the new political framework as yet another burden in their everyday work and tend to surrender to victimism and frustration. One element which requires careful reflection is that the spread of populism may, in the current economic and social situation, engender a dangerous ‘erosion’ of the ethical and cultural bases of the profession. This applies particularly to younger social workers, less prepared and less supported by more experienced colleagues. For these practitioners, populism is an ‘escape route’ from the increased work stress due to spending cuts and reform of the public services. Nevertheless, the changed circumstances in which social workers perform their duties are not only potentially destructive but also regenerative of the principles of social work.
The strategies adopted to oppose populism call into question the figure of the professional ‘technocrat’, who relies solely on his/her specialization to furnish solutions to individual social cases. A new figure that emerges as a reaction to populism is that of the social worker who assumes the role of a moral and political practitioner. In response to the indifference and ostracism of many administrators, social workers are induced to rediscover what Polkinghorne (2004) has called a profession based on ‘moral judgment’. Social work ceases being only a rational-technical practice and once again becomes a political-moral one centred on the inalienable rights of individuals. Moreover, many interviewees had been induced by populism to shed the role of the professional bureaucrat and embrace that of a forger of alliances with the local actors and a mobilizer of community resources. As a result of populism, therefore, social work seems on the one hand to be languishing in crisis; but on the other, it is rediscovering a role that the development of the Western technocratic systems of welfare has often pushed into the background.
The challenge facing social worker education and training systems is that they must incorporate the knowledge necessary to teach new professionals how to counter the drift towards populism and xenophobia. In particular, the competences of so-called ‘activists’ – like networking, the ability to build alliances with the local actors, negotiating skills, and the ability to reason and persuade – should become key components of future teaching and training programmes for entrants to the profession.
Footnotes
Funding
This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.