The Shifting Labour Process in Professional Care: Recreating Dominance and the Managerialised Mental Health Social Worker

Abstract

Though the rationalisation of health care has been extensively researched, less is known about its impacts on mental health social workers. Drawing on 120 qualitative interviews, this paper argues that workplace power travels along professional divisions and logics, appearing neutral and scientific rather than as conduits reinforcing neoliberalised approaches to health care provision. Social workers’ resistance is similarly complex and professionally-based though with strong elements of gendered altruism and social justice themes. This paper contributes to the intersection of Labour Process Theory and moral economy theory by highlighting the operation of resistance-as-engagement. Overall, mental health social workers revealed strong oppositional narratives and identities pivoting on their marginalised position within team-based care, medical professional  hierarchies and narrow, neoliberal approaches.

Presented by

Donna Baines is a Professor and former Director at the University of British Columbia’s School of Social Work. She researches and teaches in paid and unpaid care work, anti-oppressive theory and practice, and social policy. She recently published in Work in the Global Economy, The British Journal of Social Work, and the 4th edition of her now co-edited collection, Doing Anti-Oppressive Practice: Rethinking Theory and Practice (with Natalie Clark and Bindi Bennett). Donna has prior appointments at the University of Sydney, McMaster University and Dalhousie University. She holds a SSHRC Canada Insight Grant on Emancipatory Dialogue and works with an international research team on decent care work in age-friendly cities.