The Social Politics of Social Work: Anti-Oppressive Social Work Dilemmas in Twenty First Century Welfare Regimes

This article sets controversies surrounding Anti-Oppressive Practice (AOP) theorisations in British social work debates in an international welfare regime framework. The article suggests that those authors on both sides of the pro and anti perspectives have consistently shared an empirical agenda to establish and respond to the perspectives of social service users for public policy debates concerning social work reforms. However, rather than dodging the ideological controversies surrounding AOP, the article adopts an international comparative framework to contrast and compare how social work practice ideologies are shaped and influenced by welfare state ideologies. Specifically the article illustrates that in liberal welfare regimes such as Great Britain and Ireland, professional social work practice identities and ideologies have developed in a context of residual selective welfare ideologies and asymmetrically from social care work and training.  On the other hand in universal welfare regimes such as Norway and Sweden professional social work practice identities and ideologies have traditionally been embedded or closely allied to social care practices identities and ideologies. We contend that it is in the interfacing of welfare regime ideologies and social work/social care practice ideologies that in our view the breadth and possibilities of AOP can only be located.