How have three decades of neoliberalism affected the Nordic welfare states as well as the organisation, education and practices of social work in those countries? During recent decades the welfare states of Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden have gone through dramatic changes infl uenced by the political triumph of neoliberalism. This has led to both the electoral success of extreme right and mainstream neoliberal parties, and to the neoliberal ideological transformations of social democratic parties. The neoliberal doctrine of making governance cheaper has thus been made the focus of governance and has led to increased marginalisation and social problems. This is the first book to comparatively explore the role of neoliberal reforms on social work and social policy across the Nordic welfare states. The richly theoretical and empirical chapters explore and illustrate the consequences of the dominance of neoliberal policies and provide an analysis of the effects of globalisation, glocalisation, welfare nationalism, symbolic violence and forced migration. The book provides valuable insights into the shortcomings of retreating welfare states in a time of increasing glocal social problems. Neoliberalism, Nordic Welfare States and Social Work should be considered essential reading for critical social work education. Students, scholars, educators and researchers of Nordic countries and beyond have much to learn from this book.

Listen to the podcast about Cory Blad's chapter in this book 'Searching for Saviors: Economic Adversities and the Challenge of Political Legitimacy in the Neoliberal Era'. This book seeks to explore welfare responses by questioning and going beyond the assumptions found in Esping-Andersen’s (1990) broad typologies of welfare capitalism. Specifically, the project seeks to reflect how the state engages, and creates general institutionalized responses to, market mechanisms and how such responses have created path dependencies in how states approach problems of inequality. Moreover, if the neoliberal era is defined as the dissemination and extension of market values to all forms of state institutions and social action, the need arises to critically investigate not only the embeddedness of such values and modes of thought in different contexts and institutional forms, but responses and modes of resistance arising from practice that might point to new forms of resilience.

The Media Welfare State: Nordic Media in the Digital Era comprehensively addresses the central dynamics of the digitalization of the media industry in the Nordic countries—Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland, and Iceland—and the ways media organizations there are transforming to address the new digital environment. Taking a comparative approach, the authors provide an overview of media institutions, content, use, and policy throughout the region, focusing on the impact of information and communication technology/internet and digitalization on the Nordic media sector. Illustrating the shifting media landscape the authors draw on a wide range of cases, including developments in the press, television, the public service media institutions, and telecommunication.

Global social work: crossing borders, blurring boundaries is a collection of ideas, debates and reflections on key issues concerning social work as a global profession, such as its theory, its curricula, its practice, its professional identity; its concern with human rights and social activism, and its future directions. Apart from emphasising the complexities of working and talking about social work across borders and cultures, the volume focuses on the curricula of social work programs from as many regions as possible to showcase what is being taught in various cultural, sociopolitical and regional contexts. Exploring the similarities and differences in social work education across many countries of the Americas, Asia, Europe and the Pacific, the book provides a reference point for moving the current social work discourse towards understanding the local and global context in its broader significance.

The COVID-19 pandemic represents a critical juncture in the development of the welfare state affirming its importance for its citizens’ economic, health and wellbeing, and safety, especially for its most vulnerable populations. It demonstrated that the crisis preparedness that is crucial for an effective protection of its citizens, the ultimate purpose of the welfare state, unquestionably exceeds the narrow horizon of a corporatised welfare industry with its singular focus on the maximisation of profit for the elites and cost containment for the government. Social workers need to engage with the contradictions and tensions that spring from underfunded welfare services and engage in the political struggle over a well-resourced welfare state. Contributors to this book take on this challenge. By tracing the various contradictions of the pandemic, the contributors reflect on new ways of thinking about welfare by exploring what to keep, what to challenge and what to change. By highlighting important challenges for a social justice-focused response as well as exploring the many challenges exposed by the pandemic facing social work for the coming decades, contributors critically outline pathways in social work that might contribute to the shaping of a less cruel and more capable welfare state. Using case-studies from Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australia, Italy, Slovenia, Estonia, Sweden, Spain, South Africa, Canada, Sri Lanka, Zimbabwe, China and the United States, the book features 19 chapters by leading experts. This book will be of interest to all social work scholars, students and practitioners, as well as those working in social policy and health more broadly.

Contemporary social work cannot be understood without an appreciation of the broader context of social policy in which it takes place. Such an understanding is increasingly important as social workers are expected to work across institutional, professional and even national boundaries in new ways profoundly affected by the changing global context. This insightful book examines how shifts in the dominant political ideology have affected the nature of welfare provision, the kinds of social problems addressed by policy, and the balance of responsibilities for well-being between individuals, the family, voluntary organizations, the market and the state. It explains the impact of these developments on the organization of social work and on relationships between social workers and service users. The book discusses contested concepts central to social work – such as justice, liberty, equality, difference, need and risk – and illustrates these through a range of examples. The critical analysis provided in this book offers students of social work a crucial foundation for negotiating difficult and sensitive practice situations and defending their profession, providing them with the tools and knowledge to uphold key professional values.

Social work educators and practitioners are grappling with many difficulties confronting the profession in the context of an increasingly neoliberal world. The contributors of this book examine how neoliberalism — and the modes with which it structures the world — has an impact on, and shapes, social work as a disciplinary ‘field’. Drawing on new empirical work, the chapters in this book highlight how neoliberalism is affecting social work practices ‘on the ground’. The book seeks to stimulate international debate on the totalizing effects of neoliberalism, and in so doing, also identify various ways through which it can be resisted both locally and globally. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the European Journal of Social Work.