Social Work and the Art of Crafting Resilient Societies [Crafting Resilience]

Social resilience has become a buzzword in policy circles, where it is seen as the panacea for a host of societal challenges and a counterweight to an overly involved welfare state. At its simplest, social resilience is conceptualized as the ability of society to cope with adversity and adjust to future crises. But what does social resilience mean in practice? And how can it be created? This project answers these questions in an innovative and interdisciplinary way by involving partners from government, professional, and various knowledge institutions. It studies social interventions in eight Dutch cities that, by crafting new relations between the state and marginalized citizens, seek to bolster social resilience.
It pays special attention to social professionals who are on the front lines of dealing with citizens in need. They are tasked with organizing tailor-made social support at the neighbourhood level and are expected to help shape safe and caring communities. Yet social work has been understudied in the Netherlands. We know too little about how social workers and other professionals with social tasks do their job, and what community relations and forms of governance they help shape. These are dangerous lacunae because without understanding and, ultimately, helping social professionals in their jobs, their work towards an inclusive, resilient society will be hampered.
This project investigates how, in the pursuit of social resilience, social professionals work with policymakers and citizens to envision new state-citizen relations, how they navigate the politics that shape their profession, and resolve the dilemmas that result from the combinations of care and control that characterize their work. It thereby aims to theorise the potential for social professionals, policymakers and citizens to collectively craft a more resilient, democratic and just society, while, at the same time, providing methods for concrete policy and professional practice.