Papers by Angelika Papadopoulos
The Economic and Labour Relations Review
This article uses Loïc Wacquant’s concept of the centaur state to analyse symbolic framings of th... more This article uses Loïc Wacquant’s concept of the centaur state to analyse symbolic framings of the meaning and future of work in the Australian policy response to COVID-19 in 2020. In contrast with historical conceptualisations anchored in rights and social security, contemporary Australian social welfare policy discourse is dominated by political representations of the imperative to work. For people currently outside of the labour market, self-reliance through paid work is a primary objective of social security policy. In 2020, economic impacts of national lockdowns were ameliorated by large transfers from the state to businesses and individuals. Concurrent announcements of plans for a ‘business-led’ post-pandemic economic recovery centred the message that the meaning of work lies in its individual and social utility. Prior to the pandemic, transformation of the modes of organisation of work had already brought into question normative claims about the meaning of work, and what is c...
The British Journal of Social Work
The future of social work preoccupies scholars and educators in the field, with consideration per... more The future of social work preoccupies scholars and educators in the field, with consideration periodically extending beyond ‘trends’ to the fundamental question of whether social work per se even has a future. A recurring theme in these debates concerns social work’s professional project, and whether professionalisation enhances or undermines social work’s values and aims. Whilst contributing to the conceptual articulation of a social work habitus, few of these contributions are informed by the views of practitioners in the field. This article analyses 122 practitioners’ perspectives on current issues for social work, through data taken from a survey conducted in Victoria, Australia in 2018. Practitioners’ perspectives are analysed in relation to the theoretical construct of professional capital. In contrast to modernist interpretations of professionalisation-as-status typical of polemical works, a professional capital perspective construes social work’s professional project as a le...
Critical Policy Studies, 2022
Australian Social Work, 2019
Better Access to Psychiatrists, Psychologists and General Practitioners through the Medicare Bene... more Better Access to Psychiatrists, Psychologists and General Practitioners through the Medicare Benefits Scheme initiative (Better Access), is an Australian Federal Government scheme aiming to improve access to mental health services. Accredited mental health social workers have been involved in the delivery of services under Better Access for more than a decade. In this time, there have been significant changes in the field of mental health services, with consequent increases in size and costs for Better Access. Better Access now represents public spending of more than one billion dollars per annum, yet there is no ongoing account of its impact. In this paper we consider the policy chronology and evaluation of the program, using current available data to question the impact of Better Access on both the service system and the nature of mental health social work practice. This case highlights the importance of a clear articulation of the scope of mental health social work, and ongoing monitoring of the impact of policy in a policy environment increasingly characterised by individualised funding and service delivery structured according to the principles of New Public Management. IMPLICATIONS. Social workers' increasing involvement with Better Access has reshaped the scope of mental health social work practice.. The impact of Better Access on outcomes for service users and mental health social work is not currently a focus of research attention.. Better Access is a case study illustrating the potential of the policy context to directly shape social work practice, therefore critical engagement with the impact of Better Access is an essential professional imperative.
Australian Social Work, 2019
This article presents an approach to curriculum design that incorporates natural environmental co... more This article presents an approach to curriculum design that incorporates natural environmental content into social work education using sustainability principles. The curriculum development project outlined here used scenario-based learning (SBL) to integrate sustainability themes into contemporary social work practice challenges. SBL offers a flexible pedagogical strategy to integrate environmental content and explore social complexity. Importantly, it presents eco-social concerns as a central consideration of all contemporary social work practice. IMPLICATIONS. The article highlights the value of integrated scholarship in developing graduates' professional identity as a primary aim of social work education.. Scenarios incorporating environmental, economic, and social complexities generated by climate change can be used to integrate environmental content across different fields and practice modalities.. Scenario-based curriculum design provides a flexible approach to conceptual and contextual integration of environmental issues and other emerging social challenges.
Higher Education Research & Development, 2017
ABSTRACT In quantifying and qualifying the scope of academic labour, workload models serve multip... more ABSTRACT In quantifying and qualifying the scope of academic labour, workload models serve multiple ends. They are intended to facilitate equitable and transparent divisions of academic work, to provide academics with a sense of whether their workload is reasonable relative to their colleagues, and universities with a mechanism for rationalising the allocation of responsibilities. Existing scholarship exploring workload models examines the impact of modelling on career progress or occupational stress, or takes the form of advice from academic unions. A third body of research attempts to theorise the operational challenges and impact of workload models using small studies of their implementation. Workload models can also be seen as a ‘policy technology’ shaping academic identities. Priorities are signalled through the differential weighting of academic activities. In a climate of looming workforce shortages and increasing staff/student ratios, workload intensification is a managerial strategy attempting to meet institutional needs without incurring additional costs. Workload models cannot protect workers against this, but they should provide a mechanism by which thresholds of reasonableness can be defined. Analysis of workload models demonstrates that they incorporate assumptions about teaching that have been subverted by structural shifts in operating practices. Further dissonances between model assumptions and contemporary practices are illustrated through secondary analysis of responses to a survey of academic staff conducted in 2015. The unintended consequence of workload modelling’s effort to regulate academic labour is a performance guided by simulacra that incorporate representations of academic work no longer reflected in contemporary conditions of practice. This performance ultimately conceals the absence of what models were supposed to achieve – transparent and reasonable allocations of work.
This paper will present the preliminary fmdings of our research project, Creative Writing and the... more This paper will present the preliminary fmdings of our research project, Creative Writing and the Enterprise University, aimed at identifying and analysing the implications of the growth of creative writing programs in Australia on Australian literary culture. Through in-depth interviews with key stakeholders (educators, students) from three Victorian universities and those working in the industry, this research project explores the impact of the new political economy of higher education on creative writing programs. In this paper, we examine the some of the specific issues for creative writing and creative writing programs emerging from the research and the way they replicate broader arguments taking place within higher education in the context of neoliberalism and the enterprise university.
Journal of Cleaner Production, 2017
This article explores Australian social work's engagement with environmental concerns through a r... more This article explores Australian social work's engagement with environmental concerns through a review of scholarly literature and professional documentation, and suggests the professional imagination and espoused professional identity of social work practice as expressed in Australian social work education share significant common ground with the concerns of sustainability education. This raises the question of why it is that social work has yet to infuse, embed, or otherwise engage with the adoption of the principles of education for sustainability. The review found that social work has developed some momentum in negotiating challenges emerging as a consequence of climate change and other forms of complexity, but remains educationally challenged by the imperatives that follow commitment to sustainability in practice. To move beyond the metaphorical sense in which social work has previously used the term 'environment' requires re-framing of social work education's purview, and rethinking of the approaches used to incorporate sustainability concerns into professional practice qualifications. Principles of inquiry based learning and sustainability education are suggested, as the next step towards integrating and embedding the concerns of the future with revised social work praxis.
While the Constitution arrogates responsibility for educational matters to the States of Australi... more While the Constitution arrogates responsibility for educational matters to the States of Australia, the Commonwealth has been dominant in the area of university policy since the 1970s. In the creation of 'superministries' (Pusey 1991) in the early nineteen eighties the Department of Education was clustered with the portfolios of Employment and Training (DEET). In the 1990s Youth Affairs was added (DEETYA), then it became Education training and Youth Affairs (DETYA) when employment was relocated. Since 2002 it has been located with Science and Training (DEST). These classifications, while of sociological interest in illustrating the priorities of governments of the day through decisions as to bureaucratic architecture, will be subsumed in text under the 'Department of Education', or 'The Department'. 8 See Foss &Foss (2002) for a summary of the concept of distributed knowledge as taken up by theorists of information technology and organisational theory and as considered in terms of the hypothesis that distributed knowledge causes authority (as traditional hierarchical organisational structures) to fail.
Aotearoa New Zealand Social Work
INTRODUCTION: Brave new social landscapes painted in the watercolours of liquid modernity challen... more INTRODUCTION: Brave new social landscapes painted in the watercolours of liquid modernity challenge the possibility of a renaissance of radical social work. The consequences of modernity’s liquefaction for the project of taking a political stance challenge radical social work conceived as a retrieval of solidarities and mobilised collectives of the past. APPROACH: Principles of radical analysis are used to explore theoretical and institutional factors affecting the contemporary articulation of a radical project, and to consider the implications of liquid modernity for such an articulation. CONCLUSIONS: Radical strategy can no longer take the form of “speaking truth to power”, for power no longer feels obliged to listen. Future radical social work can succeed through the creation of new strategic responses to reconstituted fields of practice, state–global interfaces, and the injustices they create. This entails a critical reappraisal of the language of radical practice, a reorientati...
This chapter explores the Australian approach to the recognition of transnational social workers ... more This chapter explores the Australian approach to the recognition of transnational social workers migrating to Australia. Prior research into transnational social work has: questioned the portability of values, skills and knowledge across cultural contexts (McDonald et al, 2003; Walsh et al, 2010; Pullen-Sansfacon et al, 2012); explored the experiences of migrant social workers' adaptation to destination country practices (Kornbeck, 2004; Hussein et al, 2010; Bartley et al, 2011; Beddoe et al, 2012; Sims, 2012; Harrison, 2013; Beddoe and Fouche, 2014; Hussein, 2014); and also noted the ethical implications of social workers migrating from countries that need their services (IFSW, 2012).
The Economic and Labour Relations Review
The COVID-19 pandemic has created economic crises and considerable loss of employment throughout ... more The COVID-19 pandemic has created economic crises and considerable loss of employment throughout the world. In the Australian context, social distancing restrictions and business closures contributed to a dramatic increase in unemployment, with 780,000 people losing work within weeks of the first COVID-19 outbreaks. Job losses were concentrated in casualised industries such as retail, recreation, arts and culture, hospitality, and accommodation. We examine policy discourses framing independent work, entrepreneurial workers and flexible work relations as essential for ‘economic recovery’, where this means business flexibility, productivity and future economic prosperity. We draw on these framings to show how the equation of flexible work relations and productivity underpins the Australian Government’s response to unemployment caused by the pandemic, as reflected in policy announcements and proposed changes to industrial relations law. In these proposals, constructions of ‘job creatio...
Practice Skills in Social Work & Welfare
Housing, Theory and Society
British Journal of Social Work
As a contribution to theorising the field of international social work practice, this article exp... more As a contribution to theorising the field of international social work practice, this article explores the Australian approach to recognition of overseas qualifications for social workers. Recognition of qualifications across borders both enables and is constitutive of internationalised social work practice. Migration of social workers has previously been discussed with reference to portability of values, skills and knowledge across cultural contexts, and the ethical implications of social workers migrating from countries which need their services. Questions of professional recognition through skilled migration have received less scholarly attention, compounded by a lack of empirical data documenting trends and analysing international implications. In this article, information gathered from the Australian Association of Social Workers (AASW) provides a preliminary picture of recent migration of social workers to Australia. Critical analysis of the assumptions underlying the qualifications assessment process supports the conclusion that the current approach rests on an understanding of social work that risks excluding migrant social workers who ostensibly do not conform to the model of social work practice on which the assessment process is based, potentially excluding valuable contributions to internationalising practice through transnational migration.
Australian Social Work , 2019
This article presents an approach to curriculum design that incorporates natural environmental co... more This article presents an approach to curriculum design that incorporates natural environmental content into social work education using sustainability principles. The curriculum development project outlined here used scenario-based learning (SBL) to integrate sustainability themes into contemporary social work practice challenges. SBL offers a flexible pedagogical strategy to integrate environmental content and explore social complexity. Importantly, it presents eco-social concerns as a central consideration of all contemporary social work practice.
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Papers by Angelika Papadopoulos