Session Information
23 SES 03A, Reconstructing Education and Health as Neo-Liberal Human Service Work: Disturbing Borders of Work, Occupational Politics and Agency
Symposium
Time:
2008-09-10
14:00-15:30
Room:
B1 116
Chair:
Terri Seddon
Contribution
Welfare state change have implications for occupational ordering and the agency of the service class. The issue of interest in this paper is how the neo-liberal policy shift is being forged and what kind of an approach would capture the reshaping of the new social order. The paper reflects how the policies of lifelong learning and social inclusion, in addition to the introduction of a medico-managerial model for public services, are creating critical terms and conditions for the division of labor in human service work in Finland.
The neo-liberal ethos of care work and the impending crisis of recruitment in health are creating disturbances that provoke competition within and between occupations around status and knowledge attributes and employment relations. In the name of employability and flexibility, a reform concerning a trans-sector occupation titled practical nurse for health and social care was implemented in Finland.
The reordering of the division of labor constitutes a laboratory for revitalizing the human ecological approach developed by the Chicago-influenced sociologists. It encourages questions in relation to the dilemma of structures, culture and agency: Firstly, who are the laborers, i.e. professions, occupations, paraprofessionals and unpaid workers, and how do they fit into the new order? Secondly, how are the occupational communities policing themselves in the new service settings in terms of identity and agency?
The methodological question then arises how to create dialogue among the overlapping and conflicting policy drivers and related disturbances to capture the complexity of social order.
References
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