Florian Lieutaud

Thesis Proposal Presentation:

In 1978, in Alès, a former mining town in the Gard department, La Clède was founded—a private, nonprofit association working in the social and medical-social sectors to provide “reception, support, and social and professional integration for people at risk or facing social exclusion.” This sector, which historically grew out of religious charity and philanthropy, gradually became part of the welfare state in the early 20th century, evolving into a true public service.
Social (and medical-social) work—as well as the public and private agents who embody it—essentially constitute the institutional intermediary between society and the “surplus population” (Castel, 1995), pursuing the ambitious goal of “reintegrating” the “excluded.”
However, numerous tensions run through and strain the fabric of social work. Public policies are today widely criticized by social workers, who often see them as little more than a race for profitability and a hunt for deficits, while lamenting a drying up of human and financial resources. In a society that conceives of the integration of its members through work while simultaneously multiplying calls for a healthy lifestyle, the scope of the concept of deviance seems to be continually expanding, as it finds fertile ground among the most vulnerable.
Guided by a host of ideals—such as kindness and empathy—that serve as a mantra for their work, social workers aim to lead their clients toward social norms, health, autonomy, and citizenship. These concepts, with their blurred and, to say the least, malleable boundaries, nevertheless constitute goals for social workers, who may invoke them in search, at heart, of professional and moral fulfillment—a reward for a heavy emotional commitment that also proves exhausting.
Drawing on the work of Robert Castel, the objective of this research may be to develop a different understanding of the challenges of social work practice in the hope of gaining better control over them.

Edited by Geneviève Zoïa