Transformations in Local Social Action in Portugal

Hermínia Gonçalves () and Jorge Ferreira
Additional contact information
Hermínia Gonçalves: Center for Transdisciplinary Studies for Development (CETRAD), University of Trás-os Montes e Alto Douro (UTAD), 5000-801 Vila Real, Portugal
Jorge Ferreira: Center for Research and Studies in Sociology, University Institute of Lisbon (ISCTE), 1649-026 Lisboa, Portugal

Societies, 2023, vol. 13, issue 9, 1-17

Abstract: The decentralization of social functions to municipalities, also known as municipal decentralization, triggered new contexts of practice in municipal social intervention. Municipalities are now dealing with more work and a focus on working in partnerships, which calls for greater dynamism of the local social action teams. This process has pushed the social workers to practices that alternate between mediation through the construction of access to a universal standard of social rights and the development of social intervention models with specific access to certain contexts and social groups. The objective of this paper is to envision new forms of standardization of social action within the framework of municipal decentralization, combining place-based perspectives with community and structural social work. What can we learn from social workers’ perspectives on the context of social functions in order to envision forms of place-based standardization of municipal social action? We seek to analyze the professional visions of local social action systems reform, discussing new contexts of practice; new place-based functions; and their correlation with political mediation for universal and intermunicipal social rights, instrumental dimensions of concrete work, and dimensions of value attributed to practicing social work. We organized the research according to the phenomenological paradigm, mobilizing the qualitative method and the multiple-case study. Based on evidence from the discourse of all professionals involved in the study, the findings indicate that the transformations of local social action systems, associated with the processes of social functions decentralization, imply greater comprehensiveness of social intervention, the ability to work in partnerships, and new place-based approach matrices, but they also present challenges for social workers in terms of multilevel governance that may favor the standardization of access to better social well-being between municipal territories.

Keywords: municipal decentralization; community social work; place-based-approach; territorialized social work (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A13 A14 P P0 P1 P2 P3 P4 P5 Z1 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2075-4698/13/9/209/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2075-4698/13/9/209/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsoctx:v:13:y:2023:i:9:p:209-:d:1239064

Access Statistics for this article

Societies is currently edited by Ms. Farrah Sun

More articles in Societies from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().