Neoliberal Empathy: Poverty Frontline Social Workers' Emotional Work

Background and Purpose: Given the centrality of poverty within social work, much effort has been directed towards the understanding of social workers attitudes with regard to poor populations, and its consequences for dealing with this social problem. However, almost no attention had been given to their emotions in the context of the intensive encounter with poverty.  The existing literature concerning social workers and their emotions relating to poverty demonstrates the existence of an emotional duality: compassion alongside judgment, involvement alongside avoidance, and solidarity alongside rejection. The current research aims to broaden the understanding about the link between social workers’ emotions and poverty, by exploring the ways in which these emotions might influence their own self, and condition and shape their actions and professional decision making. By employing Hochschild’s theory of emotional work, we propose to understand these emotions as embedded in a broader institutional context, herein- neoliberal ideology.

Methods: In-depth interviews were conducted with a convenience sample of 39 social workers during 2014. Participants were recruited for the study on the basis of their work with populations who live in poverty. All participants were active social workers, and their work seniority ranged from 0.5 to 38 years, with average of 14 years. There were 37 women and only 2 men. Participants ranged in age from 23 to 68 years, with a mean age of 41. We also conducted two focus groups with social workers. Each group included 10 participants; all were active social workers who had experiences with poor populations. Interviews were transcribed verbatim, then data was coded and categorized according to the principles of grounded theory and using an inductive approach to qualitative analysis.

Results: Findings indicate a wide range of intensive, negative emotions that social workers experience resultant from their daily encounter with poverty. This strong emotional experience, described as emotional flooding, which taken together with their workload turns into an emotional burden. Also, findings exposed varied emotional practices participants used to cope with the emotional flooding implied within the intensive encounter with a growing and impoverishing caseload and show how these practices are reflected in what we term ‘neoliberal empathy’, and are manifested as mechanisms of ‘empathy deserving’, according to neoliberal conception. In that, those who were perceived as struggling to help themselves – mainly those who were active participants in the labor market- were deserving of positive emotions and empath, whereas those who were perceived as dependent and did not express commitment to the neoliberal core values of self-sufficiency and independence- were undeserving and towards whom negative emotions of anger were legitimized. These emotions were in tandem to social workers’ practical support of service users.

Conclusions and Implications: Findings highlight the crucial role of emotions for social work practice and suggest that specific training and supervision programs specifically geared towards the work with poverty should be developed for the dual purpose of supporting social workers emotional burden, and for highlighting its implications on their daily practice with poor populations, specifically in the context of neoliberal reforms.