Practices of resistance in social work: navigating power in a local social work programme in Germany

Social work is rife with contradictions and an instrument of both help and control. Despite this, many social workers are driven by a resolve to advocate for individuals and communities and to challenge practices and policies that perpetuate inequality and oppression. The concept of resistance in social work, while offering a lens to view the field’s innate conflict between power and counter-power, remains largely unexplored. In this article, I explore the notion of resistant practices, applying it to insights from qualitative research conducted in an urban area in Germany. The social workers interviewed were employed in a local social policy programme supposed to mitigate ‘social problems’ by fostering networks and ‘activating’ local resources. I briefly delineate the inherent contradictions of the programme before revealing an array of resistant practices, both small- and large-scale, overt and covert. The findings are summarised, and implications for further research are discussed.