Sistema Regional de Información
en línea para Revistas Científicas de América Latina,
el Caribe, España y Portugal

The present investigation is framed in our condition of third year residents in the department of Social Service of the National Institute of Psychophysical Rehabilitation of the South (I.Na.Re.P.S) , whose objective is oriented to the rehabilitation of the people with disabilities in order to achieve their social reinsertion. In our professional intervention, we visualize that the labor situation represents a constant concern among those whose motor disability interrupts their vital process. In this sense, we consider that work is a central category that allows self-realization, autonomy and socialization and, therefore, we set out to know how disability affects work activity and the limitations or not that people find when trying to reinsert themselves in the labor market. With this objective in mind, we carried out research that aimed to describe the employment situation of people who attend outpatient treatment at this Institute through surveys. We start from the assumption that the acquisition of a motor disability reduces the possibilities of inclusion or permanence in the labour market.

I start by pointing out the terms that stimulate my analyses and reflections: Radicalization of Neoliberalism is an affirmation that places us in time and space. And from there, it calls for reflections and interpretations of what happens to us. Training and Intervention are two sides of the same coin in our profession which -beyond the changes in study plans throughout 70-80 years of history- has always maintained the "practice of intervention" as a privileged moment of training and intervention as an object of knowledge. Interpellation, invites us to demand explanations about formation and intervention in this situated context. The questioning provoked by these terms allowed me to order the reflections in three dimensions: From what place I reflect, which led me to urge the recovery of the category of "critical"; from there, to specify the characteristics of critical thinking in the social sciences to finally think with these lenses the formation and intervention in social work today, precisely in the context of radicalization of neoliberalism.

The situation of socio-criminal vulnerability of young people from popular sectors is not only a worrying problem, but also a field of action of public policy that calls for the investigation of multiple and complex aspects that make up the phenomenon. In this article, taking up part of the findings of recent qualitative research, we reflect on the impact of sociability networks on the configuration of young people's work trajectories, as well as on the differences established between them according to their greater or lesser density. We start from the assertion that the labour market excludes young people from popular sectors, and that this situation worsens for those who are in a situation of socio-criminal vulnerability because they have antecedents and carry a criminal sentence. Nevertheless, the social networks of these young people are configured on a series of survival strategies, anchored in their supports of proximity that compensate -or not- their precarious work and the fragility of the social protection system.

Margarita Rozas Pagaza is a Professor Emeritus and a Stamp Tamer at the National University of La Plata. She has a degree in Social Work from the Catholic University of Arequipa, Peru; a Master's degree in Social Work from the Autonomous University of Honduras, and a Doctorate in Social Work, in the postgraduate program in Social Service, Pontifical Catholic University of San Pablo and School of Social Work, National University of La Plata, and a Postdoctoral degree from the same University. In her academic career, she is the director of the Latin American Center for Social Work and dean of the School of Social Work at the University of La Plata. She has been a member of several scientific organizations and academic committees for doctorates in social work in Argentina. She is currently directing the Doctorate in Social Work, which is being developed at the same University.  She is the author of numerous books, book chapters and journal articles, related to her research topics: professional training, professional practice, social issues and social policies. Among her publications are Una perspectiva teórico-metodológica de la intervención profesional; La relación entre cuestión social y trabajo social: el caso argentino; Políticas sociales y trabajo social; la pobreza detrás de las estadísticas. He is a member of several editorial committees of national and international journals.

This article is about the current context of a profound attack on democratic instances in Brazil experienced by workers, including social workers, since the parliamentary coup in 2016 and the advent of conservative right and ultra-right governments. It analyzes the set of determinations that builds this recessive scenario and the repercussions on the process of work of the social workers, as well as the challenges for maintain a critical social direction that contributes to the development of emancipatory social processes.

The brick manufacturing process is an activity closely linked to the construction sector, one of the most dynamic in recent time. Despite this, no technological advances have been made, with few exceptions. It is an “intensive labor” industry (Basualdo, 2009); in which, the possibilities of expanding profit margins come from the exploitation of the workers. Two moments of our recent history, in the mid-1990s and the 2001-2002 period, show an important impact on the activity, the first with an increase in the construction activity and consequently in the brick industry; the second one is marked by a deep stagnation and recession. In both periods there was a reconfiguration of actors in the productive chain and redefinition of functions within the cutters. We will try to explain how these changes were installed and promoted from the notion of neoliberal rationality proposed by Verónica Gago (2014) “from below neoliberalism consists in de proliferation of ways of life that reorganize the notions or freedom, calculation and obedience, projecting a new rationality and collective affectivity” (Gago 2014:10)

This article proposes some reflections in the broad framework of the discussions in the field of disability on the notions of independence and autonomy in the life of Deaf People, focusing on access to the world of work. We start from the perspective of Independent Living and the social model contained in the International Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. In this sense, the notion of autonomy will go through the whole writing, trying to unveil those barriers that are presented at the time of exercising the right to work, when the free access to a dignified and equitable employment with a fair remuneration is put at stake. The approach of this problem from the social work, will contribute to the debate on the effectiveness of the right to work in dignified and autonomous conditions in pursuit of comprehensive respect for deaf people.

When we launched the call to publish in the present issue, back in May of two thousand nineteen, we proposed to give an account, through the different productions, of the modifications produced in the living conditions of the subjects with whom we developed our intervention, and also of the modifications produced in our professional practice, since the establishment in Argentina of the third neoliberal wave. We know that the management of neoliberal governments unfailingly favors the interests of concentrated economic groups, to the detriment of the living conditions of the majority of the population. Thus, inequality is increasing, whether it is considered in regional, provincial or social terms. And this is true wherever and whenever neoliberalism is imposed as a socio-political model. The appearance of number 6 of Social Science, already averaging the year 2020, finds us -and this is central for the social sciences and particularly for social work- facing the profound consequences of a process of exclusionary modernization, which was rejected through the popular vote on October 27, 2019. Exclusion is based on a strong attack against acquired economic and socio-cultural rights, an attack that was made concrete through the closure of strategic state areas from the point of view of guaranteeing rights; through massive layoffs - which at the state level were associated with political persecution and at the private level with the need to discipline the workforce in order to guarantee the lowering of salaries. In summary, a scenario has been configured that has destroyed the inalienable rights of Argentine society, such as public education, the right to work, health, truthful information, freedom of expression, freedom of association and political participation. This is a regressive process that has already been tried on different occasions in our country, always with the same results: impoverishment, loss of rights and awareness of our rights. The present moment illuminates us with a dim light, which can be interpreted as either sunset or sunrise. In fact, neither of the two possibilities is guaranteed. However - and as a permanent and majority bet in the field of Social Work - we want to push for the dawn. In this perspective, the professionals that intervene in the social question can build a horizon that guides their practices. In it, the recognition that ours is at the same time a distributive and cultural practice occupies an important place. In the first dimension, we have the possibility of distributing use goods, with no other restrictions than those imposed by the context. And as a cultural practice, it is necessary to develop a discursive struggle that confronts aporophobia -hate towards the poor-; and secondly, to confront the rejection of social protection policies that predominate in common sense. From this point of view, we define ourselves by what Habermas calls the emancipatory interest that structures the critical sciences. Emancipatory interest is aimed, both subjectively and socially, at breaking, in what is within our reach, with the different forms of domination, and has emancipation as its horizon. As María Inés Peralta points out in her article for this issue, the emancipatory interest needs the exercise of criticism, which ... " must be recovered, treasured, activated, updated in the light of what the current social practices summon us to think". This definition requires encouraging and renewing interest in the ethical dimension, both in training processes and in professional practice, overcoming the idea of ethics as a set of prohibitions and permissions, and facing it as a privileged space of inquiry about the social meaning of our professions, and the scope of our freedoms and responsibilities in our condition as professionals. And if this interest is addressed collectively, so much the better. Our practices and representations cannot be separated from their conditions of possibility: our analyses, our proposals, our criticisms, are inscribed in the conditions that geography and historical time exert on us. Historical time seems to be changing. Let us try to live up to this change. In terms of Michele de Certeau, let us be at the same time voyeurs and walkers, let us not grow old, let us continue to invent hour after hour the act of challenging the future.

"It can be said, then, that the practices would remain in the personal time of the subjects in training as one of the most powerful brands in terms of the constitution of their professional identity" (Acevedo and Peralta, 2010) For years, those of us who are part of the Social Work Career at the UNC have been asking ourselves -and at the same time rehearsing possible answers- about the ways of teaching, learning, doing and knowing how to do in academic practices. These questions were deepened - together with national and Latin American disciplinary debates - through the implementation of curricula that (re)meant practice as the central axis for degree training, in increasingly complex training and intervention scenarios and contexts. Our 2004 Curriculum defines academic practices as "a central space of learning in training (...) they are constructed as a space of teaching learning that is characterized by an intentional contact with reality with a learning objective, differentiating it from professional practice"[1] Therefore, academic practices are also constituted in a time/space of connection between the University and its classrooms with the diverse territories, institutions, others, and others. It is there, in these intersections, where practices are created, where the classroom is a particular territory of intervention, of creation of pedagogical proposals on a professional knowledge/doing; classrooms crossed by the inequalities of our times and filled with the diversities of those who inhabit them; classrooms where the ways of being and seeing the world are articulated to ways of thinking (se) as students and teachers of Social Work. At the same time, the territories -those scenarios outside the University with their protagonists, logics, demands, own views on the profession- are powerful spaces of teaching and learning, where diverse knowledge and doings are put in dialogue, recognizing the different perspectives of actors who converge in the construction of teaching and learning strategies of the profession. For at least 20 years, the then School of Social Work - through its management and teaching teams, institutional referents, members of the organizations and students - has been generating spaces for deep discussions about the place and characteristics of the practices in degree training. As a result of these collective paths, the institutional bets and the impulses of the chairs to write and reflect on our daily task, this special issue of Social Conscience Magazine was born; an issue we call "When territories become classrooms. The formative practices in Social Work", and that was gestated as an invitation to the pause, to a specific moment to (re)think, to retrace and to write again on the learnings, challenges and desires on the practices in Social Work, in the light of the trajectories and of the new demands that these times print to our knowledge - know-how.  This issue takes shape at a time of special complexity for our peoples, scenarios that crystallize the greatest injustices and inequalities while inviting us to redouble the cultural, political, epistemic disputes over the senses and the need to think and do different ways of inhabiting the world. From our places - Public University and Social Work - it is time to strengthen the ethical and political commitments that shape us as a profession; it is also time to give us the time to reflect and listen, to co-construct learnings and creative interventions, flexible and founded at the same time. These are times to re-signify which are the spaces, the ways, the processes through which we do learning and we learn by doing the profession: From what frames do we teach and learn the profession of Social Work? From what lenses do we build reality and otherness? And, fundamentally, with whom do we look and build that reality and our profession? With what horizons? 1] Study Plan Document, 2004, p13. School of Social Work, Faculty of Law and Social Sciences. National University of Córdoba.

A work that presents a theoretical and methodological richness necessary to think about the continent and to contribute in the construction of protection supports, reflecting from a horizon of social justice for the Latin American societies.