Practices of recognition and misrecognition in encounters between social workers and parents struggling with poverty

Abstract

This study explores recognition and misrecognition practices in encounters between parents in poverty and social workers trying to help them. The goal of the analysis is to understand how such practices can lead the actors involved to feel either included and valued or misrecognized and excluded, and which factors influence these possibilities. The research was carried out by administering qualitative interviews to 40 parents struggling with poverty and 27 social workers in eight Italian regions. The analysis identified four forms of recognition and misrecognition: negative recognition, invisibility, conditional recognition and mutual recognition. The first three ‘ethnocentric’ forms exclude reciprocity by denying recognition or generating instrumental forms of recognition, negatively affecting the helping relationship. Practices of mutual recognition are instead made collectively in interactions in which professionals not only express care for the other but also assume and treat the person as an autonomous individual who can take up a critical stance towards recognition practices and norms in the helping relationship. Recognition practices also emerge as a powerful tool for social workers to fight the vicious circles of misrecognition of parents in poverty; however, these relations need to be nurtured and made possible, through meso- and macro-level interventions as well.