LABOR PRECARIOUSNESS AND EDUCATIONAL COMMITMENT: TENSIONS IN FAMILY SOCIAL WORK FIELD PLACEMENT CENTERS

Abstract

The Pre-professional Practice of Family Social Work belonging to the Social Work Bachelor's Degree at the Humanities and Social Sciences Faculty of the National University of Jujuy, constitutes a fundamental space in the training of future professional social workers in the province of Jujuy. This allows direct contact with complex social situations, critical analysis of public policies and the development of disciplinary intervention skills. However, in the current context of public universities underfunding, this training process faces multiple structural and pedagogical challenges.  

The budget cut has a direct impact on the material conditions of the internship: limitations in student mobility, reduction of resources to guarantee adequate training paths (canteens closure of canteens, scholarships suspension, etc.), impacts on the mental health of students and teachers derived from uncertainty and other factors. 

The job insecurity experienced by many social workers who are members of the technical teams in various Practice Centres belonging to different areas, is a structural problem with an impact both on their professional performance as well as on the training support of students in pre-professional internships.  

These professionals, who are largely affected by conditions of job insecurity expressed in contractual instability, task overload, insufficient institutional recognition and salaries that do not correspond to the complexity of the responsibilities assumed, play a central role in the training of future social workers. However, they continue supporting, with ethical commitment and training vocation, the student’s accompaniment and supervision processes, contributing from their professional experience, their situated knowledge and their intervention strategies. 

The fact that this pedagogical work, which often involves additional time for planning, supervision, reporting and institutional coordination, does not receive any financial remuneration or formal recognition from training institutions or State agencies is of particular concern. Far from being an isolated situation, it contributes to the lack of visibility and devaluation of the training role played by these professionals, which reproduces historical forms of precariousness linked to the naturalization of free care work, accompaniment and support which are characteristics of the field of social intervention. 

In this context, it is necessary to rethink the links between the university, the State and the territory from an equity and co-responsibility approach, which recognizes and values the work of those who, in often adverse conditions, sustain both social intervention processes and future professionals training. Faced with this reality, the public university constitutes a fundamental space to foster situated knowledge, capable of addressing complex social problems from a comprehensive, critical, transformative and ethically committed perspective. The impact of the training it provides is expressed in the territorial insertion of social workers, who carry out their work in various areas of the social field, promoting rights restitution and expansion, strengthening community networks and contributing to the construction of more inclusive and democratic public policies. 

In this sense, defending a public, secular, free and quality university also implies defending critical and committed professional training, as well as the exercise of Social Work aimed at transforming the conditions of inequality and violation of rights that affect broad sectors of society.