Fachhochschule Ludwigshafen am Rhein
Maxstraße 29
67059 Ludwigshafen

Tel.: 0621/5203-540

thomas.wagner[at]fh-ludwigshafen.de

www.hs-lu.de/fachbereiche/fachbereich-sozial-und-gesundheitswesen/team/professorinnen-und-professoren-lehrkraefte-fuer-besondere-aufgaben/dr-thomas-wagner.html

Titel und Abstract des Dissertationsprojektes:

“Entbürgerlichung” by Addressing? – About the Relationship of Social Work to the Citizenship of its Clients

The central concern of this dissertation project concentrates on the relationship of Citizenship and using of Social Work. While it seems obvious that professionals treat their clients as human beings, it is still more questionable if they also treat them as fellow citizens (Jordan 1975 quot. In Lister 1998). This concern is ultimately linked to claims for “user-involvement” and democratising social services, which are opposed against an extensive depolitisation of social citizenship (Lister 1997, 18). It is also linked to the question weather Social Work is useful to its clients in realizing their political rights of citizenship and gaining necessary competences to fulfil this tasks (Schaarschuch 2000). As a consequence these questions stand in a relationship with the question about the reasons of a progressing degrease in political activity (Isin/Turner 2002). One main thesis of this project is that this political abstinence of citizens is not a sign of a wilful “self-exclusion” (Nullmeier 2006, 324ff). Instead this phenomenon is seen a subjective consequence drawn out of an act of exclusion which has taken place objectively via a symbolic denial of acceptance as a political actor. Therefore political disinterest is seen mainly as an expression of powerlessness (Bourdieu 1982, 632).
It is assumed on that occasion that the way in which people are “addressed”, that means the way they are fitted with social identity, which is itself seen as the result of social, political and symbolic struggles between different social actors (Bourdieu 1985), is crucial to the ability of being able to use options of inclusion formally given. Therefore it is not enough to award people with formal rights of citizenship to attain and secure their political activity. Furthermore it needs a socially legitimised and conveyed sentiment of being eligible for political involvement (Bourdieu 1982, 639). Due to the non-recognition as political protagonists, people admittedly possess quite formally lent rights of citizenship, but because of their symbolic devaluation these are no source of political (that means symbolic) capital. This powerlessness bears also the risk of getting internalised by the affected, which leads to a “sense of one’s place” (Goffman) that includes the acceptance of the own marginalisation and transforms an objective exclusion into the political disinterest of the subject. Especially welfare recipients seem to be affected by this act - that I like to call “Entbürgerlichung” - which operates by the attribution of the stigma of “undeservingness” (Lockwood 2000). This leads to the devaluation of the citizenship of welfare recipients (Gans 1995; Katz 2001). As a negative kind of symbolic capital, the stigma of “undeservingness” devalues political rights formally given.
Because of its embedding into the welfare state Social Work is ultimately linked to and mediated by social rights of citizenship. Its activity is linked to the tension of equality and inequality, in other words the tension of citizenship and capitalism (Marshall 1992) in modern societies. Because “Bürger” is an ambiguous term, which refers to the citoyen as well as to the bourgeois and by the fact that social rights are not only an inclusive concession to the interests of common people but as a part of a social compromise also an instrument of rule (Cremer-Schäfer 2005), the task of Social Work is also ambiguous. Accordingly, Social Work can be laid out on securing the prerequisites of equality, especially related to the practice of civil and political rights, as well as on the guarantee of the acceptance of a middle-class-lifestyle and moral code and its economic basis, the comodification of labour. Against this background the question is formed weather the users of social services can “co-produce” a “Gebrauchswert” which is helpful in gaining a substantial kind of political citizenship or does Social Work reproduce forms of political exclusion by stigmatising its clients?

download.springer.com/static/pdf/972/bok%253A978-3-658-00273-2.pdf

Publikationen

Monographien

• Wagner T. 2006: Inklusion/Exklusion – Darstellung einer systemtheoretischen Differenz und ihre Anwendung auf illegale Migration. IKO-Verlag. Frankfurt a.M./London.

Zeitschriften- und Buchbeiträge/Essays

• Wagner T. 2007: „Grenzgänger“ – „illegale“ Migration im Lichte von Inklusion/Exklusion, in Migration und Soziale Arbeit, 29. Jg., 2007, Heft 3/4. 270-276.
• Dallmann H.-U./ Wagner T. 2007: 'Unter Ausschluss der Gesundheit?' Über die gesundheitliche Versorgung illegaler Migranten im Lichte von Inklusion/Exklusion, in Evangelische Hochschulperspektiven Band 3. Soziale Gesundheit, 2007, Freiburg, 114-127.
• Wagner T. 2008: Die Politik der Sozialen Arbeit – Überlegungen zur politischen Produktivität Sozialer Arbeit jenseits des Mandatsbegriffs. In: neue praxis. Zeitschrift für Sozialarbeit, Sozialpädagogik und Sozialpolitik Jg. 38, H. 06/08, 631-644.
• Wagner T. 2009: Gibt es eine neue Unterschicht? – Ein Beitrag gegen Entsolidarisierung, in Widersprüche. Zeitschrift für sozialistische Politik im Bildungs-, Gesundheits- und Sozialbereich, Jg. 29, H. 111, 29-48.
• Wagner T. 2009a: Citizenship, Soziale Arbeit und Soziale Klassen. Von der politischen Produktivität des Bürgers in der Sozialen Arbeit, in Widersprüche. Zeitschrift für sozialistische Politik im Bildungs-, Gesundheits- und Sozialbereich, Jg. 29, H. 112, 23-42.

Online-Publikationen:

• Wagner T. 2005: Funktionale Differenzierung und ein ökonomischer Primat –hat die systemtheoretische Gesellschaftstheorie ausgedient? Unter: www.sozialarbeit.ch
• Wagner T. 2006a: Die Soziale Arbeit der Sozialen Arbeit? Ein kurzer Blick auf die (Selbst-)Beobachtung eines Funktionssystems. Unter: www.sozialarbeit.ch
• Wagner T. 2007a: Vom „Ende“ der Armut und der „Entdeckung“ der Exklusion. Des Königs neue Kleider oder „neue“ Qualitäten der Ungleichheit? Unter: Unter: www.sozialarbeit.ch

Rezensionen, Rezensionsaufsätze, Sammelrezensionen:

• Wagner T. 2007b: Vom 'Gespenst' der Exklusion – Braucht die Soziale Frage einen neuen Namen?, in Sozialwissenschaftliche Literaturrundschau. Zeitschrift für Sozialarbeit, Sozialpädagogik, Sozialpolitik und Gesellschaftspolitik, 30. Jg. H. 55, 97-112
• Wagner T. 2008a Rezension: Jürgen Mackert: Staatsbürgerschaft. Eine Einführung, in Sozialwissenschaftliche Literaturrundschau. Zeitschrift für Sozialarbeit, Sozialpädagogik, Sozialpolitik und Gesellschaftspolitik, 31. Jg. H. 56, 136-138
• Wagner T. 2008b Rezension: Erwin Jordan: Kindeswohlgefährdung. Rechtliche Neuregelungen und Konsequenzen für den Schutzauftrag der Kinder- und Jugendhilfe, in Widersprüche. Zeitschrift für sozialistische Politik im Bildungs-, Gesundheits- und Sozialebereich, H. 109, 28. Jg. Nr. 3, 106-113
• Wagner T. 2009: Das Wagnis der Partizipation!? Verstärkte Beteiligung von Kindern und Jugendlichen zwischen Funktionalisierung und Selbstzweck, in Sozialwissenschaftliche Literaturrundschau. Zeitschrift für Sozialarbeit, Sozialpädagogik, Sozialpolitik und Gesellschaftspolitik, 32. Jg. H. 58, 35-42.