Presentation of the advances in the European RESPONSIVE research, supported and in which EUROCEF has been participating for several years.
« Dans le cadre de la recherche RESPONSIVE Project , nous sommes allés à la rencontre d’artistes, de porteuses et porteurs d’actions citoyennes visant à mettre en lumière les tensions et contradictions qui structurent les services sociaux, mais également à amplifier la voix des personnes accompagnées, autrement dit, leur représentation dans l’espace public essentielle à la démocratie et à la transformation du travail social.
Afin de partager les résultats de cette enquête, nous vous invitons à prendre part à la journée d’étude qui aura lieu le 5 novembre 2024 de 9h00 à 17h30 à l’Université Paris Nanterre (Amphithéâtre W, Bâtiment Weber).
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“Democracy today faces several major challenges: a loss of trust in the institutions that should embody it; a growing distance between the population and elected representatives; the rise of extremism; and increasing political and societal polarization. However, without pluralism, without respect for human rights, without civic education and citizen engagement, and without a public service dedicated to the protection of individual rights and the guarantee of fair treatment for all, democracy cannot exist. At the same time, social work has the mission to 'enable access for individuals to all fundamental rights, to facilitate their social inclusion, and to exercise full citizenship.
With the aim of emancipation, access to autonomy, protection, and participation of individuals, social work contributes to promoting, through individual and collective approaches, social change, social development, and societal cohesion. It participates in developing individuals' capacities to act for themselves and in their environment" (Decree No. 2017-877 of May 6, 2017 – art. 1). In these terms, social work would contribute to maintaining our democratic ideal. However, it appears that this ideal is also confronted with certain challenges that threaten both its public service mission and the space for expression it constitutes, where democracy is learned, practiced, and built by disadvantaged individuals and groups. In this sense, it is necessary to examine how democracy is practiced within the social sector itself and how the individuals being supported can influence and shape the work of services intended to ensure the effectiveness of their rights.
In a democratic perspective of social work, moving from the user to the user-citizen (Leduc, 2014) involves paying particular attention to the social logics and resources that affect individuals' expression and ultimately their civic participation. According to Pierre Rosanvallon: to govern is also to speak. Therefore, speaking in public and institutional spaces allows those who express themselves to take part in their governance. According to the author, "a democratic policy involves giving a voice to what people experience.".
The English expression "speaking truth to power," often used to describe the role of civil society in relation to leaders, allows, according to the author, to "simultaneously increase citizens' control over their existence and enable them to establish a positive relationship with political life. Speaking falsely or speaking hollowly, on the contrary, amplifies the gap. In the strongest sense of the term, political language is therefore at the heart of establishing a bond of trust. For it is in the feeling of its correctness that the possibility of linking the present to the future resides."
The research "RESPONSIVE" resonates with this last statement in that it emerges from the observation that the lack of responses from organizations carrying out public service missions to the requests of citizens, professionals, and/or civil society organizations makes participation processes unilateral and can, depending on the context, be experienced as a disregard for rights and a form of institutional violence. In these terms, the deficits mentioned above escape the essential "speaking the truth." However, to remain alive in social services, democracy cannot be satisfied with a dead language, in other words, a discourse that is distant from the everyday lives and realities of the people they support.
The researchers of the Responsive project traveled to six European countries to meet with artists as well as advocates of civic actions aimed at amplifying the voices of supported individuals and highlighting the tensions and contradictions that structure social services, in other words, their representation in the public space, which is essential for democracy and the transformation of social work. In order to share the results of this research with academic and non-academic stakeholders, we invite you to participate in the study day that will take place on the campus of the University of Paris Nanterre on November 5, 2024..
The day will be organized as follows: in the morning, two round tables are scheduled, dedicated to citizen and artistic action aimed at the democratic participation of people in vulnerable situations in the field of social work in France and internationally. These conversations will be followed by three workshops focusing on practices involving citizens in the functioning of social and medico-social services in France. The central crucial question that will be addressed will concern the factors that promote or hinder the integration of citizen voices, and more specifically those of users of social and medico-social establishments and services, in the design, implementation, and evaluation of these services and establishments.