Serviço Social e a era digital: TICs, empreendedorismo e a precarização da profissão

Abstract

This study analyzes the impacts of productive restructuring and the spread of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) in Social Work, with an emphasis on the appropriation of the entrepreneurial discourse by social workers who use digital platforms, especially Instagram, as a means of professional practice. The research problematizes how the neoliberal logic has reconfigured the professional insertion of social workers, shifting their critical approach towards a market-oriented performance. To this end, the study is based on the historical-dialectical materialist method, which is part of Marxian theory, recognizing that only through this theoretical framework is it possible to understand reality in its totality, beyond the superficial appearance of phenomena. Thus, based on bibliographic references, we discuss transformations in the labor world, precarization, and new forms of worker subordination. The research combines a theoretical approach with an empirical study, through the observation of social workers’ profiles on Instagram. Posts were collected and discourses analyzed, linking the profession to an entrepreneurial logic, with a focus on promoting mentorships, courses, and consultancy services aimed at other professionals in the field. This stage sought to illustrate how the profession has been redefined in the digital environment and which strategies are used to disseminate entrepreneurship as a viable alternative to the crisis in formal labor. The results indicate that this trend contributes to the fragmentation of professional identity, promoting the dissolution of the three fundamental dimensions of social work practice—theoretical- methodological, ethical-political, and technical-operative—and distancing the profession from its critical and collective perspective. Thus, the need for an in-depth debate on the impacts of these transformations is reaffirmed, in order to strengthen the resistance of the category and reaffirm its commitment to the Ethical -Political Project of the profession.