ABSTRACT
Chapter 5 presents the genesis of the socio-pedagogical institutions present in the area; their ways of approaching and constructing the place and people in day-to-day welfare and the social conditions of their practice (including the perception of this condition by social workers active from the late 1970s through today). The chapter spotlights the first philanthropic institutions in the late 1800, the first welfare attempts in the first half of the 20th century and the professionalisation in the wake of WWII, and the restructuring of welfare from the 1980s onwards under headlines such as modernisation and de-bureaucratisation of the public sector. It also stresses how the expansion of so-called preventive institutions, the de-institutionalisation of former total institutions and intensified local social work in the neighbourhood have formalised collaboration between police, social agencies, and the school (called SSP), as well as made the ‘community’ a site of intervention in itself. The presence of social welfare institutions in the territory place the social workers in an ambivalent position as they strive to read changing bureaucratic demands on the one hand and represent the neighbourhood through professional solidarity and middle-class distancing on the other hand.
