Conclusion: The Potentials of a Lived Citizenship Perspective for Critical Social Work Research

Warming and Fahnøe provide a cogent overview of how a lived citizenship approach enables critical analyses of social work and social policies by addressing challenges related to rights, recognition, participation, belonging and identity. The sub-concept of intimate citizenship and a spatial analysis approach reveal how clients’ struggles in intimate and societal life, and in public and private spaces, are intertwined with geo-politics and global flows of governance strategies, e.g. neoliberalism and managerialism, which also condition social work practices. Indeed, social work constitutes a kind of sociological magnifying glass through which broader social changes can be studied, including dynamics of inclusion and exclusion, new conflicts and modes of resistance, and new social pathologies.