Neoliberal Globalization and the Climate Crisis: Implications for Social Work

Drawing on critical theory and concepts such as eco-social justice and emancipatory social work, the study analyses the relationship between climate change, global inequality and professional social work practice and education in an era characterised by neoliberal globalisation and the Anthropocene.

The thesis comprises three sub-studies. The first is a theoretical analysis arguing for the need to repoliticise social work, integrating ecological and social justice perspectives. The second is based on interviews with practising social workers and shows that, although awareness of the significance of climate change is high, opportunities for action are limited by organisational structures and a narrow, neoliberal professional role. The third sub-study analyses the extent to which climate issues are included in Swedish social work degree programmes, supplemented by focus groups with educators.

The thesis highlights a clear disconnect between global policy initiatives and local practice, as well as between the profession’s core values and its actual scope for action. The results point to the need for structural changes, enhanced training and increased awareness to enable social work that actively contributes to climate justice. The study thus contributes to developing knowledge on how social work can address contemporary ecological and social challenges.

This is a phD-research project.Tutors: Vishanthie Sewpaul & Sabine Gruber

Published articles

I.    Kaffrell-Lindahl, A., & Sewpaul, V. (2026). Disrupting neoliberalism and human-induced climate change: emancipatory social work for ecosocial justice. Critical and Radical Social Work, 14(1), 92-109. 

Abstract: An over-consumptive neoliberal world, fuelled largely by media messages that insidiously lead people to define their worth by their purchasing choices and purchasing power, is contributing to the destruction of the planet and pushing the Earth beyond acceptable tipping points, posing grave threats to human and planetary well-being. If social work is to play a meaningful role in challenging the hegemony of neoliberalism and human-induced climate change and their disastrous consequences, it must disarticulate itself from modernist, positivist orientations and embrace an emancipatory praxis with a focus on the politicisation of the self and of the profession. Emancipatory praxis holds the potential to combine a spiritual cosmocentricism, based on self-enlightenment and altered conceptualisations of self, other and nature, and the pragmatic aspects of liberation in freeing ourselves from cultural, political and capitalistic ideological hegemony to enable shifts towards ecosocial justice.

II.    Kaffrell-Lindahl, A. (2026). Social work and climate change: the split between the personal and the professional. Nordic Social Work Research, 16(1), 32–44. 

Abstract: The climate crisis is accelerating even quicker than feared with devastating consequences for nature, animals and especially people that social workers engage with. This article, drawing on empirical data from qualitative research with social work practitioners in Sweden, highlights the gaps between global rhetoric and on-the-ground realities, and the huge chasm between social worker’s commitment to climate justice on a personal level and their professional practice. Informed by reflexive thematic analysis and the descriptive-interpretive research design, the empirical data show that while social workers reflect deep awareness of the importance of responding to climate change, understanding it as everyone’s responsibility, they see the call to action as being far removed from the demands of daily practice. There are strong indications that global patterns of individualization, specialization and the impositions of efficiency and narrowly defined outcomes, featured of neoliberalism and new public management, influence social workers’ scope of work in decided ways. The global, national and institutional constraints on the roles of social workers raise ethical issues in relation to the imperative that all social workers address issues of ecosocial justice. The data suggest that if there were spaces for dialogue and reflexivity in their workspaces, and educational political and organizational support for group and community-based approaches, social workers would be willing to live up to the global imperatives to fulfill their roles in contributing towards ecosocial justice. The implications for the politicization of social work and the importance of emancipatory praxis in social work education and practice are discussed.