Possibilities and limitations of social policy in Brazil and Portugal on the category of social work networks

• Grant number: 16/02582-5
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research Internship - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: May 05, 2016
• End date: August 04, 2016
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Psychology - Social Psychology
• Principal Investigator: Sílvio José Benelli
• Grantee: Ana Claudia Fagundes Miguel de Souza
• Supervisor: Cristina Maria Pinto Albuquerque
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Ciências e Letras (FCL-ASSIS). Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP). Campus de Assis. Assis , SP, Brazil
• Institution abroad: Universidade de Coimbra (UC), Portugal
• Associated to the scholarship: 14/16435-9 - The subject of network in working in the national police of attendance child and adolescence and in the social care: a dialectics analysis, BP.IC

Abstract

As part of the transformations of social policy in Portugal and in Brazil, claims to civil society and networking has been assuming increasing importance, and it is essential to understand critically how such work is structured, as well as the possibilities and limitations that such work deals with regarding particularly to governance, innovation and the implementation of social rights and expectations. Therefore, we shall carry out a comparative and critical analysis on the subject of social work networks in social policy in Brazil and Portugal, particularly from the theoretical framework of historical materialism. Part of this research is already ongoing in Brazil. A three-month research internship abroad in Coimbra, Portugal, shall contribute to study the subject in this country, albeit briefly, and the researchers have already been accepted by an institutional supervisor at the University of Coimbra. We shall inquire dialectically the meaning given to the term social work networks based on the Portuguese official discourse found in the literature, and from workers and decision-makers at public and private social organizations of social intervention belonging to the Social Network Program in Coimbra. We shall also investigate the possibilities and limitations of networking, discussing its contradictions and economic, social and cultural aspects involved in this kind of social management in both countries. (AU)