The social construction of workaholism as a representational naturalization.

Workaholism, a term borrowed from the language around alcoholism, first appeared in academic writing in the late 1960s. This article addresses the following questions: How has the concept of workaholism evolved in scientific literature and in society? How do people who identify as workaholics represent and communicate work addiction, and how do they identify it as their lived reality? Drawing on the concept of naturalization as a process of social representation, we argue that workaholism has been constituted as a naturalized object, and we consider the ways in which it is reproduced in everyday life through communication and experience. We situated the definition of workaholism within the scholarly literature. We then conducted semi-structured interviews with eleven individuals who self-identify or have been diagnosed as work addicts. Our research shows that representational naturalization began when workaholism first became a recognizable reality as a result of changes in the world of work. Naturalization was then achieved by eliminating contradictions through the process of decoupling the positive features of workaholism from the overall concept. Our results demonstrate how this naturalized representation of workaholism is reproduced through the communication and lived experience of "workaholics."

Organizational Context and Healthcare Reforms: What Effect on the Professional Distress of Canadian Social Workers and Social Service Provision?

This study examined the lived experience of Canadian clinical social workers in light of the organizational context in which they work. The literature indicates an alarming rise of occupational psychological distress in social workers, which aligns with the rise of the neoliberal ideology within the Canadian healthcare sector. While we know that organizational constraints and structural reforms affect social worker's workplace well-being, it remains unclear how these changes are represented by front-line practitioners and how they affect the provision of social services in healthcare settings. To deepen our understanding of this issue, we conducted a thematic analysis of thirty semi-directed interviews with social workers currently practicing in three Canadian cities (Ottawa, Moncton and Winnipeg). Discussions of daily work life, responsibilities, autonomy and subjective understandings of the social worker's role revealed which organizational constraints were the most significant in everyday practice and how they relate to their professional identity and mandate. Provincial healthcare reforms were generally found to have negative effects on clinical social workers, whose struggles for recognition were impaired by the fundamentally neoliberal ideologies behind the large-scale restructuring of service provision, themselves at odds with the humanistic principles of social work. Our findings further suggest that structural changes under the New Public Management frame could be detrimental to both the quality of services provided by clinical social workers and their well-being. Overall, this investigation highlights the importance of organizational improvements in the workplace through systemic changes that would concurrently target managerial expectations, resources allocation, autonomy, work-life balance and respect for professional values.

Mirrored Social Representations of Canadian Caseworkers with Migratory Paths Intervening with Refugees in the Host Country.

In 2015, the resettlement of 25,000 Syrian refugees in Canada placed a strain on social services. Caseworkers employed in these agencies often come from similar migratory trajectories to those of the refugees. This experiential proximity requires an understanding of the subjective perspectives that caseworkers with migratory paths have of refugees in the context of their professional practice. We analyzed fifteen individual interviews with Canadian caseworkers and conducted field observations of resettlement activities in the Ottawa-Gatineau region using inductive reasoning inspired by grounded theory. Adopting a sociogenetic approach to social representation theory, this qualitative study illustrates how the social representation of refugees among foreign-born caseworkers is highly informed by their migratory past experience, as well as by the social identity and social context from which that representation was socio-generated. Our analysis reveals the mirror effect of the caseworkers as a fruitful concept for understanding the identity-otherness dynamics in the encounter between the distant other (refugee) and the self.