“Beyond the Letter of the Law”: A Critical Discourse Analysis of Social Rights Take-Up in Social Work

Social work is considered a human rights-based profession. One of the major domains wherein social workers advance human rights involves carrying out actions directed at ensuring the realization of social rights of underprivileged service users. However, empirical knowledge about the actual everyday practice of social rights take-up in social work contexts is still scarce. Guided by scholarship on social rights advocacy and social work discourse, this study explores how take-up of rights discourse is manifested in social workers’ advocacy efforts on behalf of their marginalized service users. To do so, the study draws on 30 rights take-up letters written by practitioners in departments of social services in Israel, relating mainly to users’ right to housing, an adequate standard of living, and health care. A critical discourse analysis of the letters shows that in their efforts to secure the rights of service users, social workers primarily employed three discursive moves: discourse of individual responsibility, discourse of charity, and clinical discourse. Additional findings show that very few letters used human rights discourse. We conclude by offering a structural explanation for social workers’ reliance on discourses that depoliticize the idea and practice of securing people’s social rights.