Samenvatting

As a practitioner, a manager and a scientist in social work for 40 years, I am still intrigued by
the social work positioning and legitimating processes. Its recognition by users and financiers
is often diffuse and its fragmentation sometimes hinders effective interventions. In social
work itself, we see a range of positioning processes, most of them either legitimating social
work as a promoter of social justice, a supporter of emancipation and anti-oppressive practice,
or positioning social work as a therapeutic approach, treating people with socio-psychological
and psychiatric disorders. Social work is often promoted as a ‘real’ profession, in need of
formal recognition and in need of a precise profile. In this article it will be argued that the
core of social work is about supporting people in their social functioning and should position
itself in the centre of the post-modern quest: the social-psychological disorientation, the lack
of meaning, and the problems of isolation and exclusion. Modern professionalism is not about
demarcating and regulating but much more about ‘Entgrenzung’ and openness.