Vol. 15 No. 30 (2025): Teoria queer e scienze sociali: tra sfide e prospettive
Monographic Section

Il possibile contributo delle teorie queer alla prospettiva anti-oppressiva nel servizio sociale

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  • Mara Sanfelici,
  • Luca Pavani
Mara Sanfelici
Università degli studi di Milano-Bicocca, Italia
Luca Pavani
Università degli studi del Piemonte Orientale, Italia
DOI: https://doi.org/10.36253/cambio-18642

Published 2026-02-11

Keywords

  • antioppressive social work,
  • queer theories,
  • care,
  • power

How to Cite

Sanfelici, M., & Pavani, L. (2026). Il possibile contributo delle teorie queer alla prospettiva anti-oppressiva nel servizio sociale. Cambio. Rivista Sulle Trasformazioni Sociali, 15(30), 85–96. https://doi.org/10.36253/cambio-18642

Copyright (c) 2025 Mara Sanfelici, Luca Pavani

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Abstract

This paper explores potential intersections between anti-oppressive social work approach and queer theories. Although developed in different contexts, both perspectives emerged from movements contesting misrecognition, stigmatization, and structural discrimination, and both aim to transform everyday life-worlds as well as welfare institutions. On this basis, the paper identifies a shared critical and pragmatic orientation toward social justice. Firstly, the article first reconstructs the foundations of anti-oppressive social work, tracing its development from radical and structural approaches through feminist and anti-racist social work, to later integrations of post-structural, constructionist, and intersectional perspectives. Anti-oppressive practice involves linking the micro, meso and macro levels of intervention, overcoming the care/justice dichotomy by viewing them as complementary, and basing professional action on democratic, dialogical and reflexive relationships. Particular attention is paid to how socially constructed categories (such as class, gender, ethnicity, age, ability, and sexuality) shape identities, organize recognition and misrecognition, and legitimize unequal power relations within social work practice, organizations, and welfare policies. Secondly, the paper outlines core contributions of queer theories in challenging heteronormativity and more generally processes of normalization, highlighting the historical and discursive production of sexual and gender identities and the ambivalent effects of inclusion strategies that risk functioning as assimilation. By foregrounding contingency, boundary-making, resignification, and intersections with class, race, and gender, queer theory supports anti-normative reflexivity about what counts as normal, deviant, or atypical. Finally, the article discusses convergencies and tensions between these perspective in the contemporary debate and it ultimately argues for a productive hybridity that uses queer lens to problematize normative standards while maintaining a justice-oriented commitment to material redistribution, recognition, and care understood as a relational, ethical, and transformative practice at the core of social work.

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