Reciprocity in Poverty. A Study on the Relationship System between Social Workers and Service Users in Bari, Southern Italy

This article describes the theoretical basis and research methodology of my ongoing PhD research project. The doctoral study focuses on extreme poverty and marginalization and aims to explore the relationship between people in poverty and social work in the daily work context. This structural relationship – a persistent model between social positions – is analysed through the categories of gift theory, emphasising the money mediated disengagement relationship typical of the individualisation process. Simmel’s approach to the study of poverty considers its symbolic-relational element as the determining dimension: the definition of ‘the poor’ depends on the social and cultural context and, consequently, it changes according to the policies and social workers’ view. Based on the relative-relational approach, the analysis has two main objectives: describing the structural context (the city of Bari, Apulia, Italy), useful to understanding the policy governance view of the extreme poverty phenomena, and analysing the representations of social workers and service users about their identity and relational dimensions.