Three Decades of Post-Yugoslav Transformation(s) of Social Policy and Social Work in Serbia – Still Between Uncertainty and Failure

This chapter provides contextual insights into the changing nature of social policy and social work as a result of profound societal transitions that have had a decisive impact on the transformation of the welfare state in Serbia since the beginning of the 1990s. In the last three decades, social policy and social work have become dominated by market-oriented adaptive reform reactions to the jeopardised welfare of citizens. Reforms have been guided by principles of tightening eligibility criteria and imposition of obligations, resulting in a serious narrowing of the scope of social policy and social work and a disempowering of their target groups. The combination of quasi-socialist, neo-liberal and conservative discourses, accentuated with underdeveloped elements of participation, consultation and co-production, has strongly guided the design of the politics of the welfare state. The main challenges that have contributed to such approaches are both external and internal to the national welfare state, and have resulted in low modernisation impulses in social policy and social work. Consequently, social policy is characterised by prevailing economic concerns along with its challenged sustainability and controversial redistributive outcomes, low-to-moderate coverage of the population, as well as a high degree of informality. Social work services have become diversified, with the user perspectives not duly taken into account, while the benefits are low and connected to the alleged activation approach. The impact of COVID-19 revealed numerous shortages in social policy and social work, with healthcare concerns being at the forefront and other aspects of welfare having been neglected to a significant extent. In order to produce a positive transformative impact with in society, social policy and social work should in the future be based on a fully-fledged paradigm of solidarity, and led by rights-based and bottom-up approaches.