"‘While leaving, I'm still waiting at the door, because I'm worried’. Vibrating Boundaries in the Relations between Social Workers and Clients in Caring Practices"

On April 15, 2022, Elena Iarskaia-Smirnova took part at the conference "An anxious society and the (im)possibilities of solidarity", organized by the Sociological Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the St. Petersburg Association of Sociologists SPAS, panel "Feelings, emotions and boundaries: a psychotherapeutic turn in modern Russia" with a report on the topic "'While leaving, I'm still waiting at the door, because I'm worried’. Vibrating Boundaries in the Relations between Social Workers and Clients in Caring Practices" together with Valentina Yarskaya-Smirnova.

The results of the analysis of interviews collected in 2021 with social workers serving the elderly at home were presented. Physical and emotional boundaries in social workers’ experience are not static, they vibrate, are revised and felt in a new way due to the high level of uncertainty, unpredictable relationships and requests, along with increasing risks and instability during the pandemic. Relations between the workers and clients are fraught with risks of power imbalance, therefore, there are public and unspoken regulations that, depending on the degree of institutionalization of practices, are recognized as standards and recommendations at the level of professional associations and organizations or are transmitted orally at the grassroots level, among employees, and can be shared and maintained by the administration of services, still remaining informal arrangements. In such kind of relationship, there are many dilemmas, rules of conduct and procedures are not always standardized, but are developed in the processes of routine labor practices that develop in the relationships with people and engagement in their problems. These practices involve emotional care work u but they cause problems of trust and an imbalance of customer requests and employee capabilities.