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12 - Social Work and COVID-19 in Greece
- Edited by Michael Lavalette, Liverpool Hope University, Vasilios Ioakimidis, University of Essex, Iain Ferguson
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- Book:
- Social Work and the COVID-19 Pandemic
- Published by:
- Bristol University Press
- Published online:
- 23 March 2021
- Print publication:
- 19 October 2020, pp 87-94
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Summary
Government's response and society
According to WHO, on 15 July 2020 there were 3,826 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Greece with 193 deaths. During the last months, Greece managed to achieve a low pandemic rate due to measures concerning social distancing and early lockdown. However, there are three other issues that are behind these ‘successful’ policy that are not often addressed in public discourse. First, as Alexis Benos (2020) argues, Greece is “in the margins of the capitalist production”, which, amongst others, entails intensification of mass production and all its ills such as the tragic working conditions. Second, the Greek public health sector has been totally abandoned by the government, which leads to the third issue that the health system would be unable to afford or handle a large-scale hospitalisation of COVID-19 patients. Greece is following the pace of a global trend where health systems across the world collapsed as a result of “40 years of neoliberalism”, which “has left the public totally exposed and ill prepared to face a public health crisis on the scale of coronavirus” as David Harvey (2020a) argues. In fact, since 2019 the right-winged Greek government has deepened the degradation of the public health sector by attempting to merge it with the private sector.
Since the pandemic outbreak, the Greek Federation of the Unions of Hospital Doctors (2020) repeatedly pointed out the lack of staff and protective equipment in the hospitals.
The pandemic had made more than apparent across the world the need of a strong public health system. Yet, this is not the priority of the Greek government.
While COVID-19 and climate change are the most recent aspects of the crisis, the general impact of neoliberal capitalism on society should not be lost. More specifically, the over-10-year crisis of neoliberal capitalism in Greece, which was exposed with the financial crisis of 2008, was used as a pretext by the government to dismantle the welfare state and public sector (Papatheodorou 2018), resulting in the wellknown austerity measures, whose tremendous consequences are still palpable on the population. The negative implications of neoliberal capitalism were further exposed as the so-called “refugee crisis” emerged (Khiabany 2016). There is enough evidence to suggest that refugees routinely experience violations of their human rights due to the EU's punitive and hostile policies, leading to thousands of deaths (Karageorgiou 2016; Khiabany 2016).
Social work and the Greek crisis
- Edited by Iain Ferguson, University of New South Wales, Michael Lavalette
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- Book:
- Critical and Radical Debates in Social Work
- Published by:
- Bristol University Press
- Published online:
- 04 February 2022
- Print publication:
- 12 March 2014, pp 45-50
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Summary
The following comments will not be neutral not only because the insightful work of the authors – concerning poverty, social policy and social work – has been for years a source of inspiration for me but mainly because this text was written in May 2012 in Greece, where I live and work. More specifically, two years after the entrance of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and Central Bank with the alliance of Greek elite, the people are getting poorer and poorer day after day. The unemployment rate has risen to 25%, while there are constant cuts in salaries and pensions as well as the abolition of benefits. The statistics demonstrate an increase of up to 20% in suicides over the last two years alone. Similarly, the incidence of depression, drug use and mental health problems has increased significantly. Poverty, as Jones and Novak highlight, is not only about the lack of money; it is much more and its effects on people's lives are more than apparent in austerity Greece.
Faced with such human tragedy you cannot be neutral. This is particularly true for social work. The commitment of social work to social justice and the well-being of people is a clear indication of which side social work should be on. Jones and Novak make a clear call to social workers to use ‘strong words’ and take action against the human destruction.
However, critical analysis of the general context is a basic precondition before taking action. At this point, the authors describe vividly the situation across the globe and contribute to providing the reader with an insightful understanding.
The following comments focus on two points of the authors’ analysis. The first point that will be discussed is the management of poverty under capitalism and the tactics of the system, using examples from the Greek case. The second point refers to the resistance of the people and the need for social work to take action.
To begin with the first point, the authors highlight how poverty and inequality are clearly connected with capitalism. Capitalism has systematically used a number of ‘tools’ in order to keep its dominance through the management of poverty.