Learning From the Wisdom of Mutual Aid:  Implications for Social Work Education and Practice

Overview: Historically and presently, oppressed and marginalized groups have mobilized via mutual aid for survival and resistance, providing a powerful counterpoint to the harms inflicted by mainstream social welfare. This session explores engagement with mutual aid as a critical topic within social work education for culturally humble, critically conscious practice.Proposal text: Attorney, writer, activist, and scholar Dean Spade states that, when we engage in mutual aid, “we are both building the world we want and becoming the kind of people who could live in such a world together” (Spade, 2020a, p. 18). Mutual aid centers human rights, providing a counterpoint to harms inflicted by mainstream social welfare. Defined loosely as an exchange of resources and support for mutual benefit, mutual aid has surged during the pandemic – in the US (Bell, 2021; Rodriguez, 2020), and globally (Carstensen, Mudhar, & Munksgaard, 2021; Sitrin & Sembrar, 2020) – as many have sought support to fill resource gaps left bare by federal, state, and local governments.

Despite its relevance in the present moment, mutual aid is not new; it has existed as a philosophical and practical response to the failures of public institutions for over a century, with oppressed and marginalized groups being forced to mobilize for their survival and dignity. Notably in the US, the Black community mobilized to care for one another and envision new ways of living, free of domination – beginning with the self-help efforts of enslaved people, continuing with resistance to the atrocities of Jim Crow during the Progressive Era, and extending through the Civil Rights years and into the present in response to police and white supremacist violence (Beutin, Henley, Okesanya, & Williamson, 2021; Carlton-LaNey, 2011; Chiles, 2015; Roberts, 2017). Similar initiatives have emerged in response to societal and governmental violence against the trans community, undocumented immigrants, incarcerated persons, persons with HIV-AIDS, sex workers, and the disability community, among others (Arani, 2020; Carrasco et al., 2017; Davis & Fayter, 2021; Hwang, 2019; Magaña, 2011; Spade, 2020b).

Mutual aid is unique in its dual focus on (a) concrete supports, and (b) societal transformation. Social workers’ engagement with mutual aid has been only minimally explored in the literature (for example, Steinberg, 2010), likely due in part to the non-professionalized, peer-led nature of mutual aid, and to our profession’s ambivalent, and sometimes ambiguous, relationship to social welfare systems, as we are embedded in and complicit with the very institutions whose impacts and ideologies we would hope to resist (Brady, Sawyer, & Perkins, 2019; Jacobs et al., 2020; Kolivoski, Weaver, & Constance-Huggins, 2014; Levin, 2019). Nonetheless, it is imperative that we understand and name the ways in which social welfare systems and policies have functioned to intentionally limit access to resources and care. It is in this understanding of the failure of institutions that we can learn to envision equitable solutions.

This session explores mutual aid as an important focus of social work education for culturally humble, critically conscious practice. Participants will discuss strategies for engaging students in exploring how they might support and engage with the wisdom of mutual aid without falling prey to co-optation, and/or replicating societal hierarchies and supremacies. In this process, we can encourage the next generation of social workers to continue the crucial tasks of envisioning and realizing our highest ethical and professional imperatives.