Autonomous Collective Practices as Evidence for Evidence-Informed Anti-Oppressive Social Work: Insights from...

This article analyses how autonomous collective practices developed by social movements in contexts of precariousness can contribute to expanding evidence-informed anti-oppressive social work. Although anti-oppressive social work has emphasized the need to challenge structural oppression, redistribute power, and transform the conditions that produce social suffering, empirical research has largely focused on institutional contexts, paying less attention to community- and movement-based practices outside formal intervention frameworks.

The study is based on a qualitative reanalysis of an ethnobiographical corpus produced between 2016 and 2019 on a network of autonomous initiatives addressing precariousness. The corpus combines 30 biographical interviews, participant observation, and documentary analysis.

The analysis identified four main dimensions: the politicization of precariousness; mutual support and autonomy; care, territory, and the reproduction of life; and repression and criminalization. The findings reveal observable effects in terms of dignity, connection, meaning, and collective capacity.

The article contributes to evidence-informed anti-oppressive social work by recognizing social movements as spaces of situated knowledge, non-institutionalized intervention, resistance, and social transformation. It argues that autonomous collective practices can expand the evidentiary and practical horizons of anti-oppressive social work by showing how communities collectively interpret, contest, and transform precarious living conditions.