'Social work practices for people with precarious residence status in Brussels: An exploration of religiously and philosophically inspired solidarity initiatives'

In this project, we study the links between religious and philosophically inspired organisations (FBOs) and welfare state institutions (WSIs). Today, the national welfare state does not (yet) have an answer to a number of new challenges in our rapidly changing world. FBOs meet some of these challenges and are becoming increasingly important in organising social support and solidarity. Especially in cities with a lot of diversity, we see people's religious beliefs taking back more place in public life.
In the current social context, this trend is often viewed with suspicion. Yet FBOs have a lot of assets to deal with the challenges of our time. There is a need for substantiation and nuance in the debate on what solidarity should look like. Therefore, in this project we look at what FBOs in Brussels do in their everyday practices and how they relate to WSIs and the welfare state. The focus is on the target group of people with precarious residence status. Concretely, the project aims to (1) design a template for a (dynamic and interactive) social map of FBOs in Brussels; (2) develop tailor-made community service learning education modules (for social work students) and training courses (for the Brussels social work field), based on in-depth qualitative field research among Brussels FBOs and WSIs and (3) improve cooperation between secular and religious forms of solidarity. Central to this is the idea that we should focus on social work that can bridge and cooperate with FBOs on the basis of complementarity.