DEMOCRACY, RIGHTS AND SOCIAL WORK: PARTICIPATION AND ACCESS TO RIGHTS IN THE FACE OF THE GLOBAL CRISIS

Abstract

Democracy is a theme in many socio-political analyzes in the face of the recent global crisis and the
guarantee of rights. When asking what democracy means, the answers are assertive: “the right to
make their choices, participate in decision-making processes, freedom of expression, participation in
political relations, space and identity in political deliberations. However, there is a retraction of
subjects in the confrontation with political decision-making power demonstrating a condition of
disenchantment as subjects and citizens. Despite the free manifestation gained by the right to vote
and the freedom to use the street as a public space for visibility of manifestations of every order and
nature, one of the challenges in contemporary democratic societies is to understand this distancing
in the participation of decisions that impact on life, on condition of living with quality, dignity and
security. The communication is the result of a bibliographic and documentary study, and aims to
discuss the contradictions expressed in the ideal of the concept and social meaning of democracy
and the real expressed in the daily life of society looking from the construction of social policies in a
globalized world that proposes the integration between peoples while creating physical and social
barriers to this integration and reception. It also presents the Social Work as a profession that works
in the objective conditions of life of the subjects, workers, and has the ethical-political commitment to
defend rights, equity and social justice having as its central value the collective freedom built
individually.
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