Revisiting professional autonomy and structural constraints: Relational work in anti-drug social work

This study re-examines professional autonomy within China’s anti-drug social work by highlighting the role of relational work. Using qualitative case studies of four rehabilitation organisations in two cities, it explores how social workers build trust, networks, and reputation to sustain practice under structural constraints. Findings reveal contrasting paths: a professionalised organisation losing projects due to weak political ties, and a bureaucratic one gaining stability through administrative trust. Relational work thus functions as a key mechanism for negotiating survival, opportunity, and ethics within restrictive party-state-led, penal-welfarist systems. The study contributes to global social work by showing that autonomy in the Global South is not a fixed condition but a dynamic, relational practice enabling limited yet vital professional agency.