Relational Social Work: a perspective to trace the socioenvironmental shaping of flood risk in precarious settlements

Abstract

The implications and consequences of human interactions on socioenvironmental and ecological sustainability and on the construction of risk are now indisputable. From this perspective, contemporary social work has an opportunity to recover the bases of its social theory regarding the relationships between “person and environment”, applying them to the socio-environmental interactions of vulnerable communities, qualifying their role in the shaping of disasters caused by flooding in precarious settlements. In this article, we present a relational perspective that investigates the socioenvironmental interactions of populations migrating due to forced displacement, applying social network analysis (SNA) to understand the socioenvironmental shaping of flood risk in precarious settlements using the example of a case in Colombia. We meet networks of migrants who create precarious settlements in environmentally protected areas with a precarious perception of risk –when desperate and faced with a lack of opportunities or access to land for construction purposes– who create informal institutional links that sustain the development of the settlement with political favours. Recognising the formation of these networks provides an opportunity to reflect on their ways of thinking and acting. Moreover, they represent an important source of information to propose dialogue scenarios involving the relevant actors, which may in turn facilitate the definition of collective agreements to construct safer and more sustainable environments.