"We are open, the door is just very heavy" - the politicization of social work education admissions decision-making in England

<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title> <jats:p>The professionalization agenda in English social work seemed complete when registration came into being in 2000 under the oversight of the General Social Care Council. Since 2005, anyone using the title “social worker” must be registered, and failure to adhere to regulatory standards risks removal from the register. Two decades and two regulatory bodies later, the interrelationship between social work and politics remains as contested. Where one might have anticipated the professionalization agenda to have satisfied power, it has in effect achieved the opposite, with growing demands to further standardize, validate, and regulate the profession. This chapter considers social work education admissions decision-making as illusio praxis, a politically constructed site of power within social work education as a gateway to the profession. Using a political discourse analysis, this chapter posits that far from emancipation, the populist professionalization movement has colonized social work for politically presented commonsense ends. Through a logic of construction analysis, this chapter exposes a moralizing gray area when considering whose capital counts in meeting “suitability” to study social work. In conclusion, it will be possible to question the ethical presumption of professionalization as modernization or populist mission creep reasserting labor power and claiming new sites of capitalism.</jats:p>