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

The professionalisation 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 would be the risk of 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 professionalisation agenda to have satisfied power, it has in effect achieved the opposite with growing demands to further standardise, 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 gateway to the profession. Using a political discourse analysis, this chapter posits that far from emancipation, the populist professionalisation movement has colonised social work for politically presented common sense ends. Through a logics of construction analysis, this chapter exposes a moralising grey 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 professionalisation as modernisation or populist mission creep reasserting labour power and claiming new sites of capitalism.