Ars combinatoria. Creatività e immaginazione professionalmente orientata al servizio della persona

The paper presents the results of an empirical investigation of the actual experience of social workers who are called to implement the measures that have introduced the Citizenship Basic Income (“Reddito di Cittadinanza”). We hypothesized that social workers cope with some criticalities reported in literature by mobilizing and combining resources of different nature: people, relationships, skills, knowledge, regulatory devices etc. The empirical work was based on focus groups conducted in Sardinia and Veneto. Evidence corroborates the idea that combinatory capacity is a key element of professional action. It also indicates which contextual factors can promote or hinder practitioners’ combinatory capacity.