Commoning Conflictuality : Activist Social Work at the Neapolitan Commons

This thesis examines how urban commons function as sites of community-based social work and political mobilisation under conditions of welfare retrenchment, using the theoretical frameworks of Social Reproduction Theory and “agonistic social work”. Through ethnographic fieldwork at Ex-OPG Je So’ Pazzo and Villa Medusa in Naples, it investigates how spatial and organisational forms shape social work practices, how these practices foster political subjectivation and mobilisation, and how this dynamic influences public–commons partnership with the municipality. The findings show that the commons operate as relational infrastructures of social reproduction: shared space and collective governance enable locally expressed needs to be recognised as interconnected, also reshaping the relationship between “helper” and “helped.” Participation in care practices can foster political subjectivation by linking everyday experiences of precarity to collective interpretation and action, though this process remains uneven and mediated by material constraints. While the Ex-OPG more directly translates social work into mobilisation, Villa Medusa relies on territorially embedded assemblies and mediation. Under shifting municipal administrations, public– commons partnership emerges as conflictual and contingent rather than stable or co-opted. Engagement with the state is best understood as agonistic rather than collaborative. The thesis contributes to social work scholarship by bridging literature on urban commons and civil society-driven welfare practices, and by extending theories of agonistic social work to the context of public–commons partnership.