Social entrepreneurship and social integration challenges of interdisciplinarity in the co construction of knowledge

If the term «entrepreneur» theoretically associates with the risk-taker, who starts something new and/or operates a business to put in practice a personal idea, it also highlights a (new) rethoric based on freedom and individuality, which
requires attitude”, “spirit” and a “way of being” capable of solving “individual” problems (Campos & Soeiro, 2016). Such a framework emerges form an environment of activation and individualization of social policies (Soulet, 1998; Branco & Amaro, 2011), guided by economic materialism and an idea that the entrepreneurial attitude contributes to the creation of more and better jobs, to the improvement of existing solutions and to the creation of more efficient processes. Also, it creates room for social entrepreneuship as a sustainable action in pursuit of social value to respond to social problems and needs. In this sense, it is argued that there is a possible connection between social work and social entrepreneurship which gives chance to boost interdisciplinarity in the co-creation of knowledge. On one hand, social work might participate in
social entrepreneurship processes with its orientation towards human dignity, cohesion and social justice, while on the other hand, management brings all the background connected with enpreneurial activity and innovation.
With this line of reasoning, we start from the results of a PhD research in Social Work where we discuss, through a mixmethod approach, (i) the impacts of attendance in entrepreneurship and social entrepreneurship training to the personal and professional pathways of 52 participants, by applying a survey; (ii) the positioning of social work in face of the potential relationship between social work and social entrepreneurship, by conducting 2 focus groups with academics
and practitioners;(iii) the perspective of other stakeholders of entrepreneurship processes, namely from a management background, via semi-structered interviews.
We intend to sustain the argument coming from the PhD research and reinforce it with a further qualitative data gathering, namely with the helding of (i) in-depth entreviews with 15 potential entrepreneurs envolved in self-employment processes and of (ii) a focus group with 5 academic social workers connected with practices and/or projects of social entrepreneurship and with 5 managers, also connected to the academy and entrepreurship. The combination of data will allow a deepen of meanings and representations of potential entrepreneurs about the process of employment creation; an alliance of perspectives comming from two social sciences around potentialities
and frailties of “self-employment” as a path to social integration; a lauching of new clues for the involvement of the profession on the public debate around “work” as a social right, projecting proposals for social policy measures.