Paper presented by the candidate Ana Elizabete Mota as a requirement of public call for the post of Professor at the Department of Social Work at Universidad Federal de Pernambuco -UFPE, Recife, 2006. The purpose of the paper is to historically and theoretically discuss the terms of debate on Social Work and Social Issues; in general, it resumes the origins of discussion in the field of Social Work, presents some of the main perspectives, and emphasizes on the different uses given to the term Social Issue. The most relevant sources of information were the documents from ABESS/ ABEPSS, which have been produced in order to support and shape the most recent theoretical review (the years 90s during the Twentieth Century). A brief review of the literature on Social Work was made, later, the factors influencing on the profession are discussed (Pierre Robert and Castel Rosavallon). Based on an explicitly marxist inspiration, it states that the term Social Issue is considered a strategic definition rather than an analysis category, whose heuristic ability would allow the identification of the origins, development, and eventual overcoming of the contradictions generating social inequality.