{"title":"Transnational knowledge in social work programs: Challenges and strategies within assisted voluntary return and reintegration support","authors":"Ine Lietaert","doi":"10.1080/21931674.2017.1316661","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/21931674.2017.1316661","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The nexus between migration research and social work research led to interesting impulses to study transnational social work practices. However, the practical terms of being involved in cross-border programs are understudied. This article aims to transcend the preserving national and western-centric orientation in social work research by investigating assisted voluntary return and reintegration (AVRR) support. Drawing on interviews and group discussions with social workers supporting returnees in host countries and countries of origin, I set out to reveal the challenges that this practice poses within the Belgian AVRR program. The findings showed that the Belgian social workers were confronted with a lack of transnational knowledge to fulfill their roles, resulting from a division between different practitioners within the support chain and the localization of the main focus of the support across borders. Furthermore, the data shed light onto the struggles with regard to social workers’ positions within the program and towards its goals. For the Belgian social workers, this is related to their place within a restrictive migration policy. For the social workers in the countries of origin it was mainly linked to the transnational character of the program. Viewing these findings, I reflect on their implications for the provision of AVRR support and transnational support practices.","PeriodicalId":413830,"journal":{"name":"Transnational Social Review","volume":"24 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-05-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128553619","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Negotiations with a risk assessment tool: Standardized decision-making in the United States and the deprofessionalization thesis","authors":"Pascal Bastian","doi":"10.1080/21931674.2017.1313509","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/21931674.2017.1313509","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This article focuses on the challenges of decision-making in child protection. Comparative studies show that standardized risk assessment tools predict future maltreatment more accurately than interpretative assessment. Despite a long tradition of research on statistical decision-making, few studies deal with how such instruments are used and integrated into professional decision-making practice, and – from a transnational perspective – how specific national regulations influence such instruments and decision-making at street level. The article discusses concerns about the fact that such classification systems might have a negative impact on professional discretion. Based on a materialist approach, it highlights the actual practice of professional decision-making under the conditions of the application of actuarial tools. Using data from an ethnographical study, a practice of negotiation can be shown between the social workers and the assessment tools. The idea is discussed that this negotiation practice can be interpreted neither as manipulation of the tools nor principally as a decline in discretion. The main argument developed in this article is that a highly standardized practice can activate reconstructive processes and can even lead to greater discretionary powers. This thesis is discussed on a professional and an organizational level. The article concludes with a discussion of evidence-based social work as a traveling concept between nations.","PeriodicalId":413830,"journal":{"name":"Transnational Social Review","volume":"35 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-05-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125061372","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Claudia Olivier-Mensah, Wolfgang Schröer, C. Schweppe
{"title":"Social work transnationally revisited","authors":"Claudia Olivier-Mensah, Wolfgang Schröer, C. Schweppe","doi":"10.1080/21931674.2017.1317983","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/21931674.2017.1317983","url":null,"abstract":"The transnational interconnectedness of social work is not a new phenomenon. Historical analysis showed that social work has been entangled transnationally in many ways, and transnational studies provided a concept to describe and analyze these entanglements. The “transnational” concept is not only very common in social work discussions today, but it actually seems to have become a buzzword that is used to describe all kinds of phenomena, structures, and processes. The transnational perspective brought to light the “methodological nationalism” at work in the theory and practice of social work (Köngeter, 2009; Wimmer & Glick Schiller, 2002). It showed how social work has naturalized the nation-state, focusing on social process within the nation-state and its institutions as a natural unit of analysis and equating society with the nation-state. Transnational social work looks at border-crossing intertwinements of social processes and structures (Chambon, Schröer, & Schweppe, 2012; Negi & Furman, 2010). With a transnational perspective, we can analyze how and in which constellations social work is part of border policies and services (McGrath, Hynie, & King, 2014) and how it is – directly or indirectly – placed in a national frame. This does not mean that national policies of social work are always problematic, but that it is important to reflect on how the national frame includes some people and excludes others. The nation-state is still one of the crucial frameworks organizing both our lives and the social work profession. Since the beginning of the twentieth century, the concept of “international social work” has examined the national limitations of social work by recognizing the fact that actors, policies, and social services do not stop at state borders (Cox & Pawar, 2006; Graßhoff, Homfeltd, & Schröer, 2016; Healy, 2008; Kammer-Rutten, Schleyer-Lindemann, Schwarzer, & Wang, 2016; Midgley, 2001). A cross-border social work (cf. “global social work,” Noble, Strauss, & Littlechild, 2014) thus contains more than just the transfer of concepts and models from one national context to another. Salustowicz (2009, p. 70) calls for “[t] he overcoming of one’s cultural, social and political boundaries.” However, in research and practice, this approach is often grounded in a national comparison of different political and social work models, without considering the “bridging object,” the “trans,” or the “transmigratory element of social work” (Herz & Olivier, 2013b, p. 7). A central element of transnational social work is the focus on the border crossings of people, social relations, organizations and policies, and the processes and structures that evolve when these social flows transcend national borders and","PeriodicalId":413830,"journal":{"name":"Transnational Social Review","volume":"7 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-05-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130610810","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The dynamics of transnational research collaboration illustrated by a project on social media in poverty reduction","authors":"Barbara Waldis, D. Duff","doi":"10.1080/21931674.2017.1314613","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/21931674.2017.1314613","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Transnational social work usually deals with the international collaboration to solve a specific problem or case, where the representation of the individual and institutional scope of life and action – from the perspective of the beneficiaries and the social workers – are considered as transnational and thus, not nationally bound. That is where the methodological nationalism is consciously ruled out. International research collaboration in social work considers the transnational space. What does it mean to build up a common, transnational understanding of specific, socially, politically, and theoretically anchored concepts of poverty and new media in poverty alleviation programs within the international research group? When, how, and with what limits is a comparison of governmental action programs possible? Where are the opportunities and the limits of such transnational research collaborations? The research teams from Ghana, Mauritius, and Switzerland were composed of six people: two experienced researchers, two lecturers, and two professionals in social work. The scope of this article is the analysis of where the benefits and the challenges for transnational conception of poverty reduction through new media and transnational research collaboration lies.","PeriodicalId":413830,"journal":{"name":"Transnational Social Review","volume":"13 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-05-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124281454","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Identity and migration in Europe: Multidisciplinary perspectives","authors":"Michele Manocchi","doi":"10.1080/21931674.2017.1317200","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/21931674.2017.1317200","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":413830,"journal":{"name":"Transnational Social Review","volume":"245 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-05-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116586389","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"An interview with Maria Nikolakaki regarding the 2016 “Crossing Borders” conference in Lesvos, Greece","authors":"Raluca Bejan","doi":"10.1080/21931674.2017.1317199","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/21931674.2017.1317199","url":null,"abstract":"The journey from Athens to the port of Mytilene, capital of Lesvos, takes about nine hours by boat. Formerly a highly visited tourist spot, packed with small cafés and local Greek stores, Lesvos has recently attracted international attention due to the high influx of refugees from the Middle East and Africa arriving on the island’s shores. Alongside the Greek coastlines of Chios, Leros, and Samos, and Italy’s ports of Augusta, Lampedusa, Porte Empedocle, Pozzalo, Taranto, and Trapan, Lesvos nowadays constitutes a “hot” arrival “spot,” labeled as such by the European Commission to denote the high(er) inflow of refugees and asylum seekers. In light of the European refugee crisis, an international conference was organized in Lesvos in the summer of 2016 to address issues related to citizenship, displaced migration, borders and identity, refugee and asylum law, as well as the larger socio-political phenomena of imperialism, colonialism, globalization, and capitalism, which are also grounding the refugee crisis as such. The Crossing Borders conference took place between 7–10 July 2016. It was the first event organized by the Cooperative Institute for Transnational Studies (CITS), in collaboration with the Sociology Department of the University of Aegean. The conference was sponsored by the Stop the War Coalition (UK), Peoples’ Assembly Against Austerity, Real News Network, Stopimperialism.org, and the National Greek Television. Featured speakers included Tariq Ali, Andrej Grubačić, Feyzi Ismail, Dimitris Lascaris, Zoe Konstantopoulou, Vicki Macris, Maria Nikolakaki, John Rees, and Kenneth Surin. CITS was founded earlier in 2016 as an independent institution of higher learning, ideologically steered by radical politics and operating as a bottom-up educational system under the guiding principles of participation, collaboration, solidarity, democracy, and cooperativism, hence intended to work as a commons, with a general assembly bargained by all members, including teaching scholars and students. CITS also struck up an Advisory Board, comprising the well-known names of Tariq Ali, Étienne Balibar, Werner Bonefeld, Raquel Gutiérrez, John Holloway, Peter McLaren, Moishe Postone, Jacques Rancière, and Helena Sheehan. The conference opened with an art exhibit on the refugee topic, encompassing paintings, photos, sketches, and a combination of video art installations. Bilingual conference panels, in Greek and English, were conducted for two days. Sessions incorporated roundtables as well as special events, such as the screening of Janus’ Legacy: Refugee Passage to Europe, a documentary film directed by Dimitris Papageorgiou and Alexandros Spathis, which was","PeriodicalId":413830,"journal":{"name":"Transnational Social Review","volume":"54 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-05-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116777942","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Thinking and acting globally and locally: Developing transnational social work practices in Belgium","authors":"S. Withaeckx, M. Schrooten, D. Geldof","doi":"10.1080/21931674.2017.1317198","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/21931674.2017.1317198","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract In societies characterized by globalization and increasing mobility, social workers are more often confronted with transmigrants: people who move multiple times, combine complex migration trajectories, and whose social lives are shaped in various sites. The growing complexity of these mobile clients’ needs calls for a paradigm shift in social work. Social workers can no longer suffice with locally grounded, one-nation state solutions to their transnational clients’ problems, but will need to cross borders both literally and figuratively. Concepts of international and transnational social work have been formulated to reflect the challenges posed by globalization and increasing mobility, remain however still underdeveloped, and the concrete shapes transnational social work practice remain as yet under-researched. Based on a qualitative research on social work with transmigrants, this paper describes emerging practices of transnational social work in Belgium. We argue that transnational social work is as much an attitude as an actual practice, as the development of a transnational awareness serves as an important precondition for recognizing transmigrants’ welfare needs. The realization of the much-needed paradigm shift calls, however, for a firm incorporation of this awareness on all levels of social work practice and in its still locally directed policy frames.","PeriodicalId":413830,"journal":{"name":"Transnational Social Review","volume":"37 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-05-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122830621","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Border thinking in social work: The role of indigenous knowledge in the development of relations between the Global North and the Global South","authors":"R. Lutz, Inkje Kristin Sachau, A. Stauss","doi":"10.1080/21931674.2017.1328908","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/21931674.2017.1328908","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract International social work is caused through current confrontations. It deals with the consequences of colonization, de-colonization, globalization and indigenization. This requires a “border thinking” and new focus on local and indigenous knowledge. Taking the colonial wounds as a chance, the creation of a diverse world based on older forms of knowledge would be imaginable. Especially, social movements of population that have been marginalized in colonialism are seen as subject of hope. Our aim is to encourage the re-appropriation and re-interpretation of concepts and content from repressed and forgotten traditions and an interculturalism as an exchange and negotiation. Both recognize local indigenous knowledge and transform this into a practice of international social work; this is the main thesis of our article.","PeriodicalId":413830,"journal":{"name":"Transnational Social Review","volume":"16 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-05-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114275295","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Border narratives in Canadian social work: Neoliberal nationalism in the discursive construction of “citizen/Self” and “non-citizen/Other”","authors":"Chizuru Nobe-Ghelani","doi":"10.1080/21931674.2017.1314656","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/21931674.2017.1314656","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This article elucidates how social work is not only constituted by cross-border processes but also constitutes the transnational processes of bordering within the territorial boundary of the nation-state. The analysis is drawn from a qualitative study of social workers who have worked with migrants without full immigration status in Toronto, Canada. Building on critical border scholarship that reconceptualizes borders as processes, I examine border narratives – a discursive-level operation of border making. I highlight how neoliberalism, one of the key technologies of contemporary transnational bordering processes, intersects and works together with nationalistic citizenship discourse, governing the discursive constructing of “citizen/Self” and “non-citizen/Other.” I call this governance at play neoliberal nationalism and demonstrate some of the ways that neoliberal nationalism works on, through, and within social workers to make sense of exclusionary and inclusionary practices towards migrants without full immigration status as they struggle to navigate a highly complex immigration system and funding structure as well as the effects of neoliberalism in their workplace. I demonstrate how social workers reproduce neoliberal logic and the hegemony of national citizenship even as they critique them, rendering it challenging to see their own complicity in the internal border making of the Canadian nation-state.","PeriodicalId":413830,"journal":{"name":"Transnational Social Review","volume":"7 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-05-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129305738","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}