Publication
Title
Thinking and acting globally and locally : developing transnational social work practices in Belgium
Author
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.
Language
English
Source (journal)
Transnational social review. - Leverkusen-Opladen, 2011, currens
Transnational Social Review
Publication
Leverkusen-Opladen : Budrich , 2017
ISSN
2193-1674
DOI
10.1080/21931674.2017.1317198
Volume/pages
7 :2 (2017) , p. 143-157
Number
2193-1674
Full text (Publisher's DOI)
Full text (publisher's version - intranet only)
UAntwerpen
Faculty/Department
Research group
Publication type
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Identifier
Creation 04.07.2017
Last edited 22.08.2023
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