El racismo en Grecia se ha venido construyendo a lo largo del tiempo a través de divisiones sociales y su legitimación se ha producido a raíz de políticas punitivas y violentas: Reflexionar acerca del desarrollo histórico del racismo poniendo el énfasis en la actual crisis de los refugiados es la clave del presente artículo. Junto a ello se reflexiona acerca del papel ambiguo que en ocasiones desempeña la profesión del trabajo social en este ámbito cuando a menudo sin pretenderlo contribuye a implementar políticas injustas y a reproducir desigualdades sociales. Basado en los paradigmas antiracista y de solidaridad que han emergido especialmente en los tiempos de crisis, la discusión de este artículo apunta a la urgente necesidad para el trabajo social de resistir contra el racismo por medio de una acción antiopresiva tanto a nivel macro como a nivel micro.Racism in Greece across time, has been constructed through social divisions and legitimized via violent and punitive policies. Reflecting on the historical development of racism and with a special focus on the current refugee crisis, this paper provides insights into the profession’s ambiguous role that is called to undertake in the implementation of unjust and oppressive policies and reproduction of social inequalities. Based on the anti-racist and solidarity paradigm that has risen especially during the crisis, the discussion indicates the urgent need for social work to resist and struggle against racism via anti-oppressive action both at micro and macro levels.

Social work and the psychosocial effects of the economic crisis in Greece: Challenges for new radical directions in services, theory and values El trabajo social y los efectos psicosociales de la crisis económica en Grecia: Desafíos para nuevos objetivos radicales en servicios, teoría y valores Asimopoulos Charis* y Dimitra-Dora Teloni** Abstract:The economic crisis in Greece cause serious social problems (sudden increase in unemployment, job insecurity, in household debt, in poverty and inequality, greater social seclusion and significant cutbacks in health, mental health and social protection system) that have significant effects on the psychosocial situation of the population (increase of depression, anxiety, psychosomatic issues, alcohol abuse and suicide).The psychosocial effects of the economic crisis have set new standards and demands for social work in Greece and for the role of the social workers and the social services, on two levels especially: service level and value and theory level. Social workers in all settings need to be in a position to deal with mental health problems with the appropriate clinical and community interventions as well as with radical approach and effective methods.

This article focuses on the results of self-funded quantitative research conducted by social workers working in the “refugee” crisis and social services in Greece (1). The research, among other findings, argues that front-line professionals possess specific characteristics regarding their working profile. Statistical methods in the research performed significance tests to validate the initial hypotheses concerning the correlation between dataset variables. On the contrary of this concept, in this work, we present an alternative approach for validating initial hypotheses through the exploitation of clustering algorithms. Toward that goal, we evaluated several frequently used clustering algorithms regarding their efficiency in feature selection processes, and we finally propose a modified k-Modes algorithm for efficient feature subset selection.