Going home: Social work across and about borders

Abstract

This article explores the idea of returning home to the South to practise social work. Through our experiences as members of diasporic communities living in the North, we examine how we are implicated in the tensions that surround social work practice and research as efforts to internationalize continue to grow. Specifically, we explore the following themes: the neomanagerial underpinnings of the internationalization of social work; neocolonialism embedded in occupying the role of the reluctant expert; and what we carry with us to help us negotiate the tensions that we experience in navigating our practices across borders.

My Stage: Participatory Theatre with Immigrant Women as a Decolonizing Method in Art-based Research

“…Analyzing the contextual aspects of the art-based action (disciplinary, social [dialogical], temporal-spatial, and societal and political) within social work research formed a basis for developing a holistic and critical approach aiming at decolonizing art-based research (Deepak, 2011;Dominelli, 2010;Motta, 2015;Spivak, 2005;Wehbi et al, 2016). Because our research combined different disciplinary knowledge bases of social work and art education, the analysis process crossed disciplinary borders in reflecting on theoretical and ideological aims and terms of social justice.…”

“…Decolonizing research discusses the dynamics of whiteness and epistemological power, which impact the social dynamics and knowledge production of social work research (Wehbi et al, 2016). The researcher and theatre practitioner were not neutral actors, but their views were based on their social and economic positions, history, and societal and geographical contexts, as well as their personal vulnerabilities and limits (Motta, 2015).…”

“…Our particular focus is in addressing the contextual dimensions of art-based research and providing viewpoints to how it can dismantle multiple, intersecting power structures and thus function as a decolonizing research method. In doing so, we also respond to the call to increase decolonizing approaches in social work research (Deepak, 2011;Dominelli, 2010;Mikkonen, 2017;Ranta-Tyrkkö, 2010;Wehbi, Parada, George, & Lessa, 2016).…”

Decolonial and Transnational Feminist Solidarity: Promoting Ethically Sustainable Social Change with Women in Rural Nepalese Communities

“…The importance of this study lies in its in-depth standpoint based on long-term grassroots cooperation of the researcher with social change advocates in Nepalese communities and NGOs, which develops contextsensitive social work research (Dominelli, 2010). It also contributes to the wider debates on international social work and development and responds to the call for strengthening the decolonising approach within them (Deepak, 2011;Dominelli, 2010;Ranta-Tyrkkö, 2010;Wehbi, Parada, George, & Lessa, 2016).…”

Researching home in social work

“…Social work literature in child welfare has called for social workers to critically reassess how we use the term home, which includes challenging how social workers assume a moral position on the residential fixity of childhood homes, even when children may have multiple family homes and their connections to home can be fluid, complex and contested (Forsberg and P€ os€ o, 2011). Thirdly, in social work, home is referred to as a country, as in research with western trained social workers 'returning home' to practice social work in their countries of origin (Wehbi et al, 2016), and in the lived experiences of refugees and 'tragic' exiles from one's home country (Kumsa, 2007). Lastly, when considering how to respond to formerly homeless drug users in a Housing First program, a recent Finnish study examined how workers constructed a sense of home in collaboration with their clients, arguing that supporting client's attachments to their current living places can prevent future homelessness (Ranta and Juhila, 2019).…”