The Emergence of Social Work Research Between Professionalisation and Nation-Building: A Transnational Case Study

Abstract

This study explores the transnational history of social work and, as a case study, examines the movement of social work research between Germany and Mandatory Palestine in the 1930s and 1940s. This transnational circulation of knowledge and ideas was driven by a group of German-Jewish social workers who migrated to Palestine and helped establish the profession in the new country. Particular attention is paid to early professional schools of social work, which served as hubs for knowledge circulation and laid the academic foundations of social work long before the discipline found its final form. To study this translation process, this article analyses research activities at Alice Salomon’s Academy for Social and Educational Women's Work in Berlin and Siddy Wronsky’s School of Social Services in Jerusalem. Both institutes were influential in establishing the profession in their countries and closely linked the emerging social work training and research. As a transnational research team, we approached and analysed these activities through archival files and documents in Israel and Germany. This analysis is framed by assumptions about the transnational translation of knowledge and, to add context, presents findings on the origins of social work in both countries and its societal embeddedness.

Jewish Social Work Biographies between Germany and Mandatory Palestine

“…In the case of Jewish-German social work, this process is deeply intertwined with forced migratory movements of Jewish social work experts. These professionals, who were previously involved in the building of social work in Germany as part of their social and emancipatory engagement, now translated this knowledge into the Jewish state in the making (Gal;, Halpern 2019Lau 2019, Mazursky;Lau 2021, Schmitz et al 2019. Most of them were women, middle-class, academically educated and active in various social and religious movements.…”