Erica Righard, PhD, is an associate professor at the Department of Social Work and a research fellow at Malmö Institute for Studies of Migration, Diversity and Welfare (MIM).
Call for papers - European Journal of Social Work - Social work with asylum seekers, refugees and... more Call for papers - European Journal of Social Work - Social work with asylum seekers, refugees and other displaced groups across Europe Abstracts (300 words) to be submitted by 30 September
This report answers questions about how accommodation for asylum seekers and refugees is constitu... more This report answers questions about how accommodation for asylum seekers and refugees is constituted as a field of policy and regulation at the national level; how these policies and regulations are interpreted and adopted in their implementation at the local level, and how this is experienced by persons who are in the asylum process, or have recently received their residence permit in Sweden. The changing migration and reception regimes are import backgrounds as to how accommodation for asylum seekers and refugees is developing. Among these important changes are: o In November 2015 the government implemented ID control at the borders to Denmark and Germany in order to reduce the immigration of asylum seekers. o In March 2016 Sweden introduced a national refugee settlement dispersal scheme, the Settlement Act (Bosättningslagen), that makes it mandatory for municipalities to accept a specific number of refugees and to arrange for their accommodation for a period of at least two years...
Migration and integration, especially the reception of refugees and displaced peoples, are widely... more Migration and integration, especially the reception of refugees and displaced peoples, are widely shared social and political challenges across Europe. The purpose of GLIMER is to understand how the governance and local integration of migrants and Europe's refugees is developing, and in ways that can be utilised through best practice sharing and reporting. Inspired by the success of 'welcoming cities' in southern Italy, we will work with civil society groups, local authorities, citizens and refugee groups in order to support sustainable the meaningful integration of diverse communities. We will focus on cities in both Southern and Northern Europe and a key aspect of the project will be dedicated to investigating how the local governance of new arrivals can secure successful integration across a range of indicators. This research will be carried out in close collaboration with practitioners with the aim of co-producing knowledge that can be beneficial for a range of stake...
This policy brief will provide an overview of shared gender dynamics that affect asylum seekers a... more This policy brief will provide an overview of shared gender dynamics that affect asylum seekers and refugees in integration processes across the localities of Scania (Sweden), Cosenza and Catanzaro (Italy), Nicosia (Cyprus) and Glasgow (Scotland). Specifically, this brief will highlight the varying gender equality policy and governance structures that exist in these localities and how they interact with displaced migration mechanisms. Next, this brief will delve into gendered dynamics in key integration processes including accommodation, language education and labour market access. Lastly, while more context-specific recommendations are laid out in each country's full report, select recommendations corresponding to each thematic section are signalled throughout the brief. GLIMER is informed by a combination of rigorous policy analysis, qualitative research with multi-party stakeholders and secondary analysis. This policy brief is reliant on policy documents, statistics and evalu...
This policy brief will provide an overview of trends in labour market integration for displaced m... more This policy brief will provide an overview of trends in labour market integration for displaced migrants across Sweden, Italy, Cyprus and Scotland. Specifically, this brief will: 1) discuss overarching policy parameters that define labour market integration frameworks for asylum seekers and refugees, 2) highlight the shared barriers that prevent migrants from fully engaging with employability services and 3) discuss issues to consider beyond traditional 'employability services' that may impact labour market integration for displaced migrants. It should be noted that while more context-specific recommendations are laid out in each country's full report, select recommendations corresponding to each thematic section are embedded throughout the brief. GLIMER is informed by a combination of rigorous policy analysis, qualitative research with multi-party stakeholders and secondary analysis. This policy brief is reliant on policy documents, statistics and evaluations together w...
This policy brief will provide an overview of cross-cutting trends in language training and educa... more This policy brief will provide an overview of cross-cutting trends in language training and education for adult asylum seekers and refugees across the localities of Malmö and Eslöv (Sweden), Cosenza and Catanzaro (Italy), Nicosia (Cyprus) and Aberdeenshire, Argyll and Bute, and Glasgow (Scotland). Specifically, this brief will discuss key issues that have consistently been identified as contributing factors to programme completion and language acquisition. This brief will organise these crosscutting trends into three overarching categories that ultimately influence educational access, provision and quality of language training for migrants: 1) individual factors; 2) education system/programme factors; and 3) policy and programme governance factors. Key policy recommendations correspond with each thematic category. GLIMER is informed by a combination of rigorous policy analysis, qualitative research with multi-party stakeholders and secondary analysis. This policy brief is reliant on...
This policy brief will provide an overview of cross-cutting trends in asylum and refugee accommod... more This policy brief will provide an overview of cross-cutting trends in asylum and refugee accommodation governance across the localities of Malmö and Eslöv (Sweden), Cosenza and Catanzaro (Italy), Nicosia (Cyprus) and Glasgow (Scotland). Specifically, this brief will discuss national short and long-term accommodation frameworks. Next this brief will delve into the local implementation of these programmes and review the different roles played by local authorities and third/private sector actors. This brief will close with a summary of key policy and data gaps underpinning some of these programmes. Lastly, it should be noted that while more context-specific recommendations are laid out in each country's full report, select recommendations corresponding to each thematic section are embedded throughout the brief. GLIMER is informed by a combination of rigorous policy analysis, qualitative research with multi-party stakeholders and secondary analysis. This policy brief is reliant on p...
This policy brief responds to questions about how gender equality is considered and acted upon in... more This policy brief responds to questions about how gender equality is considered and acted upon in the reception and integration of asylum seekers and refugees from a multi-scalar perspective. It also makes recommendations for the improvement of gender equality in the reception and integration process. Gender equality is on the political agenda in Sweden; the national government has even proclaimed itself to be a 'feminist government'. Gender equality was introduced as a field of policy in the 1970s. At that time, it was limited to women's labour market participation, but has since then broadened its scope. Today, gender equality is supposed to permate all policy fields, including reception and integration policies. Since 1994, gender mainstreaming has been the main strategy for implementing gender equality on both national, regional and local levels. The reception and integration of asylum seekers and refugees are, as is migration itself, gendered processes. Our research...
This report is about gender dynamics in the governance of the reception and integration of asylum... more This report is about gender dynamics in the governance of the reception and integration of asylum seekers and refugees in Sweden, with a particular focus on the region of Scania. It builds on work done in the previous GLIMER work packages about housing and accommodation (WP3), language training and education (WP4) and labour market integration (WP5) together with additional new empirical material about gender policy and third sector initiatives targeting gender dynamics. The additional material consists of policy documents applied on national and local levels, and interviews with personnel working in projects for female newcomers. The Swedish welfare state model is an important context for understanding issues of gender equality in the reception and integration of asylum seekers and refugees. The Swedish welfare state is based on an understanding of equality in terms of rights and contributions through labour market participation. This means that it relies on a dual-earner family mo...
This report is about language training and education for adult asylum seekers and refugees in Swe... more This report is about language training and education for adult asylum seekers and refugees in Sweden with a particular focus on the situation in the region of Scania. It responds to questions about the governance of language training and education with a particular focus on gender and the role of civil society. As a field of governance, language training and education is positioned at the intersection of integration policy, labour market policy and education policy, each being a complex and contested policy field. As an area of intervention, it embraces disparate organisations such as the Swedish Public Employment Service, various educational organisations at national and local levels, including folk high schools and study associations from the third sector as well as private enterprises. As this report will show, over time the steering and organisation of language training and education have changed significantly, but many contested issues have remained the same.
Swedish language training and education for adult immigrants occurs under the intersecting policy... more Swedish language training and education for adult immigrants occurs under the intersecting policy areas of integration, labour market participation and education. Since the first initiatives in the 1960s, it has undergone numerous reforms. Today it is, for the large part, a highly formalised education while at the same time some certain aspects of language training are practically unregulated. Importantly, asylum seekers and refugees have significantly different access to language training and education. In the following we consider language training and education for asylum seekers and refugees aged 16–64 years. Swedish for immigrants (Svenska för invandrare, sfi) is a formal municipal adult education with national school and course curricula accessible free of charge to all adult immigrants who do not have basic Swedish proficiency. Refugees (with domicile registration) generally participate in the education as part of the Introduction Program coordinated by the Public Employment ...
In Sweden asylum seekers may choose to stay in 'Facility Accommodation' arranged by the S... more In Sweden asylum seekers may choose to stay in 'Facility Accommodation' arranged by the Swedish Migration Agency or in 'Own Accommodation' arranged by the asylum seeker. After a decision of residence permit, people in the former continue to be responsible for their own accommodation, while people in Facility Accommodation are transferred from the Swedish Migration Agency run accommodation in the reception system of a municipality. In 2016 the Swedish government introduced a Settlement Law in order to speed up this transfer and encourage the geographical dispersal of refugee reception, making it mandatory for municipalities to receive and organise accommodation for a specified number of refugees. Besides refugees who stayed in Facility Accommodation during the asylum process, the law also includes resettled refugees. Refugees who stayed in Own Accommodation during the asylum process are excluded from access to this planned housing organized by municipalities, as are f...
Epistemological hierarchies in the social sciences stipulate that sedentarism is naturalised as a... more Epistemological hierarchies in the social sciences stipulate that sedentarism is naturalised as a normality, and that mobility is viewed as a deviation. This article sets out to propose an analytical framework that takes the analysis beyond this kind of nationalized knowledge production, and to empirically show the gains of de-nationalized frameworks for analysis of social protection and dynamics of in-/equality in the globalised society. I will do this relying on the empirical example of the public old-age pension scheme in Sweden.
En una investigación iniciada recientemente estudiamos los contenidos que se dan al tema de las r... more En una investigación iniciada recientemente estudiamos los contenidos que se dan al tema de las relaciones étnicas en los programas de educación para trabajadoras/es sociales en Suecia. Entendemos que en Trabajo Social ésta es un área de conocimiento cuyos contenidos varían de acuerdo a las prioridades y tradiciones dominantes en los diferentes períodos de la historia de la formación de profesionales del Trabajo Social. El objetivo específico de nuestro estudio es describir las diferentes formas de conceptualizar las relaciones étnicas en los programas de estudio, estudiar cómo esos conocimientos influyen en las formas y contenidos de los diferentes momentos que componen esos programas, y además analizar cómo esas formas y contenidos influyen en la comprensión sobre temas relacionados con la migración que hacen los estudiantes. En este artículo sostenemos que el tema de las relaciones étnicas debería ser un tema central en la formación académica de trabajadoras/es sociales en Suecia...
Internationellt socialt arbete röner idag allt mer uppmärksamhet. Det finns emellertid inte någon... more Internationellt socialt arbete röner idag allt mer uppmärksamhet. Det finns emellertid inte någon enhetlig syn på vad som utgör internationellt socialt arbete. Denna artikel bidrar med en historisk genomgång av vilka antaganden olika definitioner utgår från och vilka konsekvenserna av dessa perspektivval är.
The significance of ambiguity – Evidence-based practice in social service with children and youth... more The significance of ambiguity – Evidence-based practice in social service with children and youthEvidence-based practice (EBP) has gained a central position as a model of knowledge for social work in the public sector. In the Swedish Government Report about knowledge-based social work from 2008, EBP is described as a useful way of structuring the social services on a scientific basis (SOU 2008:18). Following on this, and in order to establish EBP in social work practice, between 2009 and 2016, there were annual agreements between the government and the Swedish Association of Local Authorities and Regions (SALAR). As defined by the annual agreements, a national network of Regional Development Leaders (regionala utvecklingsledare) was given the task of producing regional plans of action for the establishment of EBP in the municipalities. The article examines how the Regional Development Leaders in the so-called Children and Youth Investment (Barn- och ungasatsningen) interpret and imp...
Firewalls are clear divisions between border policing and the provision of basic social rights. T... more Firewalls are clear divisions between border policing and the provision of basic social rights. They have a dual character: to ensure that no information collected with the purpose of safeguarding basic social rights should be shared for immigration control purposes; and that migrants should not be subject to immigration control when being present at, or in the vicinity, of religious, private and public institutions upholding and providing social rights. This article suggests a normative argument for ‘firewalls’ in the context of social work and develops the concept theoretically as a principle practised and negotiated at different scales.
Social work with displaced people has an extended background in the history of the profession. Ye... more Social work with displaced people has an extended background in the history of the profession. Yet, it has taken different forms and remits over time, parallel to the evolving legal and political definition of refugee themselves. Inside Europe, in particular, social work with forced migrants has gained new visibility and increasing complexity after the so-called refugee crisis. Aspects like people's limited visibility and eligibility towards formal welfare services, their uncertain legal status, their temporal "liminality" and their non-linear patterns of mobility have all major consequences for social work practice, research and education. In discussing them, we highlight the need to invest in students' (and practitioners') reflexivity, given both the complexity of building up trustbased relationships with forcibly displaced people, and the risk of cultivating essentialized, stigmatizing or nativist representations about them. In all of these respects, our introduction provides a conceptual basis for this Special Issue of EJSW, and for the broader debate in social work across Europe.
Call for papers - European Journal of Social Work - Social work with asylum seekers, refugees and... more Call for papers - European Journal of Social Work - Social work with asylum seekers, refugees and other displaced groups across Europe Abstracts (300 words) to be submitted by 30 September
This report answers questions about how accommodation for asylum seekers and refugees is constitu... more This report answers questions about how accommodation for asylum seekers and refugees is constituted as a field of policy and regulation at the national level; how these policies and regulations are interpreted and adopted in their implementation at the local level, and how this is experienced by persons who are in the asylum process, or have recently received their residence permit in Sweden. The changing migration and reception regimes are import backgrounds as to how accommodation for asylum seekers and refugees is developing. Among these important changes are: o In November 2015 the government implemented ID control at the borders to Denmark and Germany in order to reduce the immigration of asylum seekers. o In March 2016 Sweden introduced a national refugee settlement dispersal scheme, the Settlement Act (Bosättningslagen), that makes it mandatory for municipalities to accept a specific number of refugees and to arrange for their accommodation for a period of at least two years...
Migration and integration, especially the reception of refugees and displaced peoples, are widely... more Migration and integration, especially the reception of refugees and displaced peoples, are widely shared social and political challenges across Europe. The purpose of GLIMER is to understand how the governance and local integration of migrants and Europe's refugees is developing, and in ways that can be utilised through best practice sharing and reporting. Inspired by the success of 'welcoming cities' in southern Italy, we will work with civil society groups, local authorities, citizens and refugee groups in order to support sustainable the meaningful integration of diverse communities. We will focus on cities in both Southern and Northern Europe and a key aspect of the project will be dedicated to investigating how the local governance of new arrivals can secure successful integration across a range of indicators. This research will be carried out in close collaboration with practitioners with the aim of co-producing knowledge that can be beneficial for a range of stake...
This policy brief will provide an overview of shared gender dynamics that affect asylum seekers a... more This policy brief will provide an overview of shared gender dynamics that affect asylum seekers and refugees in integration processes across the localities of Scania (Sweden), Cosenza and Catanzaro (Italy), Nicosia (Cyprus) and Glasgow (Scotland). Specifically, this brief will highlight the varying gender equality policy and governance structures that exist in these localities and how they interact with displaced migration mechanisms. Next, this brief will delve into gendered dynamics in key integration processes including accommodation, language education and labour market access. Lastly, while more context-specific recommendations are laid out in each country's full report, select recommendations corresponding to each thematic section are signalled throughout the brief. GLIMER is informed by a combination of rigorous policy analysis, qualitative research with multi-party stakeholders and secondary analysis. This policy brief is reliant on policy documents, statistics and evalu...
This policy brief will provide an overview of trends in labour market integration for displaced m... more This policy brief will provide an overview of trends in labour market integration for displaced migrants across Sweden, Italy, Cyprus and Scotland. Specifically, this brief will: 1) discuss overarching policy parameters that define labour market integration frameworks for asylum seekers and refugees, 2) highlight the shared barriers that prevent migrants from fully engaging with employability services and 3) discuss issues to consider beyond traditional 'employability services' that may impact labour market integration for displaced migrants. It should be noted that while more context-specific recommendations are laid out in each country's full report, select recommendations corresponding to each thematic section are embedded throughout the brief. GLIMER is informed by a combination of rigorous policy analysis, qualitative research with multi-party stakeholders and secondary analysis. This policy brief is reliant on policy documents, statistics and evaluations together w...
This policy brief will provide an overview of cross-cutting trends in language training and educa... more This policy brief will provide an overview of cross-cutting trends in language training and education for adult asylum seekers and refugees across the localities of Malmö and Eslöv (Sweden), Cosenza and Catanzaro (Italy), Nicosia (Cyprus) and Aberdeenshire, Argyll and Bute, and Glasgow (Scotland). Specifically, this brief will discuss key issues that have consistently been identified as contributing factors to programme completion and language acquisition. This brief will organise these crosscutting trends into three overarching categories that ultimately influence educational access, provision and quality of language training for migrants: 1) individual factors; 2) education system/programme factors; and 3) policy and programme governance factors. Key policy recommendations correspond with each thematic category. GLIMER is informed by a combination of rigorous policy analysis, qualitative research with multi-party stakeholders and secondary analysis. This policy brief is reliant on...
This policy brief will provide an overview of cross-cutting trends in asylum and refugee accommod... more This policy brief will provide an overview of cross-cutting trends in asylum and refugee accommodation governance across the localities of Malmö and Eslöv (Sweden), Cosenza and Catanzaro (Italy), Nicosia (Cyprus) and Glasgow (Scotland). Specifically, this brief will discuss national short and long-term accommodation frameworks. Next this brief will delve into the local implementation of these programmes and review the different roles played by local authorities and third/private sector actors. This brief will close with a summary of key policy and data gaps underpinning some of these programmes. Lastly, it should be noted that while more context-specific recommendations are laid out in each country's full report, select recommendations corresponding to each thematic section are embedded throughout the brief. GLIMER is informed by a combination of rigorous policy analysis, qualitative research with multi-party stakeholders and secondary analysis. This policy brief is reliant on p...
This policy brief responds to questions about how gender equality is considered and acted upon in... more This policy brief responds to questions about how gender equality is considered and acted upon in the reception and integration of asylum seekers and refugees from a multi-scalar perspective. It also makes recommendations for the improvement of gender equality in the reception and integration process. Gender equality is on the political agenda in Sweden; the national government has even proclaimed itself to be a 'feminist government'. Gender equality was introduced as a field of policy in the 1970s. At that time, it was limited to women's labour market participation, but has since then broadened its scope. Today, gender equality is supposed to permate all policy fields, including reception and integration policies. Since 1994, gender mainstreaming has been the main strategy for implementing gender equality on both national, regional and local levels. The reception and integration of asylum seekers and refugees are, as is migration itself, gendered processes. Our research...
This report is about gender dynamics in the governance of the reception and integration of asylum... more This report is about gender dynamics in the governance of the reception and integration of asylum seekers and refugees in Sweden, with a particular focus on the region of Scania. It builds on work done in the previous GLIMER work packages about housing and accommodation (WP3), language training and education (WP4) and labour market integration (WP5) together with additional new empirical material about gender policy and third sector initiatives targeting gender dynamics. The additional material consists of policy documents applied on national and local levels, and interviews with personnel working in projects for female newcomers. The Swedish welfare state model is an important context for understanding issues of gender equality in the reception and integration of asylum seekers and refugees. The Swedish welfare state is based on an understanding of equality in terms of rights and contributions through labour market participation. This means that it relies on a dual-earner family mo...
This report is about language training and education for adult asylum seekers and refugees in Swe... more This report is about language training and education for adult asylum seekers and refugees in Sweden with a particular focus on the situation in the region of Scania. It responds to questions about the governance of language training and education with a particular focus on gender and the role of civil society. As a field of governance, language training and education is positioned at the intersection of integration policy, labour market policy and education policy, each being a complex and contested policy field. As an area of intervention, it embraces disparate organisations such as the Swedish Public Employment Service, various educational organisations at national and local levels, including folk high schools and study associations from the third sector as well as private enterprises. As this report will show, over time the steering and organisation of language training and education have changed significantly, but many contested issues have remained the same.
Swedish language training and education for adult immigrants occurs under the intersecting policy... more Swedish language training and education for adult immigrants occurs under the intersecting policy areas of integration, labour market participation and education. Since the first initiatives in the 1960s, it has undergone numerous reforms. Today it is, for the large part, a highly formalised education while at the same time some certain aspects of language training are practically unregulated. Importantly, asylum seekers and refugees have significantly different access to language training and education. In the following we consider language training and education for asylum seekers and refugees aged 16–64 years. Swedish for immigrants (Svenska för invandrare, sfi) is a formal municipal adult education with national school and course curricula accessible free of charge to all adult immigrants who do not have basic Swedish proficiency. Refugees (with domicile registration) generally participate in the education as part of the Introduction Program coordinated by the Public Employment ...
In Sweden asylum seekers may choose to stay in 'Facility Accommodation' arranged by the S... more In Sweden asylum seekers may choose to stay in 'Facility Accommodation' arranged by the Swedish Migration Agency or in 'Own Accommodation' arranged by the asylum seeker. After a decision of residence permit, people in the former continue to be responsible for their own accommodation, while people in Facility Accommodation are transferred from the Swedish Migration Agency run accommodation in the reception system of a municipality. In 2016 the Swedish government introduced a Settlement Law in order to speed up this transfer and encourage the geographical dispersal of refugee reception, making it mandatory for municipalities to receive and organise accommodation for a specified number of refugees. Besides refugees who stayed in Facility Accommodation during the asylum process, the law also includes resettled refugees. Refugees who stayed in Own Accommodation during the asylum process are excluded from access to this planned housing organized by municipalities, as are f...
Epistemological hierarchies in the social sciences stipulate that sedentarism is naturalised as a... more Epistemological hierarchies in the social sciences stipulate that sedentarism is naturalised as a normality, and that mobility is viewed as a deviation. This article sets out to propose an analytical framework that takes the analysis beyond this kind of nationalized knowledge production, and to empirically show the gains of de-nationalized frameworks for analysis of social protection and dynamics of in-/equality in the globalised society. I will do this relying on the empirical example of the public old-age pension scheme in Sweden.
En una investigación iniciada recientemente estudiamos los contenidos que se dan al tema de las r... more En una investigación iniciada recientemente estudiamos los contenidos que se dan al tema de las relaciones étnicas en los programas de educación para trabajadoras/es sociales en Suecia. Entendemos que en Trabajo Social ésta es un área de conocimiento cuyos contenidos varían de acuerdo a las prioridades y tradiciones dominantes en los diferentes períodos de la historia de la formación de profesionales del Trabajo Social. El objetivo específico de nuestro estudio es describir las diferentes formas de conceptualizar las relaciones étnicas en los programas de estudio, estudiar cómo esos conocimientos influyen en las formas y contenidos de los diferentes momentos que componen esos programas, y además analizar cómo esas formas y contenidos influyen en la comprensión sobre temas relacionados con la migración que hacen los estudiantes. En este artículo sostenemos que el tema de las relaciones étnicas debería ser un tema central en la formación académica de trabajadoras/es sociales en Suecia...
Internationellt socialt arbete röner idag allt mer uppmärksamhet. Det finns emellertid inte någon... more Internationellt socialt arbete röner idag allt mer uppmärksamhet. Det finns emellertid inte någon enhetlig syn på vad som utgör internationellt socialt arbete. Denna artikel bidrar med en historisk genomgång av vilka antaganden olika definitioner utgår från och vilka konsekvenserna av dessa perspektivval är.
The significance of ambiguity – Evidence-based practice in social service with children and youth... more The significance of ambiguity – Evidence-based practice in social service with children and youthEvidence-based practice (EBP) has gained a central position as a model of knowledge for social work in the public sector. In the Swedish Government Report about knowledge-based social work from 2008, EBP is described as a useful way of structuring the social services on a scientific basis (SOU 2008:18). Following on this, and in order to establish EBP in social work practice, between 2009 and 2016, there were annual agreements between the government and the Swedish Association of Local Authorities and Regions (SALAR). As defined by the annual agreements, a national network of Regional Development Leaders (regionala utvecklingsledare) was given the task of producing regional plans of action for the establishment of EBP in the municipalities. The article examines how the Regional Development Leaders in the so-called Children and Youth Investment (Barn- och ungasatsningen) interpret and imp...
Firewalls are clear divisions between border policing and the provision of basic social rights. T... more Firewalls are clear divisions between border policing and the provision of basic social rights. They have a dual character: to ensure that no information collected with the purpose of safeguarding basic social rights should be shared for immigration control purposes; and that migrants should not be subject to immigration control when being present at, or in the vicinity, of religious, private and public institutions upholding and providing social rights. This article suggests a normative argument for ‘firewalls’ in the context of social work and develops the concept theoretically as a principle practised and negotiated at different scales.
Social work with displaced people has an extended background in the history of the profession. Ye... more Social work with displaced people has an extended background in the history of the profession. Yet, it has taken different forms and remits over time, parallel to the evolving legal and political definition of refugee themselves. Inside Europe, in particular, social work with forced migrants has gained new visibility and increasing complexity after the so-called refugee crisis. Aspects like people's limited visibility and eligibility towards formal welfare services, their uncertain legal status, their temporal "liminality" and their non-linear patterns of mobility have all major consequences for social work practice, research and education. In discussing them, we highlight the need to invest in students' (and practitioners') reflexivity, given both the complexity of building up trustbased relationships with forcibly displaced people, and the risk of cultivating essentialized, stigmatizing or nativist representations about them. In all of these respects, our introduction provides a conceptual basis for this Special Issue of EJSW, and for the broader debate in social work across Europe.
Professional social work was established and expanded in a historical moment marked by intense na... more Professional social work was established and expanded in a historical moment marked by intense nation-building; it was organized along and in parallel with other welfare state services which functioned to strengthen the nation-state. Today social work is at practice in a society marked by intensified globalisation; social needs and social problems that social workers are confronted with in their professional practice are sometimes transnational in their dynamics and cannot adequately be understood when limited to a local or national context. Drawing on insights from the transnational perspective, this article identifies challenges and ways ahead in the development of social work practice and theory with relevance for the globalised society. It argues that the transnational perspective can contribute to the dissolving of binaries between both ‘here’ and ‘there’, and ‘us’ and ‘them’ in social work, and pave the way for approaching social problems from a relational viewpoint beyond ‘gi...
General rights Unless other specific re-use rights are stated the following general rights apply:... more General rights Unless other specific re-use rights are stated the following general rights apply: Copyright and moral rights for the publications made accessible in the public portal are retained by the authors and/or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing publications that users recognise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights. • Users may download and print one copy of any publication from the public portal for the purpose of private study or research. This is a product that has been realised over a long period of time and many have contributed to it. Some I have been in contact with on occasion, and others over the whole period. To single out each and every one is not possible and I am therefore directing general appreciation to colleagues, family and friends for an abundance of support in varied ways. Special acknowledgements go to my advisors Professor Tapio Salonen, Växjö University and Professor Thomas Faist, Bielefeld University. Tapio Salonen has encouraged and welcomed my topic, which has a foothold not only within but also beyond the discipline of social work. I am grateful for this generosity. He has critically pointed out fallacies in the drafts and made me revise my arguments-over and over again. Thomas Faist was connected with the project during its first year. His comments on ideas and drafts have provided me with an intellectual stimulus that has carried the work forward substantially. In spring 2004 Thomas Faist hosted me at the Centre on Migration, Citizenship and Development (COMCAD) at Bremen University of Applied Sciences (today located at Bielefeld University). Besides favourable working conditions this stay provided me with enriching discussions. I am grateful to this stay. I thank the Swedish Council for Working Life and Social Research for the financial support that enabled the stay. My friend and colleague Norma Montesino has commented on innumerable drafts and ideas. Thank you for your patience, and your ever critical and encouraging voice. At a late stage of the process, Diana Mulinari acted as commentator on a seminar. She provided me not only with critical comments that served to improve the work significantly, but also injected a decent amount of energy much needed to finish the work. Håkan Johansson and Jan Magnusson have commented on the entire draft. Their critical comments set off some further revisions that improved the final result. I also acknowledge helpful comments from Johanna
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