Part 3 Summary of Findings, Conclusions and
4.5 Conclusion: Towards a Relational and Affective Frame for Considering Social Work’s Commitment to Social Justice?
In Chapters 2 and 3, I had characterised the field of social work with cross-border migrants in South Africa as likely to entangle social workers and other practitioners of care in multiple structures and processes of injustice, thus placing them in situations where they might receive potentially contradictory and unattainable mandates and could expect to face considerable ethical challenges. It was against this background that in this chapter, I engaged with a range of writers in the feminist relational/political ethics of care and anti-oppressive traditions, all of whom attend to the ways in which people’s being, understanding and responding to social injustices are interlinked. My intention was to consider the insights these authors provide into how the implications of displacement and cross-border migration for social work’s commitment to social justice could most fruitfully be explored.
Following my review of some of Iris Marion Young’s work, I proposed the term just practice to signify the idea that any commitment to social justice requires an acknowledgement that agents are inevitably positioned, and cannot but act, in relation to structural processes of injustice within which they may be embedded. In such contexts, just practice would consist of relationships between people and the ways in which they call upon one another to be just, try to listen, hear and heed such calls. This would include not just practical responses to particular incidents of injustice, but also the search for shared understandings of what justice might mean, and people’s critically-reflexive engagement with their own social positioning within the contexts in which such calls to be just arose.
Thereafter, I considered some of Joan Tronto and Fiona Robinson’s writings on the political, or critical, ethics of care. Their respective works respond on several levels to the question of how to consider social work’s commitment to social justice. By linking of the notion of social justice with the idea of care as a practice, the political ethics of care introduces into the debate the concepts of relationality, interdependence, and vulnerability as a shared human property.
It also provides the ideal of a practice, in which all five phases of care are integrated, as a standard against which to assess, for example, social work responses to cross-border migrants. As a result, the political ethics of care highlights the need to interrogate what kinds of relationships and responses are brought to the fore by what kinds of situations. Such
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contextual and relational analysis can assist in drawing conclusions as to what it would mean to be just in the face of multiple and complex, structural processes of injustice within which practitioners may be entangled, and what would enable practitioners to practice justly.
Focussing on the responsibilities that arise for social workers and other practitioners of care in relation to their Others – both in direct service user-service provider relationships and in more distant, mediated relationships – implies a need for them to engage critically and reflexively with their own dispositions and actions. This is a chief concern for virtue ethicists.
My review of recent critiques of virtue ethics was centred on a paper by Derek Clifford and highlighted how such self-scrutiny can be problematic insofar as it risks diverting attention away from important contextual conditions, instead regarding the individual dispositions and actions of practitioners in isolation. Yet, if structural processes of injustice, and the ways in which people are entangled in them, are disregarded, even virtuous practitioners can be rendered both agents and victims of oppression. Against this background, communities of practice – where practitioners can seek support and engage one another critically and reflexively so as to deepen their understanding of the requirements of justice – can have an important role to play. Both the practices considered in this study and the process of exploring them illustrate the relevance of such communities – and what can transpire in their absence – thus giving rise to particular recommendations regarding social work’s commitment to social justice.
My review of some of the work of affective turn theorists demonstrated the extent to which theories of affect keep the idea of human interconnectedness at the centre of attention, interrogating its complex nature, and how it can be known and acted upon. Emphasising the importance of pre- and extra discursive realities, these authors highlight feeling, emotion, and affect as central features of ethics. This renders the affective particularly valuable to the question of just practice, care and the implications of cross-border migration for social work’s commitment to social justice. I found that Michalinos Zembylas’s work exemplifies how structural processes of injustice work within and through individuals and their multitude of relationships, and how, through processes of critical emotional reflexivity, openings towards relating better, caring more and responding more justly can be discerned. Finally, I found that Clare Hemmings’ notion of affective dissonance demonstrates the importance of attending to the gap between what people would like to be and do, and what they actually feel able to be
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and do. By carefully tracing the causes, dynamics and effects of this dissonance through their relationships, bodies and actions, people can begin to work out what it means to relate, care and respond better in situations where social justice can seem elusive, and where structural processes of injustice seem overpowering. The arguments of both Zembylas and Hemmings underscore not only the potential that communities of practice can hold, but also highlight the role of affect in pointing to openings for just practice that exist even within structural processes of injustice. In particular, the limits and possibilities that lie in the notion of affective solidarity are worth exploring further, and I want to return to this notion in the concluding chapter, considering its relevance for social work with cross-border migrants and beyond.
Together, the debates reviewed in this chapter provide what I would like tentatively, to call a relational and affective frame for considering social work’s commitment to social justice. They also point to a need for a study on the implications of displacement and cross-border migration for social work’s commitment to social justice to produce a situated, critical and emotionally reflective account of how structural processes of injustice entangled cross-border migrants, their social workers, other practitioners of care, and members of the receiving community; positioning, implicating, and affecting them differently. The relevant methodological considerations are presented in the following chapter.
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Chapter 5
Methodological Considerations and Research Process
The preceding chapter concluded with the argument that an exploration of the implications of cross-border migration for social work’s commitment to social justice would benefit from a situated, critical and emotionally reflexive account of how structural processes of injustice worked within and through cross-border migrants, their social workers, other caring practitioners and members of the receiving community as they positioned themselves and related to one another in the context of this study. In this chapter, I present the study’s key methodological considerations and an overview of the research process by which I sought to achieve this purpose. This includes an explication of the research design, the units of observation and analysis, sampling sites and strategies, the different methods of data collection and analysis employed, as well as a discussion of the main ethical concerns, issues of trustworthiness, and the study’s limitations. Some methodological questions are addressed in the empirical chapters (Chapters 6 to 10, in Part 2 of the thesis). However, as each of these chapters focuses on a specific objective and draws on a specific sample and data set, the main aim here is to show how these fit within an overarching methodological framework.
Furthermore, my understanding of important methodological questions changed along with my evolving perceptions and interpretations of the study’s subject matter and my own embeddedness therein. Hence, the chapter’s second aim is to trace my methodological journey through the study’s planning, data collection, analysis, and completion phases.