Part 3 Summary of Findings, Conclusions and
3.3 Conclusion: Social Work and the Challenge of Responding Justly to Cross-border Migrants
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explicating desired outcomes seem to provide a certain basis for the normative evaluation of social work practice. Yet, the global definition of social work and the profession’s statement of ethical principles seem to provide insufficient grounds for a normative assessment of the values, attitudes and actions of the practitioners themselves. The two documents provide insufficient means for guiding, directing and supporting social workers practicing under difficult contextual conditions and facing complex work demands, in relation to which they have to discern, and act upon, the requirements of social justice. Yet this is the case in the field of social work with cross-border migrants.
3.3 Conclusion: Social Work and the Challenge of Responding
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shown to be influenced by social work’s deontological and utilitarian traditions. My analysis of these documents’ statements concerning social justice suggests that they contain a good deal of clarity with regard to locating the profession normatively, stating agreed-upon expectations regarding practitioners’ value orientation and professional conduct, and stipulating the desired outcomes of social work interventions. However, none of this seems sufficient in terms of providing direction, guidance and support for practitioners working with service users who face complex injustices, under conditions characterised by complex constraints.
Thus, the literature reviewed in this chapter leaves readers with a conundrum. There are rich descriptions of what constitutes the contextual injustices, exclusionary processes, and oppressive practices in the field of social work with cross-border migrants, and the manner in which practitioners can be complicit in them. There is also a wealth of examples of the negative outcomes of their direct involvement in these structures, processes and practices – both for service users and for social workers themselves. Finally, there are strong normative statements as to what practitioners should do in order to resist such injustices. Yet while some attention is paid to the conditions that render resistance and alternative forms of practice difficult, I would suggest nonetheless that the intricate inner, relational, and contextual structures and processes through which practitioners become drawn into these injustices, need to be explored further.
For example, questions remain with regard to how different social workers come to embrace different discourses and practices even when they are placed in the same or comparable positions. Conversely, the literature generates an impression that social workers who are placed in remarkably different positions still come to share certain ideologies and engage in similar practices, a phenomenon that could also be explored further. It remains unclear therefore, just how social workers should go about challenging that within which they are not just implicated, but often deeply embroiled. Linked to this are questions concerning what contextual conditions might facilitate the development of shared experiences and solidarity between social workers and their service users, and the extent to which this is a precondition for service providers’ and service users’ dialogical engagement around social work goals, methods and ethics. Thus, the claim that structural analysis and political practice are at odds with empathy and care requires interrogation as well.
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I conclude that thus far, the ethical debate in the field of social work with cross-border migrants has shown some propensity to vacillate between moral prescription and moral condemnation – an unhelpful approach for practitioners facing difficult practice situations. If the aim is to support practitioners wishing to respond justly to cross-border migrants, the questions of knowing and doing what is required in relation to social justice may need to be supplemented with attention to the human reality of being – particularly the condition of being entangled in multiple structures and processes of injustice. This is not merely an ethical problem but one in which ethics and politics are intertwined, and which I will consider next.
To this end, Chapter 4 considers the promise of social justice that might lie in alternative, non- deontological, non-utilitarian and non-principle-based, conceptualisations of social work ethics.
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Chapter 4
Paradigmatic Considerations
In Chapter 3, I noted that when it comes to responding to the plight of cross-border migrants in particular practice situations, mainstream discourses on social work ethics – as represented by the global definition of social work and the profession’s statement of ethical principles (IFSW/IASSW 2004, 2014) – do not translate simply into just practice ‘on the ground’. Indeed, in a context where consensus regarding the meaning of social justice is lacking (see Chapter 1.1.2), little agreement can be presumed to exist regarding specific practice implications that might flow from social work’s global definition and statement of ethical principles. These discursive and practice contexts raise a particular conceptual challenge for this study: if the connections between ethical insights and social work practice are perilous while the meaning of social justice is under dispute, exactly how should the implications of displacement and cross-border migration for social work’s commitment to social justice be considered? This is this chapter’s guiding question. In response, I consider a range of writers in the feminist relational/ethics of care and anti-oppressive traditions, who – different ethical and theoretical leanings notwithstanding – do converge on the understanding that practitioners’ ways of being, understanding and responding to the world are intertwined. These ways influence their interpretation of what it means to further the ends of social justice, as well as their inclination and ability to act upon these interpretations in the specific contexts of their daily work.
I begin with a discussion of Iris Marion Young’s (1990, 2007, 2011) contribution to social work’s understanding of how structural processes of injustice can affect the daily practices of social workers, other practitioners of care and people who feel called upon to respond to incidents or situations of social injustice (Section 4.1). Thereafter, in Section 4.2, I consider how Joan Tronto (1993, 2011, 2013, 2014), Fiona Robinson (2010) and other writers on the ethics of care might contribute to performing the leap from a critical analysis of structural injustices to actually responding to particular situations in concrete ways. To this end, it may be necessary to focus on the ‘self’ as the observer, thinker and actor. However, such emphasis has been noted for risking narcissistic preoccupation, as well as rendering the ‘self’ vulnerable
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to manipulation in the interest of unjust institutional regimes. These risks have been discussed in the context of recent critiques of virtue ethics (for example, Clifford 2014), and I provide a brief review of this discussion in Section 4.3. Possible responses have been developed, among others, by affective turn theorists. I reflect on some of these contributions in Section 4.4, focusing on the notions of critical emotional reflexivity and affective dissonance. In my discussion, I draw, among others, on Clare Hemmings (2012), Michalinos Zembylas (2014), and Richard Hugman’s (2005) consideration of emotion in the ethics of caring professions. It is in conjunction that these debates support the production of 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 in this study, and assist in discerning those openings for just practice that emerged in its course.