Part 3 Summary of Findings, Conclusions and
3.1 Social Work Practice with Cross-border Migrants: Tasks, Roles, and Challenges
3.1.1 Social Work’s Gatekeeping Role and the Care-versus-Control Dilemma
A review of papers published between 2004 and 2014 on the experiences of practitioners working with a wide spectrum of cross-border migrants in a number of countries reveals how these tensions and vulnerabilities play themselves out in remarkably similar ways. Citing a study conducted by Crawley (2007), Sarah Cemlyn (2008) discusses the role of social workers at one of Great Britain’s key entry points for foreign nationals, that is, the point of arrival of asylum seekers. As members of the country’s Asylum Screening Units, practitioners were found executing their work while seated next to immigration officers and separated from asylum seekers by a glass screen. They were tasked, inter alia, to assist with the age assessment of applicants. Noting ‘pockets of good practice’, Cemlyn (2008:198) contends that overall, ‘the quality of age assessment [was] poor, reflecting socially constructed understandings about behaviour and a culture of disbelief’, and that social workers
‘sometimes [succumbed] to pressure to assess children as older in order to avoid expenditure’
(Cemlyn 2008:192).
Reporting on their study of the work of a Specialised Asylum Team in Great Britain, set up in terms of the 1996 Immigration and Asylum Act to support newly-arrived asylum seekers, Sales and Hek (2004) write that,
Those leading and working with these teams were often professionals with a long-standing commitment to working with refugees and asylum seekers. The constraints of the new role were, however, acute. Asylum teams experienced a growing demand for the service as a result of new arrivals in a period of budget constraints, and their work tended to be dominated by assessing eligibility and providing for immediate needs, rather than a broader social work role (Sales and Hek 2004:64).
Participants in their study described how as a result, they formed what some called
‘inappropriate’ relationships with service users, in that ‘the requirement to establish entitlement led to a focus on establishing the credibility of the client’s claim and thus to a relationship built on suspicion rather than trust’ (Sales and Hek 2004:68). In 2004, the British parliament promulgated further legislation with a view to eradicating such ‘perverse
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incentives’ (Cemlyn 2008:200) as might encourage rejected asylum seekers to overstay their welcome. This was to be achieved by withdrawing all material support; however, ‘minimal provision’ was still available for ‘destitute plus’ cases where ‘an individual’s need is to a material extent made more acute by some circumstance other than the “mere” lack of accommodation and subsistence’ (Cemlyn 2008:202) such as old age, disability or pregnancy.
Consequently, social workers were placed in the even more challenging position of being asked to assess whether rejected asylum seekers were ‘just destitute’, or more than ‘just destitute’. Both Sales and Hek (2004) and Cemlyn (2008) provide accounts of practitioners questioning, ameliorating the effects of, and participating in community-based resistance against Great Britain’s tightening regime of exclusion. Yet, neither offer any evidence of sustained, systematic action to halt these developments.
Magdalena Mostowska (2014) studied the responses of practitioners to homeless Eastern European migrants living in Copenhagen. The legality of such migrants’ residence hinged on their economic independence; and even though Denmark has ‘universal’ social security benefits, migrants’ eligibility depended on a minimum period of employment. These circumstances had left many un- or underemployed migrants without residence permits and often destitute (Mostowska 2014). According to Mostowska (2014:i23) in 2009, the government ‘withdrew funding for homeless migrants with no residence permit’, a decision that was softened somewhat in 2011 when public funding ‘for winter emergency shelter’ was approved. Mostowska (2014) found that Copenhagen’s municipal services for this group were restricted to ‘advice, information and facilitating repatriation’ while a small number of non- government organisations depended primarily on private funding to offer overnight shelter, a drop-in centre, and street work to a restricted number of people for limited periods of time, provisions that were largely uncoordinated (Mostowska 2014:i24). Given these constraints, service providers engaged a number of strategies in response to the plight of these service users, which Mostowska (i24-i25) categorises as follows: submissive strategies complying with state regulations, subversive strategies which undermined such rules, and innovative strategies that undermined government directives and were directed at structural change.
Importantly, Mostowska (2014:i31-i32) contends that all three strategies were based upon interpretive frames which, in spite of ostensive differences, were remarkably similar in that they depicted a homeless migrant as –
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Someone who has little chance of living up to the expectation … Service providers generally [saw] a homeless migrant as a helpless person, who is nevertheless responsible for his or her migration and thus is out of place seeking help [and should go home].
Jessica Jönsson (2014), researching social workers’ attitudes and practices in relation to undocumented migrants in Sweden, found that practitioners framed this group along two broad discursive patterns. One, which she calls the ‘victim discourse’ (Jönsson 2014:i42), viewed the problem of undocumented immigration in terms of global challenges, such as ‘lack of development’ and wars in other parts of the world. This discourse was ‘used mainly for undocumented women and children who deserve some kind of help from Us’ (Jönsson 2014:i42). The other discourse framed the challenge of undocumented immigration in terms of men’s ‘bad individual choices’ and illegal actions: because of ‘their criminal existence in Sweden’ practitioners concluded that they could ‘not be entitled to any support and protection by government’ (Jönsson 2014:i42). Social workers positioned themselves quite differently in relation to their service users, either ‘distancing themselves from the complexities and problems of undocumented immigrants’ (Jönsson 2014:i46); or adopting ‘a balanced position to find “loopholes” … under national and international law … to help people get the right help’ (Jönsson 2014:i47); or actively resisting the exclusion of undocumented migrants by engaging in what Jönsson terms ‘undocumented practices’ (Jönsson 2014:i45).
Undocumented practices, she says, are actions that circumvent and contravene the rule of law where necessary to provide service users with the required protection and support. To this end, some government-employed social workers, feeling powerless to help particular undocumented migrants themselves, would refer such matters to colleagues in the NGO sectors, who seemed less constrained by government rules and regulations. These participants justified their actions as ‘a matter of contributing to the realisation of human rights for everybody’ (Jönsson 2014:i48). Ultimately however, Jönsson (2014:i50) concludes that ‘such a solution to major social problems’ may be ‘ineffective’ and ‘unsustainable’.
Jelka Zorn (2007), writing from Slovenia, focuses on the role of social work in relation to the detention and deportation of rejected asylum seekers and undocumented immigrants. Noting that in these facilities, the police had ultimate authority, she reports that social workers were required to keep persons awaiting deportation busy, deal with their complaints, and provide
‘psycho-social counselling’ (Zorn 2007:133). One expressed aim of such counselling was ‘to provoke homesickness in people whose fate is deportation anyway’, accomplished among
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other things, through ‘asking questions about … family members and others left behind, [and]
facilitating access to telephone calls to their homeland’ (Zorn 2007:134). Ultimately, Zorn (2007:134) asserts, social work interventions served to make ‘a refugee without status deportable’ (Zorn 2007:129) and ‘life in detention bearable, not only for detainees, but even more so for the employees’ (Zorn 2007:134). It is worth noting that in spite of her stark criticism of these and related activities performed by social workers in Slovenia’s detention and deportation centres, she points out that some practitioners were ‘drawn into’, rather than choosing to perform, these roles, and ‘thus [were] not able’, rather than choosing not to
‘serve people according to their needs’ (Zorn 2007:136). The processes by which social workers were ‘drawn’ into their roles, however, were not the subject of Zorn’s study.
The above case studies depict a myriad of exclusionary practices, directed at a wide range of cross-border migrants, and located both externally at national borders and internally at states’ institutional boundaries. As such, they show some of the ways in which states may try to control and restrict access not just to their territories but also to the protections and benefits deemed to be the privilege of citizens, even where they are formally designated to be universal (Balibar 2004; Bauman 2004; Behanbib 2004; Fraser 2008a). Importantly, the case studies illustrate the kinds of activities in which social workers in these contexts may be called upon to perform gatekeeping roles. The overall impression generated is that in relation to both actual and prospective claims by cross-border migrants, social workers have tended to lean more towards their control functions than towards their caring responsibilities, even though some forms of resistance against the harshness of exclusionary measures were also recorded. While some of the studies considered here focused on the discourses – the interpretive frames – that can play a role in the choices social workers make in their work with cross-border migrants, questions remain concerning the conditions under which, and processes in the course of which, social workers may come to regard certain discourses and practices as more appealing, convincing, feasible, or appropriate than others.
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