Part 3 Summary of Findings, Conclusions and
3.1 Social Work Practice with Cross-border Migrants: Tasks, Roles, and Challenges
3.1.2 Social Work’s Vulnerability to Discourses of Scarcity and Budgetary Constraints
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3.1.2 Social Work’s Vulnerability to Discourses of Scarcity and
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frequently [mentioned] in relation to staff’s high workloads, as well as the pressures and responsibilities of their work ... Some staff described feeling upset and tearful … mostly … as a response to the realities of clients’ experiences and circumstances (Guhan and Liebling- Kalifani 2011:227).
All the participants regarded their work as ‘more stressful’ and as posing ‘greater ethical dilemmas’ than was the case in other fields of social work (Guhan and Liebling-Kalifani 2011:206). In Kim Robinson’s study, participants –
Spoke about the emotional demands of listening to traumatic personal narratives [which]
were experienced as having a large impact on their own mental health … Workers carried with them a sense of responsibility for the future safety of service users, even those that had been deported … Often, the demands seemed to be overwhelming, with one experienced social worker stating: ‘I feel like I am just trying to help people get through a horrendous system’
(Robinson 2013:93-94).
Like Sales and Hek (2004) above, all three studies note that for both personal and political reasons, the majority of their research participants were highly motivated to work in the field of cross-border migration, but that a number of contextual conditions undermined their resolve and constrained their ability to make a positive difference in their service users’ lives (see also Briskman, Zion and Loff 2012; Barberis and Boccagni 2014). Based on her international comparison, Robinson characterises the legal and policy context of cross-border migration as one of ‘continual and rapid change’ (2013:93), but the cultural context is one that is consistently characterised by ‘hostility and disbelief’ (2013:89). As such, the cultural context provides the direction of change in the legal and policy spheres. In this way, the two contextual conditions work together to unsettle and delegitimise migrants’ personal experiences, perspectives and narratives. Rendering cross-border migrants en bloc as ‘a risk’
to social, political and economic stability, these conditions also feed into, and encourage social work’s gatekeeping and control function. Because this rendering clashes with social work’s other tendency to relate to service users in terms of its caring mandate, that is, as people in need of support because they are ‘at risk’ of exclusion and deprivation, ethical practice requires that social workers ‘unpack and reflect on these complex discourses’
(Robinson 2013:95).
Such critically reflexive practice seems difficult to perform under conditions of neoliberalism, that is, in the context of austerity measures and welfare spending cuts integral to the neoliberal ideology (see Chapter 2.1). NGOs depend on increasingly limited funding from government, supra-national agencies (such as the UNHCR) and private sources for which they
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have to bid. This funding context is said to generate ‘a climate of competition’ among organisations and ‘anxiety’ amongst staff, at the same time as it constrains organisations’
ability to determine the contents and direction of their work (Robinson 2013, 2014; Barberis and Boccagni 2014; Jönsson 2014). There is a tendency to employ fewer staff albeit in the face of increasing demand, and to retain many on short term contracts with little to no social or job security of their own (Al-Makhamreh, Spaneas and Neocleus 2012; Robinson 2013, 2014;
Barberis and Boccagni 2014; Jönsson 2014). This practice leads to outcomes, two of which are key to the arguments of this chapter.
Firstly, there is a propensity among NGOs in this field of cross-border migration to focus their work on ‘providing direct services’ (Robinson 2014:1606). One consequence is a leaning towards neglecting their ‘critical political role’ (Robinson 2014:1606) in relation to public discourses, practices, policy and legislation, which comes to be regarded as an add-on, rather than an integral part of the work. A second consequence is that direct services themselves are inhibited by scarce funding and budgetary constraints, limiting what practitioners are able to do. For example, Guhan and Libling-Kalifani (2011:214) observe that –
A large caseload … tended to result in … significant pressures and difficulties managing their time at work … These pressures compromised the quality of the services they were able to provide … [and] left them little opportunity to process or reflect on their experiences at work
… which tended to be compounded by the desperate nature of their clients’ situations.
Such conditions left participants in Robinson’s study ‘feeling … like the service users’ that is,
‘outside of any supportive mainstream structure’ (Robinson 2013:97), and ‘increasingly placed in situations of crisis’ (Robinson 2014:1612). Arguably, such similarities in the experiences of service users and providers could create additional bonds of empathy and solidarity between them. Instead however, the reviewed literature suggests that service providers tended to experience the relationships formed under these contextual conditions as burdened and strained. Powerlessness and exclusion seemed to be regarded as parallel, rather than shared, experiences. Several of Gulhan and Liebling-Kalifani’s participants felt that
‘their clients’ expectations … were too high, causing [them] to make unrealistic demands’
(2011:214) and reported that ‘clients could at times be violent and aggressive’ (2011:214), with the qualification that ‘their awareness of how clients had been treated tended to result in them putting in extra efforts and/or hours’ (2011:215). Similarly, the majority of practitioners in Robinson’s study longed for better ‘professional boundaries’, which they
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found ‘difficult … to maintain … with service users who were so vulnerable and outside of systems of support’ (Robinson 2014:1611). Robinson (2014:1607) notes conflicting affective responses among practitioners, akin to the ‘emotional rollercoaster’ described above: on the one hand, there was ‘a withdrawal and a dread of work’, while on the other hand, there was an inclination to become ‘overly involved and needing to “rescue” service users’. Ultimately, Robinson (2014:1605) contends, conditions of neoliberalism generally, and in the field of cross-border migration specifically, render it ‘odd’ or radical to support service users rather than completing assessments for needs that are not going to be met’ (cf. Barbaris and Boccagni 2014; Jönsson 2014).
This then appears to be the nature of social work’s vulnerability to discourses of scarcity and budgetary constraints in the field of cross-border migration. The holistic, critically-reflexive and dialogical approach espoused by the theoretical literature seems to give way largely to a micro-focus and residual approach in practice. In this context, an image emerges of practitioners who are either co-opted as gatekeepers and agents of control, or who feel besieged by the exclusionary systems confronting their service users, and who feel limited in their ability to assist service users in integrating as equals in the societies among which they live. In subtle ways therefore, social work’s responses to cross-border migrants appear to be undermined and constrained by the same global processes and conditions that have contributed to the large-scale cross-border migration and which necessitated such responses in the first place. The next section explores how the reviewed literature frames the question of ethics and, more specifically, the question of social justice, as well as considering the kinds of ethical guidance available to practitioners trying to navigate this complex terrain.