Social Work in Europe

Race and Ethnic Relations

Charlotte Williams, Mekada Graham

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9780415693769
• eBook ISBN: 9781135753955
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Social Work
• Index: Social Sciences

It is an acknowledged if not accepted fact that all European societies are being fundamentally transformed, and indeed perceptively unsettled, by increased migrations across nations and by the asserted presence of established minorities within their borders. The scale and speed at which these transformations have taken place have brought in their wake considerable social impacts and no small measure of fear and anxiety.

Encounters with such diversity are part and parcel of the social work task, and learning how to negotiate them should be a de facto aspect of the training and continuous professional development of social workers and other social professions. However, the moral and political dimensions of the role, scope and nature of the social work task in responding appropriately to these changed and changing realities are rather more contested. This volume addresses many dimensions of the response to issues of race and ethnicity in social work practice in Europe. It extends the debates on inter-cultural and race equality practice in social work through a stimulating and innovative collection of contributions.

This book was originally published as a special issue of the European Journal of Social Work.

Travelling hopefully: race/ethnic relations and social work research: a transnational dialogue

Charlotte Williams & Mekada Graham

It is an acknowledged if not accepted fact that all European societies are being fundamentally transformed, and indeed perceptively unsettled, by increased migrations across nations and by the asserted presence of established minorities within their borders. Europe is not what it used to be. The scale and speed at which these transformations have taken place have brought in their wake panoply of national anxieties. Intense debates, popular, political and academic have emerged about the nature of social inclusion, about the citizenship rights of minorities and about the impact of diversity on national solidarity and national identity. At one end of the spectrum disturbing incidents such as the shooting of Theo van Gogh, a film director in the Netherlands in 2004, the riots in the Banlieues in Paris and the bombings in central London (both in 2005) are cited as evidence of ‘the problem of minorities’. In France, the spectre of Muslim women and girls wearing the nicab has been interpreted as an affront to national solidarities and is now banned under legislative measures, a policy stance which is being considered by six other EU countries. At the other end of the spectrum, the celebration of multiculturalism, admixture, intermarriage, hybridity and the creolisation of cultural forms are seen as part and parcel of progressive modernity. Both of these visions loom large in the contemporary scene and reflect the ambivalence of Europe towards its immigrant minorities. Bauman (2007:90) has referred to these parallel positionings as mixophobia (hostility to immigrants) and mixophiilia (love of cosmopolitanism). Both produce their own discourses of difference and diversity but somehow both miss the complexities these transformations bring to the social work task. Encounters with diversity are de facto part and parcel of the social work task and learning how to negotiate them should be a de facto aspect of the training and continuous professional development of social workers and other social professions. What may be more contested are the moral and political dimensions of this brief: the role, scope and nature of the social work task in responding appropriately to these changed and changing realities.

This contested terrain forms the backdrop to social work research projects and academic activities. For those of us with social justice concerns the focus is necessarily ‘the problems for minorities’ within the context of rapidly changing societies or as a result of their migrations (Valtonen 2008). These concerns should lie at the heart of any contemporary research projects in the sense that research itself can be an instrument of change. This represents an explicit recognition that research activity has moral and political dimensions: an emancipatory and liberatory potential that can contribute to redressing evident discriminations and inequalities (Humphries 2004 and 2008). Lorenz (2006), amongst others, has argued that research in social work cannot be incongruent with the moral mandate of the profession: what we chose to research and how we go about the enterprise of research has profound implications for the identity of social work itself.

The project that brings together this collection of articles was initiated by the editors at the IFSW/EASSW conference in Palma, Italy in 2009. Although we had communicated by email, this was the first time we had met each other and in Palma we began our own transnational, indeed trans-Atlantic dialogue about social work and the state of play of what we were loosely calling ‘anti-racist social work’ (of course, a very British/US terminology). We pondered on the ways in which the debates both in theory, practice and research had advanced and/or been undermined in our own national contexts and on what we saw as some of the trends more universally within the profession of social work (a review taken forward in this collection by Graham and Schiele, chapter 6). We wanted to capture the ground on the changing political landscapes of race/ethnic relations and the social work response through opening up our dialogue to others and thus this special edition was conceived. In this opening chapter we outline facets of the changing political context in which social work research with minorities necessarily implies new sensitivities, we consider the challenges of making research relevant to a changing demographic across Europe and we consider the ‘state of play’ of social work research. We conclude by arguing that our research says something about who we are as a profession and has considerable import in terms of defining a social work identity¹ in Europe.

Challenging times

A starting point in considering the issues pan-Europe is that in most European countries, domestic policies on race/ethnic diversity have been shaped by political strategies aimed at European harmonization. The EU’s role has grown considerably in areas such as labour market policy, migration policy, anti-discrimination and social cohesion and whilst this does not suggest the development of a ‘European model’ these powers impact, albeit unevenly, across the member states. Notably, this policy positioning can have both inclusionary and exclusionary force for example as in the Schengen agreement which establishes freedom of movement across 23 countries within the EU but which has also powerfully operated as the basis for common agreements on restricting the immigration of non-European ethnicities – often dubbed ‘Fortress Europe’. The sub-national level is, however, the vital arena for the implementation of policy. A quick look at the website of the FRA (the EU Fundamental Rights Agency)² formerly EUMC (European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia) gives a good overview of both country specific reports on anti-discrimination measures and a sense of the experiences of ethnic minorities in each of the 27 member states. EUMC reports had consistently shown that there was a severe lack of data on minorities in many countries. Data is needed to measure social inclusion of ethnic minority and immigrant groups, as well as the extent of discriminatory treatment and criminal victimisation, including racially motivated crime, experienced by minorities. Therefore, the FRA conducted a major representative survey interviewing selected ethnic minority and immigrant groups in all of the 27 Member States of the EU. The survey examined experiences of discriminatory treatment, racist crime, victimisation, awareness of rights, and reporting of complaints. This is the first ever EU-wide survey of ethnic minority and immigrant groups’ experiences of discrimination and victimisation in everyday life and presents a troubling picture.

At nation state level there is evidence of a much differentiated application of anti-discrimination law and policy. Across the member states it is clear that rights awareness amongst minority groups is low and there are concerns about the rise in animosities against particular groups such as the Roma and Muslims.

The main findings of the FRA Report (2009) suggest that:

• Those from ethnic minorities are on average almost five times more likely to experience multiple discrimination than those from the majority of the population.
• ‘Visible minorities’ – those who generally look different from the majority population – feel discriminated against more often and across a larger number of grounds as compared to other minorities. For example, Roma and people of African origin are more likely to experience discrimination than former Yugoslavians, those with a Russian background, and Central and East Europeans.
• Gender and age can have an impact on how likely a person is to suffer discrimination: for example, young ethnic minority/immigrant men tend to report high levels of discriminatory treatment.
• Some 46% of respondents who experience discrimination on different grounds were concentrated in the lowest income quartile recorded for their EU Member State.

With the voluntary or forced ethnic concentration in particular states it is undoubtedly the case that the visibilities of ethnic difference give rise to increasing levels of racial hostility (Husband 2007).

It is worth making a few important points at the outset about the categorising of the disadvantaged groups to which we refer. The meanings and attributions we give to diverse groups and the policy categories we build have considerable implications for not only access to rights and conferring a sense of inclusion but also to monitoring and auditing equality (see Ramon et. al in this volume, chapter 2). It is estimated that there are some 25 million ‘non-nationals’ living in the EU, including 18 million who have moved into the area from outside of the EU (nearly 4% of the EU’s total population).³ These will include a number of categories of individuals who have distinctive levels of rights, including legal economic migrants, asylum seekers, refugees, undocumented (illegal) migrants, Roma/traveller and the increasing migrant descended settled population. Alongside these groupings we must add the issues impacting on national minorities, such as the Sami or the Welsh. Not all migrants are minorities and not all minorities are migrants of course but there are clearly groups to which exclusionary, racialised and discriminatory practices mark them out as vulnerable. The recognition of the status of minorities in respective countries of Europe relates to particular forms of multiculturalism apparent in policy making. Bloch and Solomos identify at least three models corresponding roughly to the position in Germany, France and Britain. Respectively these are: policies that aim for limited inclusion of minorities as long as they don’t interfere with the culture of the majority (Germany): policies of assimilation and integration which include action to deal with discrimination and exclusion (France) and policies that affirm various versions of multiculturalism and allow for some degree of cultural pluralism (UK) (Bloch and Solomos 2011). The significance of this variety of applications of multiculturalist policies should not be overlooked. Whilst we would argue that there are a number of points of convergence across Europe with regard to the treatment of racialised minorities there are at the same time clear differences discernable at national level.

More critically, we note the nationalistic mood of particular states and the rise of cultural nationalism in which patriotism and the search for essentialised and pure ethnicities become the default setting. It is worth remembering that international migration is not peculiar to our time – what is peculiar to the modern epoch is the idea of nation, national boundaries and the presumed homogeneity of these nations (Lorenz 2006:64). National territories were of course far more permeable to the movement of peoples in the past than they are today (Valtonen 2008:2). As migrations increase so there is a notable and growing backlash against diversity and against multiculturalist policies in the member states (Grillo 2005). These, in turn, are refracted by the political positioning and mobilizations of ethnic minority groups within civil society at times in terms of overt protest as has happened in France and in Britain. These developments are crucially mediated within particular social policy contexts by the exigencies of history, cultural ecologies or ‘ways of life’ and by discourses and societal ideologies about who belongs and who doesn’t that feed into institutional practices (see Lorenz 2006). Yet these national stories prevail and are important to us as a profession as the articles by Christie and Gordijn in this volume clearly illustrate (chapters 4 and 5). Gordijn’s challenge to the Dutch historical canon, the limits of national thinking and societal ideologies reminds us that these ‘stories’ are the starting point for change. Social workers and other professionals across nation states are increasingly engaged in refining approaches to ethnic diversity, in challenging and critically interpreting national mandates into practices that reflect the social justice ambitions of the profession. In this vein, Husband (2007:11) admonishes the profession to ‘explicitly recognize its politically compromised position and discover its own political integrity’. He suggests that in the current challenging context clarity of purpose is required and an unambiguous political framework that acknowledges something of the ambivalent positioning of the profession vis à vis state policy.

This extends beyond the practice front to a consideration of the role of social work research in multicultural societies in engaging with the challenge of inequalities and the recognition of differences and diversity that occurs within any societal context. A national ‘mood’ made up of a set of cultural, historical and social considerations inevitably shape the task. There are a number of particular features in what Husband has called ‘a deteriorating policy environment’ (2007:5) which determines the challenging terrain in which we now practice and undertake social work research.

Ethnic diversity is now part of our taken for granted everyday reality in ways unheard of even 20 years ago – there is in many respects an emergent multiculturalism that defies state policy. Whilst European states are inherently multicultural, at the same time governments are retreating from multiculturalist policies and adopting a plethora of counter strategies that serve to undermine confidence in multiculturalism. Recent times have witnessed a repositioning of the debate and narrative of diversity, the fostering of the rise of neonationalism and the implementation of a strident assimilationist social policy agenda across the member states, manifest in policies such as enforcement of majority language acquisition, dress and ‘nationality’ tests. Government agendas have converged on concerns about cohesion and integration and on demarcating minority community groups as suspect and ripe for interventions at the level of civil society. This is a climate in which cohesion, Husband has argued, becomes ‘dangerously merged’ with neo nationalist assimilationist politics and itself becomes the tool for radical social management of minority communities whose cultural attributes are too readily labeled aberrant and pathological (Husband 2007:6). Such multiculturalist policies and their impacts require critical evaluation, they require research and critical commentary that exposes their damaging effects on individuals and minority communities; they require a response built on evidenced counter discourses.

Within the wider context of the consensus on neo-liberal politics across Europe there is growing evidence of the impact of its managerialist methodologies on social work responses. Social work itself, it has been argued, is under attack. It is clear however that this is not an even process. The growing hegemony of neo-liberal economics and its associated socio-political ideologies impact differentially across the welfare systems of various European states. Arguably the penetration of neo-liberal methodologies has been more pronounced in the UK than elsewhere in Europe given the more highly stated sponsored, heavily regulated and legally prescribed activity that social work is in that context (Ferguson 2008, Lavalette 2010). Nevertheless its impact on social work and the social professions more broadly is being felt across European states. Not only has the depoliticizing of the professional identity of social work been subject to the progression of technocratic and managerialist techniques, but there are also notable encroachments on the nature of social work research. Driven by the ‘what works’ imperatives and evidence based practice agendas ostensibly concerned with efficiency, effectiveness and accountability to users, a renewed emphasis on scientific rigour provides a compelling rationale for the ascendancy of positivist methodologies (McDonald 1994). There is little evidence, however, to suggest these approaches serve to challenge the issues of minority oppression any better than approaches adopted in the past (see below) or indeed resolve deep and fundamental questions about the profession’s positioning vis à vis the user groups it researches. A searching questioning of methodologies is therefore required in the current context, one that consistently asks whose interests are best served by the process and outcomes of research activities. In such a policy context the moral and political mandate of social work can all too easily become compromised by powerful and converging political discourses.

The contemporary challenges for social work research with minorities are not confined to a consideration of how to operate within an increasingly hostile political environment. There are also challenges posed by the changing pattern and nature of ethnic identities and relationships that have shifted dramatically over the last ten years in particular (Vertovec 2005, Fanshawe and Sriskandarajah 2010). Societies are increasingly multilingual, multi-faith and multi ethnic but the patterning of mixed-ethnicities, intermarriage, hybridity and cross cutting status of gender, class, region, locality produce new complexity. Vertovec (2005) has referred to this dynamic as ‘superdiversity’ arguing that ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• 1. Travelling hopefully: race/ethnic relations and social work research: a transnational dialogue
• 2. Attempting to mainstream ethnicity in a multi-country EU mental health and social inclusion project: lessons for social work
• 3. Redefining relations among minority users and social workers
• 4. Whiteness and the politics of ‘race’ in child protection guidelines in Ireland
• 5. What about the influence of Dutch culture on integration?
• 6. Equality-of-oppressions and anti-discriminatory models in social work: reflections from the USA and UK
• 7. Swedish welfare responses to ethnicity: the case of children and their families
• 8. Swedish experience of sheltered housing and conflicting theories in use with special regards to honour related violence (HRV)
• 9. Theatre enriching social work with immigrants—the case of a Finnish multicultural theatre group
• 10. Traps of humanitarian aid: observations from a village community in Sri Lanka
• 11. Travelling Hopefully?: A Postscript
• Index