Anti-Racist Social Work

Lena Dominelli

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781350312777
• Edition: 4
• Topic: Sciences sociales
• Subtopic: Travail social

Fully revised and updated throughout, this fourth edition of Lena Dominelli's influential book retains its reputation asthego-to text on anti-racist social work practice. As racism continues to present a problem in contemporary society: the growth of the Far Right, the rise of Islamophobia and the victory of the Brexit camp in the EU referendum, the need to address racist attitudes and behaviour that affect diverse groups of people in the UK remains an urgent one. A truly classic text, Anti-Racist Social Work has been providing students and practitioners with a comprehensive guide to the debates and practices on racism in contemporary society since 1988. New to this Edition:
- Includes a brand new chapter on 'Social Work Across Borders'
- Incorporates discussion of recent events and developments to encourage critical thinking and analyses their effect on practice
- Offers examples from across the globe at both micro and macro level

CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION: RACISM, AN ISSUE OF CONTINUING CONCERN

Introduction

Racism continues to be an issue in all societies, although its expression varies in each according to cultural norms and historical period. In the UK, the arrest and conviction of two of those responsible for the murder of Stephen Lawrence several decades ago gave hope for change. Today, the growth of the Far Right, the rise of Islamophobia, the victory of the Brexiteers in the 23 June 2016 referendum on whether to remain in the European Union (EU), and the questioning of the rights of EU citizens from Eastern Europe, e.g. people from Poland, to work in the UK have legitimated and exacerbated racist practices, with racist attacks increasing by 47 per cent since this vote (Isaac, 2016). These developments indicate the need for urgent action to address racist behaviours affecting the diverse configurations of peoples residing in this country. I had not anticipated writing a further edition of this book because I had hoped that by this point in the 21st century, tolerance, acceptance and the celebration of diversities would dominate. Sadly, loss of faith in the pluralistic multiculturalism of previous times (Malik, 2015) and the rise in racist attacks since the EU Referendum in the UK have convinced me otherwise.

My optimistic hopes had drawn upon the inclusion of anti-racist issues in public consciousness, the growing unacceptability of racist discourses in the media and the mainstreaming of anti-racism within the social work curriculum. Recently, however, direct links to ‘anti-racist social work’ have declined because some people thought that the ‘end of racism’ had been reached; racist practices were being addressed in other ways; and intersectionality among the social divisions that impact upon racism and people’s experiences of it have led to an interest in how ‘race’ and ethnicity intersect with gender, disability, mental health, age, class and sexual orientation. However, publications integrating such concerns tend to focus on the acts themselves and/or exclude social work, e.g. Toni Morrison’s (1992) Race-ing Justice and En-Gendering Power has theoretical underpinnings and contexts that do not consider social work. Kimberley Crenshaw’s (1991) path-breaking work on intersectionality does not refer to social work despite discussing violence including domestic violence and rape.

Tackling racism continues to be a major social issue throughout the globe, although this is specific to the situational contexts of the country being considered – its make-up as a political entity, cultural traditions, economic framework, demographic composition and historical epoch. In this book, I explore racism and antiracism as articulated in and through social work, experienced by service users and practitioners primarily in the UK, to enable people to understand the complexity of the topic and the roles that they can play in bringing about more egalitarian, empowering anti-racist practice as part of the journey of eradicating racism from people’s behaviour, institutional practices, procedures, routines, policies and cultural norms. Racism as a latent force that hides underground until the moment is propitious for its re-emergence cannot be tolerated.

The world has changed substantially in many respects since the first three editions were written, although in the continuation of racist practices much remains the same. Racist behaviours have also taken new, worrying directions, as illustrated by the mass murders committed by Anders Behring Breivik in Norway and terrorism globally. Thus, this book will go beyond the previous three editions in considering new challenges in promoting and enhancing anti-racist social work and how to respond to them. These new challenges are linked to:

The spread of globalisation with its rising unemployment and mass movements of people for both legitimate and illegal purposes;

The internationalisation of social problems, particularly those associated with international adoptions; poverty; people trafficking; natural disasters; (hu)man-made conflicts and violence; and the drug trade;

The preoccupation with terrorism and violent assaults on civilians;

The rise of religious and other forms of fundamentalism across the world;

The spread of ethnically supremacist ideologies and nationalisms; and

The growing complexity of the work that social workers are expected to undertake when promoting human rights, social justice, environmental justice and active citizenship.

I consider these points in this book while arguing the continuing need to tackle racism in and through social work, and develop them in the chapters that follow, using practice examples including some drawn from countries other than the UK. The next three chapters of the book provide a strong theoretical formulation to the practice-based chapters that follow. Additionally, case studies, practice tips and further reading facilitate a deeper exploration of theory and practice in each chapter. This organisation enables readers to dip in and out of the book at will.

Legislation is an important change-enabling tool in the anti-racist social work repertoire. Thus, the equalities legislation is examined in terms of its content, how it can be used to promote anti-racist practice, and its limitations as a change strategy. Examples of good practice in this regard will be drawn from several countries in the West including the UK and USA, and international conventions on this subject including the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination originally endorsed by the UN Assembly in 1969, and changed through subsequent iterations.

Differences in the fourth edition

Social work academics have recently focused on the more generalised approach of anti-oppressive practice, e.g. Braye and Preston-Shoot (1995), Dalrymple and Burke (1995), and Dominelli (2002a). Others focusing specifically on racism and social work have tended to follow specific perspectives, e.g. Makeda Graham’s (2002) book on Africentric approaches to social work is concerned with issues that matter to people of African origins. Kish Bhatti-Sinclair’s (2012) Anti-Racist Practice in Social Work is oriented largely towards British social work requirements espoused by the now defunct General Social Care Council (GSCC). Several books, e.g. Jacobson (1999), concentrate on white identity with little integration of socio-economic inequalities. In this version of Anti-Racist Social Work, I retain a concern with both personal forms of oppression and structural inequalities, and argue that good anti-racist practice has some transferable skills that are not country-specific, although those using anti-racist materials from elsewhere need to ensure that they make these locality-specific and culturally relevant. I also include examples from other countries and consider indigenisation as an issue, because globalisation has increased interdependencies between nations, with events in one country impacting upon others elsewhere.

Dominant discourses in pre- and post-Brexit Britain have scapegoated ‘immigrants’ for the woes experienced in an economy undergoing industrial decline and loss of influence in the world (Brown, 2016), reiterating the ancient refrain of blaming those who differ from the norm for current woes. Meanwhile, geo-political poles are shifting as other nations, such as superpower China, strong nationalist India, and Russia, join the USA. Moreover, multinational corporations headquartered elsewhere control key sectors of the British economy without being held locally accountable for their decisions to transfer assets to other countries, even though these add to job flight and rising unemployment in the UK. The growth in self-employment, low-paid jobs and ‘zero hours contracts’ increase uncertainty and exploit working-class men and women, regardless of minority or majority ethnic origins. These are no substitute for the well-paid blue collar jobs previously providing employment for skilled working-class men, and undermine their economic provider roles.

These trends reveal neoliberalism’s unsettling of traditional social relations and expectations embedded within modernity as corporate entrepreneurs seek to grow profits at the expense of people’s need for decent pay and working conditions, and a physical ecosystem that nourishes all living things. By implanting uncertainty in everyday lives, unsettled and unsettling social relations aggravate fear of the future. This fear plus manufactured scarcity in jobs, housing, education and health care services provide fertile ground for easy-to-grasp stories that blame those who are different and/or ‘othered’ for shortages of social resources in all these areas. By manufactured scarcity, I refer to the choices that power holders – governments and corporations – make to exploit resources and move jobs around from one place to another based on profit motivations, not people’s need to sell their labour power at a rate that enables them to purchase the goods they need to live a decent quality of life. In other words, poverty is a political choice, not a necessity. However, eliminating it requires that those managing the socio-economic system prioritise paying people salaries that will not lead to the working poor becoming a larger proportion of either a national, or the global population; nor to unemployment or underemployment.

These concerns are relevant globally as the growth of narrow nationalisms across the world attest to people’s insecurities about ensuring that they retain or acquire a decent standard of living. The growth of Far Right movements in Europe has resulted in a realignment of political parties towards the right side of the political spectrum wherein the scapegoating and exclusion of ‘(im)migrants’ as ‘the other’ becomes embedded within the popular imagination. These have endorsed both individual acts of violence and mass violence. One of these was the massacre of young socialists at a summer camp on the island of Utøya in Norway in July 2011, where Anders Behring Breivik murdered 68 young socialists on the basis of conducting a war against Islam to protect a European identity. During April 2015, others in South Africa attacked migrant workers from Zimbabwe and other African countries out of concern that they were taking their jobs and homes. Also, the American presidential candidate who vowed to keep Muslims and Mexicans out of the USA in 2016 intensified the anti-immigrant feelings that remained following his election (Carman, 2017). Racism remains crucial to social work, not only because practitioners operate within such backdrops, but because they also have to address the cultural needs of service users, engage with victim-survivors of racist attacks, and reduce the number of those perpetrating racist practices and violence.

Additionally, the rise of Islamic State (Da’esh) has shifted the anti-racist debate significantly. Overwhelmingly attracting young Muslim men with thwarted ambitions, it has adopted a violent, patriarchal ideology that is against any progressive engagement with (Western) modernity while exploiting the advantages of industrialised (Western) globalisation such as the appropriation and use of information technology, the internet and weapons: appropriating Western culture is acceptable as long as this culture can be subordinated to its needs. Moreover, its ideology shows little respect for life, including that of its supporters, culture, society and the environment. It is untheological because it ignores established Islamic scholars and Muslim voices telling them ‘you ain’t no Muslim bruv’ (Michael, 2015). Instead, Da’esh’s leading adherents exercise a brutal power of control over the foot-soldiers – men and especially women whose bodies are imbued with these men’s desire to oppress women’s right to control their bodily integrity, and revel in their virginity in this life and, for suicide bombers, in the next. Worryingly, arguments over women’s bodies are again taking off in the West, where what Muslim women wear, e.g. the burkha and burkini, has become a political issue about security and social cohesion, rather than remaining a private matter in which each woman decides what to wear.

There is limited understanding of what motivates and drives Da’esh’s actions and encourages some young men and women into its camps. Research into these issues is absolutely essential if Western societies are not to lose some of their gifted young Muslims, who have so much to contribute to the world, to camps in places like Raqqa, as occurred with the young British schoolgirls who went to participate in an idealised world that bore no resemblance to the reality they faced when they arrived: lives subject to total control, marriage, early motherhood, deprivation and constant bombardment. Those who attempted to escape such bondage, e.g. a young woman of Austrian nationality seeking to leave Raqqa, have been brutally killed in public (Boyle, 2015); as a result, a young British woman, subsequently killed in a Russian airstrike, told her parents that she dared not risk escaping, although she wanted to do so. In Syria, a young man who opposed President Assad was subjected to extreme scrutiny because Da’esh mistrusted him, and he feared for his life for writing a diary that described his daily life of fear, insecurity and deprivation under its control (Thomson, 2016).

The existence of Da’esh poses challenges for social workers (Guru, 2010, 2012). In the UK, practitioners have to respond to both the CONTEST strategy to counter-terrorism because recent legislation requires public sector workers to observe its implementation through what is commonly known as Prevent, based on the 4Ps of Prevent, Pursue, Protect and Prepare (Home Office, 2011); and work with people in ways that convey dignity and respect even if terrorist actions have destroyed precious lives. While social workers have the skills to separate the person from their behaviour, and focus on changing the latter, there is little tacit wisdom and research to help engage with the self-styled ‘jihadists’ in a locality-specific, culturally relevant manner in order to understand the conditions that drive them to reject the over-whelming view wherein all communities condemn their behaviour as non-Muslim. Islam means ‘peace’ in Arabic, but is missing in a jihadist ideology that focuses on absolute power and control by a few men over both men and women and commits atrocious violent criminal acts in enforcing it.

The structure of the book

Chapter 2 considers various definitions of racism and anti-racism and how these play out in diverse countries. This includes the importance of concepts of identity, acceptance and belonging and their links to narratives of place and space; and the persistence of structural inequalities, particularly those linked to socio-economic status and class.

In Chapter 3, I examine the way in which binary conceptions of inclusion and exclusion vary according to ethnicity and ‘race’ and prevent social workers from addressing the complexity of the issues when practising in anti-oppressive ways. This includes a critique of culturally competent toolkits that presuppose static, essentialist,...