Anti-Racist Social Work

International Perspectives

Gurnam Singh, Shepard Masocha, Gurnam Singh, Shepard Masocha

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9781352008159
• eBook ISBN: 9781350312760
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Social Work
• Index: Social Sciences

Welfare, health, education, conflict, security and migration are examples of phenomena that are prevalent across all societies. With chapters from leading scholars from around the world, this exciting new book draws upon the impacts of globalisation, colonialism, and capitalism, to explore the common challenges facing nations across the globe and provide an insight in to the history, theory and practice of a new anti-racist social work.

1

Introduction

Gurnam Singh and Shepard Masocha

Though human societies, populations and cultures have always been in a state of flux, the contemporary historical moment, often characterised as the age of ‘globalisation’, has witnessed a dramatic compression of ‘time and space’ resulting in unimaginable social upheavals. It was David Harvey, in his book The Condition of Postmodernity (1989), who first coined this term to suggest how the joint forces of capitalism and technological advancement were leading to the destruction of spatial barriers and distances. Whilst for some this new epoch in world history has brought great rewards, tragically it has also resulted in a dramatic acceleration of all kinds of social inequalities both between and within nations, regions, cities and towns. A report published by the international charity Oxfam argued that the richest 1 per cent now have more wealth than the rest of the world’s population combined, that the wealthiest 62 people on the planet have more wealth than half the world population and that global inequality is worse than at any time since the nineteenth century (Oxfam, 2016).

And yet, despite these rapid changes, there are some underpinning features of capitalism, as it has developed through periods of slavery, colonialism to the contemporary epoch of globalisation in its neoliberal form, that remain fundamental. Through all these stages, whilst the precise nature of the relationship is contested, in one way or another, ‘race’ and racism have had a critical role in producing and reproducing social relations (Omi & Winant, 2014). Specifically, ideologies of ‘race’, religion, ethnicity, nationality, caste, ability, sexuality, age, gender and class have intersected in complex and dynamic ways to construct and reconstruct systems of exploitation and oppression (Andersen & Collins, 2015).

‘Race’ can be defined as ‘a cultural category of difference that is contextually constructed as essential and natural – as residing within the very body of the individual – and is thus generally tied, in scientific theory and popular understanding, to a set of somatic, physiognomic, and even genetic character traits’ (Silverstein, 2005, p. 364). As a scientific and analytic concept, the notion of ‘race’ has been heavily critiqued, yet it remains a significant factor in shaping the lived experiences of minority groups. This book questions the utility of the concept of ‘race’, arguing that its continued use uncritically within social work reifies the notion of ‘race’ and lends support to the existence of racial hierarchies (Christie, 2006; Singh, 2018). The book draws attention to the various processes that are implicated in the social construction of ‘race’. These processes of racialisation not only essentialise the targeted minority groups but also legitimate and naturalise their marginalisation and exclusion. By drawing attention to these processes of racialisation, the book ‘indexes the historical transformation of fluid categories of difference into fixed species of otherness’ (Silverstein, 2005, p. 364). This book argues that the state plays a fundamental role within these racialisation processes. Omi and Winant (1986) illustrate the pivotal role played by the state in (re)producing and sustaining the racial order through the promulgation of specific legislation, policies and practices, as well as the establishment of socioeconomic and political structures that constrict, marginalise and exclude racialised minority social groups. The concept of the ‘racial state’, first introduced by Omi and Winant (1986) and further developed by Goldberg (2002) and Lentin and Lentin (2009), is used in this book as a framework for understanding the specific ways in which governmental ‘biopolitics’ and technologies construct and regulate racialised minority social groups. Within social work, there is a limited understanding of racism as a political system that has capacity to regulate bodies.

Historically, from its inception, but particularly within the context of the period of world history in the postwar period, social work has become an important site of struggle and contestation between what might be termed the interests of the capitalist state and the challenges faced by those groups made vulnerable by it (Payne & Askeland, 2008). Along with the ongoing development of industrial capitalism, this period has also been characterised by the emergence of postcolonial states. This resulted in dramatic movements of migrant labour and refugee populations from former European colonies to the former ‘motherland’. It also posed new challenges, principally around the struggles over human and social development faced by former colonised nations.

Equally important in this period was the establishment of welfare states and principles of universal human rights that represented not only a challenge for all states but also an important thread to (re)define social work as an international profession with a common set of values focussed on such things as ‘liberation of people’, ‘social justice’ and ‘human rights’ (IFSW, 2014). Although social work within the different nations has its own unique features, nonetheless one can see common challenges and themes emerging within the profession, such as issues of how best to protect and safeguard children and vulnerable adults, of assessing and meeting the needs of a diverse population, of making sense of human needs and functioning, and the question of responding to culturally diverse practices, beliefs and norms (Singh & Cowden, 2013).

New approaches that developed in response to the needs services for diverse populations ranged from politicised radical (anti-racist) and black nationalist approaches, through to active critiques of social work education and training and consensual models associated with ideas such as ‘multiculturalism’, ‘ethnic sensitivity’ and ‘cultural competence’ (Harrison & Turner, 2011). Alongside approaches that focussed specifically on the needs of minorities, we saw also the development of more general models of practice, such as ‘anti-oppressive’, ‘anti-discriminatory’, ‘postmodern’, ‘radical’, ‘transformative’ and ‘indigenous’ social work. These approaches on their own sought to address questions of multiple oppressions and intersectionality of ‘race’, gender, class, sexuality, disability, age and religion (Andersen & Collins, 2015). Though these approaches were supposedly designed to counteract the tendency towards promoting the idea of a ‘hierarchy’ of oppressions, one consequence was that in many instances, racism and the particular experiences, histories and struggles of oppressed and colonised black and minority ethnic group people became lost in the desire to develop practice models beneficial to all equal opportunity target groups – including those who enjoyed considerable class, racial and/or gender advantage. Additionally, the role of black and minority social workers and the sacrifices they made and the battles they fought, and won, is disappearing from the collective memory of social work, where the present generation of social work students seem quite oblivious to this important legacy.

In the current period of neoliberalism, with greater levels of surveillance on minority populations on the one hand and fragmentation of social protection in the form of welfare states on the other, social work is experiencing a renewed interest in anti-racism (Bhatti-Sinclair, 2011; Keating, 2000; S. Singh, 2013; G. Singh, 2014). Anti-racism in its litteral sense can be defined as ‘forms of thought and/or practice that seek to confront, eradicate and/or ameliorate racism. Anti-racism implies the ability to identify a phenomenon – racism – and to do something about it’ (Bonnett, 2000, p. 4). Anti-racist perspectives have provided social work with significant insights into the structural and institutional sources of disadvantage (Dominelli, 1988). They are characterised by a commitment to the ‘dismantling of institutionalised practices of racism, whether in education, in employment, housing, immigration policy, and so on, as well as a direct confrontation with racist ideologies’ (Rattansi, 1992, p. 29). Anti-racist perspectives have resulted in the emergence of black perspectives within social work, as well as a much better understanding of the experiences and impact of racism on black people (Keating, 2000).

However, in spite of these insights and contributions from anti-racist perspectives, current social work theory appears not to fully reflect ‘the fast-shifting ‘politics’ of race and racism’ (Lavalette & Penketh, 2014, p. 13; emphasis added) in contemporary societies. For instance, social work largely draws on out-dated views and narrow historical definitions of racism that are largely based on skin colour and biological categorisations (Masocha, 2015), yet the late twentieth century saw the emergence of a ‘new’ racism (Barker, 1981). Largely, blatant expressions of racism have been replaced (but not eliminated) by this ‘new’ racism, also known as modern racism (McConahay, 1986), symbolic racism (Kinder & Sears, 1981) and xenoracism (Fekete, 2001). A defining characteristic of the ‘new’ racism is that it is so subtle that it is very difficult to identify, and often takes place without the use of overt derogatory racist language associated with the traditional forms of racism. Instead, a ‘coded discourse’ has emerged that can be understood only through semantic and pragmatic cues to its target audiences (Reisigl & Wodak, 2001). For instance, exclusionary views are increasingly being enunciated and legitimated by drawing on culture, instead of race, as a marker of difference.

In the present moment, these new articulations of difference, of who is an ‘insider’ and ‘outsider’, can be felt through the worrying rise of right-wing populist forces gaining power and influence across the world. In both developed affluent societies of the so-called democracies of the global North and West, (e.g. the US, UK, Germany, Italy, Greece and France) and developing countries in the global South and East (e.g. Brazil, Turkey, Nigeria and India) we are seeing a rising authoritarian wave not seen since the 1930s, and the emergence of fascism in Europe. Most worryingly, in established democratic states, most notably Brazil, the US, India and Turkey and across many parts of Europe, we are seeing a rapid ascendency of openly racist and sectarian forces. Gary Younge, writing in The Guardian, notes, ‘These electoral victories are, largely but not exclusively, the products of those age-old prejudices: not because everyone who voted for them was racist, but because all the racists who did go to the polls voted for them. The intensity of that racism is now growing, as the victors use their podiums and despatch boxes to amplify their bigotry, giving confidence and licence for people to spread their poison.’ (Younge, 2019).

The rise of this new and virulent authoritarian populism and nationalism is a result of five key factors, many of which are elaborated on in various chapters in this book. These are (1) the global banking crisis of 2008-09 and subsequent austerity policies, leading to unprecedented levels poverty; (2) the entrenchment of neoliberalism, resulting in further shrinkage of the public realm in areas such as welfare, health and education; (3) the disruption of local labour markets by globalisation; (4) the failure of the Arab Spring to deliver the kinds of democratic reforms that were craved by the protesters and the resultant desta-bilisation conflict and refugee crisis; and (5) following on from the so-called War on Terror, a significant rise of Islamophobia and general scapegoating of minorities. It is against this backdrop of the ongoing crisis of capital, that new and dangerous articulations of racism become manifest, thus presenting social workers – whether they are located within the neoliberal state or civil society – with new and urgent challenges.

The structure of the book

One of the challenges in producing a book of this nature is that it seeks to offer a comparative insight into questions of ‘race’, racism and social work in different regions with quite diverse social, historical and economic contexts. One option would have been to follow the approach taken by Payne and Askeland in their book Globalization and International Social Work: Postmodern Change and Challenge (2008). They set up a series of binarisms, such as North and South, East and West, and use this as their conceptual frame. One of the limitations of this approach is that it runs the danger of simply reproducing a set of stereotypes that are constructed as binary oppositions. Worse still, as Rattansi (1994) warns, identities of the Western (and for that matter Northern) and its other have historically been formed through fictitious accounts of the non-Western other, and this often through other binary constructions such as ‘rational/irrational’ and ‘modern/primitive’, which function to produce and reproduce oppression.

To avoid some of the dangers identified here, we have sought to adopt a framework that works from the basis that though the world is very different in some ways, in others there are overarching similarities. Certainly, the impacts of globalisation, colonialism and capitalism have touched most people on the planet in small and large ways. Many of the challenges facing nations across the world, in terms of questions of welfare, health, education and growing aspirations are not that different. And questions of conflict, security, migration, violence and real threats, as well as moral panics associated with these social phenomena, are prevalent across societies. And perhaps the most compelling argument for adopting an approach that seeks to mesh a universal framework is that whilst allowing for particularities to emerge – even if one rejects the view that it may be a permanent feature of the human condition – it is true that racism itself is a phenomena that can be found in all human societies, though its specific manifestations and ideological complexion will vary from country to country.

And so, the book draws on Goldberg’s influential work, The Racial State (2002), as a framework for understanding the role that states play in reproducing, renewing and, at times, challenging racism. The structure of the book is premised on the view that understanding racism requires an understanding of the racial states within which it manifests. Thus, the book provides comprehensive accounts of the historical, ideological and political contexts within which anti-racist social work projects have developed in different sites across the world. It illustrates how anti-racist social work is a gl...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Titlepage
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Figures and Tables
• Dedication
• Foreword
• List of Contributors
• 1 Introduction
• 2 ‘Race’, Racism and Resistance: Theory and Politics
• 3 (Re)imagining New Spaces for Anti-Racist Social Work: Policy Deliberation as Practice
• 4 Popular Social Work in the West Bank – Insights for an Internationalist Anti-Racist Social Work
• 5 Reflections on the Development, Ideology and Practice of Anti-Racist Social Work in Greece
• 6 Transcending Racism in Asylum Politics in Australia: Quest for Social Workers
• 7 Social Work, Social Justice and Sectarianism in Post-Conflict Northern Ireland
• 8 From Colour-blind Racism to Critical Race Theory: The Road Towards Anti-Racist Social Work in the United States
• 9 Racial Issues and Social Work Intervention in Brazil
• 10 Social Work and the Community Question in India: Addressing Complexities of Social Structures
• 11 Interrogating Anti-Racist Social Work Education in England
• 12 Anti-Racist Social Work: The Hong Kong Context
• 13 Anti-Racist Social Work: South African Perspectives
• 14 Conclusion
• Index