Professionalisation for what? Reflections on social work practices with asylum seekers at the interface between spatial proximity, emotional distress and professional distance

ABSTRACT

The article questions in what ways personal capacities (or a lack of them) as well as structural factors ameliorate or aggravate the idea of providing responsive social work and thus promote responsive professional social work practices within different types of reception facilities for refugees and asylum seekers in northern Italy. This study is based on a qualitative research approach which seeks to understand the relation between the refugee crisis, reception centres and professionalisation from social workers’ perspective. The author opted for a qualitative research approach in order to interpret and better understand the complex reality of the research settings. As the results reveal, the provision of social services for refugees and asylum seekers in northern Italy has, for a long time, been carried out alongside the rhetoric of emergency and temporality with a high impact on the quality of the services. Thus, as the results show, social workers report emotional distress due to the complex nature of the work environment, the highly diversified demands and the excessive workload.

ASTRATTO

L’articolo si chiede in che modo le capacità personali (o la loro mancanza) e i fattori strutturali migliorano o aggravano l’idea di fornire un lavoro sociale reattivo e quindi di promuovere pratiche professionali reattive di lavoro sociale all’interno di diversi tipi di strutture di accoglienza per rifugiati e richiedenti d’asilo nel nord Italia. La ricerca si basa su un approccio di ricerca qualitativa, che cerca di comprendere la relazione tra la crisi dei rifugiati, i centri di accoglienza e la professionalizzazione dal punto di vista degli operatori sociali. L’autore ha optato per un approccio di ricerca qualitativa per interpretare e comprendere meglio la complessa realtà dei contesti di ricerca. Come rivelano i risultati, l’erogazione di servizi sociali per i rifugiati e i richiedenti asilo nel nord Italia si affianca da tempo alla retorica dell’emergenza e della temporaneità con un forte impatto sulla qualità dei servizi. Così, come dimostrano i risultati, gli assistenti sociali riportano il disagio emotivo dovuto alla complessità dell’ambiente di lavoro, alle esigenze altamente diversificate e all’eccessivo carico di lavoro.

KEYWORDS:

• Social work
• professionalisation
• reception centres for refugees and asylum seekers
• Italy
• working context

PAROLE CHIAVE:

• lavoro sociale
• professionalizzazione
• centri di accoglienza per rifugiati e richiedenti asilo
• Italia
• contesto lavorativo

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Claudia Lintner holds a PhD and is junior professor of Sociology at the Free University of Bolzano (Italy). She received a B.S. degree in Social Work at the Free University of Bolzano and an M.S. degree in Social work and Migration studies from the Ca’Foscari University, Venice- Italy. She worked as a research visitor at the University of Roskilde, Denmark and at the University of Innsbruck, Austria. Her research interests in sociology of migration are in the areas of migrant entrepreneurship, the role of social work in the context of crisis, Refugees and their everyday coping strategies in border areas.