Immigrant Social Workers and Transnational Practices: The Example of Latin Americans in Switzerland

Abstract

This article explores how Latin American social workers living in Switzerland develop transnational practices in their professional and civic life. It focuses more particularly on the forms of support that these migrants provide to their societies of origin or to their immigrant compatriots through the activities they carry out either through their job, through their extra-professional commitments, or by combining these two dimensions of their existence. From interviews with 17 Latin American social workers, a typology of four forms of transnational commitment is suggested: local social work and transnational civic activity, professional transnationalism, transnational alternative professional exchanges, and “glocal” social work.

KEYWORDS:

• Immigrant social workers
• transnational practices
• professional life
• civic life
• Latin American
• social work
• social policies

Notes

¹The authors quote the case of a medical doctor from Cameroon living in Geneva and going back periodically to his home country to give specific training on some pathologies.