Nordic Social Work Research – steadily growing and moving around

This editorial marks a shift in the editorship of Nordic Social Work Research. In January 2016, we started out as editors. We became responsible for a very young, sound, lively and well doing journal. Now today, with the journal soon becoming eight years, we can say that during the last three years Nordic Social Work Research has steadily been growing and moving around in the field of social work research. The number of submissions, subscriptions, and downloads have unequivocally increased. As far as downloads indicate, our readers are primarily from Europe including the Nordic countries, which is appropriate and encouraging for a journal with the aim of promoting and disseminating research on social work from the Nordic countries. However, we have also learned that the journal has a significant and stable readership outside Europe, recently including countries such as for example United States of America, Australia, Canada, India and China. Thus, we also dare to think that Nordic Social Work Research inspires international scholarly discussions and foster comparative reflections on the various forms, practices and developments of social work and social work research. Considering this, we are very comfortable about transferring the journal to a new team of editors by January 2019 with Professor Maria Eriksson, Department of Social Sciences, Ersta Sköndahl Bräcke University College, Sweden, as Editor in Chief (currently Co-editor), and Associate Professor Bagga Bjerre, Department of Psychology, Aarhus University, Denmark as Co-editor.

During the last three years, we have repeatedly been struck and encouraged by the great variation in social work practices and developments in welfare and social policy addressed in the journal. It seems impossible to capture the theoretical, empirical, methodological and practical variations of all the articles in a few sentences. However, we may try to say something about the landscape of social work and social work research that has fertilized and enabled the growing and moving around of Nordic Social Work Research. What seems recurring is the consistent effort to get a deeper, more comprehensive and thus more adequate understanding of the experiences, relations, practices, forms, conditions and processes of change in social work, including the life of services users. Regardless of whether the research carried out draws on more ‘well-established’ or more ‘unusual’ theoretical and methodological approaches, or whether the empirical and practical interest gives attention to more or less explored areas, this effort to engage with the complexities of social work practice, the life world of service users, and possibilities for social change is at play.

We might consider this a basic feature of Nordic social work research important to remember for both social work researchers and social workers, especially in a time where ambitions to promote social change is increasingly expressed through the concept of ‘social impact’. The concept of social impact is based on the assumption that (incentives to provide) social services can be optimized and become more effective if embedded in social investments based on contracts between public and private investors, evidence based programmes centred around performance goals, and technologies for measuring outcomes for return on investment (cf. Dear et al. 2016). Social work and social work research, as it appears in Nordic Social Work Research, is genuinely concerned with how processes of societal, social and human change come about, but in multiple ways and at various levels, and thus not necessarily and only in a way that complies with this logic. We also know that economic rationales and incentives, standardized programs of assessment and intervention as well as related technologies may, if becoming the dominant feature of service provision, generate unanticipated, counterproductive and indeed very tragic consequences for people dependent on social services (Eubanks 2018). In the light of this, and by looking back at the last three years, we believe that Nordic Social Work Research holds a body of knowledge representing a multifaceted and complex response to social problems offering a basis for a critical reflective approach to how we perceive and strive for social impact in a Nordic context.

From the body of knowledge available in Nordic Social Work Research 2016–2018, we know that how we do social work and, in particular, the reflection over, shaping and improvement of relations between social workers and service users in everyday practices matters for service users’ experiences as well as possibilities for change (e.g. Skårner and Billquist 2016). We also know that this basic and very dynamic aspect of social work is dependent on the institutional, organisational and administrative environment, as well as the capability of social workers to think and act professionally and critically reflective upon this (e.g. Grell, Ahmadi, and Blom 2016). If this is not possible, we know there is a risk that the inevitable categorizations of social work will become uniform, and reproduced in an automated and standardised way, leaving less space for a variation of relations and positions on behalf of service users (e.g. Mykkänen, Forsberg, and Autonen-Vaaraniemi 2017). In the light of this, it is worth noting that the institutional legitimacy and organisation of social work still associates with a traditional linear understanding of the processes of decision-making. However, we know that in practice, professional decision-making is in as much about navigating in complex relations where absolute information about and influence on the present reality and future possibilities with regard to a person’s situation and life is not available or possible (e.g. Magnussen and Svendsen 2018). Perhaps the difficulty of accepting this basic premise of social and human life, including enduring the insecurity and risk of taking responsibility for difficult decisions with an unknown probability of ‘success’, is one of the reasons why policy makers, managers and social workers seek for and embrace what appears to be strong discourses on solutions to social problems. In recent times and up until today, one of such discourse fixates around productivity, labour market participation, employment and activation policies as main solutions to social problems. Without questioning the individual value of a stable and sufficient economy, or the benefit of gaining social relations through labour market participation, it is still worth reflecting on how a governmental employment approach to social problems affects social policy, social work, and not the least: the everyday life of people living on a low income (Thorød 2017). Has it subtlety changed the agenda and discourses of social services and social work regarding normalisation, and more broadly our perception of e.g. solidarity, poverty, equality and citizenship hitherto supporting the Nordic welfare state? We know that currently there is a strong focus on individual resources, attitudes and responsibilities, even when speaking of people or groups traditionally associated with vulnerability such as women subject to and children witnessing intimate partner violence (e.g. Hiitola and Hautanen 2017), young people leaving out-of-home-care (e.g. Storø 2018), or people suffering from mental disorder and in need of health care (e.g. Svavarsdóttir et al. 2018). Does this indicate a graduate shift in how we perceive social problems in social work, or perhaps even a dissolution of the meaning of collective action as a response to social problems? How does this relate to current debates on the role of the civil and private sector in social work? Does the new agenda on social investments and social impact, merging logics from the private and public sector, contribute to a reconfiguration of our perception of social problems and in what sense? With the articles, underlying the issues of Nordic Social Work Research, we believe that there is substantial evidence for and grounds for a continuous reconstruction of social work as related to social problems associated with collective action and responsibility (cf. Nissen 2014).

Some of the questions raised above call for what we in our first editorial addressed as a need for comparative analytical reflections within and beyond Nordic social work research (Nissen and Eriksson 2016). During our editorial term, we have tried to initiate this by developing a space for and reaching out to our international social work research community. At a workshop at the Nordic FORSA conference 2016 in Copenhagen, we invited participants to discuss Nordic Social Work Research in an international context. Besides the above-mentioned issues, we discussed the basic conditions and challenges for solidarity in the Nordic societies as a part of Europe and in the face of globalization. Moreover, we discussed the visibility, or lack of visibility, of certain social problems in Nordic social work and social work research. In line with Bauman (1998), there was a concern regarding the human consequences of globalization, economic competition, material inequality and social division.

This issue of Nordic Social Work Research includes six very different articles touching upon relatively new aspects within Nordic social work more or less directly reflecting conditions and issues related to globalization. In Housing Pathways, not belonging and sense of home as described by unaccompanied minors Kauko and Forsberg presents results from a qualitative interview study with unaccompanied minors coming to Finland from Africa and Asia, dealing with an important challenge related to migration namely the sense of belonging and home. They show that although the children have previously been subject to experiences of war, fear and insecurity, the sense of not belonging is most visible in their encounter with the practices and structures of reception system. This sense of not belonging is painfully associated with feelings of unfamiliarity, loneliness, indifference and carelessness.

Whereas the situation and experience of unaccompanied children seems clearly and directly related to local consequences and vulnerable positions due to global conflicts, some of the other articles address global trends in the governance and practices of social work relating to both normative, political and economic agendas. In The meaning and making of childhoods in kinship care – young adult’s narrative, Skoglund, Holtan and Thørnblad note how attitudes have changed with kinship care now being the preferred choice for placement in Australia, Western Europe, New Zealand, and the United States of America, and with a similar trend emerging in Norway from where the study originates. Based on a qualitative interview study with young adults, they portray childhood in kinship care in four ways pertaining to stories about the normal, the supported, the struggling and the neglected childhood. The article offers a nuanced understanding of how out-of-home placements, including kinship care, is not a standard service with a predictable quality and outcome. The experiences of childhood in kinship care may turn out to be very different ranging from ‘good’ to ‘dangerous’. This is of course also the case when it comes to foster care more broadly, as is indicated in Lundström and Sallnäs’ book review of Familiepleje i Danmark [Foster care in Denmark] (Bryderup, Engen, and Kring 2017). Another global trend is the emerging use of welfare technologies in social and health care services. The social and economic backcloth for this trend is demographic changes in industrialized countries in terms of aging, and the expected increase in expenses for care, along with normative expectations of effective support, empowerment and self-management. In Welfare technology dilemmas facing young people with intellectual impairment – some illustrated theoretical explorations, Ørvig and Claussen discuss the potentials and dilemmas of welfare technologies and communication support systems such as smart phones, IPads and GPS. The potentials and dilemmas revolve around the variation in user participation, knowledge and skills, and parallel to this whether welfare technologies are associated with surveillance or freedom. A third and more well know trend is the valuation of a healthy and fit body in Western culture, and the use of sports in treatment activities. In The making of body difference: Physical activity, gender, and age in institutional addiction treatment, Mattsson shows how the use of psychical activity supports ideas about gender, age and body, and thereby is associated with normative ideals that become disciplinary. The body normativity furthermore reveals a separation between the presumed psychological and physical capabilities of an individual based on gendered assumptions about the young, physically fit and healthy man.

It is striking how transnational normative, political and economic agendas permeates not only the local micro- and everyday practices of social workers and service users, but also the most intimate aspects of people’s life such as the experience of care, support and bodily practices. Situated in this complex web of expectations, it becomes crucial that social workers are capable of communicating legal aspects to clients and service users in a comprehensible way. In Communicating the law in statutory youth protection settings, Antczak, Mackrill, Lange and Ebsen explore how social workers try to create a shared understanding of the legal space, possibilities and rights of the client, and how this involves multiple competences such as translating, timing, generating trust and balancing different structural and relational considerations. An important question raised by the authors is how the translation of law into everyday language relates to power issues, and whether it undermines or secure young clients’ rights. In relation to this, it becomes interesting how clients respond to power issues at play in social work. In Resistance and protest against Norwegian Child Welfare Services on Facebook – different perceptions of child-centring, Stang shows that Norwegian Facebook groups are protesting about power, injustice and unethical professional conduct in child welfare services in contrast to international groups, protesting against the very State authority to ‘steal’ children from parents. She discusses if such Facebook-groups form alternatives to the professional, political and international research literature’s perception of child centring, and if they are part of a broader social movement. Global technologies provide opportunities for service users to protest against statutory power and construct alternative agendas. One may see this as new fora for expressing personal or institutional distrust, raising a question regarding how to include the voices of service users on Facebook in democratic processes where improving and safeguarding their rights becomes a possibility.

As a Nordic journal, we wish to create a space for reflecting on the global, cultural and structural conditions of social work and social work research, and we thank the Nordic FORSA Associations of Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden for providing space and support for this. We are also very pleased that we have been able to expand our international editorial board to twelve members. We feel comfortable that they will provide us with valuable input further strengthening the international relevance of Nordic Social Work Research. As editors, we thank our Nordic editorial board for contributing to discussions and evaluations of the quality, relevance and scope of the journal. We thank our book reviewers. We also thank our publisher Taylor & Francis, and in particular, ElisaBeth Alexis, for continuously providing us with valuable strategic advice, as well as the production team for cooperating so well with our indispensable editorial secretary Johanne Kær Berg from Department of Sociology and Social Work, Aalborg University. Finally, we would like to thank the research community of Nordic social work researchers who have steadily contributed to submitting and reviewing an increasing amount of high quality articles. Behind every paper lies an immense amount of work. The process of writing, submitting, reviewing, waiting for and formulating a review response, often more than one time, can be challenging each in its own way. We are very impressed by the dedicated, constructive and rigorous approach we have experienced, and take it as a sign of the high commitment of the Nordic social work research community. With that kind of practice, one can only be optimistic about the future of Nordic Social Work Research.