Social workers and intercultural mediators: challenges for collaboration and intercultural awareness

ABSTRACT

Social work in Europe is facing numerous challenges in terms of promoting the participation of migrants and their descendants in super-diverse societies. This study investigates collaboration between social workers and intercultural mediators based on international debate and fieldwork in Italy. Does social work require collaboration with other professions specialised in intercultural relations? What are the characteristics of intercultural professionals? What are the pros and cons of collaboration between social workers and intercultural mediators? This study shows that local social services need to work with intercultural mediators, allowing local social services to implement various strategies for tackling cultural and linguistic barriers with their clients and rely on professionals inside or outside their own. Furthermore, intercultural mediators tend to have weak and heterogeneous training backgrounds and working conditions. This article aims to contribute to the debate on the welfare reform process to support migrants and their descendants’ equal rights and participation in society, highlighting the need for collaboration between interculturally aware social workers and intercultural mediators to tackle institutional structural weaknesses in such professions as part of an organisational innovation process in social-welfare institutions.

SOMMARIO

Il lavoro sociale in Europa sta affrontando numerose sfide in termini di promozione della partecipazione dei migranti e dei loro discendenti in società ‘super-diverse’. Questo studio indaga la collaborazione tra assistenti sociali e mediatori interculturali, collocandosi all’interno del dibattito internazionale e muovendo dai dati emersi in una ricerca sul campo realizzata in Italia. Il lavoro sociale richiede la collaborazione con altre professioni specializzate nelle relazioni interculturali? Quali sono le caratteristiche dei professionisti dell’intercultura? Quali sono i pro e i contro della collaborazione tra assistenti sociali e mediatori interculturali? Questo studio dimostra che i servizi sociali locali hanno bisogno di lavorare con i mediatori interculturali, per attuare strategie volte ad affrontare le barriere culturali e linguistiche presenti fra servizi e utenti, affidandosi a professionisti interni o esterni ai propri ruoli. Purtroppo, i mediatori interculturali tendono ad avere percorsi di formazione e condizioni di lavoro deboli ed eterogenei. Questo articolo intende contribuire al dibattito sul processo di riforma delle politiche di welfare per sostenere l’uguaglianza nei diritti e nella partecipazione sociale dei migranti e delle loro famiglie, evidenziando la necessità di collaborazione tra assistenti sociali, consapevoli della dimensione interculturale del loro lavoro, e mediatori interculturali. Tale percorso di collaborazione viene considerato come occasione per affrontare alcune debolezze strutturali e istituzionali che caratterizzano entrambe le professioni, e come parte di un processo necessario, più ampio, di innovazione organizzativa nelle istituzioni socio-assistenziali.

KEYWORDS:

• Social work
• intercultural mediation
• migrants
• welfare services

PAROLE CHIAVE:

• Lavoro sociale
• mediazione interculturale
• migranti
• servizi sociali

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Angela Genova, sociologist, is post-doc at the University of Urbino Carlo Bo, Italy, where she lectures on Social Policy and Health Policy. Her research interests include European comparative social and health policy with a focus on inequalities and discriminations.

Eduardo Barberis, sociologist, is researcher at the University of Urbino Carlo Bo, Italy, where he lectures on Immigration Policy and Urban Sociology. He coordinates the Research Centre on Applied Transcultural Research (CIRTA). His research interests include the territorial dimension of immigration and social policy, and antidiscrimination practice.

Notes

1. People at risk of poverty or social exclusion. Indicators ilc_peps05 and ilc_peps06. Accessible at: http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/data/database.

2. We opted for the term ‘incorporation’, following Schiller and Çağlar (2009, p. 179). Terms that refer to migrants’ social connections – integration, inclusion, assimilation, incorporation, and transnationalism – are politically inflected because they are shaped by national discourses about migration. Incorporation is less the subject of political rhetoric, however, given its several decades of usage in English language scholarship.

3. For a summary, see http://goo.gl/drZ9oa (last accessed: August 11, 2017).

4. ATS is the abbreviation for ‘social district’, which identifies a local area sharing the same organisation of social services. In the Marche region, there are 23 ATSs, each of which is identified by a number. ATS 1 is the social district of Pesaro, ATS 4 is Urbino, ATS 6 is Fano and ATS 7 is Fossombrone.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by the Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Pesaro under a grant for research at the University of Urbino Carlo Bo.