The Political Context in Everyday Social Work Practice

Abstract

Social work is political-normative work (De Boer & Duyvendak, 2004). Hence, the political and policy context in which social work practices take place is crucial in understanding social work as a profession and its social task as a product of the welfare state. The political comes to the fore very explicitly when studying social work interventions with clients of immigrant backgrounds, especially due to the prioritization of the “integration” of migrants on various European political agendas. This article studies how frames on “good citizenship” determine the everyday practices of social workers using data on the Netherlands.

KEYWORDS:

• Citizenship
• social work
• framing
• immigrants
• culturalization

Notes

¹Soysal (2012) argues that these two ideological shifts in citizenship need to be put in a broader perspective of trends in post–World War II Europe and for that matter points to the i on human rights after World War II.

²In the 3-year study, we interviewed social workers yearly, which yielded 39 interviews with social professionals. Especially in the interview round of year one, we interviewed more than one professional per organization. In most cases, we interviewed the same social worker three times.