Author:

Keywords:

Transmigration, Transnational social work

Abstract:

In societies characterized by globalization, increasing mobilities and superdiversity, social workers are increasingly confronted with clients whose background, experiences and welfare needs are shaped within multiple locations. More and more migrants are transmigrants: people who move multiple times, combine complex migration trajectories and whose social problems are shaped in various sites. The growing complexity of these mobile clients’ needs, calls for a practice of transnational social work. Social workers can no longer suffice with locally grounded, ‘one-nation state’ solutions to their to their clients’ problems, but need to cross borders – both literally and figuratively – when dealing with the welfare needs of a more mobile and temporal population. Alerting to the need for a paradigm shift, transnational social work has been defined as an emerging field of practice, designed to serve transnational populations and operate across boundaries. Still, it remains as yet under-researched regarding its concrete shapes and effects in practice. Based on a qualitative research on transmigration and social work, this paper describes emerging practices of transnational social work in Belgium. We argue that transnational social work is as much an attitude as an actual practice, as the development of a ‘transnational consciousness’ serves as an important precondition for recognizing and dealing with transmigrants’ welfare needs. The realization of the much needed paradigm shift calls however for a firm incorporation of this consciousness on all levels of social work practice and its still locally directed policy frames.