One - Transnational social work: opportunities and challenges of a global profession

Summary

Introduction

The professional experiences of transnational social workers (TSWs) form the central focus of this book. The Oxford online dictionary defines ‘transnational’ as ‘extending or operating across national boundaries’ and our usage of the term delineates social workers who have gained their professional education in one nation and who relocate to practise (or aspire to practise) in another. Since the turn of the millennium, there has been a growing recognition that ‘transnationalism’ is an increasingly appropriate concept to describe the activities of some migrants and migrant communities, expanding the term's application beyond merely describing the activities of corporations and flows of capital (Faist, 2004; Levitt and Jaworsky, 2007; Portes et al, 2007; Patterson, 2009). The two are not unrelated, of course: in ‘freeing’ capital to move easily across the world economy, nation-states have also increasingly facilitated the movement of labour – across all strata of the economy, from agricultural labourers to chief executives (Portes, 2003; Nora Chiang, 2008; Faulconbridge and Muzio, 2011; Seabrooke, 2014). That technological advances have made international travel and communication far simpler and cheaper than for previous generations – combined with the relative ease of shifting capital across international borders – has meant that migrant individuals, families and communities are able to sustain intense contact and exchange between both sending and receiving societies, maintaining degrees of simultaneous embeddedness in both (Glick Schiller et al, 1992; Portes et al, 1999). Their ‘shift’ across international borders may be temporary or long-term. Their decision to cross borders may be informed by push and/or pull factors: political or religious conflict; violence; economic need; employment opportunities; new or existing family relationships with transnationals; career advancement; adventure; and discovery of heritage and ancestry (Beddoe and Fouché, 2014).

An increasingly pressing demand in the study of globalisation and transnational migration is the need for particular professions to address the complex dynamics within each profession that are brought about by transnational labour market mobility (Verwiebe and Eder, 2006). Prior examinations of transnational labour flows have tended towards a bifurcated focus of either low-waged, unskilled or semi-skilled labour migrants on the one hand, or members of the transnational capitalist class on the other: professional, managerial or entrepreneurial elites.