Abstract

This paper examines knowledge, representation, and power within global social work scholarship on forced migration. Drawing upon postcolonial theory, the researchers critically analyze findings of a review of social work scholarship. Social workers worldwide play a role in the global response to forced migration at interpersonal, meso, and macro levels. Yet contributions of the discipline to knowledge about refugees, asylum seekers, and other forced migrants are unspecified. The researchers conducted a comprehensive literature search of articles pertaining to refugees and forced migrants published from 1978 to 2019 in global social work journals. The presenters analyzed 331 publications, with geographic, methodological and topical trends highlighted as findings. The most frequent topics include practice, intervention, health and mental health. Topical priorities suggest less focus on institutional, systemic and historical dimensions to forced migration. Scholars based in North America, Western Europe and Australasia produced 90% of the publications in this review. Authors based in Asia and the Pacific Islands, Eastern Europe, Middle East and North Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, and Sub-Saharan Africa published the remaining 9%. The majority of studies thus focus on refugees in countries of resettlement, even as the majority of forcibly displaced people worldwide are in the Global South. The over-representation of publications on forced migration by authors in the Global North suggests an imbalance in representation and power, warranting critical reflection towards decolonizing social work knowledge on forced migration. Future avenues warrant disciplinary introspection of systemic biases and methodological, topical, and geographic preferences in knowledge production.

Presenters

Karin Wachter

Jessica Lee
Assistant Professor, School of Social Work, Indiana University , Indiana, United States

Odessa Gonzalez Benson
Assistant Professor, University of Michigan, United States

Details

Presentation Type

Paper Presentation in a Themed Session

Theme

Education and Learning in a World of Difference

KEYWORDS

Forced migration, Refugees, Social Work, Review, Postcolonial Theory, Power, Knowledge

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