Eighteenth International Conference on New Directions in the Humanities

Abstract

Anti-immigrant nativist sociopolitical discourses (Lopez, 2015; Neiwert, 2015) directly question the capacity of immigrant and refugee children and adults alike to incorporate themselves into the sociocultural and economic mainstream life of a number of European countries as well as the United States without posing a threat. These discourses frame the acculturation process of immigrants and refugees solely in terms of assimilation. In so doing, they obscure the sociopolitical forces that interact and effect immigrant acculturation processes, as well as the interpersonal trauma often experienced in forced migration driven by war, ethnic conflict, and growing poverty produced by globalization. This paper considers social justice as a meta theoretical framework for clinical social work practice. An integrated sociopolitical and clinical social justice practice model is introduced for working with families displaced by forced migration, where racial, cultural, and ethnic material is often intertwined with interpersonal trauma and the process of societal immigrant integration. The integrated model, informed by sociological and psychological theories, explains how nationalist or nativist sociopolitical contexts emerge and evolve, and interact with interpersonal social identity constructs. This interactional process creates and maintains structural and systemic dynamics of oppression, power, and subjugation, explicitly linking macro and micro social processes to immigrant integration and well-being, especially as related to mental health and trauma. The integrated model highlights the important role that sociopolitical dynamics and public policies might play in opening new strategies that promote the integration of immigrant and refugee communities.