European Social Work Identity

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European Social Work Identity

• Dr. Elizabeth Frost,
• University of The West of England, Bristol, UK

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• This talk will consider
• How can we best understand the notion of a
  collective identity
• Is there such a thing as a European identity
• Is there such a thing as a European social work
  identity?

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• Identity both individual and group -is a
  slippery concept with multiple meanings.
• The idea of group identities includes
• the external position of people geographical,
  political, cultural, structural-
• and the subjective experience of inhabiting these
  places and ideas.

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• For example a social work identity would
  include
• issues such as skills, attributes and a body of
  knowledge dictated by policy, law and practice
  contexts, interpreted through training and
  experience
• self-concept and ethical issues, to do with a
  subjective understanding of who social workers
  see themselves as being, what they believe and
  believe in, what symbolic meanings form their
  understanding and how these things mesh with
  the practices of being a social worker.

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• Another way of thinking about identity as a
  concept, then, is that it looks inward and
  outward.
• Identity is both about belonging what we have
  in common with some people - with what/whom do we
  identify, and what differentiates us from
  others (Jenkins, 1996).
• Collective identities are collective hopes,
  dreams and affiliations as well as objective
  similarities and shared activities.

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• Understanding collective (European) identities
• The notion of European identity is an evolving
  one like all identities, a process.
• There is currently an unfolding process of
  European identity, formed partially by the act of
  discussion and reflection upon the ideas of
  Europe/Europeans in itself (Preston, 2005, p 498)

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• In what ways can collective identity be
  discovered and understood? Can we really talk
  about a European collective identity?
• 1) First let us approach collective identity as
  finding commonalities
• Commonalities of, for example, history, culture,
  shared experience and so on . What kinds of
  commonalities and shared beliefs do we have in
  Europe?

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• Wintle values that link to being the first
  industrialised countries, the first modern
  democratic countries and the first Christian
  cultures. European culture is modernity
  cumulative knowledge and progress, technology
  and wealth along with nation states and ideas of
  freedom and equality (Wintle, 199611)

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• Steiner (literary)
• the coffee house the landscape on a
  traversable and human scale these streets and
  squares named after statesmen scientists artists
  and writers of the past our twofold descent from
  Athens and Jerusalem (2006, p7)

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• 2) A second way of understanding (European)
  collective identity is that seeking to be united
  in itself constitutes a useful indicator of
  collective identity.
• Identity is a process not simply a product, and
  making attempts to collectivise is a register of
  how people(s) perceive their identities, who they
  see themselves as connected to and what they
  wish to develop with them.

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• Shared identity is demonstrable in the joint
  attempt to forge that very thing. In relation to
  European identity, it is possible to consider a
  group of countries themselves seeking to be
  united. Since the second world war (itself a
  curiously unifying factor) there have been
  persistent attempts to create a European union(
  Macionis and Plummer, 2002 p88)

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• 3) Another way of understanding collective
  identities such as European is to consider the
  formal and informal collectivisation the top
  down and bottom up
• It is not just the success of the process of
  attempting to politically forge a collective
  identity from the top that indicates collective
  identity
• It is equally significant to analyses the bottom
  up activities the informal, people generated
  collective acts and organisation which show a
  sense of the collective.

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• For example top-down attempts to impose a
  shared currency, laws and policies, taxes and
  immigration controls, suggest collectivisation in
  Europe

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• But at the same time the informal (bottom-up)
  is evident
• Sporting, cultural and educational networks and
  activities have proliferated in Europe over the
  last few decades. Grass roots politics including
  trade-unions, European unions of socialists and
  conservatives all reflect collective political
  identities. Bottom up organisations are both
  ubiquitous and burgeoning. (Wintle, 2000, p.
  20-21.)

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• On the basis of using these three analytical
  frameworks for considering collective identity
  shared cultures/histories working towards
  collectivisation top down and bottom up
  activities there is some evidence of a
  collective European identity at this point in
  time

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• European social work identities ?
• So then I am claiming at least some kinds of
  European identities. Is it possible to also
  establish that there are European social work
  identities?
• Using Macioniss first measure of what
  collective identity means (outlined above
  tracing shared histories, languages, cultures,
  etc.) Can this be claimed for pan-European social
  work? Or is there little common ground?

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• Unlikely that social work across Europe would
  share a great many cultural features. Social
  work as a profession and institution is
  constructed through nation states in terms of
  policy, legal systems, economics and practice
  (Erath et. al. 2001) and therefore must reflect
  the diversity of European national politics.
• From this top-down perspective, social work is
  likely to reflect its separate national
  identities. As such, it will present a nationally
  defined and circumscribed range of differing
  historical and policy specifics which are
  reflected in education, research and practice.

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• However, if we consider further the kinds of
  ethical, practice, self-identity and related
  issues within European social work the
  bottom-up aspects there may be significant
  commonalities at work too.

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• In 2003, the social work thematic network
  co-sponsoring this conference undertook an
  impressionistic project on similarity and
  diversity.
• Each of the twenty-four European countries
  involved in the network were asked to describe,
  from their own viewpoint, the history,
  definition, education, roles, status and
  activities of social work in their country.
  (Campanini and Frost, 2004).
• This produced a picture of both similarity and
  differences in the whole notion of social work

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• Overall, what the project suggested is that in
  terms of the top-down- the laws policy, history
  and the very definition of the term social
  worker- there was little evidence of collective
  identity in Europe.
• For example, even what the term social worker
  means has enormous variation between countries.

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• However when we considered more subtle and more
  meaning-based issues the picture was more
  blurred. For example
• in most countries social work identity was
  changing and fluid and the process of
  professional identity definition was subject to
  regular variation and over-haul
• Does the notion of similarly experienced
  instability and change we are all equally
  unsettled about who we are - constitute a
  shared identity?
• It may help to generate a shared sense of
  threat/excitement a shared idea that change is
  possible, and redefinition, which may also
  include working towards a common redefinition.

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• If a bottom-up analysis is applied, the common
  struggles, mutual problems and themes become
  evident. Bottom-up here would include the
  intellectual and ideological underpinnings and
  the ethical, moral and philosophical beliefs
  found in social work(ers), with which the
  profession itself identifies and through which it
  defines itself .

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• Intellectually and ideologically, the two-fold
  descent from Athens and Jerusalem refered to
  above, impacts on most pan-European social work
  identities to some extent. However, European
  social works inheritance (one might argue the
  whole European intellectual tradition including
  social analysis) is equally dominated by the
  immeasurable, continuing modernist inheitance
  the two-fold descent from Vienna and Germany
  that of Freud and Marx.

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• Ethically and morally
• The social work profession promotes social
  change, problem solving in human relationships,
  and the empowerment and liberation of people in
  order to enhance well-being.
• Principles of human rights and social justice
  are fundamental to social work. Of the IASSWs
  Core purposes of the Social Work Profession, at
  the top of the list is to, facilitate the
  inclusion of marginalized, socially excluded
  dispossessed, vulnerable and at-risk groups of
  people, and the successive point is to address
  and challenge barriers to inequalities and
  injustices existing in society. (IASSW, 2004,
  p2).

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• It is possible then to trace cultural and
  historical themes, intellectual traditions and
  common practices, as well as a shared ethical
  and moral base to establish a collective European
  social work
• Using the attempts to collectivise as a
  register of collectivity approach to collective
  identity, there is also evidence of a European
  social work identity being currently forged

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• Social Work Education developing European social
  work identity
• One of the issues which became evident in the
  project mentioned above, was that all European
  countries who discussed the social work of that
  country, commented upon the role social work
  education plays in this process of
  Europeanisation. There is evidence to suggest
  that an increased International/European
  orientation in most of the European countries
  (Labonte-Roset, 2004).

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• For example The European section of the
  association, EASSW, has established a European
  accreditation agency, called the European
  Network for Quality Assurance for Social
  Professions (ENQASP),
• Involvement in student mobility and teaching
  staff exchange. Modules that address various
  aspects of social work from a comparative
  perspective.

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• Programs carried out in the English language and
  summer schools European social work training at
  Masters level
• Additonally educational projects, such as, The
  European Centre for Resources and Research in
  Social Work with the aim of developing a
  database of research in the area of social work
  or related areas.
• Us here now!

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• Given the models of collective identity outlined
  above, which highlight the process of developing
  collective actions as being indicative of
  collective identities, as well as shared beliefs,
  values and cultures, a collective European social
  work identity can certainly be demonstrated.

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• References
• Campanini, A. and Frost, E. Eds. (2004) European
  Social Work Diversity and Commonalities. Rome
  Carocci
• Labonte-Roset, R. (2004-unpublished) The European
  Higher Education Area and Research-oriented
  Social Work training. Magdeburg Conference paper
• International Association of Schools of Social
  Work (2004) Global Standards For The Education
  and Training of The Social Work Profession.
  Adelaide
• Macionis, J and Plummer, K (2002) Sociology a
  Global Introduction. Harlow Prentice Hall
• Preston, P. (2005) Reading the Ongoing Changes
  European Identity, The Political Quarterly,
  Spring.
• Steiner, G. (2006) The Ideal of Europe. The
  Liberal. Hay Festival Edition, pp4-8

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