@article{KhooKleibl, author = {Khoo, Su-ming and Kleibl, Tanja}, title = {Addressing the Global Emergencies of Climate and Human Rights from Below: A View from the Pedagogy of Development Ethics and International Social Work}, series = {Irish Studies in International Affairs}, volume = {31}, journal = {Irish Studies in International Affairs}, number = {1}, doi = {10.1353/isia.2020.0001}, pages = {27 -- 42}, abstract = {Acknowledging that the climate emergency is a transdisciplinary challenge that changes everything, this paper offers reflections on teaching and research, attending to the public and students' demands, witnessed at a global climate protest- 'to not remain as bystanders, but join in action!' It asks, what could we begin to do to teach, research and write for climate action, and for solidarity? We offer a joint reflection on the experience of a collaborative Erasmus+ Disciplinary Excellence in Teaching, Learning and Assessment (Erasmus DELTA) training exchange and consider the challenges and benefits for engaged scholarship, subject specific curriculum enhancement and creative pedagogy.}, language = {en} } @inproceedings{AfeworkiAbayKleiblXypolytas, author = {Afeworki Abay, Robel and Kleibl, Tanja and Xypolytas, Nikos}, title = {Anti-Colonial Perspectives in Social Work, Social Policy and Beyond}, series = {Decoloniality, Social Policy and Social Work}, booktitle = {Decoloniality, Social Policy and Social Work}, abstract = {The history of social work and the modern Western university paradoxically represents both the high point and low point of human progress. Conceived in an epoch of immense human discovery, it is important to understand this period as characterised by white Western Imperialist and Colonial projects and the rise of capitalist accumulation. In combination, these processes, not confined to the geo-political points of origin, continue to have devastating impacts across the world, characterised by the exploitation, displacement, and destruction of human beings as well as natural ecosystems. Hegemonic colonial structures and practices created and reproduced global racialised hierarchies with the dominance of the Global North and the 'Othering' of knowledge forms and ways of life emerging from the Global South. Struggles for decolonisation and anti-racism come from an ongoing refusal by the victims of capitalism and imperialism to accept defeat and to continue to struggle for life, liberty and dignity. In the current moment, especially following the brutal public execution of George Floyd in the US and the Black Lives Matter movement, especially amongst youth, we have witnessed a global response, incorporating gestures of solidarity, through the 'taking of the knee' through to direct action to remove statues and monuments celebrating various characters associated with Empire, slavery and colonial exploitation. Decolonial perspectives are often neglected in the Global North. At the same time, activist intellectuals such as Freire, Fanon, and also Gandhi remain important sources for social work practice otherwise. Decolnialism refers both to a specific global conjuncture and to a broad range of theoretical analyses and political dispositions, borne out of the struggle of countries in the Global South to escape from colonial rule and from neo-colonial global power relations. In parallel, post-colonial thought critiques the Northern and Western-centrism of what passes for global knowledge, distrusting particularistic knowledge forms that pretend to a universal understanding and reach and, instead, seek to bring back pluriversal thinking. Crucially, an anti-colonialist paradigm focuses on dismantling global structures of domination - in thought, language, action, suggesting that political and conceptual work is needed, constantly, to challenge the powerful legacies of the colonial past. This bias is as present in social work as it is in other disciplines and practices, eroding the memory and relevance of alternative traditions and practices. Alongside geo-political colonisation there were parallel processes of the colonisation of madness, childhood, sexuality, poverty, gender, disability and old age. In all of these examples, the dominant powers use the same, or similar, patterns of subordinating, even erasing, 'The Other', through disciplines of care and control that involve oppression and exploitation. Crucially, the planet, and its finite resources, are being colonised for profit through unfettered extractivist productivism. Social work's emergence as a profession was deeply implicated in social Darwinism and eugenics, trends that have re-emerged in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. Understanding global inequality as a phenomenon deriving from colonialism, imperialism and capitalism, this course seeks to address the prosepcts for a decolnial social work, a social work otherise, a social work of the South and the ways these can and should be reflected in social work education, training and rpactice. How can international documents (conventions, treaties etc.) be used to combat the colonialist paradigm? What kinds of alternative understandings of the relationship between people and nature exist and how can these be used as part of the anti-colonial struggle? What are some of the colonising and de-colonising effects of international efforts in social work? How can indigenous wisdom, local and hidden intelligence and skills, be preserved and built upon? How can patriarchal values be turned off and around, providing the openings for values of care, solidarity and kindness? Can minor subversions of social work contribute to major changes?}, language = {en} } @inproceedings{AfeworkiAbayKleiblNeureitheretal., author = {Afeworki Abay, Robel and Kleibl, Tanja and Neureither, Franziska and Daňkov{\´a}, Petra and Klages, Anna-Lisa and Lutz, Ronald}, title = {Ethical Considerations for Social Work Education and Research in Africa: COVID-19, White Privilege, Structural Inequalities and its Implications for European Social Work}, series = {Innovation and Resilience: Preparedness of Social Work Education in Uncertain Times}, booktitle = {Innovation and Resilience: Preparedness of Social Work Education in Uncertain Times}, abstract = {The current pandemic forces parts of Social Work practice, research and education to reinvent itself. Alongside new online formats and blended-learning models, new ethical questions and dilemmas arise. These include issues of resources, control and power, access, accessibility, mobility and rising inequalities, positionality of researchers, data protection and the duty of care in social scientific research and education with migrants and other ,vulnerable' populations. While individual-oriented models which have arguably been a hallmark of the European Social Work practice, come to its limits during the pandemic, communal practices and local self-organized support systems come to the forefront. How can the Global North learn from approaches of the Global South? The symposium draws on this notion of joint learning and raises important questions about the (im)possibility of equal research partnership during times of worsening structural inequalities. This symposium draws on Social Work related research projects in cooperation with partners in Uganda, Ghana, Nigeria and Ethiopia. The situatedness of the research projects has implicit and explicit ethical implications that pointed out the need for postcolonial reflections. The first perspective focuses on critical whiteness in research practice and pandemic-related challenges regarding field access and exchange opportunities. The second part of the discussion calls for situated ethics based in transnational multi-site research with migrating persons. Drawing on the theory of Social Work as a human rights profession in a global context, the final part of the discussion then moves to emphasize the mandate of Social Work researchers, practitioners and education to consider the perspectives of those unheard and unseen in the current discourse. The range of papers point towards the dilemma of a predominantly white Northern perspectives of Social Work profession that is only slowly reflecting upon and researching its own role in upholding and reproducing the colonial matrix of power. This symposium concludes by making some suggestions how to work towards an ethical space of engagement in which power imbalances are recognized and an in-between space, in which one can in fact only stumble forward together, created.}, language = {en} } @inproceedings{AfeworkiAbayKleiblDaňkovaetal., author = {Afeworki Abay, Robel and Kleibl, Tanja and Daňkov{\´a}, Petra and Klages, Anna-Lisa}, title = {Beyond the Single Story of "Migration Management": Creating Space for "Epistemic Disobedience" in Engaging with Migration in Social Work}, series = {The 21st International Conference of Migration "Border Thinking"}, booktitle = {The 21st International Conference of Migration "Border Thinking"}, abstract = {In recent years, Mignolo's concept of "border thinking" became an increasingly relevant critical framework to analyze the complexity of migration processes to postcolonial Europe (Lutz, Sachau, \& Stauß, 2017; Zannou, \& Pfaffenstaller, 2020). It differentiates between external and internal borders; whereby the latter refers to the modern/colonial world system and its epistemological conceptualizations in the postcolonial era that continue to be dominated by the hegemonic order of Eurocentric discourses - here on migration (Mignolo, 2000). Within a reductionist approach to the complexity of migration processes (Mayblin, 2016), motives of migration are often analyzed within a single-story framework that considers solely the perspectives of European-destination countries - disregarding the external border that considers the perspectives of the subaltern (Zannou \& Pfaffenstaller, 2020). In addition, the applied framework constructs Europe as in need to protect its welfare systems from overload and exploitation, and its societies from infiltration (Mayblin, 2016). The so-called "root causes" for migration are sought in "underdevelopment" and inter- and intraregional conflicts for land/resources and power. Its close and complex relations to colonial legacies however, are often left unconsidered (Zannou, \& Pfaffenstaller, 2020; Lutz, Sachau, \& Stauß, 2017). Yet, the imprints of colonial rule on former colonized states continue to impact social, political and economic structures on both sides, thereby shaping knowledge production (Mignolo, 2013). In our presentation, we critically discuss the dominant Eurocentric discourse on "migration management" and its universality claims. Focusing specifically on social work, we sketch out how the production of research and the (self) understanding of the social work profession within the welfare state are often entangled in (re)producing hegemonic discourse. With Mignolo, we reflect on the possibilities of "epistemic disobedience" (Mignolo, 2009; 2013) and its demands for universality in social work education, research and practice.}, language = {en} }