SoSe21: International Social Work Master (MRM)

This section of the course locates international social work in a post-colonial global socio-political and economic context that remains fluid and turbulent since the onset of the Coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic in January 2020. All the turmoil, death and socio-economic devastation, among others, wrought by Covid-19 across the globe are well researched and documented. However, it remains to be seen how international social work featured during this global health crisis. Part of this section will be to tease out the role and standing of social work within the ambit of post-colonial social work, both before and during the pandemic, and then make suggestions on a pathway for a post Covid-19 world. Furthermore, attempts will be made to establish linkages between international social work and post-colonial social work in the present global scenario. As the world prepares for a post-Covid-19 dispensation, it is therefore pertinent for social work educators and practitioners to critically interrogate the socio-political forces that defined the world prior to the outbreak of the pandemic. This is important because international social work not only needs revised and revamped theoretical positions, but it must be informed by agency. Agency, is central to this discourse because the world had found itself in a precarious and perilous situation which was triggered by global trends such as international migrations, climate change and global social exclusion that were typified by “developing” countries finding themselves on the fringes of global processes, especially, globalisation. In the same vein, the developed north, particularly Western countries and those which were constituted as the Eastern Bloc had responded with actions that supported and entrenched unilateralism, ultra-nationalism and xenophobia. The foregoing negative forces need to be revisited and interrogated while using the lens of international social work.