Ethnicity in Eastern Europe

ETHNICITY IN EASTERN EUROPEA CHALLENGE FOR SOCIAL WORK EDUCATION

DARJA ZAVIŠEK, JELKA ZORN, LILJANA RIHTER, SIMONA Ž. DEMŠAREDITORS

Darja Zaviršek, Jelka Zorn, Liljana Rihter, Simona Žnidarec Demšar (Eds.)Ethnicity in Eastern Europe: A Challenge for Social Work Education

Published by: University of Ljubljana Faculty of Social Work

Topniška 31, 1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia

© Copyright: the Authors and the Publisher, 2007

Editorial Board: Lidija Kunič, Milko Poštrak, Bernard Stritih, Mojca Urek

Cover photographs and layout: Dražena Perić

Proof reader: Michael C. Jumič

IASSW-AIETS

CIP - Kataložni zapis o publikaciji Narodna in univerzitetna knjižnica, Ljubljana

364(4-014) ETHNICITY in Eastern Europe [Elektronski vir] : a challenge for social work education / Darja Zaviršek ... [et al.] editors. - Ljubljana : Fakulteta za socialno delo, 2007. www.fsd.si ISBN 978-961-6569-10-1 1. Zaviršek, Darja 234389760

Contents

Acknowledgements

IntroduCtIon

darja Zaviršek: Pathologized Ethnicities and Meaningful Internationalism

the Colour of soCIAl Work

lena dominelli: Multi-Ethnic Europe: Diversity and the Challenges of ‘Race’, Racism, Ethnicity and Nationalism

rosa logar: Gender and Ethnicity in Domestic Violence Prevention and Education

dagmar schultz : Resource- and Resilience-oriented Work with Immigrant and Black Patients

ethnICIty As A dIvIdIng tool And “floAtIng” PeoPle

Špela Urh and Simona Žnidarec Demšar: Ethnically Sensitive Social Work with Roma

svetlana trbojevik: Macedonian Civil Society as an Active Promoter of Interethnic Relations

Ilona Pešatová: Government Measures Aimed at Reducing the Exclusion of Roma in the Czech Republic

Miroslav Brkić: Refugees, the Internally Displaced and Deported Persons in Serbia

Jelka Zorn: New Borders, New Exclusions

7

19

39

63

85

107

127

138 161

eduCAtIon And CurrICulA

Christine labonté roset: Ethnicity and Intercultural Practice in Social Work Curricula

Milanka Miković and Udžejna Habul: The Effects of Ethnic Divisions on Social Work Education in Bosnia and Herzegovina

Eva Anđela Delale and Vanja Branica: Ethnicity in the Curriculum and Research of the Croatian School of Social Work

Suzana Bornarova: Promoting Multicultural Education Within and Beyond the Social Work Training in Macedonia

Marina Ajduković, Vanja Branica and Lucija Vejmelka: The Male and/or Female Beginnings of Social Work Education in Croatia: An Analysis of Graduation Theses Topics

IntervIeW

Jelka Zorn: An Interview with Christine Labonté Roset and Lena Dominelli

ContrIbutors

Index

178

185

201

218

239

258

272

275

Acknowledgements

This book is the product of the Ethnicity in social work education re-gional conference, which took place at the Faculty of Social Work of the University of Ljubljana in December, 2006 through the financial support of the Centre for Social Innovation at the Austrian Science and Research Liaison Office (ASO). This conference saw the establishment of the Sub-regional Network of the Schools of Social Work from Eastern Europe, which is intended to make the region more active within the international social work community and within the International Association of the Schools of Social Work (IASSW). This association has provided enor-mous support and intellectual encouragement for the development of the social work community in eastern Europe. The editors would like to thank ASO and IASSW for financial support.

Darja Zaviršek, Jelka Zorn, Liljana Rihter, Simona Žnidarec Demšar

Ljubljana, April 9, 2007

7

Darja Zaviršek

Pathologized ethnicities and Meaningful Internationalism

About the book and the network

This book is one of the very few books from the eastern Europe that addresses issues of ethnicity, racism, and anti-racist social work practice, while at the same time taking into account the perspec-tives of gender and health. It presents a variety of concepts and so-cial work perspectives, as well as a terminological diversity which reflects the individual preferences of each contributor. Anti-racist social work, multiculturalism, ethnically sensitive social work, in-tercultural social work, social work with ethnic minorities are terms most often used in this volume to position ethnicity for understand-ing, respecting and acting in regard to diversity. The chapters of the book arose from discussions at the regional conference “Ethnicity in Social Work Education”, which took place in 2006 at the Faculty of Social Work of the University of Ljubljana. This event brought together social work teachers and academics from different regions of Europe, with an emphasis on the former Yugoslavia.

The conference also witnessed the establishment of the Sub-Regional Network of the Schools of Social Work from the Eastern Europe, which is intended to make the region more active within the international social work community. The network paves the way for an improved, more diverse understanding of the historical, ethnic, linguistic, social, and political particularities of this European region, which are often overlooked due to the Cold War ideology and rhetoric. Focusing on the social work education, it is important to understand and share differences in teaching experiences, practices, and interpretations of the meaning of social work among different eastern European countries within

8 D A R J A Z A V I R Š E K

a broader social and political context. Today, there is a handful of countries, such as Georgia, where the first social work studies have only recently been established (in 2006). In most eastern European countries, professional social work and education were developed only after the political changes that took place between 1989 and 1991. In only a few countries was social work present for a limited period of time before Communists came to power (Romania, Bohemia and Hungary) or established by Communist leadership (Yugoslavia 1952).1

The Cold War, which rendered those few social work traditions which did exist in this region invisible, and the absence of social work education in most eastern European countries until recently were among a number of reasons (language, economic issues and former political regimes) for the under-representation of the schools of social work from eastern Europe in the global social work community. Their activities, publications, and congresses have remained mostly nation-based, and have gone unnoticed by the wider public until just recently. An exception was the rather strong network of schools of social work in Yugoslavia, where a continuous exchange of information ceased in 1991, and was re-established after the end of the war in Bosnia and Her-zegovina in 1995. Intensive cooperation took place between 2000 and 2005, and involved all schools of social work within the territory of the former Yugoslavia.2 The re-establishment of pre-war contacts among social work teachers and practitioners encouraged the development of the new schools of social work in the Republika Srbska (the Serbian part of Bosnia and Herzegovina), which was founded in 2000 (Depart-ment of Social Work, University of Arts, Banja Luka).

A similar network of social work teachers and practitioners from Yu-goslavia has been created as part of the initiative for the development of social work education in Kosovo at the University of Pristhina (since 2005).3 These initiatives can be seen as the predecessors of the current Sub-Regional Network of the Schools of Social Work from the Eastern Europe.

1 See more about the establishment of the schools of social work in Yugoslavia in Zaviršek (2005).. 2 For more about the network see Hessle and Zaviršek (eds.) (2005).3 For more about welfare work in Kosovo see Dragidella (2004).

9 FROM PATHOLOGIZED ETHNICIT IES TO MEANINGFUL INTERNATIONALISM

The sub-regional network has already led more schools of social work from the eastern Europe to join the International Association of the Schools of Social Work. The IASSW, which will celebrate its 80th anniversary in 2008, has done a great deal to support the development of the social work community in the eastern Europe, including financial support for this book (together with the Austri-an Science Foundation, ASO). The same is true for the significant-ly younger European Association of the Schools of Social Work, which has also welcomed the new sub-regional network.

Pathologized ethnicity

The decision to make “ethnicity” one of the first topics for a gathering of social work academics from eastern Europe was a conscious one. Under socialism, no one had an ethnicity, and today only the “others” have it, with Romany communities being the most ethnicized of all. The ethnicity of the other has already become a pathologized ethnicity.

The discursive merging of racist and medical theories can be traced all the way to the 19th century, when the pathological imagery of cripples, madmen, and savages was symbolically linked with femi-ninity and the concept of “other race” was developed. For example, deaf persons were constructed as oddities, closely related to Africans (Mirzoeff 1995). A visual culture of “other bodies” was promoted in freak shows, that is, public exhibitions of “human deformities” rang-ing from various bodily deformities to dark skin or strange voices. At the same time, medical research sought to prove that people of certain ethnicities were especially prone to disabilities.

At the turn of the century, for instance, it was impossible to detach the discourse of Anti-semitism from medical pathologi-zation. The famous neurologist Jean M. Charcot not only set the tone for treating hysterical women, but also claimed that the Jews in particular were weak and effeminate by nature and were con-stantly in danger of going mad and developing mental disorders (Gilman 1993, 1998). By 1890, racist beliefs about the “degenerate nature of Jews” had spread throughout the entire European medi-cal world. A legacy of prejudice, hate, social exclusion, and the


notion of the moral superiority of non-Jews shaped the image of Jews, particularly the eastern European Jews who had fled from pogroms and poverty and settled in cities of Vienna, Trieste and London as disabled creatures whose madness could pollute the ma-jority of the European population. In the heart of central Europe, a Viennese psychiatrist, Alexander Pilcz, invented a new diagnosis called “East Jewish psychosis” (ibid.). Eastern European Jewish immigrants were seen as the victims and transmitters of this illness into the healthy/developed world. All these examples show that the idea of cultural superiority relied heavily on medical diagnoses of disability in order to stigmatize, spatially segregate, and symboli-cally “accuse” an ethnic group onto which all the negative values of society had been projected.

There are several reasons why ethnically sensitive social work and intercultural social work have received almost no attention in the eastern Europe, especially compared with other social work topics. The political reason is linked to the fact that in countries with communist/socialist leadership, the category of ethnicity was subsumed under the only socially and analytically acceptable cate-gory, a “class”. The official ideology was based on the premise that class equality, which was supposed to be ensured through the full employment of men and women and a health and pension system, would overcome all other differences, such as gender, ethnicity, age, and religion. As one might guess, this hindered the development of ethnically sensitive social work.

This does not mean that there was no social work practice in the field of ethnicity. In Yugoslavia, for instance, thousands of unaccom-panied children needed placement and care as a result of the Second World War. In Slovenia, caring workers assisted Bosnian children, known as “Bosančki”, who had fled the war in the southern regions (Zorn 2006). These children received accommodation in private homes and in public care institutions across Slovenia until the 1950s, when a majority of them were sent back. Between the 1960s and 1980s, assistance was given to unqualified immigrant workers who came to Slovenia from economical less developed parts of Yugosla-via in search of jobs and better wages. Social workers employed in


every large company assisted these immigrants with social housing, subsidized holidays, and child benefits, and at the same time moni-tored and threatened “alcoholics” and “work-haters”.

The socialist slogan “workers’ protection” focused on workers “without ethnicity”. One consequence of ethnically undifferentiated social work became obvious much later, when ethnic wars in Yugoslavia caught social workers off guard and unprepared to understand racism and offer proper support for refugees. Similarly, social work teachers were unprepared to reflect on concepts of anti-racist social work theory/practice and to react to and fight back against everyday racism.

Generic universalism dominated social work curricula in all eastern European schools which carried out social work training under communism (Croatia, Slovenia, Serbia, Macedonia, Bosnia and Herzegovina). Political censorship prevented the development of curricula which would include theories and methods of social work that recognized multiethnic societies and particular needs of individuals and groups stemming from ethnicity, gender, class, and physical ability, which had been familiar in the knowledge of western societies since the 1980s (see chapters by Labonte Roset, Dominelli). Social work teachers and practitioners grew up in an environment where it was believed that only the universalistic approach to social work could provide support to those in need. A particularistic approach which focused primarily on differences could only enforce them (see chapter by Schultz). It was believed that not speaking about ethnic differences was a performative act of deleting the unwanted. Silence was an act of speaking.

Still today, a differentiated universalism is only rarely thought to be just as important as treating people as “the same”. One can often hear a social worker from the eastern Europe say: “I don’t make any differences between clients, for me everyone is the same.” Here difference implies a threat to the “imagined homogeneity” of society as a “whole”.

During the 1990s, the ideology of equality and sameness came to a most brutal end. Ethnic wars divided people and changed multiethnic societies into mono-ethnic countries with minorities struggling for their formal and everyday rights (see chapter by Miković and Habul). Roma ethnic minorities were the hardest hit,


because their skills and historically accumulated disadvantages have, in the age of neo-liberalism, pushed them to the bottom of all economic and social hierarchies (see chapters by Urh and Žnidarec Demšar, Trbojevik). During the last decade they gained some formal citizenship rights (see chapter by Peshatova), but are nonetheless still viewed as non-citizens.

While an ever growing number of societies are becoming multiethnic, certain territories with a history of ethnic diversity, such as Bosnia and Herzegovina, have become homogenized and cleansed societies (see chapter by Miković and Habul). Even the analysis of the ethnic background of former social work students in Croatia has proven that traditionally multiethnic mixtures of social work students no longer exist (see chapter by Ajduković, Branica and Vejmelka). Besides Roma, other minorities face both formal and everyday discrimination, such as the “Erased” of Slovenia and refugees and internally displaced persons in Serbia (see chapters by Zorn, Brkić).

Recently, a social work teacher from Georgia commented that poor persons begging in the streets “are not Georgians, but Roma.” This remark raises several questions. Did the speaker wish to be ethnically specific by pointing out the fact that Roma are among the most eco-nomically discriminated people in the country, or did the speaker wish to exclude them from being part of the “whole”? Does merely noting ethnicity place someone on the margine of the societal order, on the out-skirts of Georgian society? While “they have ethnicity”, the Georgian majority population does not. Or, to quote Lena Dominelli from this book, “’Race’ is externalized as relevant only to the other.” A conse-quence of violent nationalism and racism and the absence of anti-racist theory/practice in curricula can be seen in the fact that the concept of

“ethnicity” applies only to minorities and never to members of major-ity ethnic groups. “They”, not “we”, have “ethnicity”. Some members of ethnic minorities are not even conceptualized as being “among us”, as they are spatially segregated in refugee camps, asylum centers, and detention facilities. They are “on the other side/outside”. Some eth-nic groups with the status of non-citizens do not even have an access to social workers, because, in many eastern European countries, social workers only serve “citizens”.


For this reason, many social workers view ethnicity as a pathology per se, a socio-biological attribute which in and of itself contains and causes violence, poverty, and illness (see chapter by Logar). For many social workers, having an “ethnic perspective” means little more than

“working with Roma”, whom they often view as social welfare recipi-ents (“they come to us only to get social benefits”). For other social workers, an “ethnically sensitive approach” generally implies not inter-fering in the lives of Roma: “If I do not enter into a Slovenian household, why should I visit Roma? I respect their privacy.” As much as we might agree with this statement, and with the principle that Romany commu-nities should not be places of state interventions, we can also find fault with it. One of the social worker’s most difficult tasks is to understand the fine line between not pathologizing the disadvantaged and acting according to the principle of affirmative action, which is necessary in situations where people experience trans-generational deprivations as individuals and as communities.

differences in teaching

It is obvious that, over the past fifteen years, social work education in the eastern Europe has been growing very quickly and has become academically established within a very short period of time. Most social work programs have been developed up to the doctoral level. In spite of psychologization and therapeutization tendencies, which were partially a product of what was once called “educational impe-rialism” (various western experts coming to teach social work in east-ern Europe), professional social work achieved greater educational autonomy and independence from adjacent disciplines, which were once keen to dominate social work curricula (psychology, pedagogy, sociology, psychiatry). Nevertheless, ethnicity and anti-racist social work theory/practice are still not a common topic in social work curri-cula (see chapter by Delale and Branica). Instead of becoming an ob-vious part of the curriculum, it is normatively expected that they will be covered under different topics, much like gender. The common sense explanation is that many teachers cover topics of diversity, and that it therefore does not need to be an explicit part of the curricula.


The exact opposite is true. When “diversity issues” (anti-racist social work; disability studies; gender inequality etc.) are not an explicit part of the curricula, they are often overlooked and subordinated by more general social work topics, which are thought to include and embrace

“everybody”: “family”, “youth”, “the elderly”. An interesting hybrid situation can be found in Macedonia, where

social work curriculum do not include vast sections on ethnically sensitive social work, but rather social work students are expected to enroll in “parallel education” programs provided for and funded by international humanitarian and private organizations (see chapter by Bornarova). Western organizations (often with contested actions and values), and not the school of social work, provide ethnically sensitive teaching. A positive side of this development is that many NGOs are in fact much closer to the everyday world of people in need than some social work teachers, and can therefore encourage students to learn from everyday life experiences. They can often provide adequate fieldwork placement for students.

The other side of the same story is the NGO-ization of post-socialist societies, a concept that focuses on the cultural shift from grassroots NGOs, which served as agents of social action, towards NGOs as predominantly service oriented agencies.4 Whereas early NGOs used public space in a political way, today (the lack of) public space is often transformed into professional/organization-driven space dominated by professional skills applied to individual persons.5 Instead of political activism, people employed in “post war NGOs” in the region are expected to deliver services.

The concept of NGO-ization also includes a post-colonial rela-tionship between the rich and the poor. The former dictate the type of work, language, choice of the “project topics”, project goals etc., while the latter remain dependent, even within new organizational forms and collaborations. Who has not heard the joke about the huge number of western NGOs spread out across all of the eastern Europe? It reminds one of a much older joke, common throughout 4 See the extended history of the term in Stubbs (2007). 5 In Slovenia, this has most obviously occurred among women’s NGOs, which have been trans-

formed from (feminist) action oriented organisations for women into women’s social services.


western Europe, about the “anthropologization” of non-European societies. In Indonesia every family consists of a mother, many children, an aunt, a father, a grandmother, a grandfather, an uncle, a sister-in-law, a nephew, a niece, and an anthropologist! In the east-ern Europe, every family consists of a mother, one child, a father, a grandmother and a member of an NGO.6

At the same time, there have been several examples of good practice. Some of these are described in this book (cf. Bornarova, Trbojevik), and another example worth mentioning is a project in Kosovo which saw international NGOs and humanitarian organiza-tions, together with local agents, encourage community work within a multiethnic village. Using a social work perspective, international and local actors carefully waited for the right time “for a shift from humanitarian aid to community development projects” (Soumpasi 2003). All these examples show that social work is taught not only at universities and that there are different ways to teach diversity.

Instead of being subsumed by other social science disciplines, social workers in some eastern European countries now face the threat of the de-professionalization, re-catholicization, and re-mas-culinization of their profession. The neo-liberalization of everyday life, the de-montage of state welfare services, the privatization of education, and the de-secularization of nation states (just to name a few occurrences) have planted the seeds for initiatives which do not view social work as a social science discipline, but rather as an agency for “helping the needy”. The de-montage of state wel-fare services offers more recourse to the church and catholic priests, who, in some countries, can compete for any social work job on a equal basis with social workers with a 4 year degree. Such devel-opments can lead to the de-professionalization of the social work profession and harms the established acknowledgment of social work as an academic discipline. Furthermore, whenever resources and jobs are scarce women are more likely to remain unemployed. Much like in the situation in “Tito’s Yugoslavia” following the Second World War, where the first social work jobs were given to men who had served in the partisan war or to their relatives, women will be, 6 Thanks to Christine Labonte Roset for reminding us of this joke.


like in all times of scarcity, the first to be pushed out of the profession. If this happens, women will lose yet another space created especially for them. The profession was created by women for women not be-cause they are “the better sex” for this job, but as a conscious political strategy of women’s equality and equal participation of some famous pioneers of social work education.

Meaningful internationalism

Though social work has always been internationally oriented, it seems that the internationalization of social work has become especially important in today’s world. Many practitioners and social work academics face the narrow-mindedness of national contexts and experience everyday violence aimed not only at ethnic and other minorities, but at social workers who express critical social work ideas. These social workers and academics search for good practice and comparative research in countries all over the world. They are transgressing the boundaries of nation states and therefore risk being seen, like Jews in the past, as Roma or left wing cosmopolitans, or even as asylum seekers, as polluted and dangerous bodies. They also form alliances with people who are fighting for social justice and share similar values. For many, internationalism has both become a survival technique and contributed to better practice and critical comparative research within local contexts. In terms of ethnically sensitive social work, understanding and praising diversity can make for quite a heavy work load. This present work is confirmation of that fact.


References:

Dragidella, L. (2004), Jugend- und Versöhnungsarbeit in Nachkriegsgebieten: Rahovec/Orahovac im Kosovo. In: Seifert, R. (ed.), Soziale Arbeit und Kriegerische Konflikte. Münster: LIT.

Gilman, S. (1993), Freud, Race and Gender. New Jersey: Princeton University Press.

Gilman, S. (1998), Love + Marriage = Death And Other Essays on Representing Difference. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

Hessle, S. and Zaviršek, D. (eds.) (2005), Sustainable Development in Social Work – The case of a Regional Network in the Balkans. Stockholm: University of Stockholm.

Mirzoeff, N. (1995), Silent Poetry. Deafness, Sign, and Visual Culture in Modern France. New Jersey: Princeton University Press.

Stubbs, P. (2007), Aspects of Community Development in Contemporary Croatia: Globalisation, Neo-liberalisation and NGO-isation. In: Dominelli, L. (ed.), Revitalising Communities. UK: Asghate.

Soumpasi, N. (2003), Pilot Project in Kosovo. Training the Trainers on Tolerance: A Social Work Perspective. Social Work in Europe, 10, 1: 32-40.

Zorn, J. (2006), Socialno skrbstvo po drugi svetovni vojni: nova ideologija in stare vrednote. In: Zaviršek, D. and Leskošek, V. (eds.), Zgodovina socialnega dela v Sloveniji. Med družbenimi gibanji in političnimi sistemi. Ljubljana: Faculty of Social Work.

Zaviršek, D. (2005), “You will teach them some, socialism will do the rest!”. In: Schilde, K. and Schulte, D. (eds.), Need and Care

– Glimpses into the Beginnings of Eastern Europe’s Professional Welfare. Barbara Budrich, Opladen & Bloomfield Hills.

19

Lena Dominelli

Multi-Ethnic Europe: diversity and the Challenges of ‘race’, racism, ethnicity and nationalism

The European continent has become increasingly multi-ethnic and multi-national. But inequalities in wealth, status and posi-tion dominate the landscape, endangering social cohesion. These inequalities are straining social relations between different ethnic groupings and have led to the growth of the Far Right in many Eu-ropean nations. The discourses the Far Right has perpetrated have focused on scarcity in social resources as a way of engendering fear of strife amongst local populations. In this paper, I consider how social workers can understand these developments and engage in creating a more egalitarian world. Europeans can move in this di-rection if action is taken to do so; otherwise, racist social relations will intensify and ethnic strife will be exacerbated.1

diversity in europe

Europeans have become ethnically diverse for a number of rea-sons. One of these is linked to migratory movements. These have become increasingly affected by global events including natural di-sasters, armed conflicts and people seeking to move out of poverty. Additionally, ethnic groups reflect internal demands for autonomy and self-definition. These are causing nation-states which were ini-tially predicated on notions of people sharing a unitary identity and submerging their differences in order to create a country to frag-ment and dissolve in the face of their demands, e.g., the demands 1 This article is based on the third edition of Anti-Racist Social Work, published by Palgrave, 2007.

It was issued earlier in 1988 and 1997.

20 L E N A D O M I N E L L I

for Basque independence; the destruction of Yugoslavia. Within na-tion-states, those defined as ‘black’ are resisting such definitions and rejecting racist configurations of their sense of self. By doing so they highlight differences between them and the others. Mean-while, ‘white’ peoples’ fears of the ‘other’ are exacerbated through social exchanges and encounters that are too fraught by relations of superiority and inferiority for these continue to exist alongside these challenges to them. In these, white people worry about missing out on social resources if they have to be shared with ‘others’. Also, lo-cal white residents refuse to engage with the ‘other’ as an equal with whom resources should be shared. This reaction exposes the ration-ing basis of racism, or its attempt to exclude ‘black’ people from legitimate access to social resources.2

Changing Perceptions of racialised social relations and racism

Racialised social relations in Europe are evident in all aspects of life. These are reflected in:

- the acceptability of expressing racist thoughts. The acceptability of expressing racist thoughts is growing in Europe, as indicated by the rising popularity of Far Right political groups, even in countries noted for their ‘tolerance’ of difference, e.g., The Netherlands and UK are now facing the growing popularity of Far Right views on ‘race’, culture and ethnicity. In the UK, the British National Party succeeded in getting 42 councillors elected during the 2006 local council elections.

- a growing racism. Racist attacks and racist behaviours are increasing, particularly those expressed against people of Islamic faith. Islamophobia, as it has become known, includes a hatred of Islam and a devaluation of the contributions of its adherents to world civilisations. Islamophobia in Europe predates 9/11 and the ‘war on terror’, e.g., Arabs in France, Turks in Germany, Muslim Bosnians in the UK.

2 I use the terms ‘black’ people and ‘white’ people, not to suggest that these are biological cat-egories, but to indicate that the former are at the receiving end of racist social relations and the latter as those initiating them.

21 MULTI -ETHNIC EUROPE: DIVERSITY AND CHALLENGES. . .

- racism encompassing groups other than those labelled ‘black’. Not all these groups were ‘black’. Muslims from Eastern Europe were ‘white’, but in the mid-1990s, John Major claimed that 6 Bosnian Muslim families were too many to admit as asylum-seekers to the UK.

- the racialisation of all. Racialisation occurs across all ethnic groups, but white Europeans see themselves not as racialised, but as de-racialised. ‘Race’ is externalised as relevant only to the ‘other’.

- the presumed homogenity of ’white’ people. White people are not a homogenous group. Deconstructing whiteness requires us to explore differential privileging along ethnic lines to make sense of how the identities of white people are configured to reflect a hierarchical ordering within and among this category.

Defining Key Terms

The definition of ‘race’ changes over time as different constella-tions of social relations are configured by human beings seeking to achieve certain ends. Consequently, ‘race’ is a socially constructed category. It can underpin racist behaviour and beliefs or promote egalitarian ones. In the former, it provides the basis for racism, or the enactment of racist policies, practices and cultural norms that destroy the desire to have equality amongst people. In its various forms, racism is configured around biological, social and cultur-al attributes such as skin-colour, hair texture, language, religion, dress code. In its biological form, phonological or physical char-acteristics are configured as binaries in which one set is superior to the other. For example, during colonialism led by European na-tions, white ethnicities, skin colour, eye colour and hair texture were defined as superior to those of darker skinned people with dark hair and eyes. In this, the Europeans, as a dominant group of people, were able to establish their norms as universally appli-cable and define their characteristics and culture as superior. The others were viewed as deviant, deficient and inferior. They also succeeded in imposing their views on others through a combina-


tion of consent, which was based on subjugated groups’ accep-tance and internalisation of the views and norms of the dominant group; violence, coercion and conquest.

Stuart Hall (1992: 338) has defined racism as a ‘set of economic, political and ideological practices through which a dominant group exercises hegemony over subordinate groups’. I have argued that it occurs through three inter-related and interactive dimensions: personal racism that focuses on individual attitudes, beliefs and behaviour, institutional racism that emphasises social policies and practices that are promoted through social institutions, and cultural racism, which brings together social values and norms in order to define what is socially acceptable in a given society (Dominelli 1988). Racism construes the artefacts of everyday life as signifiers that configure ‘race’ through processes of racialisation in order to create binary dyads of superiority and inferiority. These binaries draw upon taken-for-granted assumptions that feature in normal everyday life practices. These result in people undertaking various activities without thinking about their deeper implications or impact upon others. In this way, they internalise racist dynamics and give ‘consent’ to racist social relations without being aware that they are endorsing racism.

These dynamics involve both ‘black’ and ‘white’ people in their production and reproduction. Additionally, these dynamics confer agency or “subjectivity” upon those deemed superior, causing them to behave as if they are subjects while others are objects of their minis-trations. The terms ‘white’ and ‘black’ should not be understood as being biologically rooted, but as signifiers for those constructed as ‘objects’ (black) and ‘subjects’ (white) in racialised social rela-tions. These work through unitary notions of identity grounded in ‘them (different) and us (same)’ dualisms and ‘othering’. A configu-ration thats sees ‘race’ applying only to ‘them’ means that ‘white’ people do not have to deconstruct ‘whiteness’. Thus, they fail to seem themselves as racialised beings, and are privileged by racist social relations. Most white people focus on personal racism and fail to understand the other two types, let alone the role they play in reinforcing personal racism. As a result, people who generally


perceive themselves as ‘tolerant’ individuals who believe in ‘equal-ity’ between people find it difficult to see how they can be racist and resent being so labelled. The figure below demonstrates the interac-tive dimensions of racism.

Figure 1: Interactive Dimensions of Racism

PersonalRacism

CulturalRacism

InstitutionalRacism

ComplexInteractive

Negotiations

Source: Dominelli, L. (2007), Anti-Racist Social Work. London: Palgrave. Third edition.

Changing forms of racism

Racism changes over time, although earlier forms can co-exist with more recent ones, e.g., biological racism alongside cultural racism and technological racism. However, some key dynamics endure; they can be summarised as follows:

Culturalracism

Institutionalracism

ComplexInteractive

negotiations

Personal racism


- Racism is a form of social exclusion that racialises people through binary dyads that create hierarchies of value and worth around a superior group and an inferior one.

Racism is expressed as:Personal racism (individual attitudes, prejudices, beliefs, acts), In-stitutional racism (legislative and administrative policies and prac-tices), Cultural racism (social values and norms that assign value and worth).

- These forms co-exist, overlap with and feed off each other to (re)produce existing racist social relations and create new ones.

- Institutional and cultural racism become structural racism and legitimate racist behaviour on the interpersonal level.

- Contemporary forms of racism include:

Biological racism was based on biological phenotypes such as skin-colour, eye colour and hair texture. Cultural racism focuses on language, religion and other cultural attributes. Socio-biological racism or technical racism involves the racialisation of the human genome, DNA.

Racism is a tool for rationing social resources in situations of scarcity, and undermines social cohesion by allocating these to the privileged group.

Thus, racism is an important form of social control that hampers society’s capacity to care for others.

Configuring the ‘Other’

‘Othering’ is an important part of racist social relations. It is cru-cial to the creation and reproduction of the binary basis of racism. I define ‘othering’ as the process of differentiating the self from other people by relying on a dualism that defines the self as supe-rior and others as inferior (Dominelli 2002). This process values only those who are like oneself, i.e., are the same, and devalues or disparages those who are different. The belief in a superior set of


beings underpins assimilationist responses to difference. Assimi-lationist views are also predicated on unitary conceptualisations of the self that form the basis of accepting ‘the other’. In other words, on a demand that ‘they’ become like ‘us’. This conceptualisation of social relations between people is central to the ‘technologies of the self’ (Foucault 1991) that reproduce taken-for-granted assump-tions about superior attributes through daily practices that are not subjected to analysis and/or criticism.

Racialising Others‘Race’ is an aspect of identity that has an impact on both ‘white’

and ‘black’ peoples. However, ‘white’ peoples act as if ‘race’ only involves others, that is, not them. Racialisation processes are pred-icated on the following:- ‘Race’ as a social construct. Notions of ‘race’ are used in the

process of racialising people and in legitimating racist practices.Because it is socially constructed, both ‘race’ and the processes whereby racialisation occur can be changed.

- Racialisation as a complex process that politicises physical and/or cultural attributes by creating evaluative structures that measure the worth of a particular attribute associated with one group over that of another.

- In racialisation processes, the attributes most valued are consid-ered superior and act as the benchmarks or norms whereby the attribute(s) associated with the ‘other’ is judged as inferior.

- Racialisation as the exercise of power relations, particularly those that set the terms within which different groups or individuals inter-act within hierarchies of power and oppression. These are complex because they are configured through social interactions in which all parties use agency to influence the way in which the relationship will develop and what priorities will gain ascendancy.

- Individuals or groups will both configure and be configured by others. Thus, racialisation is an interactive and negotiated process.

- Racialisation has many dimensions, e.g., gender, class, age, dis-ability, sexual orientation. These are interactive and so cannot


be thought about as additive or hierarchical in the sense of com-peting against each other. All forms of oppression have to be addressed simultaneously.

Privileging Whiteness

Privileging whiteness is an integral part of racist social relations. It has a number of important characteristics, namely that:

- ‘White’ people do not readily acknowledge this privileging.- ‘White’ people may be unaware of their privileged status.- Some ‘white’ people feel guilty about forms of privileging that

cause black people to suffer injustice.- Setting up an oppressor/oppressed binary can be self-defeating

in promoting anti-racist struggles, especially if those involved cannot get beyond the ‘feeling guilty for being white’ stage.

- ‘White’ people may oppress ‘black’ people on the basis of ‘race’ while being oppressed themselves on the basis of another trait, e.g., a white woman oppressing a black woman by assuming their experience of sexism is the same, i.e., ignoring racism.

- Deconstructing whiteness is essential to the process of identify-ing the basis for white privileging and working towards achiev-ing a socially just and equal society.

- Setting up structures to support racial equality will not be easy.

racist reactions to difference

There is no single reaction to difference because human beings are actors who exercise agency in their interactions with others:

- Racist reactions to difference include: obliterating difference, ignoring difference, accepting and celebrating difference.

- An individual’s reaction has to be understood in terms of the context in which it occurs and the other social actors involved in it.

- Racially configured social relations depend on creating a binary dyad of racialised and non-racialised participants. In Europe, white people are not seen as racialised, while black people are.


- The de-racialisation of white people enables white people to think that addressing racist behaviours is an issue for black people.

- Racialisation processes privilege whiteness. This is experienced differentially amongst those encompassed by this category.

- The privileging of whiteness is ignored by white people while the disadvantaging of black people is poorly dealt with.

- In racist dyads, black people are ‘othered’ and socially excluded.- Racist behaviour violates the human rights of black people.- Everyday life practices are racialised and racism affects

everyone.

Racialisation processes also involve the derogation of human rights. Linking the observance of human rights to citizenship within a particular nation-state means that those from outside that state are not covered, that is, human rights are reserved for nationals only. This is crucial in the denial of human rights to immigrants, refugees and asylum seekers, even though the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which was signed by all member countries of the UN, defines these rights as universal. Moreover, the racialisation of human rights preserves them as a ‘good’ that Westerners bestow on ‘uncivilised’ others. It results in the disparagement of ‘black’ people and assumes a superior human rights record in Western nations that are able to judge all the others from an assumed position of superiority. This attitude also renders human rights organisations ineffective because it belies equality in the interactions between those involved or even in their criticisms of each other.

racism Interacts and Intersects with other social divisions

Racist discourses demonise (im)migrants, refugees and asylum-seekers and endanger European unity. A number of these discourses are currently present in Europe. The growth of Far Right movements in Europe, e.g., the Vlams Blok, Front National, British National Party, is indicative of this. Led by the Far Right, these discourses are being adopted by other political parties, who are falling into line by endorsing many of their demands. Included amongst these are demands for immigration controls. These have become normalised


and also accepted by centre-leftist and social democrats. As a result, immigration legislation has become more punitive and exclusionary, e.g., withdrawal of many benefits for asylum seekers in the UK, the removal of Roma peoples from their homes in parts of Slovenia. At the same time, racism has intersected with sexism and gender di-visions have become increasingly patriarchal. The retrenchment of patriarchal, male-led cultural forms is evident in the resurgence of fundamentalist strands of all religions, and women have seen a loss of hard-won rights, including reproductive rights. Also, the state’s concern to alleviate insecurities, particularly what it defines as na-tional security, has led to authoritarian responses that threaten liberal, secular society and individual freedoms.

Racism focuses on one aspect of identity – ‘race’ and the asso-ciated terms of ethnicity, nationality and culture, although each of these has its own complex dimensions. It would, however, be erro-neous to think of ‘race’ as not interacting with other social divisions to produce highly differentiated experiences of racism, even within a single ethnicity. ‘Race’, therefore, interacts with and intersects with other social divisions such as gender, class, disability, age, sexual orientation, religion, and language in order to create different and complex experiences of racism both amongst individuals and within the separate groupings that comprise an ethnic group.

One example of ethnicity and gender coming together in a rac-ist formulation of its dynamics is the discourse on clothing worn by Muslim women. Contemporary politics in Europe have taken a dress code - Muslim women wearing the headscarf or the niqab - racialised it, and turned it into a signifier of threatening and dangerous differ-ence by linking it to terrorism and difficulties in communication be-tween people, as did Jack Straw in the UK in the autumn of 2006. This represents a particular discourse that takes women’s clothing out of the personal sphere of private choice and catapults it into the public arena as a sign of resistance to integration into a Western way of life. What do such discourses say about tolerance? And what do these say about the non-visual forms of communication that perme-ate the everyday lives of those who are visually impaired? This is not to argue that such items cannot be used for insurrectionary purposes,


but to question the stereotypical assumption that this is the main or only way in which such clothing should be viewed.

The growth of Muslim ethnicities from many parts of the world – the Middle East, the Maghreb, Africa, Asia, and Eastern Europe have caused a number of European nations to question their integra-tion into the nation-state. Muslim peoples’ commitment to maintain-ing their religious and cultural norms including those of dress have led to increasing tensions between Muslims and non-Muslims, and contributed to a new type of racism – Islamophobia.

As a new form of racism, Islamophobia focuses on Islamic reli-gion and cultures and is a contemporary example of what Martin Barker (1981) identified as ‘cultural racism’. Although discrimina-tion against Muslims from North Africa and Turkey was evident in France and Germany, where many of them went to work in low-pay-ing jobs in the 1970s, the ‘war on terror’ has exacerbated their posi-tion and intensified Islamophobia to the point that anyone who holds the Islamic faith or looks to be of Middle Eastern descent is deemed a potential terrorist and treated as a threat. Nation-states have re-sponded to this ‘security’ threat with an attack on the civil liberties of both Muslims and non-Muslims, arguing that national security concerns over-ride these rights. Additionally, some individuals may be mistaken for Islamic terrorists and lose their lives, as did Jean Charles de Menezes after the bombings in London in 2005. And, as indicated above, the debates around Muslim women’s headscarves and niqabs have been drawn into these dynamics. Thus, a matter of individual and personal preference associated with dress has become redefined as threatening and dangerous, even though this apparel is seldom worn in the West. Multiculturalism has traditionally relied on an assumed parity between different cultures. It has ignored power relations that privilege the hegemonic culture over others and enable multiculturalists to assume innocence in their interaction with others. This innocence is now juxtaposed with the dangerous nature of ex-tremist cultures and is central to the dynamics of Islamophobia.

The figure below shows the way in which racialised social rela-tions are used to privilege ‘white’ people, or those who are defined as ‘superior’. They expose the significance of socio-economic discrimi-


nation (low pay and status), political exclusion; the use of physical, emotional and sexual violence against individuals and families, in-cluding children, for keeping ‘black’ people in their place. Numerous studies have highlighted the lack of progress made by ‘black’ people in social institutions, whether in the judiciary system, in parliament (some European nation-states exclude non-nationals from voting), in social work, in financial institutions, or as captains of industry, unless they are servicing their own ethnic groups in the retail sector.

Figure 2: Controlling Racialised Relations

Political and Cultural Marginalisation

Isolation and Intimidation

Attacking Children

verbal threats

socio-economic

discrimination

emotional

Abuse

racialising Privilege

sexual and Physical Assaults

racialised Power

relations

Source: Dominelli, L. (2002), Anti-Oppressive Social Work Theory and Practice. London: Palgrave.


responses to racism

Responses to racism change over time, depending on the actors involved and their objectives in any particular social interaction. On the level of the nation-state, these have varied from the oppressive rejection of anyone who was ‘different’ to the inclusion of everyone, regardless of difference, into an egalitarian framework of social re-lations. In Europe, these can be categorised as follows:

Segregation. This has been identified in common parlance as ‘You don’t belong here’ and people are encouraged to maintain their social distance from one another. Its most extreme form was prac-tised as apartheid, particularly in South Africa.

Assimilation. This has been a popular approach to newcomers to Europe. They are invited to join the body politic by ‘Becoming like us’, that is, the original inhabitants of the continent. This includes a demand that the other person lose their distinctive differences, whether it is language, religion, culture or other social attributes. Part of the difficulty is that it also draws upon physiological differ-ences, which become racialised as barriers to assimilation because there is little that the other person can do about them. This is where the binaries of ‘othering’ are shown to rely upon essentialised and unitary identities that privilege those belonging to the dominant or hegemonic group.

Multiculturalism. This approach relies on an acceptance of the cultural differences that exist between different ethnic groups and can be justified as the ‘We’re human beings too’ motif. However, as multiculturalism does not address power disparities between differ-ent cultural groups, it encourages divisions without bringing people together except on the most superficial levels. Moreover, multi-culturalists essentialise identity and treat it as fixed and immutable. This can also lead to the creation of new stereotypes, through which the ‘other’ is judged. The cultural competence approach is an off-shoot of multiculturalism and suffers from similar shortcomings.

Integration. Different groups to co-exist with one another. Multi-culturalism and pluralism were seen as possible ways of achieving


this. These focused on sharing social space and the territory encom-passed by the nation-state, as in the adage, ‘This is our land too’.

Interculturalism. This approach claims that ‘We’re human beings too’ in an attempt to bring people’s universal humanity into use in eradicating racism. However, like multiculturalism, it fails to address power disparities. It is currently the method that the European Union favours in encouraging dialogue amongst those in different ethnic groups. It aims to get people to understand different cultures and in-teract with one another on the basis of an equality that is assumed to exist, but in fact does not.

Anti-racism. Anti-racist discourses seek to eradicate racist social rela-tions by exposing the dynamics of racism and their variations over time and convincing people who share their views to take action to achieve this end. It focuses on the idea that racism is socially constructed and that it can be destroyed through action on both the collective and indi-vidual level. Those advocating this position also seek to establish an egalitarian society where the ‘race’ which a person is associated with would become irrelevant.

Black, Asian and Afri-centric perspectives. These approaches have much in common with anti-racist ones, but they expound the voices of people who have been at the receiving end of racism and so are based on experiential knowledge of the damage that racism causes. These also aim to eradicate racist social relations.

Egalitarianism that values diversity. Those who favour egal-itarian responses to racism believe that it is possible to promote equality between people and eradicate racism as one form of oppression. It enjoins people to ‘Share this land’ and live and work together for the betterment of all.

Several of these discourses can co-exist in any given place. I have tried to depict these discourses as important constituents of ‘narra-tives of place and space’ (Dominelli 2007), which situate people within particular possibilities of belonging. Belonging to a known geographical entity is an important part of identity formation, the politics of legitimation, and of interaction between nation-states and the sovereignty to which each lays claim.


Figure 3: Narratives of Place and Space

Source: Dominelli, L. (2007), Anti-Racist Social Work. London: Palgrave. Third Edition.

You don’tbelong here

Let’s share this land

Become like us

narratives of Place and

space

This is our land too

You can’t get along without

us

We’re human beings too


racist social relations in social Work Practice

Social workers have been implicated in creating and reinforc-ing racist social relations, despite the fact that they perceive their profession as ‘tolerant’. This is because they focus largely on their value system and personal racism, i.e., their attitudes and beliefs. It is only when the interaction between personal, cultural and institu-tional racism is considered that this state of affairs becomes evident. The ways in which racist practices are produced in and through social work practice can be itemised as follows:

- Institutional and cultural racism can implicate social workers in racist practices, e.g., through rationing resources that indirectly exclude those from a particular ethnic or religious group.

- The use of essentialised or unitary concepts of identity that often stereotype service users.

- The use of culturally inappropriate services. Sometimes this is termed the ‘one size fits all’ approach.

- The use of a universalism that enables social workers to ignore difference. This is known as the colour-blind approach, and results in their treating everyone alike.

- The failure to think of identity issues as concerning them, either individually or collectively, only their clients.

- The fear of being labelled ‘racist’ if they question cultural prac-tices. They are also afraid to admit they do not know about or understand a particular culture and resist asking the individual concerned about it.

Social workers draw upon stereotypes of who people are and what they do. These essentialise identities by treating them as uni-tary and fixed. Along with stereotypes, social workers rely on fixed identities to determine eligibility for services and in doing so ignore the uniqueness of the individual and his/her specific needs. When working in this mode, they fail to use their professional judgment in determining responses to particular situations, often to the detriment of those they serve. For example, social work responses to refugees are


based on unitary identities of what is needed and who is involved in a particular ethnic group. Guided by bureaucratic criteria, limited resources and stereotypical assumptions, they often deny refugees the help they desperately need. Social workers are likely to feel dis-empowered in such situations and fail to take up opportunities to protest against such bureaucratic criteria by linking up with others who also question their appropriateness. Additionally, they can pro-vide evidence of hardship that can be used in advocacy work. In the UK, social workers are unable to house refugees in communities where they have pre-existing links with others in their ethnic group-ing or organisations that can assist them in carving out new lives in a new country. Instead, this task is undertaken by the National Asylum Seekers Service (NASS), which disperses them into various parts of the country, usually in deprived communities inhabited by poor white people. This approach increases the pressures on scarce lo-cal resources and exacerbates ethnic conflict between those already there and the newcomers. These tensions can also lead to death, e.g., the murder of an asylum seeker in Glasgow.

Anti-racist social Workers’ responses

Social workers must challenge their own racist practices and contribute to critiques of those operating in the society in general.

- Social workers are well-placed to play critical roles in eradicating racist social relations within their profession and broader society because they are committed to equality and social justice.

- To engage in anti-racist behaviour, social workers have to:- Understand how racist dynamics structure social relations of

inequality in both the profession and society.- Understand their own positionality and contribution to social

injustice.- Be committed to egalitarian social relations and ending inequalities

and oppression of all types.- Organise and mobilise as a profession in order to gain a seat at

those ‘tables’ where human well-being is being discussed, so


that they could serve as advocates and present data about the disastrous impact of inequality on peoples’ lives.

- Help to organise and mobilise service users to play a major role in ending oppression.

- Dialogue with policy makers to ensure that the social resources and public commitment required to end oppression are available.

Conclusions

Racism is endemic throughout Europe. It’s eradication will re-quire a serious programme of action across the continent. This will involve many players – practitioners, policymakers and ordinary people. The complexities of racist social relations and the exclusion of ‘black’ people at so many levels require action at many levels – lo-cal, national and international. Social workers have a contribution to make to this struggle. Social workers cannot eradicate racist social relations in society on their own. Their contribution involves un-derstanding how racist social dynamics work, advocating the elimi-nation of racism, and becoming involved in alliances with others working for its eradication. They also have to become fully involved in getting rid of racism in their own practices, both individually and as professionals. They can take steps in this direction by:

- Using an egalitarian value system to move discourses away from ‘you don’t belong here’ to ‘let’s share this land’ in their work with diverse minority ethnic groups.

- Showing and promoting the interdependence that exists among all residents living in a locality and highlighting the fact that they have a vested interest in ensuring a good quality of life for all.

- Assisting individuals trying to value diversity and build bridges across difference.

- Advocating structural change and helping to mobilise communi-ties in anti-racist directions.

- Working for a human rights, citizenship-based notion of entitle-


ment that is not rooted in the exclusivity of the nation-state, e.g., advocating a global citizenship and portable welfare payments.

If they can engage in broad alliances – at local, national and international levels - it may be possible to celebrate an egalitarian social order throughout the world.


References

Dominelli, L. (2002), Anti-Oppressive Social Work Theory and Practice. London: Palgrave.

Dominelli, L. (2007), Anti-Racist Social Work. London: Palgrave/Macmillan. Third edition. First published in 1988 and second edition published in 1997.

Foucault, M. (1991), Technologies of the Self. In: Martin, L., Gutman, H., Hutton, P. (eds.), Technologies of the Self: A Seminar with Michel Foucault. London: Tavistock.

Hall, S. (1992), The Question of Cultural Identity. In: Hall, S., Held, D., McGrew, T. (eds.), Modernity and its Futures. Cambridge: Polity Press.

39

Rosa Logar

gender and ethnicity in domestic violence Prevention and education

Introduction: Domestic Violence as a Gender Based Violence

According to the United Nations definition, gender-based violence is “violence that is directed against a woman because she is a woman or that affects women disproportionately. It includes acts that inflict physical, mental or sexual harm or suffering, threats of such acts, coercion and other deprivations of liberty” (United Nations 1992, Para 6). Data shows that domestic violence disproportionately af-fects women; it can thus be defined as gender violence. According to police statistics from Vienna, around 92% of the victims of domestic violence are female, and approximately 95% of the perpetrators are male family members, mostly husbands and common law partners (Wiener Interventionsstelle gegen Gewalt in der Familie 2006). Be-cause of the clearly gendered nature of the problem, this article fo-cuses on domestic violence against women.

In all regions of the world, women experience violence at the hand of their partners or male family members. For a long time the extent of this violence could only be estimated, seeing as the cases of violence which became known to the public were only the tip of the iceberg. Over the past decade, the extent of violence against women was revealed through large-scale studies drawn up in several countries. The report entitled Violence and Health, published by the World Health Organization (2002), contains 48 studies on the prevalence of violence against women; these show that between 10 and 69% of women (depending on the country in question) have been affected by physical violence – they have been abused by a

40 R O S A L O G A R

spouse/partner at least once in their life. The first representative study, conducted in Germany with more than 10,000 women respondents, found that approximately one out of four women (i.e. 25%) have been physically or sexually abused by a partner (Federal Ministry for Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth BMFSF 2004a).According to the new UN in-depth study on all forms of violence

“violence against women persists in every country of the world as a pervasive violation of human rights and a major impediment to achieving gender equality. Such violence is unacceptable, wheth-er perpetrated by the State or its agents or by family members or strangers, in the public or private sphere, in peacetime or in times of conflict. The Secretary-General has stated that as long as violence against women continues, we cannot claim to be making real prog-ress towards equality, development, and peace” (United Nations, GA 2006: 9).

Immigrant and ethnic Minority Women - Questions of Concepts and Definitions

The classification of women into categories such as immigrant or ethnic minority is questionable and cannot stem from characteristics of the women concerned, but rather from changing social construc-tions based on historical, political, and economic developments. An example of this is the recent enlargement of the European Union by the inclusion of several former eastern European countries. Women arriving from these countries before 2004, and women from Bulgaria and Romania before 2007, were considered “foreigners” within the EU, categorized according to their purpose for entering the EU ter-ritory, and labelled according to legal guidelines as “third country nationals”, “immigrants”, “guest workers”, “refugees”, “illegal im-migrants”, “asylum seekers”, “tourists”, “victims of trafficking”, etc. Today, they are “EU citizens”, even though they still do not enjoy the same rights as citizens of the “old” members of the EU.

While women leave their countries of origin and emigrate to other countries for a number of reasons, the only reason for the West’s clear political tendency to differentiate between “good migration”, that is, migration desired and needed by “receiving” countries, and

“bad migration”, or undesired migration that has to be prevented, is the global economic process known as “globalization”. An important

41 GENDER AND ETHNICITY IN DOMESTIC VIOLENCE PREVENTION. . .

instrument for differentiating between “good” and “bad” migration is the creation of immigration laws which determine who falls into each category and result in control of “migration flow”. Immigra-tion laws create different groups of people that are entitled to fewer rights than national citizens, thus making them second class citizens or even “non-citizens” or “illegal persons” with no rights at all. The basic human rights of immigrants are often not safeguarded in the country where they live.

There is also a growing tendency to attribute a new significance to “culture” and “religion” as constitutive factors, while political and economical factors are often overlooked. The category “ethnicity” is mainly attributed to “minorities” (ethnic minorities) while the

“majority” would appear to lack ethnicity or ethnicities; this implies a strategic understanding that a majority is culturally homogeneous and constitutes “one ethnicity”.

It is not possible to critically explore the multi-faceted issues sur-rounding ethnicity and immigration or ethnicity and gender within the space of this article (cf. Andall 2003). This short analysis serves only to point out the need to question the meaning of categories such as “immigrants” or “ethnic minorities”. These concepts also differ in individual European countries. Nonetheless, it is necessary to ad-dress the groups of women concerned and at the same time to try to avoid discriminatory labelling or the use of questionable concepts.

In this article, I use the term “immigrant women” to describe women who have immigrated to a country (including so called “legal” immigrants as well as women without papers, women asylum seekers, and refugees) and the term “minority women” for women from various ethnic groups within a country who did not immigrate recently. Neither group is homogeneous. Immigrant women, for example, can be broken down into many different groups: immigrant women married to immigrant men, immigrant women married to men belonging to the ethnic majority, immigrant women with or without citizenship in the country of immigration, asylum seeking women married to asylum seeking men, refugee women, etc. The key unifying factor of these groups is, as already stated, that applied laws basically deny them almost all rights. The group most deprived of basic human


rights and thus most vulnerable to exploitation, discrimination, racism, and violence are immigrant women without papers. Immigrant women married to immigrant men dependent on residence status and immigrant women married to men belonging to the ethnic majority in the early stage of marriage, who are completely dependent on their husbands, are also quite vulnerable. Furthermore, asylum seeking women have a rather precarious status. In Austria, for instance, asylum seekers are not entitled to a work permit, and prostitution is the only option for women who wish to earn money legally.

Immigrant women, as well as minority women, often experience structural violence. Galtung (1975) defines structural violence as any constraint on human potential due to economic and political structures. Unequal access to political power, education, health care, resources, or legal recourse constitute forms of structural violence. Structural violence and manifested violence are highly interdepen-dent, because structural violence often produces direct violence, which can include domestic violence, racial violence, hate crimes, and other forms of violence.

Violence against Immigrant and Minority Women: Multiple dependencies and forms of violence

Although sufficient research on the prevalence of spousal or family violence against immigrant and minority women has yet to be conducted, some evidence indicating that immigrant women experience violence more often than other women does exist (Federal Ministry for Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth BMFSF 2004a). Women’s shelters and other services for women who have been victims of violence are often frequented by immigrant women. In 2005, 52% of women seeking support and shelter in Austrian women’s shelters were Austrian, 48% belonged to other nationalities, and 18% of women of non-Austrian nationality came from south-eastern European countries. (Verein Autonome Österreichische Frauenhäuser 2006). These figures hint at a greater frequency of violence in immigrant families, but must be interpreted carefully, without placing blame on “cultures” or “religions”. As


stated above, factors such as multiple dependency, disadvantages, discrimination, and poverty create a greater potential for violence and weaken the possibility of leaving a violent spouse/partner.

Immigrant women are often completely dependent on their husbands, especially in the first years of marriage. Abusive husbands know that their wives fear being forced to leave the country should they leave them, and abuse this dependency by treating them badly. Sometimes immigrant women married to men belonging to the ethnic majority are treated like slaves, forced to kneel before their husbands and wash their feet or provide sexual favours on command and subject to other forms of exploitation and violence.

Immigrant women suffer from many forms of physical, psycho-logical and material violence. Additionally, they experience unique forms of violence such as threats of deportation if they report abuse to the police, or threats that their children will be kidnapped and taken abroad, where they will never see them again. Sometimes their passports and other papers are taken away, making it difficult or impossible for them to leave. Very strict patriarchal or religious norms, such as responsibility for the functioning and “honour” of the family, are also grounds for violence as well as barriers to leav-ing a violent spouse. Young immigrant and minority women may face the threat of a forced marriage, which is often not caused by “culture” or “traditional” practices, but rather by economic factors. Marriage is often the only legal way to immigrate to “fortress Eu-rope”, which is turning away immigrants in ever greater numbers, in particular the poor and uneducated.

The danger of repeated offences is great in cases of domestic violence, and isolated occurrences of abuse are rare. In times of separation or divorce, the chances of violence tend to increase: the majority of murders, attempted murders, and acts of serious violence are committed when victims attempt to leave their abusers. Ironically, it is safer, so to speak, to stay in a violent relationship than to end it. According to a Canadian study on murders of women by family members, women who are in the process of ending a relationship run the greatest risk of being killed by their partners (Crawford, Gartner 1992). The danger of severe violence and murder is also high for


immigrant women trying to leave their abusive husbands. A research project conducted in Scandinavian countries, which

included interviews with immigrant women who had been victims of violence, states in its conclusion:

In this report, we have used the women’s narratives to illustrate how abused foreign women are literally trapped between law and life, as the report title indicates. The women can either choose to stay in violent marriages until becoming eligible for permanent residence. Or they can leave their abusive husbands and hope to be among the few elected who are granted residence permits – both potentially life-threatening options (The Danish Research Centre on Gender Equality 2005: 63).

The European research project CAHRV has also reached the conclu-sion that “Despite minimal data across Europe, it is clear that immigrant women experience greater exclusion and hugely reduced access to legal solutions for violence. […] many of these women inhabit an effectively lawless space, denied access to legal solutions due to the insecurity of their residence status” (Humphreys, Carter et al. 2006: 38).

Immigrant and minority women therefore require intensive and adequate support in order to be able to leave a violent relationship. Women’s NGOs and services play an important role in empowering immigrant women. Other important instruments for the prevention of violence against immigrant women are independent residence permits and access to social benefits and the labour market (Berlin Institute for Comparative Social Research 2004).

state obligations to Prevent violence Against Women

Violence against women is not a “private affair”, but a public and political problem. Acts of violence constitute human rights violations, and states are bound under international as well as national law to take action. The Council of Europe has determined that “states have an obligation to exercise due diligence to prevent, investigate, and punish acts of violence, whether those acts are perpetrated by the state or private persons, and provide protection to victims” (Council of Europe 2002, paragraph II).


The UN Declaration on the Elimination of Violence against Women (1993) states that “states should condemn violence against women and should not invoke any custom, tradition or religious consideration to avoid their obligations with respect to its elimina-tion. States should pursue by all appropriate means and without delay a policy of eliminating violence against women” (United Na-tions 1993, Article 4).

The United Nations Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) (United Nations 1979) and its recommendations oblige member states to implement effective measures to end all forms of violence and discrimination against women. The CEDAW Convention was substantially reinforced by its Optional Protocol (United Nations 1999), which gave individual women, as well as women’s organizations, the right to file complaints. In 2003, Ms. A.T., a Hungarian woman who had been physically abused by her husband for many years, filed a complaint with the CEDAW Committee, claiming that the Hungarian Government had violated her rights by failing to protect her from further violence and provide adequate help (United Nations 2005). In its decision, the CEDAW Committee stated that the Hungarian Government had indeed violated the rights of Ms. A.T. and ordered the state to take immediate action to protect and support Ms. A.T. and her two children, as well as other women and children in similar situations.1

The theme of violence against women was included in the Platform for Action (United Nations 1995). This is a programme for the implementation of the results of the Fourth World Conference on Women, held in Beijing in 1995, as one of twelve critical areas for concern. According to this document, “violence against women is an obstacle to the achievement of the objectives of equality, development and peace”; member states consequently adopted a catalogue of measures to eliminate all forms of violence against women.

The Council of Europe has issued a number of important recommen-dations pertaining to violence against women and domestic violence, such as Recommendation Rec.(2002)5, which deals with protecting 1 CEDAW Decision of 26 January 2005, A.T. vs. Hungary, see http://www.un.org/womenwatch/

daw/cedaw/protocol/decisions-views/A.T.-v-Hungary-2-2003.pdf


women against violence. The recommendations state that member states should “consider, where needed, granting immigrant women who have been/are victims of domestic violence an independent right to residence in order to enable them to leave their violent husbands without having to leave the host country” (Council of Europe 2002, paragraph 59).

At the Third Summit of Heads of State and Governments of the Council of Europe Member States, held in Warsaw in May 2005, the European Council adopted an Action Plan including a Pan-Eu-ropean Campaign to Combat Violence against Women, including Domestic Violence, which is to be implemented in 2007. A Task Force to Combat Violence against Women consisting of eight inter-national experts was set up to prevent and combat violence against women. The Task Force prepared a blue print for the campaign (Council of Europe 2006) and will be in charge of evaluating prog-ress at the national level and establishing instruments for quantify-ing developments at the pan-European level, with an emphasis on drawing up proposals for action.

the Austrian state and Prevention of gender violence

In Austria, as in many other European countries, women’s NGOs have created important services to support women victims of domes-tic violence and their children: over the past decades, women’s shel-ters, help lines, and counselling centres have been established in all the provinces. Today these services play an important role in the field of social work and are funded by local and regional governments.

In 1997, Austria enacted the Domestic Violence Law to improve the prevention of domestic violence and enhance support for vic-tims (Logar 2005). The law consists of three elements, which were mutually developed and coordinated. Victims of domestic violence (as stated above, the vast majority of victims are women) are to receive comprehensive protection against violence and extensive support, and will have the possibility of staying in their own home.The three elements of the Domestic Violence Law are:


1. Eviction and restraining orders issued by the police for a dura-tion of 10 or 20 days;

2. Long-term protection by means of a protective temporary injunc-tion under civil law (3 months and more);

3. Support for victims, violence prevention measures, and the coordi-nation of interventions by newly established Intervention Centres.

Intervention Centres for the support of victims of domestic vio-lence were established in all nine Austrian provinces. They are run by women’s NGOs and funded by the Ministry of the Interior and the Minister for Women’s Affairs. The police are required to send a report to the local intervention centre within 24 hours of the every intervention. The Centres follow a pro-active approach and, rather than waiting for victims to take action and seek help, contact the victim and offer support. It is absolutely necessary to offer active support, as victims of domestic violence are often too afraid or too depressed to seek help.

Statistics show that the number of evictions and restraining or-ders in Austria has risen from year to year. This is probably due less to a growth in violence and more to the fact that the new legal measures have been more frequently adopted by the police. Within the first nine and a half years, a total of more than 32,000 evictions were carried out. The first evaluation found that the law’s goal to break the circle of violence through police expulsion of the perpe-trator and to support the victim of violence through intervention centres could be achieved in most cases. The new legal regulations are an efficient measure for improving protection against domestic violence and send an important message (Dearing, Haller 2000). Nonetheless, continuous support for victims is crucial. In the sec-ond study, almost all women who remained with a violent spouse/partner reported that their spouse had ceased his violent behaviour for a short time following police intervention, but later became vio-lent again (Haller 2002).

The law also protects immigrant women who have been victims of domestic violence. The law alone, however, does not offer sufficient protection, as women in immigrant families are often socially and eco-


nomically dependent on an abusive spouse/partner. Austrian women’s NGOs therefore demand that immigrant women obtain a residence permit and work permit independently of their husbands, because only then do they stand a realistic chance of leaving the abusive husband and living a life free of violence (Arbeitsgruppe Migrantinnen und Gewalt 2003).

standards in social Work Practice and education to support Women who have been victims of violence

Guidelines for social work practice have been developed by special agencies like women’s shelters and services for immigrant women and also by feminist scholars in social work studies (Logar 2000, Tiroler Frauenhaus/Frauen gegen VerGEWALtTigung 2001, WAVE-Network 2004, 2006). However, almost no research on the implementation of standards has been conducted.

Multiple discrimination, disadvantages, and insecure legal sta-tus determine if, how, and where immigrant women experiencing violence can seek help. Furthermore, immigrant women are often unfamiliar with the legal situation and structure of society; it is dif-ficult and sometimes impossible for them to understand the system of social services.

Practice has also shown that immigrant women tend to have little trust in authorities and fear negative consequences for their families, such as the loss of residence status, should they turn to the police or other institutions within the justice system. Immigrant and eth-nic minority women are less likely to access statutory services (Rai, Thiara 1997). They react more positively to services like women’s shelters, where they can stay anonymously without being registered by authorities. According to research conducted in Germany, pro-active services that reach out to women and provide counselling in different languages are particularly important and suitable for im-migrant women who have recently moved to the country and know little about their rights and opportunities (Federal Ministry for Fam-ily Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth BMFSF 2004b).

Because of such a situation, immigrant and minority women


should be treated as more susceptible to repeated violence by their partners/spouses. They have fewer options and opportunities to seek help and are less likely to receive adequate help. This is a serious social problem and a violation of the right to protection from violence. In order to change this highly problematic situation, significant changes in policy and also in social work practice are needed in Austria and in other European countries. Greater efforts must be made to ensure that all immigrant and minority women who experience violence have access to services, and services aimed particularly at immigrant women must be established.

standards of good Practice in supporting Immigrant and Minority Women The question to be asked is what kind of support do immigrant

and minority women need and what can be regarded as adequate service. The following guidelines and principles for good practice are based on the work of women’s services and their long-stand-ing practice of supporting women who have been victims of vio-lence (VAWE-Network 2004, 2006).

Advocacy for women who have been victims of violenceCountering violence means adopting a clear stance and condemning

violence against women in all its forms (“There is no excuse for violence. It is always the perpetrator who is responsible”). In attempting to remain neutral about violence, one runs the risk of tolerating it.

Advocacy2 can have a number of meanings; it can imply supporting and empowering women to secure their rights, or representing the interests of women in legal settings, or both. In any case, the emphasis is on (human) rights and entitlements, and reflects the view that all forms of violence against women are human rights violations.

Survivors of violence need services that provide support during the crisis situation and on a long-term basis, which would accom-pany them through all relevant processes and coordinate interven-tions. Women’s services usually provide this kind of support, and it 2 The term advocacy in this context describes activities, not a profession, and does not imply

that the person working as an advocate has to have a legal profession; he/she can be a social worker or other professional.


should become standard procedure for every survivor of violence to be supported by a women’s advocate. Survivors seeking help should never be asked to offer proof of the violence they have suf-fered. It is important to listen carefully, to believe, and to respond with the utmost respect and without prejudice.

Protection and safety Safety must be given top priority in all agencies providing

services to women who have been victims of domestic violence and their children. Risk assessment and practical safety planning which would guarantee that the immediate safety needs of women and their children are met should be a mainstay of support for women who have been victims of violence.

Building a relationship of trustBuilding a consistent relationship is important because it enables

women who have been victims of violence to develop a feeling of trust and to open up and talk about their experiences, something that is far from easy. It takes time to build a relationship of trust, and short term interventions do not provide adequate support. Ad-vocates must have an in-depth understanding of the dynamics of violence against women in the family and of the complex fears and dependencies it creates. Emotional support is needed as well as practical support.

EmpowermentBeing a victim of domestic violence means living through the

traumatic experience of being powerless and at the mercy of a vio-lent spouse. The aim of any kind of support should be to overcome powerlessness and to empower women so that they can lead a self-determined life. Survivors of violence should not be labelled “ill” or “distressed”, which would further weaken their position. Per-sonal weakness is often the consequence of exposure to violence. Violence leaves marks not only on the body, but also on the mind and self-esteem. Some approaches to work with abused women go astray by interpreting this weakness as characteristic of women who, consequently, are viewed as pathological cases. It is crucial to regard women as agents for change and experts on their own


situation. Women who have been victims of violence need support to reflect on their situation and understand how their spouse was able to exert power over them, which consequently enables them to develop better strategies for overcoming violence.

Right to self-determinationIt is important to respect a woman’s right to make decisions about

her own life. Very often, relatives, friends, or even social service professionals try to tell a woman what to do. Some think that a woman should separate from the abuser; others tell her to give him another chance. Unfortunately, people are often disappointed or even annoyed if a woman does not follow their advice. Such advice, however, can put even more pressure on a woman and turn out to not be helpful at all. It is important to let a woman know that she is the only person in a position to decide and that her decision will be respected. The aim of an intervention is to stop the violence, not to end a relationship. The right to self-determination is an important principle. How long a woman stays in a shelter and whether or not she permanently separates from her spouse is solely up to her.

Matching Services Some immigrant and minority women might prefer to be support-

ed by someone of their own background when seeking help, and others might not. In any case, services for women who have been victims of violence should employ advocates with diverse cultural backgrounds and language skills in order to be able to meet the dif-ferent needs of clients.

Special knowledgeAdvocates supporting immigrant and minority women have to be

specially trained and able to assess the situation of such women; for instance, they must be aware of the loss women experience when leaving or fleeing their country of origin. They also have to be sensi-tive to different cultural beliefs and norms that might affect women seeking help. Furthermore, advocates have to have special and de-tailed knowledge about immigration laws and how they affect immi-grant women in order to be able to assess the immigration status of clients and avoid measures that would jeopardize their status.


Comprehensive, tailored information and support Not all women seeking support have the same needs. It is important

to listen carefully to each individual woman in order to find out what she wants. Some women, especially those who have just recently moved to a country, need support in every-day life skills, such as: how to find ones way though the city, how to use public transport, how to call the police, how social agencies work, how to get children to school, how to find a kindergarten or language course, etc.

Fighting racism Services providing support to immigrant and minority women must

be aware of the racist tendencies and racist violence that exist in society and its institutions and how these might affect their clients. They also have to be able to support clients in this respect and to respond to and fight against racist violence. Racism can become part of institutional practices in social work by discriminating against immigrant and minority women seeking help. This possibility must be addressed.

Raising awareness Raising awareness is an important element of preventing violence

against women. It is necessary to address different communities using appropriate means of communication in order to send the message that violence against women is an unacceptable, criminal act. Furthermore, it is important to spread knowledge within the communities about the rights of and services for women who have been victims of violence so that community members will be able to support and assist women in crisis situations.

Services free of chargeSupport services for women who have been victims of violence

and their children should be free of charge, especially for women with little or no income. This ensures that women and children in need can receive support regardless of their financial status.

Support for childrenChildren are always affected by violence against their mothers,

either directly or indirectly. It follows that violence against women is also violence against children. Unfortunately, they are often forgotten victims because few agencies and services are aware of


their needs. Support for children has become an integral part of service in women’s shelters, but not all services meet this standard. Support for children has to be organized in a family-friendly way, which would make it possible to accept the help offered. Counselling and support for children should be offered parallel to help for mothers, as a package serving the needs of both mother and child. This makes it possible to strengthen the mother-child relationship and the non-violent family system, which is often the only source of support for children.

Confidentiality and anonymityIn order to protect a woman’s rights and integrity, it is neces-

sary that she be able to decide which personal information will be passed on to others. Therefore, an agency should not pass on any information to others without the woman’s consent. Excep-tions should and must be made if the life and health of women or children are at stake (i.e., suicide attempts, acute danger from the violent spouse, or women abusing their children). Women should also have the right to receive counselling and support without hav-ing to reveal their identity.

Women supporting women and specialised services Abused women suffer greatly because they have been dominat-

ed and abused by their male partners. Therefore it is important for them to receive support and help from female staff with experi-ence in this field. Women’s organisations have developed the prin-ciple of women helping women as a core concept for empowering women who have been victims of violence. Victims suffer from being in a weak position and from having lost faith in their own abilities and strength. Women’s services must therefore provide a model that enables women to realize their own ability to lead an active and self-determined life. This is also reflected in the struc-ture of shelters, women’s crisis centres, and help lines, in which women not only work on the grass roots level, but also manage the organisation. This structure empowers women and children and helps them to rethink and overcome stereotyped gender roles. In-stitutions such as homeless shelters are not appropriate for survi-vors of violence (WAVE-Network 2004).


Male-dominated services such as the police should seek to in-crease the number of female staff and make sure that victims of vio-lence are served by trained female officers. Police and prosecutor’s services have been successful in addressing this problem by intro-ducing specialised units where services are also, but not exclusive-ly, provided by female staff. In several countries, police and justice system agencies have introduced guidelines that give women who have been victims of violence the right to be interviewed by a fe-male officer. Immigrant women who have been victims of violence should also have the right to specially trained female interpreters when testifying to the police or in court.

Accountability and quality of servicesServices are accountable to service users, to the organisation and

its members, and to society in general. The activities and the con-duct of services must be transparent and comprehensible. It is im-portant for services to be democratically structured and for service users to have the right to be involved in the provision and evalua-tion of services (Hague, Mullender, Aris 2003). The involvement of customers, clients, or patients is a core principle in modern qual-ity management concepts. They are not seen as the mere objects of interventions, but as important stakeholders whose opinions re-garding the quality of service are crucial to the organisation. The participation and involvement of women and children is especially important in shelters and other services where women and children reside for extended lengths of time. Women’s shelters should not be institutions in which women’s lives are dominated and controlled; instead, women and children should be included in decision-making processes. The power of an abusive husband and father should not be replaced by the power of an institution. Power must be handled carefully; regulations are necessary, but should focus mainly on providing direction and not place too many limits on the individual freedom of clients.

Alternatives to violence All women who have been victims of violence, regardless of their

nationality or ethnicity, should be entitled to financial and social support in order to have a real chance to leave a violent spouse or fa-


ther and to live a life without violence. Women in women’s shelters often cannot leave because of a lack of affordable housing. Commu-nities, as well as national, regional, and local governments, should therefore provide comprehensive financial and social support to all victims of domestic violence, including immigrant and minority women. This should include, among other things:

Financial aid without lengthy administrative procedures;• Financial support to install safety devices;• Efficient housing programmes;• Support in securing a sustainable living (education and training • programmes, re-entry into the job market, etc.);Free legal aid and support in applying for protection orders and • enforcing claims in civil and criminal proceedings;Immigrant women should have the right to reside independent • of their husbands, as well as access to the labour market;Humanitarian visas for survivors of violence without proper doc-• umentation; a ban on the deportation of victims of violence;Political asylum for women facing violence in their home countries.•

As mentioned above, these standards have been developed in practice by women’s services. In some countries, they have been integrated into social work training (see next chapter). In most European countries, little evaluative research on whether standards of support for women who have been victims of violence, espe-cially for immigrant and minority women, have been implemented in social work practice has been conducted. There is certainly a need for more research in this field, which would make it possible to assess whether services adequately meet the needs of immigrant and minority women. Such an assessment would make it possible to improve services.

gender violence in social Work education

The issues of gender violence and the intersection of gender and ethnicity should be integrated into social work education as part of the curriculum. These issues should be dealt with using a multi-dis-ciplinary perspective, which would include theoretical knowledge


as well as skills and methods for supporting immigrant and minor-ity women who have been victims of violence.

Violence against women is integrated into the study at the de-partments of social work at the Viennese University for Applied Sciences. Instead of learning about issues concerning violence against women within other subjects (human sciences, law, social work, etc.), students usually have a one semester course on the is-sue of gender specific violence. This course is mandatory, however, in only two of the three departments. Experience has shown that one semester is not enough to deal with this complex problem and that the issue of ethnicity and violence is easily overlooked.

The author of this article has developed teaching materials for this subject (Logar 2000) and teaches classes on gender violence and so-cial work interventions in two departments of social work at the Uni-versity for Applied Sciences in Vienna. Course contents include:

Self-reflection of the students’ own experiences with violence;• The theoretical background of the problem (causes, impact, • consequences, prevalence);Issues of ethnicity and gender violence;• Victims’ strategies for dealing with violence, victims’ needs;• The impact of violence on children;• Working with victims - methods and counselling skills;• Danger assessment and safety planning;• Methods and counselling skills for confronting violent men;• Legal measures for the protection from violence, application of the law;• Multi-agency work methods;• International law and international documents on gender violence.•

Research into whether and how the subject of gender violence and ethnicity has been integrated into social work studies in Eu-rope is still lacking. Social work education has an important role in eliminating all forms of violence against women and in imple-menting international laws and obligations such as the Council of Europe’s Recommendations on Violence against Women (Council of Europe 2002). The Council requires that all 46 Member States

“include in the basic training programmes of members of the police force, judicial personnel and the medical and social fields, elements


concerning the treatment of domestic violence, as well as all other forms of violence affecting women” and “include in the vocational training programmes of these personnel, information and training so as to give them the means to detect and manage crisis situations and improve the manner in which victims are received, listened to and counselled” (Council of Europe 2002, paragraph 8 and 9).

It is safe to assume that not all social work study programs in European countries have already fulfilled their obligation to inte-grate the subject of gender violence into their studies. An important step that has yet to be taken by university departments of social work is the review of curricula and inclusion of the issue of gender violence into social work study programmes.

This could also be a way to join the Council of Europe’s Stop Domestic Violence Against Women campaign, which is to be car-ried out in all European Council Member States until March 2008.3 According to Terry Davis, Secretary General of the Council of Eu-rope, the campaign should bring about concrete change for women who have been victims of violence:

Women suffering from domestic violence are not only victims of abuse, they are also victims of silence, victims of indifference and victims of neglect. They are not helpless and weak, but they are often let down. This is what the Council of Europe Campaign is determined to change. The key words are inform, help and empower. […] This Campaign is not launched merely to talk about domestic violence; it is meant to do something about it. Its ultimate success will not be measured by the number of seminars or declarations, but by the positive and quantifiable changes which our campaign helps to bring about in the lives of women suffering from abuse, through better laws, more shelters, better counselling, more help and above all by prevention. Eighteen months from now, we must be able to look back and say we have made a difference. We must not let down these victims of a widespread abuse of human rights.

(Speech held at the Launching Conference of the Council of Europe Campaign in November 2006, in Madrid).

3 For more information on the campaign see the Council of Europe website: www.coe.int/stop-violence.


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61

Dagmar Schultz

resource- and resilience- oriented Work with Immigrant and black Patients

The treatment of patients of immigrant background presents a unique challenge to psychiatric institutions. It requires specific knowledge and sensitivity on the part of the personnel - “inter-cul-tural” or “trans-cultural competencies”. Inter-cultural competency can be defined as the ability to communicate appropriately and successfully with persons:

- whose first language is different from the language of the country in which they live and/or

- who have grown up with a different culture and/or- whose social mobility differs from that of members of the majority

group on account of discrimination- who as patients/clients or as subordinate colleagues find themselves

in a relationship of dependence.

Appropriate and successful forms of communication and behaviour include:

- a respectful attitude, which accepts the Other in her/his way of being- an ever present perception of the patient as an individual against

the background of her/his group affiliation- empathy, appreciation of the Other1, and- the ability to question oneself regarding one’s own prejudice

1 Sibel Koray of the Institute for Youth Psychiatry of the city of Essen writes (2000: 23) “It is important to consider that inter-cultural competency does not have to do only with background knowledge on culture, religion, and further specifics of immigrant families, and that it does not suffice to speak the language of the Other. A very crucial – culture specific – aspect is the at-titude one has toward the Other… an attitude which accepts and respects the Other in her/his way of being, which does not leave room for condescending, devaluing treatment, allow a patronizing stance, or treat the Other as an exotic person. Inter-cultural competency is nothing but a gradual enhancement of the ability of social interaction” (translated by D.S.).

62 D A G M A R S C H U L T Z

- acknowledging the limits of one’s own knowledge- being aware of the possible effects of one’s own socio-cultural

identity on interaction with the patient (APA 1995).

This article expands the inter- or trans-cultural approach through an emphasis on resource-oriented work, which counteracts the tendency to regard persons who are assigned to a (frequently discriminated) minority as victims (implicitly serving one’s own upgrading). In the words of a Turkish nurse interviewed in our study:

“My work in the ward has shown me, when I look back on those 21 years, that the stranger is always thought to be very much in need of help, even though this person has many abilities.”

What matters, therefore, is that one adopts a differentiating per-spective and an attitude which makes it possible to explore and ac-tivate resources and resilience without being governed by prejudice and acquired notions. Resources are to be understood as a compre-hensive concept, which covers physical, cognitive, psychological, professional and earned resources, as well as material and social/family-related resources. An examination of resources usually also brings about a “personal revalorization and strengthening” (Kle-menz in Sobczyk 2006). A mediated valorisation and emphasis on strengths can support a positive relationship, reduce resistance, and increase one’s readiness to deal with problems (Sobczyk 2006).

Resilience is an interactive, lifelong process that takes place be-tween the individual and his/her environment. It relates specifically to the ability of persons to deal actively with adverse circumstances, to master life crises by resorting to personal and socially mediated resources and using them for one’s own development; such circum-stances may include serious illness, long phases of unemployment, the loss of loved ones, etc. (see Hermann 2005). In addition, im-migrants have to deal with the loss of their native country and lan-guage, and often of their profession and cultural identity; they must also deal with the “Otherness” ascribed to them. Black Germans as well as immigrants can potentially develop a great degree of staying power and learn to quickly assess situations and persons in order to survive in a society in which they often face hostility. Immigrants

63 RESOURCE- AND RESIL IENCE- ORIENTATED WORK. . .

frequently show a more or less voluntarily appropriated risk propen-sity and an ability to confront new challenges and difficulties.

The fact that a person is in a psychiatric institution should not give rise to the assumption that she/he is not endowed with such abilities and strengths. The following contribution illustrates and discusses how the importance of the personal strengths of immigrant patients is perceived and handled by the personnel in psychiatric institutions and attempts to discern those factors that can contribute to a resource- and resilience-oriented therapy. It is based on a qualitative study which was intended to demonstrate problems and procedures pertaining to the psychiatric care of immigrants and Black Germans in Berlin institutions.

on the Methodology of the study

In 2002, I interviewed 28 persons at five large Berlin hospitals and at the day clinic of one of these hospitals. At the hospitals, I spoke with doctors and nurses, both male and female; I also interviewed a psychologist, a female social worker and a female physical therapist. Students of the Free University and the Alice-Salomon-Fachhoch-schule for Social Work and Social Pedagogic interviewed directors, social workers and psychologists, as well as two immigrant clients at 14 extra-clinical institutions (assisted living institutions, transi-tional establishments, counselling and therapy centres). The inter-views were carried out using a structured questionnaire. All ques-tions permitted open answers. The following evaluation is based on a qualitative analysis based on categories. Using a database program, I have subdivided individual professional groups according to traits such as female/male, immigrant/white German/Afro-German, so as to be able to examine the relevance or irrelevance of these traits to the content of the responses. The code in parenthesis after the quota-tions signifies the following: the letters A-E designate the hospitals used in this survey; F designates the day clinic. This is followed by the interviewee’s personal code, and finally the number of the page where the given quotation can be found. The extra-clinical institu-tions are begin with numbers instead of letters.


Clinics and the day clinic:7 male German doctors (MDA), 2 male doctors of foreign descent

(MMA), 2 male Afro-German doctors (AafA), 3 female doctors of foreign descent (FMA), 1 German male nurse (MDP), 7 female nurses of foreign descent (FMP), 1 female German social worker (FMS), 1 female physical therapist of foreign descent (FMK), 1 male psychologist of foreign descent (MMPs).

Extra-clinical institutions:4 male German social workers (MDS), 2 female German

social workers (FDS), 2 male social workers of foreign descent (MMS), 1 male psychologist of foreign descent (MMPs), 1 female psychologist of foreign descent (FMPs), 2 male clients of foreign descent (MMKl).

discrimination and daily racism as Illness-inducing factors

Zarifoglu and Zeiler (1995; Zeiler, Zarifoglu 1994; 1997) have thoroughly shown how the experience of immigration and ethnic discrimination in receiving countries – experienced as formal, struc-tural restriction and informal daily devaluation, and also through the ascription of unwanted or refusal of desired social identity – can result in the deformation of personality development and in a disturbed psychic disposition (Zeiler, Zarifoglu 1994). Such expe-riences are, as Zarifoglu and Zeiler write, “usually hidden from the (German) doctor – out of shame, pride and politeness or out of a need to emphasize conformity with the social norms of the guest country” (Zarifoglu, Zeiler 1995: 159).

The authors refer to Anglo-American literature and their own case studies:

The culturally “naive” doctor regards ethnic-cultural affiliation as irrelevant and fails to explore significant data pertaining to the in-dividual’s social background, which relate to the ethnicity and im-migration of the patient as well as to the circumstances of life in the immigration country … Difficult psychotherapeutic problems arise when objective discrimination (which the patient struggles against) and neurotic experience intertwine. In this case, the therapist must


first and foremost acknowledge the actual problematic social situa-tion before engaging in therapeutic efforts (Zeiler, Zarifoglu 1997: 308, 313). Recent research has also pointed out the link between ethnic dis-

crimination and psychic illness (e.g. Karlsen, Nazroo 2002, Williams, Neighbors, Jackson 2003, Carter 2007). Despite a lack of rigorous cross-sectional, and especially longitudinal studies, which would confirm a causal relationship, scholars and politicians are largely aware that discrimination and racist experiences have detrimental effects on physical and psychic health.

resilience as a Possible resourceIn this context, research on resilience is very important (see e.g.

Walsh 1998, Masten, Powell 2003, Welter-Enderlin, Hildenbrand 2006). Resilience research initially focused on children, such as in the longitudinal study conducted by developmental psychologist Emmy E. Werner and her colleague Ruth Smith, who for 40 years accompanied approximately 700 children born in 1955 into difficult social conditions on the island of Kauai (Hawaii) (Werner, Smith 1989, Werner 1999). Since then, several studies with children have been completed in Germany (e.g. Lösel, Bender 1994, Grünke 2003, Wustmann 2004). Resilience has become a concept which encompasses the entire life cycle (Hermann 2005), and has also gained significance in the fields of psychotherapy and trauma research because it can contribute to an understanding of coping and the activation of the self-healing process (salutogenesis).

The results of resilience research emphasise those personality traits which can serve as protective factors, such as personal re-sponsibility, acceptance of crises, seeking solutions, inventiveness, perseverance, flexibility, ability to change perspective, sociability. Additional factors pertain to one’s surroundings. Studies with chil-dren have demonstrated that a stable relationship with at least one person of reference as well as role models, reliable adults, and a social network play a decisive role in the development of resilience (compare above citations). These factors should play a key role in the (follow-up) treatment of immigrant patients.


With immigrant persons and Black Germans an additional ques-tion arises: To what extent have individuals developed stigma man-agement2 (self-positioning in regards to the categories of “normal” and “different”), i.e. coping strategies in dealing with discrimina-tion and stigmatization, which they could activate during the heal-ing process? An announcement of research on immigrants and minorities issued by The Institute of Psychiatry of King’s College, London (2004) states that “understanding the relationship of men-tal illness to migration is necessary as migration is and can be a very stress-inducing phenomenon. Yet not all migrants go through the same process. The clinician needs to be aware of coping strate-gies as well as resilience among migrants.”

Our first hypothesis is that the possible strengths and abilities of im-migrant and Black German patients are frequently not (sufficiently) supported and emphasized, and that even if some rudimentary aware-ness exists, it is not necessarily integrated into therapeutic practice.

Our second hypothesis states that a positive attitude and expectations regarding potential strengths and abilities of this kind are beneficial to therapeutic work.

Focusing on potential strengths is important for several reasons: A resource-oriented approach in psychiatric treatment and clinical social work can:- encourage self-confidence and the healing motivation of the

patient;- positively influence the attitude of the personnel toward patients;- further the personnels’ self-reflection of prejudice and stereotypical

views.

The views of the interviewees about the possible resources and poten-2 Stigma management is the “situation of the stigmatized person and her reaction to the posi-

tion in which she/he finds her/himself” (Cyrus 1997: 156). One of the main hypotheses of the stigma theory, is associated with the reaction of normal persons in interaction with stigmatized persons. Stigma management is a general part of society, which occurs wherever there are identity norms (ibid: 160). According to Cyrus: “Stigma does not primarily comprise individuals who are divided into two groups, but rather comes to bear in a continuous two-role-process, in which each individual participates in both roles, at least in some contexts and some life phases. The normal and the stigmatized are not persons but rather perspectives. These are produced in social situations during mixed contacts on account of the unrealized norms which in all likeli-hood have an effect on the encounter” (ibid: 170).


tial for resilience in patients are presented in the following sections.

Where have personnel observed the special strengths of immigrant patients?A majority of interviewees confirm existing strengths, and only

a few gave a negative or neutral, indifferent assessment. Many, however, presented an initial failure to understand the question, and nearly all interviewees could confirm the benefits of such strengths for resource-oriented therapeutical work only after being asked a second time.

Toughness and staying power are primary qualitiesA female doctor from Croatia emphasized toughness:

It is not necessarily strength, but toughness. It is a matter of survival, and a matter of surviving well, of the children surviving well … poor psycho-social conditions in the country of origin bring about stamina; one would otherwise be broken and not find the strength to migrate (E, 2FMA, 8).

The same doctor gave an affirmative response when asked whether this would be useful in the treatment process.

A male Indian psychologist stressed staying power: ... that is extremely strong in them. Sometimes you think, my God, how this person could endure all this. Also the will to live, to go anywhere, to adjust to the new situation and to continue wanting to live, that is incredibly strong. One really should adopt this strength or learn it from them” (F, 9MMPs, 6).

A need or ability to endure continuous pressure, often of an existential kind, constitutes a special challenge in the eyes of one female Span-ish physiotherapist, a challenge which is not sufficiently taken into account in psychiatry:

Yes, one has to spend twice as much energy. First, they have to fight for their residency, then there’s a difficulty with the language. They have to be successful in some way, they have this pressure and that is bad, especially in psychiatry. This is not always taken into consideration. For instance, I have patients from ex-Yugoslavia or Turkish patients who found this pressure too much to bear, and it is twice as much pressure as the others feel, not to mention Germans, but those who were born here and simply are used to this society and this stress – they have everything, they do not have to fight


for residency status, find an apartment, get a work permit. It is this pressure, and when you have endured this pressure, you resurface, you float on the water like oil, or you drown (F, 7FMK, 6-7).

A male white German doctor identifies an ability to manage situa-tions which often seem unendurable:

It’s true, one should think about that more. There are people in such a migrant situation, who have gone through so much that you would think they’d be crushed, but they made it. Or the future is so uncertain that one would just as soon throw up one’s arms, yet they endure it or have developed an attitude towards it that allows them to manage some way or another (F, 8MDA, 6).

Flexibility and patience are qualities pointed out by a male Afro-German doctor:

…the outlook on life, the ability to improvise, to manage many different situations, not being so demanding, patience (A, 24MafA, 7).

Further characteristics mentioned are courage, risk propensity and sensitivity. A male white German doctor:

Many immigrants I have met – at least that is my impression – are of a certain character, setting out for a foreign place. They are fre-quently enterprising or relatively courageous persons, who can also grow with the difficulties they experience. Of course, sensitivity can also change into something like over-sensitivity or a paranoid attitude or withdrawal and mistrust. But it can also, in the individual case, always serve as a resource, I believe (A, 26MDA, 7).

Several interviewees mentioned family solidarity as an important resource, “a more intensive family solidarity, a rich network.” A male white German doctor emphasizes:

That is often an enormous resource and a greater readiness of the family to keep an ill person in the family. Germans often reason that it may be better to place a person in a therapeutic living commune or the older ones into a nursing home. They think or argue that the care is better in an institution (A, 26MDA, 5).

A female Czech psychotherapist in an extra-clinical institution stressed the capacity of families, “… to make do with very little…” (8FMPs, 33-34). A female white German nurse also considers family solidarity strength:

There often exists a strong cohesion; the family is available for


everyone if there is a problem. That is a strength which I have experienced (D, 10FDP, 4).

Capacities which are not recognized or acknowledged were stressed by an experienced female Turkish nurse who called for more communica-tion and reflection on the part of the personnel:

Of course, I am also of the opinion that – no matter how ill a person may be – this connection to these resources has to be restored again and again. My work in the ward has shown me, when I look back at those 21 years, that the stranger is always considered very much in need of help, even though that person has many abilities. One reason is that we do not communicate enough with each other. Whereby the (second) generation is much more communicative, they also speak the language very well, they know e.g. which public administrative offices to deal with. But the prejudice of earlier times is transferred to the new generation, imposed on them. For example, if a patient comes – let’s say, in her traditional outfit – they say: ‘Oh, You really speak German well.’ But when I see in the papers that she was born here, why should she not speak German well? Well, this may not seem so bad, but it can harm me or the patient. Each statement also contains a certain appeal or signal, and I notice, in regards to the therapeutic team, that one simply does not reflect enough (E, 6FMP, 14-16).

A male white German social worker at an extra-clinical institution identified a knowledge of the legal situation and the ability to assert oneself as strengths:

Yes, it is definitely a strength to know your legal situation, what you can and can’t ask for. I find that most immigrants are well informed about the legal aspects, that is, social law, and that is frequently based on their own experiences, which professional social workers do not have. Also, certain behaviours … clients who have learned how to make themselves clearly understood very well, because it was a matter of survival in some situations (4MDS, 4).

A female Mexican doctor defines abilities of social interaction:And then people who grow up with different cultures are also more open. If they are accepted, they also have good social strategies and are popular in groups (D, 11FMA, 11).

Another aspect which was mentioned is the ability to turn a (supposed) weakness into strength. A male white German doctor:


As a schizophrenic, one can withdraw, however, one can also, e.g. by participating in a self-help group, gain a new identity as someone who hears voices and says, well, I am not schizophrenic but I hear voices and I admit that… They turn a weakness into strength by admitting that they have a certain problem. This also plays a role in ethnicity, whether you deny it or positively acknowledge it (E, 5; DA, 6-7).

Referring to personal experiences, a male Afro-German doctor arrived at the following conclusion:

Yes. That always is the situation, if you have a weakness, you simply have to fight more to assert yourself … transform this weakness into strength. It could be an advantage (B, 23 MAfA, 13-14).

Stigma management through emphasizing Otherness (Zeiler, Zari-foglu 1994: 102) is expressed in the following case. A female Mexi-can doctor pointed out the benefit of the “ethnic factor”:

There are persons who play with their background when it has advantages, e.g. this Nigerian patient who is extremely good-looking, she has in a way taken advantage of her ethnic factor. Such seductive behaviour also exists (D, 11FMA, 11).

This example leads on to wonder whether the “ethnic factor” is at play in such situations, and whether “indigenous beauties” might display the same sort of behaviour. The onlooker’s observation, that is, the eroticisation of the person, is nonetheless remarkable.

The lack of an inter-cultural perspective, which could serve to unite universalistic and particularistic interests, is apparent in the following statements of interviewees who cannot relate to the idea of the special strengths of immigrants and minority members, or who completely deny the idea.The male white German director of an extra-clinical institution de-nies the significance of ethnic difference and argues:

Well, that whole discussion, the dark skinned have such and such characteristics, such and such traits, or the yellow ones have such and such. I would not go that far. The human being is already pretty broken in his peculiarity, in his own complexity. To attach it to something like that; no… (9MDI, 7-8).

A male white German nursing director reduces the resources of immi-grants to communication:

I can’t think of anything specific in that regard. When we make


use of resources, we primarily use language resources, asking co-patients for help to make ourselves understood … (B, 20MDP, 8-9).

Such an attitude does not only prevent the perception of strengths, but also hinders an identification and understanding of certain be-haviours as stigma management.

How do the personnel assess the benefit of strengths as a resource in treatment? When asked whether he draws upon capacities for staying

power and adaptation during the therapy process, a male Indian psychologist replied:

Those are positive resources. When I work with patients with such experiences, I also stress these as resources. Those are inner strengths they can use to build themselves up (F, 9MPs, 6).

A male Turkish doctor considers it important to find out about the coping strategies of patients:

The coping strategies which they have developed in such a difficult situation, yes, we definitely ask about those - which negative experiences have the person had, how he has dealt with those experiences, how has he tried to cope with them (E, 4MMA, 13-14).

A female doctor from a Syrian background doubts the abilities of doctors and the quality of the treatment system:

This presupposes that the doctor has to recognize that the patient has acquired these abilities. This means that the patient is actually more advanced than the normal German who has grown up in a protected situation, and that the doctor must be even more advanced. It assumes a perfect treatment system, that the doctor really can see, sense, and feel that. Do you believe that this is the case? (C, 15FMA, 5-8)The quality of treatment is also questioned by a male white

German doctor, but from the perspective of critical (self-) reflection concerning cultural ascription:

You cannot extract yourself as a psychiatrist and, when you find yourself in a conversation, an encounter, you are confronted above all with your own projections, with your own imagination, usually formed by the media, in relation to other cultural affiliations, and reaching a conclusion is difficult. I have experienced that one can offend the patient by excluding and culturally pigeon-holing him,

… as a Turkish immigrant or whatever, one labels the person in that way. Perhaps he wants to belong; perhaps he does not see himself as not belonging. A person is a political being and when you


push someone out of the community, it may not be experienced positively” (D, 12MDS, 2, 3-4).3

With this statement this doctor, who in another instance speaks of “members of assumed other cultures”, rejects a stereotyping concept of culture and advocates an individualistic concept of cul-ture which emphasizes socio-cultural competencies, i.e. potential capacities to integrate experiences from different cultural and so-cial contexts (Griese 2005).

In the following quotation he explains the insecurity of the therapist and the need for distance, attitudes which limit the development of mutual trust and genuine interest in activating resources:

Many therapists do not what to get too close to the patient. The illness is also repulsive. The deep fear of contaminating oneself at some point… the closeness of the patient, his life, the transferral, commiserating, not wanting to commiserate, aggression, the insecurity. All of that unloads itself upon the therapist with each patient. If that is additionally combined with another cultural context, the insecurity may increase. …The impaired communication a) via language, b) via the cultural context – may possibly create a greater distance for me, and I can also experience this as something positive (D, 12MDA, 31). He therefore confirms the theoretical view that the (ethnocentric)

prejudice of psychiatric professionals serves to provide a cognitive structure and – apparently – provide security in psychiatric practice, a standpoint described as follows by Zeiler and Zarifoglu (1994: 103): “Ethnocentric prejudice fulfils the function of distancing one-self from the patient with a foreign cultural identity”.

Where can resources, which can potentially become effective in treatment, be found? The interviewees mention the following strengths and abilities:

- toughness and perseverance- endurance

3 According to this doctor, it is not even a matter of adequate treatment, but of non-treatment: “When there is no interpreter, but only the cleaning woman, and the doctor has no time and can-not deal with a different cultural context etc. That is non-treatment. The question then is, how we can manage to treat the majority of these patients is at all? When you look at the personnel situ-ation in peripheral clinics today, you do not have any time for that. In some peripheral hospitals you do not have time for psychiatric treatment” (D, 12MDA, 34, 12).


- the ability to deal with conditions which often seem unbear-able

- flexibility and patience- courage and risk propensity- sensitivity- family solidarity- knowledge of the legal situation- the ability to assert oneself- the ability to socially interact- the ability to turn a (supposed) weakness into a strength.

Here we can find correlations with traits which have been mentioned in research on resilience, such as: independence, self-control, ingenuity, perseverance, readiness to adapt, capacity to adopt another perspective, activity instead of assuming the role of the victim. If patients do not outwardly display these traits, one should not necessarily assume that they do not exist. Accord-ing to Masten and Powell (2003), you cannot ever expect that a person is doing well consistently and in any situation. Resilience is not a character trait, even though persons demonstrate resilient capacities in their behaviour.

If resilience is defined as the psychic power to resist and as the “ability to skilfully deal with strain without damaging one-self” (Eichenberg 2006: 7) or as the capacity to “emerge from the most adverse conditions in life with greater strength and re-sources than before” (Walsh in Eichenberg 2006: 7), one would not expect to discover it in a patient in a psychiatric institution. A mental breakdown is not, however, necessarily evidence of a lack of resilience. A person may have mastered situations in the past using these abilities, and if closely examined they may become apparent in the present crisis situation. How else could one inter-pret the fact that an immigrant overcomes psychosis or depression when confronted with an environment in which professional helpers and co-patients neither speak his/her language nor are familiar with his/her reality and cultural background? Furthermore, a breakdown which may result in hospitalization could very well be one step in the struggle for survival, that is, a sort of coping strategy.


In the following section I would like to elaborate some aspects of content and structure which could further and support a re-source-oriented approach and the resilience of clients.

What can contribute to the resource-oriented treatment of immigrants and black germans?

Before examining several of the points in greater detail, I would like to list some factors mentioned by interviewees in other contexts:

- reflection of one’s own position and expectations- reflection of racism/discrimination as possible causes of illness- openness to other forms of perception of and coping with illness - openness to culture-specific forms of treatment- acknowledgement of religion as a possible key factor during

the course of the illness and the healing process- adequate language communication- inter-cultural teams- content-related exchange within the inter-cultural team- integration of patient resources in the sense of empowerment- working with relatives and persons of references- special therapeutic groups for immigrants - special extra-clinical centres for immigrants- cooperation with extra-clinical community groups- cooperation with extra-clinical psychologists of foreign descent.

Reflection of one’s own position and expectations It is obvious that a reflection of one’s own culturally determined

attitudes is very important. This can be a difficult process for professional helpers. They have to become conscious of their own internalized attitudes and images. A willingness to communicate with immigrants and black people in one’s personal and professional environment can be very helpful. At the same time, it is important to develop sensitivity to the self-identification and sensitivities of patients. As one of the interviewee states:

Not all immigrants want to be identified as such (s.a. D, 12 MDA, 3-4).

This is confirmed by a female Turkish nurse:


There are patients who want you to consider their immigrant/minority status, but there are also patients who absolutely do not want you to permanently disclose that they are Blacks or that they have dark skin, black hair, or whatever, just as there are many young kids who are going through an identity crisis and simply deny that they have a foreign passport, saying, ‘I do not speak another foreign language, but my first language is German and I want you to deal with me in German’, and therefore we naturally have to speak German with each other. The same is true of Blacks. Sometimes it is not good that skin colour assumes such an important role. People should have their needs met. And it is up to us to find this balance, to see this and to respect it (E, 1FMK, 10).

A male Turkish doctor, however, describes experiences with patients who attach great importance to treatment by a doctor of foreign descent:

Of course, the primary concern of doctors who have grown up here in Germany is to treat the sick patient just like everyone else, but I see the danger especially with that position, specifically when they do not concern themselves with the cultural aspects, so that these patients slowly turn away from the hospital and finally end up in the religious or supernatural realm. Language is necessary, strangely enough even when patients speak German fluently. There is always this idea that someone who speaks with us in our first language also understands us in a different way, and so they feel somewhat relieved; that language is also always connected to their mentality, so they trust us more. This is frequently the case. Surprisingly, patients who speak a different language which we do not understand still tend to prefer to be treated by a foreign doctor because they reason that his mentality is more familiar than the German mentality. We sometimes talk with our hands and feet, but communication is still easier than when the patient converses with German personnel (B, 21MMA, 12-13).

Acknowledgement of religion as a possible key factor in the course of the illness and the healing processRespect for religious beliefs and practices are certainly an important

part of a resource-oriented approach. For example, a divine or spiritual agent can assume the role of a psychological parent. The interviewees to a large extent support the acknowledgement of spiritual ties. This is rarely transferred to the therapeutic or purely functional structural level (e.g. none of the institutions provide a prayer room for Muslims).

Opinions vary concerning the tolerance/acceptance of alternative treatment methods which patients want to initiate themselves, such as


contact with healers who use “black magic” or with hodjas. Some of the interviewees expressed a strong disapproval of “parallel” or “two-way treatment”, while others take a neutral stance. There is a tendency, however, to tolerate or accept the wishes of the patients without proclaiming religion or spirituality as a healing and resilience producing power.4

This attitude is expressed in the following quotations:When the patient holds on to his magic and says that it means something to him, why would you want to change his decision (D, 12MDA, 11). If the person is a believer and has a firm conviction that he needs spiritual assistance from a priest or a hodja, I think we cannot refuse that. I cannot, for example, tell a German that he has no business going to the pastoral care of the hospital” (E, 4MMA, 9). Everyone needs some support; whether it is the Bible or the Quran, that does not matter (E, 1FMP, 9). Concerning hodjas, there are differences in quality, one could say, but I would try it in any case. Only if I had the feeling that, after re-peated visits, it was harmful to the person would I possibly question whether it is appropriate. I myself feel that I do not have the right to forbid that (F, MDA, 4).

Adequate language communication and content-related exchange within the inter-cultural teamsIt can be stated that communication in the first language is extremely

important for persons who do not speak German well, in order for them to unfold the personality characteristics cited above, which form a part of resilience. Members of the team who do not belong to the majority culture convey trust and support even when they do not belong to the same culture or speak the same language. The content-related exchange within the inter-cultural team serves as continued education and is important for daily and therapeutic interaction with patients (Schultz 2007).

The integration of resources of patients in the sense of empowermentRichard Sagor (2003) speaks of “CBUPO-persons”, which stands for

competence, belonging, usefulness, potency, optimism. The acknowledge-ment and the application of certain abilities of immigrant patients furthers their self-esteem, and promotes active involvement, as opposed to fatalism,

4 As to the significance of a spiritual dimension in psychotherapy see Journal of Multicultural Counselling and Development, Special Issue Spiritual and Religious Issues in Counselling Ra-cial and Ethnic Minority Populations, 27, 4 (October 1999).


and readiness for integration. This kind of empowerment can be mediated by assigning certain tasks which imply responsibility. Assistance with lan-guage communication can be used in this sense, although it would not be appropriate to involve patients as interpreters for therapeutic talks.

Working with relatives and persons of reference Work with relatives differs in intensity. As we have seen, the per-

sonnel regard family solidarity as an important resource. Results of research on resilience confirm this aspect of healing and expand it insofar as persons of reference who do not belong to the family should be included in the therapeutic plan and process. According to our study, this is practised only to a limited extent.

Special therapeutic groups and extra-clinical centres for immigrantsFocus groups for immigrant patients are rare in the institutions

we examined. One reason is the lack of personnel who speak foreign languages. Hence the few groups that do exist are led by Turkish psychologists working on a fee basis, and to my knowledge there are no groups for other languages. Nor are there any psychosis seminars for immigrants and their relatives who speak Turkish or other languages. Day clinics are accessible primarily to immigrants with a good knowledge of German, who can participate in the therapy groups, which are held in German. Immigrants rarely if ever visit extra-clinical centres where ex-patients and other persons in need can meet, because they “do not feel at ease there”, which has led several Turkish nurses and immigrant psychologists to conclude that there is a great need for a place of refuge for immigrants once they are out of the hospital (F, 6FMPm7; B, 18FMP, 11; 1MMPs, 22).

Concerning special incentives for immigrants, we again find the dualistic perspective of universalism vs. particularism, which is not present for instance in the United States (see Schultz 2003, 2004). The majority of doctors argue that special incentives for immigrant patients would promote separatism instead of integration. For exam-ple, the head physician of a hospital with a high percentage of Turk-ish patients argues:

My approach is integration. I offer therapy as far as possible in German. For Turkish patients, who do not speak German well,


there is a group led by a Turkish psychologist. I try to avoid a concentration of Turks in a ward. That would result in tensions, which are therapeutically unfavourable. This remains a German-language institution. Occupational therapy, etc. is offered in German. If over a third of our patients are Turkish, we are expected to become a Turkish hospital. That is why we do not offer any therapy directed towards sub-groups (A, 25MDA, 2).

This opinion is also expressed by other interviewees, though in a milder form. This contradicts an approach which would reflect cul-tures and potentially further resilience, and which would take into account the significance of persons of reference and social networks. This also leads one to wonder how we can expect mentally ill patients to integrate if this is not achieved even in the majority society. Rare exceptions in Germany are the Centre for Inter-Cultural Psychiatry and Supervision (ZIPP) at the Institute for Trans-Cultural Psychia-try and Psychotherapy of the Charité Berlin (see Wohlfart, Zaumseil 2006, Wohlfart 2007, see Ozankan, Atik 2007 and Gün 2007).

Cooperation with extra-clinical psychologists of foreign descentSuch cooperation would support the development of persons of

reference and role models and stabilization following the hospital stay(s).

Conclusion

Reaping the potential of resource- and resilience- oriented treatment demands the willingness of medical personnel, which, as we have seen, already partially exists. On the other hand, it requires institutional transformations and an expansion of continued education and professional training; these are dependent upon political agents, because financial bottlenecks and a lack of time and personnel often cause reforms to be abandoned even before the planning phase has been completed. Knowledge of research on resilience and its discussion could contribute to a scientific justification of this concept and a commitment to patient-oriented structural and program reforms.


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83

Špela Urh and Simona Žnidarec Demšar

ethnically sensitive social Work with roma

Introduction

“Ethnicity” and “culture” are not natural characteristics of people and communities, but rather constructs through which we define differences among ourselves and label those who resemble us and those who differ from us (Šumi, Josipovič 2006: 10). Ethnic boundaries are produced by dominant racist and romanticized discourse about those who “belong” and those who do not. The dominant discourse constantly refers to the binary opposition of

“us” and “them”; “us” is a point from which we judge and value everything else (Kuhar 2006: 147).

A critical view of the social and political situation of the Roma community will elucidate the mechanisms which produce ethnic boundaries and, consequently, discriminatory practices. Discrimi-nation against Roma is not merely a product of individual intoler-ance; it is also the result of exclusionist political strategies. Racist thinking in turn provides a basis for activities which result in the social and political disqualification of the Roma population. This article will draw attention to the ideological function of prejudice and present concrete examples of the asymmetry of power and discrimination in regards to the Roma population. Examples of the everyday life of Roma will serve to illustrate the effects of dis-crimination, which show that there are still many obstacles to be faced before the Roma population achieve inclusion and respect.

In this paper we would also like to open a discussion about social work practice with minority ethnic groups. The authors are both qualified teachers of social work and have been active advo-cates of Roma rights for several years. During our fieldwork, we

84 Š P E L A U R H A N D S I M O N A Ž N I D A R E C D E M Š A R

met with rather negative reactions, even from other social work-ers. Situations where Roma are not treated equally are common even in social work, which often views Roma as social deviants who are not willing to adjust to the dominant system. The control element in social work with ethnic minority clients is far more often present than with those who belong to the dominant popula-tion, and discrimination is often the consequence of institutional racism and the social worker’s non-reflective attitude.

The Faculty of Social Work has developed an innovative project based on anti-racist perspectives, ethnicity issues, and the community approach. Students have the opportunity to learn ethnically sensitive social work in the classroom and in the field. This project has been under way for four years now, and students, mentors, and members of the Roma ethnic group in the munici-pality of Grosuplje view it as a success. In the conclusion of this paper, some guidelines of ethically sensitive social work prac-tices will be discussed.

the Contextualization of the Conditions of the roma Community in slovenia There are many ethnic groups in Slovenia (Serbs, Croats, Bos-

niaks, Albanians, Macedonians etc.) but none, apart from Roma, have been granted special minority status and minority rights. Slovenia has no laws concerning the country’s ethnic groups; only Italians and Hungarians have been acknowledged as national mi-norities and granted special status (which implies privileges such as the right to use their own language in administrative and edu-cational institutions and courts, the right to use national symbols, the right to local self-government, the right to a representative in the national parliament), whereas the Roma community has the status of a minority ethnic community and no special rights. Two clear exceptions, however, do exist: the Local Government Act from 2002 and Equal Treatment Act from 2004. The former grants Roma municipal representation on the local political level, while the latter elaborates ethnic membership as a personal circum-stance, because of which no individual or community can be dis-

85 ETHNICALLY SENSITIVE SOCIAL WORK WITH ROMA

criminated against. Only the Local Government Act (2002), how-ever, directly protects the “ethnic” rights of Roma. Unfortunately, in practice this protection becomes indirect, much like the political and human rights guaranteed to all people by the state. This uni-versalistic perception sheds light on the contradictory position of Roma in Slovenia – although the state has declared them to be an

“ethnic community”, their minority rights still remained undefined. A bill addressing the situation of Roma is being prepared, but many Roma fear that this measure will actually worsen their situation and will result in even greater exclusion and control.

Exclusion and discrimination are evident in many sectors – housing, education, employment, health care, socio-political rep-resentation. Two Minority Reports of The Open Society Institute, from 2001 and 2002, have illustrated these problems in greater detail. Many Roma live in poor conditions and are without run-ning water and electricity; national statistics show that most of them are unemployed. The research from 2001 also pointed out some of the problems that Roma children face; for instance, many are sent to special schools for children with disabilities because of their inadequate knowledge of the Slovene language.

from the Politics of exclusion to tolerated Inequality

Globalization has an impact on social security, and also escalates and legitimises inequality (Ramesh 1999). More and more, this is producing situations where inequality is tolerated and goes unsanctioned (Leskošek 2005a: 247). Public discourse often portrays Roma as a special group with specific anthropological, ethnic, and cultural characteristics (Šumi, Josipovič 2006: 10). Roma are always the “other” – nomads with an ethnically specific way of life and culture, a marginal deviant group, etc. Although the dominant population has its own perception of Roma, Roma do not perceive themselves as being any different from the rest of society. “We do not have any special habits; come and see for a day, stay with us and observe us; we do not differ in anything” (Škerl 2006). One of the authors of this text has also heard similar statements; she would often ask Roma individuals about their specific ethnic identity and cul-


ture, and how exactly they differ from others; the answers she received seem to indicate an uncertain identification with Roma culture and iden-tity. One could get the impression that non-Roma know Roma better than Roma know themselves. A member of Roma community once remarked: “You study this; you tell us what Roma culture is” or “We do all the things the same as you do, we cook the same food, we have the same wedding rituals… we just live in poor conditions.” Alenka Janko Spreizer (2002) has also met with similar responses. It is obvious, as Barth (1969) has said, that ethnicity is always constructed in interactions between at least two groups who consider themselves to be different. Roma are often por-trayed as bad, different and uncivilized. “We”, on the other hand, are good, civilized and unproblematic. Media representations often reproduce bina-ry oppositions (Kuhar 2006: 149): “Roma are eligible for social benefits, therefore they do not want to be employed. Roma take advantage of the system and it seems that they are the one who abuse this opportunity, and not us, even though we are eligible for the same benefits. Roma are there-fore problematic.” Such interpretations give the impression that Roma possess inherently different characteristics. Šumi and Josipovič (2006: 10) believe that public discourse of this kind produces a situation where actual problems go unnoticed.

In Slovenia there are many mechanisms for the inclusion of Roma, yet in practice these often produce their exclusion.1 Matjaž Hanžek (2005: 8), the Slovene ombudsman, claims that Roma represent con-stant dislike within Slovene society, and many acts of discrimination have confirmed this statement. Accepting intolerance as a subjective and indefinable category can easily distract us from the exclusionary nature of policies. Essed (in Zaviršek 2005: 27) points out that personal racism cannot have serious effects unless it is common and expresses collective power. In this case, a racist mentality provides a basis for activities which result in the social and political disqualification of the Roma population. A distant, ignorant, patronising, or openly intoler-ant attitude towards Roma is justified by the supposed superiority of the majority and legitimises their exploitation and complaints, as well as the conditionality of human rights, the endless passing of re-sponsibility for resolving issues, and the personal hardship of Roma.

1 More on the excluding mechanisms of inclusion see Urh, Žnidarec Demšar (2005).


The “othering”2 discourse (binary oppositions between “us” and “them”) is becoming more tense. Kovačič (2005: 180-181) points out that our relation with so-called “others” ranges from tolerance, distance, and ignorance to more open forms of dislike, such as disregard, rejection or even persecution. Several incidents have played this out, including the recent incident in the village of Ambrus, where a Roma family was forced to leave their home be-cause authorities yielded to the demands and aggression (threats of physical violence, expulsion, social disqualification of the fam-ily, justification of discriminatory attitude towards the family) of the local population. This incident and the government’s reaction (the family was removed instead of protected) provide clear ex-amples of this government’s racist policies. It chose to legitimize a belief about the differences between Roma and non-Roma and acknowledged the need to shield the “better” and exclude the

“worse”. Public discourse creates cultural racism by popularizing cultural differences which are assumed to exist between people of Roma origin and the Slovene majority. These assumed differences between cultures and the binary relations they bring about create ethnic boundaries among Roma and dominant, non-Roma culture. The continuous production of differences between different com-munities leads to the spread of intolerance and the justification of human rights violations.

The paradox of modern society is that, on one hand, it is strict-ly opposed to discrimination, which is said to produce inequal-ity, while on the other its ideological divisions create prejudice, which results in various acts of discrimination.

roma as victims of Prejudice

The following examples serve to emphasize the power relations, privileges and discrimination that affect the Roma community. A revised Local Government Act (2002)3 defines 20 municipali-ties in Slovenia and grants Roma the right to a local politi-cal representative. Grosuplje is the only municipality that has 2 More on the “othering” discourse see Zaviršek (2000).3 The Local Government Act, Official Gazette of the Republic of Slovenia, 51/2002.


violated this act. Some basic conclusions can be drawn from an analysis (Žnidarec Demšar 2006) which highlights the dis-crepancy between legislation and the everyday life of Roma in Grosuplje. The prejudice that exists within local authority mechanisms, and which can be discerned in the open denial of the right of Roma to have their own representative in the council of the municipality of Grosuplje, as well as the preju-dice of local residents, is coordinated and are allowed to func-tion freely. Hate speech in public discussions, which creates and discredits the “other”, legitimises prejudice, which, as Ule (2005: 27) points out, might at first seem harmless, but can quickly become the uniting factor of the mob and eventually turn into an instrument of aggression which serves to justify discrimination and casts out the threatened group, leaving them to their “own devices”.

We have no Roma town councillor and we are not going to have one! We gave them houses, electricity and water for free

– a student has to arrange all these things for himself. Roma is too nice a word for them – we have problems with Gypsies (Hanonina 2006).The residents’ imaginary statements (the municipality still opposes

the appointment of a Roma councillor) confirm Leskošek’s finding (2005b: 92) that the principle of solidarity no longer imply the provi-sion of a decent life for all people, but a united front in the common fight against foreigners within the national body. The problem deep-ens when the potential victims of discrimination and intolerance can no longer rely on legal protection. Instead of assuring the implementa-tion of political rights, the issue has strayed into more or less irrelevant discussions, such as whether the mayor and town council of Grosuplje should be dismissed. This is an obvious example of passing the buck when it comes to remedying violations of Roma rights: the matter has been tossed around to various state institutions; meanwhile, the Roma of Grosuplje are still without a representative in the town council.

Potential victims of intolerance and discrimination should have recourse to their rights and should be able to believe that the violation of those rights is held to be illegal and that, in ex-treme cases, those who have violated their rights will be sanc-


tioned. The above example makes it clear that human rights are constantly becoming more conditional and, as Leskošek (2005a: 247) has found, left to the whims of those who claim the right to interpret them.

The discrepancy between legislation and everyday life, as well as the conditionality of equality are constants in the life of Roma. Roma, for instance, do not have the option of choosing their location of residence, because the majority has been determining their living area since 19914. Ghettoes are simply easier to control. In one case, a Roma family from Grosuplje wanted to rent a flat in the centre of town in order to escape their poor living conditions. They were rejected by the owners, and the family believe it was only because of their Roma origin. This case shows how the possibility of living outside the deprived area comes down to acceptance or rejection by the majority, and not just the will of Roma individuals. One social worker’s experience illustrates the influence and power of the major-ity. This social worker, who was employed at a Housing Agency in Slovenia, tried to move a Roma family into an empty flat (the family met the criteria of the housing agency, putting them at the top of the list of candidates for a housing change), but a single threat, uttered by an influential figure from the local community, prevented the move. As Šumi and Josipovič (2006: 11) have pointed out, this occurs every time a Roma wishes give up his/her alleged characteristics, as major-ity discourse calls them, and “civilise” himself/herself. This is exactly what the local majority, despite their alleged wish to “civilise” Roma, will not tolerate. The authors emphasise that real estate ownership is at the heart of the problem, and should receive priority whenever we wish to resolve an ethnic conflict. As long as we maintain a situation that forces Roma into the position of unequal citizens without owner-ship rights, we will put additional strain on already existing ethnic conflict and will continue to display hatred towards them.

In the field of education it is interesting that until recently the prevalent public discourse praised the importance of educating 4 After 1991, when procedures for denationalisation began, new owners demanded the removal

of Roma people, who illegally lived on private land. This meant that they lived on foreign land without the permission of the land owners and without any documents for their houses. Before this the government did nothing to systematically address the problem of land titles.


Roma and reproached their lack of education. Nowadays, more and more Roma children are attending school, but society has devised a new mechanism to maintain the distinction between Roma and the dominant group. This involves obvious differences in the quality of education of Roma and non-Roma children and the glorification of the knowledge of the latter.

In public discourse Roma are often portrayed as second-class citizens or treated like foreigners; this is particularly noticeable in the area of employment. Clichés such as “There is no work for Slovenes, let alone for Roma” are often heard. The government’s solution to the “Roma employment problem”, as the media and political discourse often call it, is often “public work”, which is temporary and offers no job security, and does not even pay survival wages. Eriksen (2002: 28) warns that dominant groups often use an ethnic division of labour to justify the exploitation of minorities, who often receive only low paying jobs. Paradoxically, active employment measures aimed at improving the employment situation of Roma in Slovenia often have the opposite effect.

These examples have shown how continuous emphasis on the differences between people leads to the spread intolerance and the acceptability of human rights violations. The relationship between tolerance and human rights is, as the Slovene ombudsman once wrote (Hanžek 2005: 7), mutual in a truly democratic society. A commitment to human rights is a key element of tolerant behaviour. Until we implement tolerance, however, we cannot achieve respect for human rights.

ethnically sensitive social Work Practices – Challenge or Illusion?

A good deal of research at the national level (for example Open Society Institute 2001, 2002) has shown that the Roma ethnic group, as well as other ethnic groups in Slovenia, is not given equal treatment and provided with services which would suit their needs.

Furthermore, they are viewed as social deviants who are not


willing to adjust to the dominant system. There is a greater control element in social work with clients from ethnic groups than in social work with clients who are members of the dominant group. Thompson (2001b: 72) has described such social work as a “vehicle for further discrimination and oppression.”

Traditional social work neglects the ethnic and “racial” dimension of social problems, and this has, through acts of omission or control, led to intentionally or unintentionally racist social work practices. It is not our intent to claim that social workers who act to the detriment of members of ethnic groups are racists; the actions of social workers must be examined within broader cultural and structural contexts (Dominelli 1988; Thompson 2001a, 2001b; Razack 2002). Social workers work within a larger socio-political context, which confers upon them certain power in relation to other people. Social workers are often perceived as racists just because they work in a racist environment. Racism, however, operates simultaneously on the personal, cultural and structural level, according to the definition offered by Dominelli (1988) and Thompson (2001a, 2001b).

“[T]here can,” therefore “be no neutral territory.” (Thompson 2001b: 70) Many social workers consider themselves sympathetic merely because of their professional duties and find it difficult to acknowledge their own personal racism; they lack an understanding of anti-racist social work practices. Thompson believes that social work which is unaware of its potential for discrimination and oppression is “dangerous social work” (ibid.: 73).

In order to achieve more reflective practices in social work, the ethnically sensitive approach (Husband 1995; Payne 2005; Thompson 2001a, 2001b, 2002; Patel 2001) needs to be included in the social work educational system. Ethnically sensitive social work is based on the idea of recognizing the cultural needs and particularities of an ethnic group, as well as on anti-racist principles which are constantly cautious of discrimination and oppression (Thompson 2001b; Payne 2005). This approach needs to be adopted in countries which comprise a variety of ethnic groups with different cultures, religions, and languages (a majority of western countries). The question of exposing differences, however, remains


to be addressed. Ethnic studies are critical of constructing ethnic boundaries that produce negative discrimination against minority groups. Conversely, particular experiences where ethnicity plays a key role are crucial when ethnic sensitivity is considered and felt to be important in ensuring services which suit people’s needs, particularly in social work practice. For this reason a universalistic perspective, which advocates the equal treatment of all people regardless of their sex, age, cultural background and other personal circumstances, has produced many contradictions within social work - it makes discussions of inequality, power relations, hidden discriminatory practices, stigmatization etc., impossible.

The ethnically responsible social worker, who has adopted anti-racist social work principles, reflects upon his/her implicit and explicit racist responses on the personal, cultural and structural level (Dominelli 1988; Thompson 2001a, 2001b). This approach also takes into consideration the position of those who have the power to define and analyse problems. Social workers are “institutional actors”, and as such have certain powers and act in accordance with certain structural mechanisms (laws, strategies, ideologies). These mechanisms are often based on stereotypical assumptions and, in recent times, on segregational and assimilative approaches toward Roma. Roma service users are therefore often deprived of services which would meet their needs. They are confronted with a package of services that is defined by experts who happen to belong to the dominant majority. This can be seen in one social worker’s statement:

I’ve been facing Roma problems for many years now. I work to ensure their benefits. Also, in cases when Roma parents don’t send their children to school, I take away their benefits. This is how I would define social work with Roma.Social work is often seen as a profession whose practitioners maintain

current socio-political structures. We must therefore be critical of practices which do not challenge the current system. An understanding of social work with minority ethnic group members defines social workers as those who work to bring about social change and challenge the status quo. The concept of anti-racism also serves as a basis for the ethnically sensitive social work practices.


toward ethnically sensitive Practices

Critical examinations of social work in Slovenia have raised doubts as to whether social work education has taken steps to counteract racist practices. Research from the last few years has emphasised a lack of anti-oppressive skills in social workers who work with Roma, asylum seekers, and refugees. This is more or less a clear confirmation of the fact that racism in social work does in fact exist, especially personal racism. Some would question the development of specific tools for social work with ethnic groups, claiming that all social work is/should be anti-discriminatory. Despite the fact that an anti-discriminatory code of ethics5 is already embedded in the Code of Ethics of the Slovenian Association of Social Workers, this ethical code in and of itself is unable to provide the services which users need. The professional responsibilities of social workers should be fulfilled in a manner which is anti-discriminatory and empowering for all service users. In addition, an ethnically sensitive approach must be implemented into social work with members of different cultures or origins (for example Husband 1995; Devore 2001; Thompson 2001a, 2001b). This would promote sensitivity to cultural and ethnic diversity (Malahleka, Woolfe 1991) as well as respect for the dignity and individuality of service users and would allow us to steer clear of stereotyping. It would result in reflective practices and prevent individual and institutional racism from going unchecked. Ethnically sensitive social work emphasises the cultural values, cultural needs and particularities of ethnic groups. In other words, it encourages social workers to understand “ethnic reality” (Devore, Schlesinger in Payne 2005). When addressing issues of ethnicity, Thompson (2002)

5 The work of a social worker has to be anti-discriminatory, which means: - she/he will not exclude, omit or oppress on the grounds of race, skin colour, gender, national

background or ethnicity, material or social status, life style, sexual, religious or ideological orien-tation, potential social stigma, intellectual or physical disabilities;

- she/he will not refuse collaboration in procedures that reflect the above mentioned principle; - she/he will pay attention to all violations of this principle, influence colleagues at work on orga-

nizational policy and, if needed, notify the public (Article 6, The Association of Social Workers in Slovenia).


also recognizes the need for anti-racist responses. An anti-racist perspective demands an examination of the position of oppressed groups; this could lead to changes that directly tackle racism on the individual, cultural, and institutional level (Dominelli 1995).

The Faculty of social work in Ljubljana has recently drawn attention to such issues and has, over the last 4 years, developed a project which combines research and practical skills in the field and which is intended to give students ethnically sensitive learning experience. This project is based on an awareness of the social exclusion that Roma face in everyday life and the fact that this exclusion stems from powerful stereotypical images within Slovene society. Students work together with Roma from Grosuplje; their overall goal is to establish social relationships with Roma in everyday life, which would in turn lead to greater inclusion and a higher standard of living. The municipality of Grosuplje is unique in that it refuses to comply with the law which guarantees Roma a political representative on the local level.

Students were the first to research the needs of people in this municipality. Local social workers informed them of the inadequate living conditions of Roma (no running water, no electricity, cottages on foreign land); these social workers claimed that Roma are social-ly excluded and deprived of a quality life. Students also found that Roma rarely participate in community activities. Due to employer prejudice, few individuals are employed, with the vast majority liv-ing on welfare. Contact with Roma and the information the students collected gave them the impression that no one in Grosuplje really cares about Roma. This was a call for students to get involved and put their knowledge of community social work to use in order to provide support for the Roma community. First, an ethnically sensi-tive approach and anti-racist theory had to be internalized.

Work in the classroom and in the field is carried out in the following manner: first, students are encouraged to recognize and eradicate their own racism. They are expected to identify with anti-racist perspectives on the personal and professional level (challenging racist comments, actions, and attitudes). By reading the prescribed literature and conversing with Roma in the field they learn to value


cultural differences. When they take action by writing positive media responses, organizing Roma cultural events, and promoting Roma culture in the broader community, they contribute to the development of positive minority identities. Their work is based on an awareness of the disadvantaged position of Roma, therefore affirmative action is in line with their anti-discriminatory perspectives.

The project is based on two theoretical viewpoints – the ethnically sensitive approach (Malahleka, Woolfe 1991; Devore 2001) and the anti-racist perspective (Dominelli 1988, 1995; Thompson 2002). It follows the method of community social work (Kahn 1994, 1995; Lane 1999; Rothman 2001; Weil 2005), and, in particular, a community development approach.

Many wish to improve the situation and living conditions of Roma using various strategies (Schuringa 2005: 25):- Political strategies. Roma represent a minority in local and

national politics, so it is not realistic to expect changes without their active participation.

- Educational strategies. Many are convinced that Roma can improve their conditions only if they are well educated and therefore easier to integrate into society. Parents, however, should also be involved in their children’s education.

- Economic emancipation. Income and financial stability are two important factors of the well being of every person. Fighting employer discrimination and promoting positive Roma employment strategies can help.

- Human rights. A focus on the violation of Roma rights can contribute to a greater awareness of their position in society. Striving to guarantee Roma minority status would bring them respect on the formal level.

- Culture and identity. Programs for preserving and celebrating Roma culture might strengthen Roma identity and self-esteem. Though such activities can be valuable, they are not crucial to the improvement of the Roma situation. As somebody commented:

I find this celebration ridiculous. I do not want to put my child on a stage and make a fool of my family. I cannot think about


‘culture’ while my house is without running water and electricity. (personal interview with a member of a Roma community at the International Roma day celebration in Črnomelj, April 9, 2003).

- Assimilation strategies. Many organizations have developed programmes aimed at helping Roma. Their strategies follow a “fix the situation” model. For example, they solve housing problems by building new houses; they provide education for Roma by opening preschool programs. This “providing” approach puts Roma in the position of clients and passive recipients, upon whom certain programs are imposed. So-called

“Roma experts” attempt to force upon Roma their own ideas of what is beneficial for them and urge them to get involved.In opposition to these strategies, Schuringa (2005) emphasises

the community development method, an “enabling” approach that views Roma as subjects. This means, essentially, that they are fully integrated into actions aimed at improving their living conditions - from planning to implementation and evaluation. According to Schuringa, the advantage of this approach is that Roma themselves see the benefits it provides, begin to feel capable and responsible, and consider themselves to be an integral part of the solution. The active participation of Roma individuals is crucial to project work. The main goal of the project is to provide support for activities which Roma themselves define as important. In this way Roma become active participants in the first phase of the project (thinking, analysing and planning). It turned out that the needs of Roma in this particular municipality were more or less similar to those in other Roma settings: electricity and running water, employment, support for school children and protection against the intolerance of the majority. A focus on the collective needs of the community, however, has not led us to neglect the needs of individuals; students often serve as providers, informers, supporters, advocates, and translators.

The overall project is based on the community social work meth-od and its principles. Activities involving the cooperation of stu-dents and Roma are a key element of the project. We begin with a research phase, where we asses the existing situation and identify the desired changes. Students receive the relevant information from


key Roma individuals, and also talk to the whole community. The focus is on active dialogue. This project allows for a high degree of active participation from members of the Roma community in all phases (providing, organization, negotiation). It is therefore based on ideas and methods of participatory community work which, far from being mere exercises, comprise a set of attitudes and behav-iours that outsiders use when engaging locals (Keough in Weil 2005). Accordingly, the project is based on a transparent division of roles, tasks, rights, and responsibilities. Project workers main-tain an equal partner relationship. Students of social work are in the position of co-workers particularly because locals are treated as “experts on Roma problems”, who act from a position of power. This makes it necessary to respect local knowledge. As Chambers (in Weil 2005: 269) has pointed out, “No one can know reality as well as the people on the ground, the people who are living it.” The project team believes in local competence and acts with the convic-tion that local persons have the capacity to identify complex condi-tions, analyse all aspects of conditions that present problems which require solutions, develop resources, and take action. This type of practice requires a strong commitment to democratic principles.

This project is also based on empowerment, which implies the acquisition and activation of power. It refers to both processes and outcomes that occur on individual, organizational, community, and societal levels (Prilleltensky, Zimmerman in Nelson, Prilleltensky 2005). The project respects the individual, organizational and com-munity levels by emphasising motivation and training for self-organ-ization, advocacy and self-advocacy, critical thinking, participation in action groups for decision making, assertiveness, efficacy, and in-creased resources. It also influences public opinion and encourages people to value diversity. Finally, critical reflection enables project workers to notice the racist practices of local workers, who work from a position of power as “experts” on Roma problems.

The advantages of an ethnically sensitive approach, anti-racist theory, and community social work methods are:

an understanding of local history, as well as the social, cultural, • economic and other circumstances of the Roma community; an


understanding of the obstacles that Roma face in everyday life;an realization of the specific changes that must to occur if the • Roma ethnic group is to achieve equal opportunities; community-based social work skills; • partnership with members of the ethnic group;• challenging racist practices and challenging the • status quo.The project’s many working goals are a reflection of the actual

needs, expectations and interests of Roma in Grosuplje. Because it recognizes a specific context, the project can counter the uni-versalistic approach which has resulted from social workers’ non-reflective, imaginary, perceptions of Roma. The project’s overall aim is to challenge the mechanisms that contribute to stereotypical perceptions of Roma in society, in particular those that stress their constant need for support. Individual differences must be taken into the consideration, seeing as not all Roma require the same support. The project therefore recognizes the following working goals:

the mobilization of the Roma ethnic group in Grosuplje:• support for Roma rights as citizens on the community level (the • right to a local political representative, guaranteed basic living standards, etc.);social skills training (preparation for job interviews, role playing • for meetings with social workers, officials, etc.);educational support for Roma children and Roma women;• activities for children to do in their spare time;• networking - encouraging local municipal services to establish a • dialogue with the Roma community (social services, employment offices, primary schools);raising public awareness about Roma living standards, • human rights, and cultural activities (positive media representation)promoting discussions about tolerance and • diversity in local primary schools.The last intervention on this list is a valuable part of the project.

The idea is to initiate discussions about differences in society, with a particular emphasis on cultural differentiation. This way, students will want to influence their pupils’ stereotypes and stress the effects of racist practices in the everyday life of the oppressed group.


Different events on the local level are planned, such as round table discussions, workshops in schools, celebrations for International Roma Day, etc. The goal of these activities is to present the local community with a “true picture” of living conditions from the perspective of the oppressed, and to raise awareness of what being deprived actually means in today’s world. Also, it is intended to contribute to a positive identity for Roma in the municipality.

This project is notoriously difficult because of its theoretical and practical complexity. It’s not easy to motivate students to get in-volved, though each year more and more students participate. Plus, ethnicity and “race” issues are sensitive subjects. It is obvious that talking about one’s own racial prejudice is difficult, and certainly something that most students would rather avoid. Although stu-dents do feel some discomfort at the beginning of the discussions, they are a crucial step towards thinking and acting in an anti-racist manner. In the end, students feel that hands-on social work educa-tion, as opposed to a traditional learning environment, allows them to integrate in-depth theoretical knowledge with practical skills gained through an ethnically sensitive approach. For many of them, the project is their first opportunity to develop different, more re-spectful attitudes and approaches to ethnic groups.

I believe knowledge about cultural minorities and an understanding of the discrimination they face are crucial to social work. An awareness of the stereotyping of members of ethnic groups is also very important. When I was a child, my parents often said to me ‘If you don’t behave, the Gypsies are gonna get you!’ We feared them because they were seen as dangerous, as thieves etc. It is critical that social work overcomes these forms of preju-dice and gets an idea of people’s actual needs and everyday life (a student of social work involved in this project, May 2006).

Conclusion The reasons for the social exclusion of Roma do not lie in their

characteristics, but stem from living conditions over which they have little or no control. Social work, as a helping profession, is one of the “actors” responsible for challenging circumstances which lead to exclusion and inequality. Exclusionary policies are reflected in state strategies concerning the Roma “ethnic community”, which seek to maintain the status quo instead of challenging it. Also, social


work practices are often based on traditional models. In response, ethnically sensitive social work focuses on services that will meet the needs of users, and does so by taking specific dimensions (ethnicity, age, experiences, living conditions etc.) into account. On one hand, it lays stress on individual support for members of the Roma ethnicity, and on the other aims at producing active social workers. Ethnically sensitive social work also promotes the full participation of service users, from the initial definition of problems to the final evaluation of the work done. When social services will begin to fight against deprivation and exclusion and encourage members of minority ethnic groups to actively engage in the social work process, they will take giants steps towards transforming an institution that has become marred by a reputation for bureaucratic indifference.


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105

Svetlana Trbojevik

Macedonian Civil society as an Active Promoter of Interethnic relations

Introduction

A broad definition of civil society states that it is one of three sectors that make up society. Separate from the state and market sectors, civil society ensures “the active participation of citizens outside of elections”. An active and free civil society is a necessary element of representative democratic systems and is responsible for holding governments accountable for their actions. The changes that took place after Macedonia gained its independence have created circumstances which made the acceptance of civil society possible. These changes have played a vital role in the democratization process. As a result, a vast number of organizations have emerged in the third sector. Civil society is mostly organized by non-government organizations: there are 5,312 such organizations in Macedonia. Of this 5,312, 56 non-government organizations (hereafter referred to as NGO’s) have included the improvement of inter-ethnic relations in their mission statements.

the historical and legal background of Macedonian Civil society

Research of the development of civil society in Macedonia is rather lacking; no detailed, comprehensive studies have been carried out. The only available sources are monographic works on the activities and establishment of certain citizens organizations (Vrangelovski 2002). Despite a long and intensive tradition of self organization, the activities of civil society in Macedonia were not formally structured, but rather took a form of informal gatherings. Neighborhood societies, community centers, and family groups are

106 S V E T L A N A T R B O J E V I K

some of the ways in which civil society has informally addressed negative social phenomena such as poverty, addiction, and family breakdown (Donevska, Gerovska 2003).

The first organized forms within Macedonian civil society appear with the Young-Turkish revolution (1908-1912), which represents a turning point for early Macedonian civil society organizations. These included Liberation Movement associations, church-school communities, and literature societies, all of which focused on developing Macedonian national identity and emancipation. Professional and craft organizations greatly influenced the development of national, cultural, and professional institutions. The establishment of both bourgeois and workers’ parties was also an important factor in the development of citizens organizations in Macedonia (Vrangelovski 2002). In the period of the Young-Turks revolution, Macedonia did not have its own legal framework, but relied on the legal systems of its rulers. With the fall of the Turkish Empire and the establishment of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, Serbian laws for public gatherings and associations from 1891 came into force. A more general legal framework was established after 1931, when the law for associations, gatherings, and agreements was introduced (ibid.).

The first legal document pertaining to association to appear in socialist Yugoslavia was the decision of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of 1945, which legalized the establishment and functioning of associations. The first law pertaining to associations was passed at the Third Assembly of AVNOJ1 in the same year. In the years that followed (1946, 1947), this law was amended. It finally disappeared in 1965, when a new federal law was passed and adequate laws were adopted in all the republics, including Macedonia. Apart from the general law, other laws pertaining to particular social interests were passed. These included the fire protection law, hunting laws, laws pertaining to the Red Cross, etc. The 1974 Constitution laid the groundwork for a new association law which granted citizens the constitutional right to freedom of assembly. The 1946 Constitu-tion guaranteed the right to free association, public gatherings, and

1 Anti-fascist Council of the People’s Liberation of Yugoslavia.

107 MACEDONIAN CIVIL SOCIETY AS AN ACTIVE PROMOTER. . .

demonstrations. With the Constitution of 1963, civil organizations and societies became legal categories. With the Constitution of 1974, they became an integral part of the political system (ibid.).

The Constitution of Macedonia from 1991 guarantees basic hu-man rights, including the freedom to join associations. Laws passed in 1991 and 1998 pertaining to social organizations and citizens asso-ciations expanded the activities of citizens organizations by stating that these are not only based on the interests of their members, but on the benefits they present to the general public. The 1998 citizens associations and foundations law regulates the conditions and pro-cesses by which the work of citizens organizations can be establish-ing, registered, and terminated.

the structure of the Civil society

For the majority of people, civil society is limited to non-government organizations which cover a wide range of formally or informally organized interactions among individuals. Apart from NGO’s, civil society incorporates different social movements, interest groups, informal self-help networks, religious organizations, district organizations, etc. (Donevska 2006, Hauss 2003). The complexity of civil society makes its structure difficult to define. Civil associations can be classified in a number of ways, using criteria such as: type of services rendered (groups for public pressure, self-help groups, neighborhood groups or local community groups, research organizations, intermediary organization), orientation (voluntary, service, participation, empowerment), etc. (Ilievski 2006, Vrangelovski 2002).

The following analysis of the structure of civil society is based on the Register of Civil Organizations of Macedonia, the most comprehensive data base of its kind, which was created by the Macedonian Center for International Cooperation in 2003. This Register includes only 1,5092 of the 5,3123 officially registered organizations. First, the Register divides civil society in two main 2 Number of organizations in the Register of the Civil Organizations in Macedonia.3 Number of organizations registered in the Court Register of Macedonia.


groups based on their place of origin: domestic and international. Domestic organizations are then subdivided into various catego-ries based on their target (risk) groups and domain (area of inter-vention) which are: democracy and rule of law; children, youth and students; women; ecology; health and healthcare; culture and the arts; cultural differences; persons with special needs; interna-tional cooperation; education and science; entrepreneurship and economy; professional organizations and others; development civil society; rural development; social and humanitarian organi-zations; sports, hobbies and recreation; senior citizens; financial services; human rights; and other citizens organizations (Macedo-nian Center for International Cooperation 2003).

Though a large number of registered organizations exist, not all of these can be described as active. This is primarily due to the fact that this sector is largely funded by donations and incapable of sustaining itself. It is highly particularized, as there are many small-scale organizations aimed at very limited target groups. Groups often operate within a clear ethnic framework, meaning that many organizations are entirely made up of members of a single ethnicity (European Agency for Reconstruction 2006).

Organizations often face difficulties in rallying local financial support and contributions (Simon 2001). The primary problem stems from a tradition of self- help within the domain of families or villages. Lack of citizen concern and self responsibility is also a major obstacle in the development civil society and, consequently, of non-government, voluntary, and charitable organizations. The second problem is that poor economic conditions have forced the majority of Macedonians to focus on their daily survival, leaving little time or resources that could be invested in voluntary work. Finally, Macedonia has no law that would provide tax breaks or exemptions to donors, and so does not stimulate philanthropic con-tributions to NGO’s.4 As a result, many organizations that oper-ate in Macedonia are internationally or externally funded. In order to speed up democratization, international donors have allocat-

4 A new law on donations and the sponsorship of public institutions has been adopted, and will take force in January 2007.


ed money to seed NGO’s, which are intended to stimulate civil society. Instead of promoting cohesion around common causes (including conflict prevention), however, NGO’s seem to have become competitors, struggling for funds in order to keep their members employed (Broughton, Fraenkel 2002).

donors

The sustainability of Macedonian civil society has for the most part been made possible by promoters of democratic stabilization in south-east Europe. These resource providers can be divided into five categories: inter-government funds (UN and EU funds); government funds (domestic and foreign government funds); in-ternational financial institutions; foundations (international and domestic); international religious organizations and local organi-zation incentives. I will give an overview of the most important donors involved in Macedonian civil society.

The United Nations is represented in Macedonia by the 11 or-ganizations that form the extended UN family.5 UN funding of civil society has helped to further inter-ethnic relations through missions such as United Nations Preventive Deployment Force (UNPREDEP), United Nations Development Program (UNDP), United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), and OHCHR (Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights). The UNPREDEP was the first mission of UN in Macedonia and played an important role in the country’s development of civil society by laying the ground for a pluralistic political scene based on the democratic principles (Sokalski 1999). The UNDP regu-larly recruits members of civil society as advisers and consultants in discussions about local development priorities and strategies. Furthermore, actors in civil society assist in monitoring the im-plementation of development priorities at the local level. UNDP has worked with civil society on the following projects:

- Mapping of the Civil Society in collaboration with the Civil Society Index Research (CIVICUS);

5 UNDP, UNICEF, UNHCR, WHO, FAO, OHCHR, IOM, World Bank, IMF, UNAIDS and UNMIK.


- Establishment of a Citizens Association which intends to revitalize and spur rural development in former crisis areas, and to assist in the establishment of Farmers’ Associations;

- Public Awareness Campaigns; - Community Mobilization on Environmental Issues in cooperation

with the Global Environmental Facility (this program provides opportunities for more direct cooperation with civil society in the fields of biodiversity, climate change, and international waters);

- Partnership for Job Creation encourages municipalities to interact closely with the private sector and business associations (Govern-ment of the Republic of Macedonia 2006).

UNICEF has implemented programs in cooperation with national and international partners and civil society. One such program, which directly focuses on civil society and inter-ethnic relations, is the Babylon project. This program was implemented in cooperation with several local NGO’s. It brings children from different ethnic backgrounds together for educational and social activities. OHCHR’s mission is to protect and promote human rights for all people. In the Republic of Macedonia, OHCHR is completing a mid-term Comprehensive Technical Cooperation Program in the field of human rights. The program began in 2002 and was implemented with the close cooperation and consultation of partners in the government, international organizations, and civil society. Some of its activities focused on strengthening civil society.

The European Union is the largest donor in the Republic of Macedonia, concurrent with Macedonia’s medium-term perspectives for becoming a member the European Union. The European Union in Macedonia is represented both by the European Union Special Representative and the Delegation of the European Commission. Since 2005, both functions have been united into a single office, held by one person (Government of the Republic of Macedonia 2006). The development assistance provided by the European Union could be generally broken down into three time periods:

The post-independence period from 1990-2001 is marked by attempts to assist the restoration of regional stability through the


ECHO6, PHARE7 and OBNOVA8 programs. The ECHO and PHARE programs also affected civil society. ECHO programs provided complementary activities in the field of community services. Since 1999, ECHO assistance has included activities designed to build confidence through the provision of community services aimed especially at children and youth. Parts of the PHARE program were also intended to assist the development of environmental NGO’s.

The stabilization and association period 2001-2006. During this period the focus of assistance shifted from physical reconstruction to support for political, institutional, and economic transition and EU integration. Previous regulations had led to a lack of coordination and an accumulation of problems. For this reason, and also as a response to the new needs of the countries of the western Balkans, the stabilization and association process was consolidated into one body, the CARDS Program. With the CARDS program in place, the European Commission wanted to have a harmonized and coordinated approach to assistance in the region, and thus established the European Agency for Reconstruction. CARDS is important because it includes an NGO strengthening program. More specifically, the CARDS national program, as one of the main outlets for the EU assistance, seeks to assist the government in promoting human and minority rights by creating a solid base for an organized and influential civil society within the broader framework of a more stable democracy. Through the CARDS program the European Commission has funded post-conflict confidence building measures and projects promoting inter-ethnic co-operation. Local infrastructure projects may indirectly (though intentionally) contribute to greater inter-ethnic cooperation through the cooperation of different municipalities.

The EU pre-accession period 2007-2013. The Republic of Macedo-nia will be supported with financial assistance through a new Instrument for Pre-Accession as part of the New Financial Perspective. Assistance to the Republic of Macedonia will be focused on institution building for full, rather than selective, alignment with Acquis and for preparation 6 ECHO provides humanitarian aid.7 PHARE provides institutional building support and cross border cooperation with Greece.8 OBNOVA provides assistance in reconstruction and rehabilitation.


for managing EU funds following membership. Other important programs in the area of inter-ethnic relations

are the Search for Common Ground, a successful inter-ethnic Kin-dergarten and Youth TV project which was implemented with Eu-ropean and US support.

Foreign government funds are distributed through embassies, liaison offices and other representatives of foreign governments. Some donors in the Macedonian civil sector which contribute to the improvement of inter-ethnic relations are:

- Austrian Development Cooperation, which focus on strengthen-ing the rule of law and civil society;

- the embassy of Federal Republic of Germany, which focuses main-ly on capacity building, inter-ethnic relations and civil society, working through Fredric Ebert (supporting the Federation of Trade Unions), Nauman Foundation, and Konrad Adenauer Foundation;

- Kingdom of Norway through its Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Embassy is committed to financing projects of Macedonian NGO's;

- Swedish Embassy's assistance has been distributed between SIDA, Swedish Committee, Olof Palmer International Centre, and Women to Women;

- Swiss Embassy supports dialog between the state and civil society;

- British Embassy;

- United States of America focuses on the development of demo-cratic institutions in Macedonia.

Apart from financial support from foreign governments, the Macedonian government has begun to modestly support civil society by sponsoring advertising campaigns. A government commission formed for this purpose selects the organizations and the Ministry of Finance is in charge of allocating the necessary resources.

The World Bank and Council of Europe Development Bank al-locate resources to the Macedonian civil sector.

- World Bank has developed a Country Assistance Strategy or


Country Partnership Strategy (CPS). The documents generally cover a period of 3-4 years and were prepared with the coopera-tion of the government and representatives of civil society.

- The Council of the European Development Bank has allocated re-sources in the area of strengthening minority groups by approving a two year project for Roma education. This project was imple-mented through the Macedonian branch of UNICEF. The objec-tive was to improve access to formal and non-formal education for Roma children, girls and young women, thus contributing to better living conditions for the Roma community.

A number of non-residual international foundations have con-tributed to the development of Macedonian civil society and the improvement of inter-ethnic relations. I will list just a few: Open Society Institute Foundation (SOROS), King Baudouin, Clinton Global Initiative Foundation, etc.

With the development of civil society we have witnessed the es-tablishment of national foundations. Some national foundations were initiated and supported by foreign foundations, which helped them develop the necessary structure (the Foundation Open Society Insti-tute – Macedonia). Some were established through the transforma-tion of public capital into private capital and provided private enter-prises with a new image (the Mobimak Foundation). Some appeared thanks to the philanthropy of eminent Macedonians, both living and deceased (the Boris Trajkovski Foundation, Blagovestie).

International religious organizations played a large role in Macedonian civil society, especially during the Kosovo crises, when they were among the first to respond. Their activities can be defined as: humanitarian aid, civil society, and inter-ethnic relations. In this article we will name just a few: Caritas (German, French, and Italian), Catholic Relief Services, Norwegian Church Assistance, Danish Church, Swedish Pentecostal Assistance, Interlife, World Vision, etc.

The list of local organizational incentives is long and includes all the initiatives that civil organizations are undertaking in their attempts to generate income in order to support their activities.


the ethnic structure of the Civil society

If one looks up the word Macedonia in Webster’s dictionary, he/she will find that it signifies a geographical region, an independent country, and a mixture of fruit. One might mistakenly think that Macedonia’s climate, which is favorable to fruit, is the source of this last definition, but in fact it comes from the fact that Macedonia has been home to a mixture of ethnic groups for centuries. The Republic of Macedonia is a multi-ethnic society with a predominantly ethnic Macedonian population, which comprises 68% of the total population, and various ethnic groups, including Albanians, Serbs, Roma, Turks, Bosniaks (people that originate from Bosnia and Sandjak) and Vlachs (an ethnic group that originates from Romania and has lived in the southern areas of Balkans [Macedonia, Albania, Greece, and Bulgaria] for centuries).

Fluctuations in this ethnic structure were the result of various conquests, rulers, migratory movements, and natality trends. It is rather speculative to claim that divisions between ethnic groups are rigid, though evidence for such divisions can be found in past and present society. As always, exceptions prove the rule. Divisions along ethnic lines are not just a reality in the political life of contemporary Macedonian society, but appear in the civil sector and in local NGO’s as well. Some NGO’s even operate in a context in which various ethnic groups seek to promote their own identity and their rights through a mono-ethnic agenda which, of course, must exist within a multi-ethnic and multi-cultural society (Simon 2001). As a consequence, Macedonian NGO’s target specific ethnic communities, although their goals are more or less similar. For example, women’s associations such as Association of Roma Women in Macedonia, Association of Serbian Women in Macedonia, and Association of Albanian Women in Macedonia work on similar issues, such as the emancipation of women and their empowerment in society, but target specific ethnic communities.

Macedonia’s constitution carries on the legacy of Yugoslavia by essentially retaining previous structures that guarantee the political, social, and cultural rights of minorities. Macedonia was considered


a model of effective conflict prevention and pluralism in the midst of regional ethnic conflicts because members of all ethnic groups continued to participate in government and state institutions (Broughton, Fraenkel 2002). Ethnic minorities not only worked side by side in parliament, but also in the educational system, the military, and other state institutions. Nevertheless, there was a discrepancy in minority participation in government structures; while representatives from ethnic minorities were involved in the leading structures of government and attained high positions as ministers, deputy ministers or department heads, minorities were not accordingly represented in the lower levels of government. Amendments of the Macedonian constitution that were made following the small-scale internal conflict of 2001 and the Ohrid Framework Agreement, also from 2001, have promoted positive changes in the protection of the rights of ethnic minorities.9

In the contemporary Macedonian society, each ethnic group has its own indigenous position, which is determined by their traditions, culture, establishment, and acceptance by other ethnic groups, most importantly acceptance by the majority group. Ac-cordingly, the transitional period was experienced differently by various ethnic groups. Perhaps the debate about whether or not a century long peaceful coexistence between the largest ethnic groups, Macedonians and Albanians, actually existed (as a result of a common enemy, the Turkish Empire) is better left to the his-torians. The fact that concerns us is that there is no record of any large scale, self-initiated conflicts between the two. We can be sure that part of the problem lies in differing opinions about “civic” and

“ethnic” identities and different stances in the debate about whether the republic and its respective institutions should be a “unitary” or “bi-national” state. According to some writers, issues concern-ing language rights (native language education, or the right to use Albanian in parliament), decentralization, the empowerment of municipal administrations, proportionate parliamentary represen-tation as opposed to majority rule, and accusations of cronyism, 9 The Ohrid Framework Agreement was achieved in 2001 by four major political parties and was

supported by the international community. This agreement is similar to the Dayton Agreement for Bosnia, and specifies the terms that needed to be implemented by the Macedonian government.


bribery, and black marketeering are rooted in a basic mistrust be-tween Macedonia’s largest communities and the assumption that any concession would be taken as a pretext for ulterior political or territorial ambitions (Broughton, Fraenkel 2002). Additionally, both ethnic groups were burdened with problems stemming from transi-tion. Macedonians were more effected by the transition because in the past more of them were dependent upon state-owned capital. Al-banians, on the other hand, were more self-reliant and more capable of absorbing the shocks of transition because of their greater engage-ment in small-scale private capitalist ventures and agriculture. Civil society was faced with the challenge of building bridges and improv-ing dialog between the two largest ethnic groups.

The position of Roma in Macedonian society has varied through-out history. It probably improved the most in the former Yugoslavia, when many Roma were integrated into society as unskilled laborers. Unfortunately, few took advantage of the era of free education in order to better their position in society. The transitional period cast many to the outskirts of society as superfluous remnants of the un-skilled labor force. The exclusion of Roma citizens has brought about intensive intervention from civil society throughout Roma commu-nities. Shutka, as the largest organized Roma community, became a trial ground for various community based programs.

The status of certain ethnic groups, such as Serbs or Vlach, in Macedonian society did not differ much from the status of the major-ity ethnic group. In the case of these ethnic groups, civil society most-ly focused on the preservation and promotion of their traditions.

the Involvement of non-government organizations in Inter-ethnic Issues

“If you aren’t part of the solution, you’re part of the problem.”Eldridge Cleaver, civil rights leader

Despite the ethnic polarization of Macedonian political and civil society, there have been many attempts by various local and international actors on the NGO scene to bridge the gap between different ethnic groups. An analysis of the mission statements of


registered organizations reveals that 56 NGOs include a commit-ment to improving inter-ethnic relations (Macedonian Center for International Cooperation 2003). Some NGO’s focus particularly on inter-ethnic relations and try to reduce tension among different ethnic groups in Macedonia. Others focus on development, advo-cacy, ecology, and other areas which indirectly improve inter-eth-nic relations by promoting the inclusion and equal participation of different ethnic groups (Broughton, Fraenkel 2002). Those NGO’s which focus their work on improving inter-ethnic relations come from more diverse communities. They are located in larger cities that are not homogeneous in their ethnic structure and are consid-ered to be an important segment of the welfare mix10 in Macedonia. The Institute for Social Work and Social Policy has established a fruitful relationship with the NGO sector. NGO’s are often invited to present their programs and are guest speakers at various semi-nars and lectures. They are also involved in extra-curricular train-ing offered by the Institute (Lakinska, Bornarova 2005).

It would perhaps be useful to describe the work of some NGO’s that have made significant contributions in this field. The Nansen Dialogue Center in Skopje functions essentially as a local NGO, even though it is part of a regional network. It is a multi-ethnic organization that organizes dialog projects, conflict analysis, and resolution training for young people and children. CIVIL is anoth-er Skopje based multi-ethnic group. It promotes human rights and peaceful coexistence by conducting community dialog sessions and debates and launching media campaigns for peace. In west-ern Macedonia there are two such organization, the Inter-ethnic Program, which operates out of Gostivar, and Multikultura and the Youth Information Center, which operate out of Tetovo. In-ter-ethnic Program of Gostivar also attempts to counter the separat-ist trend in the NGO community by organizing activities involving multiple organizations which usually tend to be mono-ethnic, such as women’s groups and sports clubs. Multikultura and the Youth Information Center work on developing tolerance and awareness of inter-ethnic issues among high school students of different ethnic

10 Provision of social services by public, private, and NGO sector in Macedonia.


backgrounds. Women’s organizations in Macedonia tend to have a mono-ethnic character and are often highly politicized, seeing as they are closely connected to political parties and actively promote their interests (Broughton, Fraenkel 2002). Nevertheless, the work of one group, ANTIKO, a network of women from across the coun-try, stands out. ANTIKO’s work contributes to increased understand-ing and unity among women of different ethnic backgrounds. The Center for Civic Initiative in Prilep promotes democracy and citizen involvement in creating positive social change. Participants in these projects are ethnically mixed, resulting in cooperation among indi-viduals from different ethnicities.

Many of the above mentioned groups were founded by social workers, or have social workers on their boards. The NGO sector represents a vast field of employment for social workers, and also includes students of social work and professional social workers as volunteers. NGO’s were also offered further training, organized by the Institute of Social Work and Social Policy through the Na-tional Center for Continued Education. The Center focuses on the education needs of social work students, both at the graduate and post-graduate levels; academics, members of government and non-government organizations, and practitioners of various disciplines in the field of social policy, social work and social development (La-kinska, Bornarova 2005). NGO’s work on overcoming inter-ethnic problems by using approaches that are identical or similar to those used by state institutions.

After the outbreak of violence (which could be described as a conflict between Albanian rebels and the Macedonian army) in February 2001, more than one hundred NGO’s signed various appeals for a peaceful resolution and non-violence. Unfortunately, the NGO community did not launch a campaign as a unified front or undertake significant joint action towards a peaceful solution (Broughton, Fraenkel 2002).

The role of international NGO’s in improving inter-ethnic relations in Macedonia is manifested in their policy of employing different ethnic groups and facilitating contacts and cooperation among Macedonia’s different communities by focusing on training central and local government officials, supporting micro-enterprise


development, and developing the capacity of local NGO’s. Only a few international NGO’s work directly with conflict prevention and inter-ethnic relations. One of them is the Search for Common Ground in Macedonia (SCGM), whose aim is to improve inter-ethnic cooperation, communication, and understanding. SCGM has worked on a variety of projects in the Macedonian education system, teaching skills for multicultural awareness and cooperation. It has also made an impact through a cooperative media project, Nashe Maalo, an award-winning children’s television series that focuses on multi-cultural literacy, tolerance building, and conflict resolution skills.

Actors of sustainability of Civil society and Promoters of a Multi-ethnic Macedonia

The last part of this paper will be devoted to an elaboration of the programs of two key players in Macedonian civil society: the Macedonian Center for International Cooperation and the Foundation Open Society Institute Macedonia.

The Macedonian Center for International Cooperation (MCIC) was established in 1993 by local initiatives and Dutch Inter-church Assistance. MCIC is considered the most stable and well-established NGO in Macedonia. It bridges the gap between NGO’s that specifically focus on inter-ethnic relations and those that positively influence inter-ethnic relations while working to-ward other goals (Broughton, Fraenkel 2002). The strategic goals of MCIC include promotion of peace development of the civil society, and provisions to groups in need. MCIC has implement-ed the following programs in the fields of inter-ethnic relations and Macedonian civil society: pages for mutual understanding, re-socialization of ex-combatants, Balkan network for the de-velopment of civil society, “Citizens world”, and strengthening of the strategic civil society organization. In addition, MCIC has designed a public-service campaign using the slogan Celo e koga ima se (literally, something is complete when consists of everything). This campaign directly encourages tolerance and support for a multicultural society (Broughton, Fraenkel 2002).


The Foundation Open Society Institute Macedonia (FOSIM) was established in 1992 as a foreign entity representative office, and in 1999 became a national legal entity, a foundation. It forms a part of the Soros network in central and east Europe. FOSIM seeks to promote stability in Macedonia by disseminating information, encouraging civil society to address Macedonia’s political and economic situation, and coordinating activities aimed at unifying NGO’s that represent minorities. Programs focus on education, medicine and health, wom-en, publishing, civil society, Roma, media, law, culture and arts, pub-lic administration, and economic development. The significance of the work of FOSIM can also be seen in the establishment of 15 spin-off organizations. The great number of implemented programs and inter-program connections makes it difficult to categorize FOSIM’s activities. Here, only those programs that have been implemented in the domain of civil society and programs that address Roma as a target group will be briefly presented.

The FOSIM has implemented programs for the development of the NGO sector, with the goal of strengthening the role and participation of NGO’s in the development of local communities. Programs for encouraging cooperation between the government and the NGO sector and the promotion of European integration, as well as programs and spin-off programs in the field of inter-ethnic relations and programs targeting specific risk groups, such as youth and women, have also been implemented. Although FOSIM does not have a separate Roma program, they have de-veloped eight projects addressing this target group and focusing of the areas of education, health, media, and civil society. These programs have made a significant impact on the Roma commu-nity, especially in the area of education. As a result of continued efforts to empower Roma education, we have seen an increase in the number of Roma involved in higher education. Currently there are more than 20 students of Roma descent enrolled in un-dergraduate programs and one enrolled in the graduate program at the Institute of Social Work and Social Policy. The Institute is very proud of its multi-ethnic student body. The majority of stu-dents are Macedonian, but there have been significant numbers


of students from other ethnic backgrounds: Albanians, Serbians, and Roma. The Institute has not witnessed any tension between students from different ethnic groups, even during the crisis of 2001 (Foundation Open Society Institute Macedonia 2006).

From the short review of the programs of both MCIC and FOSIM, we can conclude that they have made a significant contribution to the Macedonian civil society. It can be noted that they have followed similar, but nevertheless different paths in line with their unique functions. MCIC’s work is based on its mission as a center for international cooperation. It focuses on creating conditions where the civil sector can be united around a single cause or a common goal by utilizing available social capital. MCIC successfully identifies common social problems and works on overcoming them by uniting actors within the civil society. Its nature as a foundation has led FOSIM to develop a more “pro-creative” ideology. Their work is based on a strategy that focuses on establishing programs, developing their structure, equipping them for independent functioning, and providing for their sustainability. Whereas MCIC is focused on civil society at large, FOSIM deals with particular domains, such as education and health, and specifically targets the Roma ethnic group.

Conclusion

All those who have been seriously involved in civil society and have worked in the field of inter-ethnic relations should consider the following questions: Why, following so many civil society projects, did we experience internal conflict in 2001? Why was Macedonian civil society still not strong and reflective enough to prevent it? Most importantly, is civil society really as powerful, developed, and self-reflected as we would like to believe? Analysts of Macedonian society are called upon to provide answers to these questions in the near future.

Nevertheless, the efficiency of the Macedonian civil sector, especially in the area of interethnic relationship, depends on the sustainability of the sector, the local identification of problems, and


the necessary involvement of target groups. Ideally, Macedonian civil society would be sustained by rallying local financial support as well as greater involvement on a voluntary basis. The success of programs depends on local initiatives. Rather than constructing programs around donors’ bids, they should appear as a result of local initiatives, where citizens play a crucial role in their design and implementation. Basically, the maturity of Macedonian civil society should be reflected in its self-reliance.


References

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Available on: http://www.columbia.edu/itc/sipa/U6868x01/client_edit/macedonia.pdf (22.11. 2006).

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125

Ilona Pešatová

government Measures Aimed at reducing the exclusion of roma in the Czech republic

Introduction

The goal of this paper is to provide an overview of the Czech government’s stance on issues pertaining to Roma. It is estimated that there are nearly 5 million Roma in Europe, with over 3 million living in Eastern Europe. These figures are estimates, and there are no exact data because the methods used to identify Roma and collect relevant data differ from country to country (Navrátil 2003). Roma form the largest ethnic minority in the Czech Republic. According to the 2001 census, there are 11,746 Roma in the Czech Republic, roughly 0.1% of the population, and 23,211 persons who speak the Roma language (Czech statistical office, 2006). Non-official data, however, put this figure at nearly 200,000. Discrepancies between official data and unofficial estimates of the number of members of a given national minority are common, and especially significant in the case of Roma (Navrátil 2003). These numbers provide a basis for one of the main legislative criteria for defining geographical areas in which protective measures aimed at national minorities in areas such as education and the use of minority languages in official contact are carried out. With this in mind, it is very important to find new methods for acquiring reliable data on the number, position, and possible problems of national minority members in various sectors.

It is estimated that nearly 60 million people in the European Union live in poverty, if poverty is defined as an income lower than half of the average income in a given country (Apospori, Millar 2003). Poverty and long-term material deprivation are characteristic of the

126 I L O N A P E Š A T O V á

members of the Roma community. At the same time, poverty is closely linked with social exclusion and segregation. The opportunities (for example higher education, profitable jobs, high quality housing) available to most members of society are not equally accessible to Roma, i. e. members or families of the Roma community.

In the Czech Republic, official policy is focused on the integration of Roma into society. Two key strategies for integration or social co-existence with Roma communities have been implemented by the ethnic majority. The first states that Roma are a “national and/or ethnic” minority according to the Bill of Rights, and as such are a part of the Czech constitutional order (Report of the Government Attorney for Human Rights on the Present Situation of Roma Communities 2000). The second strategy concerns the limited access of Roma to employment, education, housing and health care. The pitfall of this strategy, which is often mistaken for integration, is assimilation (ibid.).

governmental Concepts of Integration Policies for the roma Community

The Czech government’s approach to Roma integration is based on three elements: respect for human rights, compliance with the national legal framework, and a socio-cultural aspect (Report on the Situation of National Minorities in the Czech Republic 2003). In 2000 and 2004, the Czech government introduced important documents that define the rights of the Roma community and state how these rights can be accessed (Conception of the Roma Integration Strategy 2004).

In order to further the integration of Roma, the Czech government has introduced a number of government bodies and facilitated collaboration with certain non-government organizations:

The Council for Roma Community Issues (governmental advisory • body), 1997.The Coordinator for National Minorities and Roma Issues (on the • regional level), 2000.

127 GOVERNMENT MEASURES AIMED AT REDUCING THE EXCLUSION OF ROMA. . .

The Roma Counselor (on the municipality level).•

The main task of the Roma Counselor it is to design a Roma integration development conception for his/her district on the ba-sis of an analysis of the needs of the Roma Community. He/she is to initiate the establishment of those institutions and institutes that are lacking in the district and support the emancipation, integra-tion, and, in certain cases, assimilation efforts of Roma. Though it is desirable that the Roma counselor’s place of work be situated directly in the chief clerk’s office, this is not the case in all places. The number of Roma assistants should be set according to qualified estimates of the number of Roma in a particular district, with one assistant per 1,500 Roma inhabitants. The Roma counselor should coordinate Roma assistants. One part of an assistant's job is com-munity social work, which includes the collection of information and the organization of educational activities for both majority and minority members in a given locality. The work of Roma counsel-ors should continue to be carried out in cities where a large number of Roma live (Basic Resources of Government Conception Policy Concerning the Members of the Roma Community 1998).

Municipalities have made efforts to interconnect services rendered to members of the Roma community on the local level. They also work out or, in certain cases, design a community plan or a plan for the social inclusion of excluded Roma communities in a given municipality and strategic plans aimed at solving this situation, which in turn are approved by the municipal council (ibid.). All community social workers engaged in Roma commu-nities must pass a training course before they begin working in-dependently. This course familiarizes them with community work and with the specifics of work with Roma, and contains subjects pertaining to the anti-oppressive approach, value systems, preju-dice, stereotypes of social exclusion, and psychosocial interven-tion (Woods, Hollis 1989). After passing the theoretical part of the training, a practical part consisting of short-term team work with a skilled community social worker takes place. The social worker can begin to work independently only after he/she has passed both parts of the course.


social services

In the sphere of social services, a shift from social benefits to social assistance with an emphasis on social work in Roma communities has occurred. In many locations, work is carried out by civic associations and charity societies. It is recommended that the legal and material conditions for the inclusion of experienced Roma members in community social work be established, even though these persons often do not meet the usual educational requirements.

The development of services and civic advice centers affects public administration and self-government in a way that is beneficial to clients. Therefore, such services should be made accessible to members of the Roma community. In order to achieve this, it is necessary to support the development of a network of advice centers which would include all districts and towns. These centers should employ Roma not only as volunteers, but also as paid assistants. Roma assistants can help professionals facilitate communication with Roma, find potential clients in the field, advocate on behalf of Roma clients, and accompany them in various official procedures. Cooperation between government and non-government organizations is also very important, because Roma emancipation and participation in decision making processes that concern Roma communities, for example supporting Roma representatives in state administration and government bodies, is of key political and civic importance.

Social activities which take place directly in the places where Roma live have shown positive results. These include, first of all, combating all forms of discrimination (based on skin color, nationality, language, or ethnic belonging) aimed at individuals or groups. In order to eliminate discrimination against Roma, a legal analysis that takes into account the point of view of the Roma community and Roma individuals must be conducted. The law states that Roma are equal to all other citizens; in real life, however, discrimination occurs on a daily basis. It is important to


identify areas of life in which ethnic discrimination against Roma takes place and is allowed to go unsanctioned, and to consequently modify the law through anti-discrimination legislation.

In 2001, the Act on Rights of the National Minorities was in-troduced. According to this law, a national minority is defined as a community of citizens of the Czech Republic who differ from other citizens due to ethnic origin, language, culture, and traditions. At the same time, these are inhabitants who have expressed a wish to be considered a national minority in order to protect the interests and rights of their communities and individual members. A member of a national minority is a citizen of the Czech Republic who declares a nationality other than Czech and expresses a wish to be considered a member of a national minority, together with others who claim to belong to the same nationality. Minority members are also protected by the Act on Education, which came into effect in 2005.

The above mentioned laws define the government’s strategy for dealing with national minorities. The legislative gap which originated in the period before the Velvet revolution was hereby filled. At that time, the relations between individuals and population groups were defined by class position and not by national or ethnic references. The issue of ethnic diversity first became embedded in legislation highlighting the equality of citizens of different ethnic minorities and clearly stating integration principles in all areas (social policy, health care, education etc.). The measures listed above should result in a decrease in social and ethnic tensions in the Czech Republic.

education

In the sphere of education, equalizing actions are aimed at in-creasing the general level of education and vocational qualification. Equalizing actions take the form of nursery schools, preparatory and equalization classes and courses, financial bonuses for teachers who work individually with pupils from certain groups, and support for Roma assistants.


A program for Roma children has been introduced in nursery schools, and is intended to ease primary school entry for Roma children. This program is recommended for children in their last year of nursery school. Roma children benefit by improving their Czech language skills and often have an easier time entering pri-mary school. Roma assistants help nursery school teachers educate Roma children in an ethnically sensitive manner. The Roma coor-dinator looks for families with small children and informs them about the possibilities and advantages of nursery school attendance. He/she also organizes a Mothers’ Club to encourage both Roma and non-Roma mothers to become more active in nursery school activities, and attempts to improve communication with the parents of children from the ethnic majority and facilitate a multi-cultural approach to education. This results in projects for the promotion of Roma culture (Roma culture week: Roma songs, Roma food, Roma stories – through the active cooperation of Roma mothers).

Preparatory classes are offered to children from socio-culturally disadvantaged backgrounds, and are most often attended by Roma children. Though they take place at elementary schools, these classes are not mandatory. Roma assistants also work to improve communication with Roma families. Ideally, an assistant teacher (a Roma assistant) who helps the teacher maintain control in the classroom, cooperates with families, and ensures that children attend school takes part in the class. The field of action of Roma assistants, however, should not be limited only to the first grade of basic school. Their intervention in higher classes is generally more successful than with younger children. Roma assistants are also needed in secondary schooling and training centers.

System requirements for education and anti-oppressive training for teachers are emphasized: mediation and negotiation can solve conflicts on the inter-personal level, but are insufficient for ad-dressing conflicts arising from structural or institutional factors. It is necessary to educate teachers about the causes, forms (e.g. direct, indirect, victimization), and levels (personal, cultural, institutional, structural) of discrimination. The ability to identify various forms and levels of discrimination and reduce their negative effects on


pupils must become a part of the professional competence of every teacher. Participating teachers display a rather exceptional degree of self-reflection (the ability to identify and to be aware of one’s own discriminatory practices and those of colleagues) thanks to these courses. Although mediation techniques can produce positive results in such cases, they are not sufficient unless the socio-psy-chological level is surpassed.

All future teachers studying at pedagogical and other faculties are advised to attend a course on multi-cultural and anti-racist edu-cation. The regular multi-cultural postgraduate study program at pedagogical faculties or other universities should also include such a course.

employment

The issue of employment among Roma is marked by the following features:

a large portion of Roma have only a primary education (in many • cases incomplete) and so belong to the unqualified labor force;Roma citizens appear in the files of the Employment Office to a • proportionally much larger extent;the majority of Roma face long-term unemployment (in some • cases up to 10 years);despite a number of job offers for unqualified applicants, such • jobs rarely go to Roma;considering the high percentage of unqualified workers among • the Roma population, most job opportunities are limited to the physically demanding work and low paying jobs;many Roma have experienced discrimination from perspective • employers (“When I apply for a vacancy over the phone, it is available; when I come in person, they pretend it is already occupied.”);as a result of long-term unemployment, many Roma lose their • motivation, work habits, social skills etc., which makes their grave situation even more difficult and closes the circle of exclusion from the job market (Navrátil 2003).


In the sphere of employment, opportunities are being sought for firms that employ persons who have difficulty finding work in the labor market. Acquiring qualification or retraining in professions which are more desirable in the labor market is one way of achieving independence. Retraining and qualification courses are intended make employment more accessible and reduce unemployment. Nonetheless, those who have successfully completed retraining courses often remain among the unemployed. To remedy this situation, thorough research of the employment market should be carried out prior to the implementation of retraining courses for Roma.

Retraining courses allow Roma to acquire skills that could increase their chances of finding work. Equalization actions can quickly bring about a more favorable balance between Roma without higher education and Roma with secondary school or, in certain cases, university education. Towards this end, the government provides grants for preparatory courses for Roma children and scholarships for successful Roma secondary school and university students, and also provides financial aid for textbooks, school supplies, and accommodation in university dormitories.

Equalizing actions are not only aimed at Roma. All individuals who fulfill the criteria are eligible, for example: “persons from a socio-culturally disadvantaged environment”, “children with special educational and learning needs” or “persons difficult to employ in the labor market”. Certain actions, however, focus only on Roma, such as preparation for work with the Police of the Czech Republic, preparation for the position of Roma consultant, and minimum training courses for Roma assistants. Clubs for the unemployed can also help to increase employment among Roma. These clubs are organized through the support of employment offices. During training courses, which last several weeks, the unemployed learn how to write and respond to job ads and how to write professional resumes. They learn communication skills, rehearse job interviews, etc.

The correct balance between the subsistence minimum and the minimum wage must be reached. The key task is to continuously increase the price of labour, and not to decrease social allowances. Employment should pay off for every breadwinner, regardless of the number of children in the family or his/her qualifications.


Improving the roma housing situation

Today, many Roma are incapable of solving their housing situation. Only the most fortunate individuals have managed to find a home of their own. According to the housing strategy prepared by the Minis-try of Local Development, the concept of affordable housing must be addressed without delay. This concept should include the maximum participation of future inhabitants in construction. Though Roma often lack financial resources, they are capable of constructing houses almost entirely by themselves.

The construction of blank flats is not an instrument of integration. Analyzes of the problem of blank flats in connection with the Roma community have revealed a very important social and political problem, which can be characterized as the displacement of the socially weak (endangered and vulnerable) part of the Roma minority from flats into substitute forms of housing, into short-term accommodations, without compensation to the suburbs of towns, and their concentration into en-claves and ghettos. An analysis of the problem of blank flats has be-come an analysis of the construction of blank flats as a means for spatial ethnic segregation.

Compensatory habitation actions can be understood to mean the cre-ation of conditions in which even non-wealthy Roma have the possibil-ity to find accommodation. Compensatory actions apply to all inhabit-ants from socio-culturally disadvantaged backgrounds. The following problems should be resolved in order to improve the housing situation of Roma: the increased concentration of Roma inhabitants in old, unsat-isfactory, stock-houses which are the property of state; the segregation practices of villages and towns, enforced (auto)segregation, the impos-sibility of renting a home in another locality due to owner prejudice, the creation of ghettos/enclaves, the illegal occupancy of flats, accom-modation in flats without a rental contract – no possibility of obtaining housing grants (Navrátil 2003).

ConclusionSocial work theory and practice aimed at the Roma minority 1. was developed in the period of the socialist state and became


practically useless after the Velvet Revolution in 1989. The whole system of social work was based on political and economic principles modeled for Soviet political institutions and practices.

The Velvet Revolution brought the age of socialism to a 2. close. A democratic political system based on the diversity of well-established political parties was built on pre-communist traditions. Other political and economic priorities, however, took precedent over support for the Roma minority. Roma issues were relegated to the verge of majority society.

The aversion of the majority population towards Roma increased, 3. and ethnic tension climaxed in the exodus of Roma to Canada and Western Europe.

The co-existence of Roma communities and the ethnic 4. majority became the main aim of the new government’s new strategy. New laws aimed at ensuring the minority rights of Roma were introduced into the Czech constitutional order, and new government bodies and complex social measures for the integration of Roma were implemented. The new system is evaluated on a regular basis and modified with an emphasis on the quality of the co-existence of the majority and the Roma minority. The realization of these strategies is slowly but surely decreasing tension and improving relations between the ethnic majority and the Roma community.


References:

Act on Rights of National Minorities Members of the Czech Republic (2001), http://vlada.cz/assets/cs/rvk/rnm/dokumenty/vladni/zakon_novela_mensiny.pdf (5.1.2007).

Act on Rights of National Minorities Members of the Czech Republic [in Roma language] (2001), http://vlada.cz/assets/cs/rvk/rnm/dokumenty/vladni/menszakon_romsky_1.pdf (5.1.2007)

Act on Pre-school, Primary, Secondary, Higher Secondary and Other Education (2004): http://www.zakonycr.cz/seznamy/5612004Sb.html (5.1.2007).

Apospori, E., Millar, J. (2003), The Dynamics of Social Exclusion in Europe. London: Edward Elgar Publications.

Czech government (2004), Conception of the Roma Integration in 2004. Available on: http://www.vlada.cz/scripts/detail (27.11.2006).

Czech government (1998), Basic Resources of Government Conception Policy Concerning the Members of Roma Community. Available on: http://racek.vlada.cz/usneseni/usneseni_test.nsf (27.11.2006).

Czech statistical office (2006), Basic Final Results of the Population and Housing Census 2001. Available on: http://www.czso.cz/csu/2002edicniplan.nsf/publ (16.2.2007).

Government Attorney for Human Rights (2000), Report of Government Attorney for Human Rights about the Present Situation of Roma Communities. Available on: http://www.osf.cz/romove/koncepce.htm (27.11.2006).

Navrátil, P., et al. (2003), Roma in the Czech Society. Praha: Portál.Secretary of Government Council about National Minorities (2003),

Report on the Situation of Nationality Minorities in the Czech Republic in 2003.Available on: http://www.vlada.cz/cs/rvk/rnm/dokumenty/dokumenty_rady/default.html (27.11.2006).

Víšek, P. (2002), Blank Flats as the Instrument of Ethnic Segregation. Roma in the Town. Praha: Socioklub.

Woods, M.E., Hollis, F. (1989), Casework: A Psychosocial Therapy. NewYork: McGraw-Hill Humanities.

137

Miroslav Brkić

refugees, the Internally displaced and deported Persons in serbia

Introduction

The decision to leave one’s town and street is difficult, even when it is made freely for the sake of better employment and living conditions. Leaving one’s own space, one’s own life, because of threats and compulsion is one of the most tragic events a human being can face. Such tragedies occurred in the territory of the former Yugoslavia. Hundreds of thousands of people were forced to leave their homes, their previous lives; they had to find a new space to call their own, one full of uncertainty, disappointment, misery and poverty. Where, and how, is one to create a new life, find a job, find a place to live, and develop new networks and relationships within the context of general poverty? How does one deal with the loss of close ties to relatives and old friends? These are some of the main questions that refugees, internally displaced persons, and deportees have to face.

The structure of the population of a given state can change significantly as a result of war; even though politicians throw around words like peace, tolerance, and co-existence following a cease fire, the consequences of destruction remain. Ten years after the Dayton Agreement in 1995 and seven years after the International Protectorate had been established in Kosovo (Serbia), there are still a significant number of refugees and internally displaced persons.

138 M I R O S L A V B R K I Ć

In Serbia, they still face obstacles to the realization of their basic human rights, integration problems, and an uncertain future: should they go back to their place of origin or stay where they are now? The journey of (re)integration is certainly difficult, as are the creation of an “old-new” home and social networks, battles with prejudice, and the need to prove oneself over and over again.

The armed conflict in the territory of former Yugoslavia began in May 1991. Slovenia was the first country in the region to declare its independence. Despite the fact that the initial conflict was very short and resulted in a relatively small number of causalities, it set off the arrival of the first refugees in Serbia. These were mainly family members of Yugoslav Army officers of Serbian nationality, who decided to leave Slovenia because of fear for their future status in the newly established country.

Their numbers were insignificant, especially when compared with those produced by the events that followed. In the next four years the war escalated and the number of people who had left their homes rapidly increased both in Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina. The war lasted until 1996.

refugees

Number of refugeesIn 1996, there were 617,728 refugees registered in Serbia. They

had come to Serbia from the other states established in the territory former of Yugoslavia in order to escape the war. The majority of these refugees came from the Republic of Croatia (54%) and Bosnia and Herzegovina (45%)1, 1% were from Slovenia (Milosavljević, Todorović, Kotal 1998). The ethno-religious structure of these refu-gees was: Serbs (77%), Yugoslavs (10%), Muslims (9%), and Cro-ats (3%) (ibid.).

When the armed conflict came to an end, the number of refugees decreased. By the end of 2005, only 139,195 refugees remained in Serbia. Most are of Serbian ethnic origin (40,818 from Bosnia 1 36% from the territory of Federation and 9% from the area of the Republic of Srpska.

139 REFUGEES, INTERNALLY DISPLACED AND DEPORTED PERSONS IN SERBIA

and Herzegovina and 98,377 from Croatia). In 2005, their age and gender structure was as follows (UNHCR 2005; Group 484 2006):

Age M % F % Total %0-4 617 0.44 615 0.44 1,232 0.89

5-17 8,456 6.14 7,856 5.64 16,402 11.7818-59 42,148 30.28 39,006 28.02 81,154 58.3060+ 15,562 11.18 24,845 17.85 40,407 29.03

Total 66,873 48.04 72,322 51.96 139,915 100.00

A decrease in the refugee population of over two thirds is not only the result of their return to their countries of origin or further emigration from Serbia. Around 20,000 refugees emigrated to other countries, primarily to the USA, Canada, and Australia (UNHCR 2005). Approximately 285,0002 refugees returned to Bosnia and Herzegovina, mainly to the territory of the Republic of Srpska, and around 105,0003 returned to the Republic of Croatia. A majority of those who remained in Serbia applied for Serbian citizenship and so exchanged their refugee status for that of poor citizens (Govern-ment of the Republic of Serbia 2004).

Basic rights Refugees in Serbia are entitled to the following rights: the right

to work (to open an employment book based on a refugee iden-tity card and unique citizen’s number), the right to health care, the possibility of accommodation in collective centers, reduced public transportation fares, the right to education, and the right to open a bank account in most domestic banks.

These rights could only be realized with a refugee identity card that contains the refugee’s name and surname, address, and a refugee number. This refugee cards does not automatically include a unique citizens’ number, which is a prerequisite for obtaining an employment book. Refugees from Croatia can only get their citizen 2 43% of the total number in 1996.3 17% of the total number in 1996.


number in Croatia. In order to obtain it, they have to return to their country of origin. This could present an obstacle for male refugees who fear being arrested because of their participation in the armed conflict. Many have avoided returning to Croatia and so cannot acquire this important personal information. This ultimately means that they are denied the right to work in Serbia.

HousingFrom 1991 to 1996, refugees mostly resided with host families

in Serbia. The percentage of these refugees was between 60 and 95, depending on the period (Group 484 2004). Although this figure gradually decreased, a majority of the refugees did not manage to solve their housing problems. According to data from 2002, only 18% of refugees had managed to find a home of their own (UNHCR 2005).4 Many still live in rented flats, with relatives and friends, in refugee camps, and in social care institutions.

Refugees who have the right to a residential flat in Croatia or Bosnia and Herzegovina are at a great disadvantage. In Croatia, this problem has not been addressed by internal legislation or bilateral agreements. The Constitutional Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina determined that flats which used to belong to the Yugoslav Army should remain the property of Bosnia and Herzegovina, meaning that those who once had residential rights now must take their case to The European Court for Human Rights.

UnemploymentUnemployment is one of the key problems in Serbia. Since 2002,

the privatization and re-structuring of state-owned enterprises has moved forward at an accelerated pace. This has resulted in an enor-mous rise in unemployment (the unemployment rate is 18%). Citi-zens over 50, as well as traditionally marginalized groups such as Roma, persons with disabilities, refugees, and internally displaced persons are in a particularly difficult position. Although the refu-gee population generally has a higher degree of education than the domestic population, estimates show that 45% of refugees are un-

4 From the Republic’s budget there were 3,000 flats built, where around 12,000 refugees were housed (UNHCR, 2005).


employed. Many are forced to work in the “gray economy”, which means that they are without health insurance and social security (pension, maternity leave, etc). They are not insured against occu-pational injuries and are often victims of fraud and exploitation.

Foreign and international organizations such as the Norwegian Refugee Council, the Danish Refugee Council, Swedish Individual Help, UN-Habitat, and others carry out income-generating pro-grams, such as micro credits, soft loans, and professional re-train-ing, to encourage independent economic activities. Although the absence of an adequate legal framework on the state level is still a problem, micro credits are approved on the basis of the permission and guidelines of the National Bank.

Access to health care and social insuranceRefugees have access to basic health care services that include

visits to general practitioners and medication prescriptions. The qual-ity of health care largely depends on the region where refugees reside. In poorer areas in southern and eastern Serbia there are no adequate specialized medical departments and, due to economic reasons, the referral of patients to Belgrade is often avoided. Poverty prevents most refugees from using private health services.

According to the Agreement on Social Insurance between Croatia and Serbia and Montenegro, which came into force on May 1, 2003, refugees are to receive their pensions in their current place of resi-dence. Some pensioners have had problems with documents, verify-ing past employment, and with delays in administrative procedures. A significant number of Serbs from Croatia do not receive pensions despite the fact that they fulfill all the requirements. According to the Commissioner for Refugees of Serbia, 20,000 requests for pensions have been submitted in Croatia, but administrative procedures are taking too long (UNHCR 2005). A particular problem is the veri-fication of employment in the former Yugoslav Republic of Srpska Krajina5. In most cases this verification procedure would seem to be unresolved because taxes for pensions, healthcare, and social insur-ance were paid to the former fund of the Republic of Srpska Krajina. 5 During the war Serbs from Croatia constituted Srpska Krajina as an independent region.


For the same reason, the Republic of Croatia refuses to pay pensions for the period between 1991 and 1995.

Access to educationEducation is available to both refugees and the domestic popula-

tion. Due to poor economic status, many refugee families are not able to send their children to faculties. Excellent high school students therefore often do not have any possibility of continuing their educa-tion. In order to alleviate the situation, some municipalities in Serbia award scholarships to successful students from socially vulnerable families.

Access to public welfareRefugees are not entitled to public welfare and other forms of

financial support (children supplements, compensation for third per-son care) which are available to the domestic population. They used to receive humanitarian assistance from international organizations, but this aid has gradually diminished. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) is the only large international agency that continues to support refugees and displaced persons.

IntegrationIn a number of cases, the good will and general acceptance of the local

population have contributed to the successful integration of refugees. Despite these good intentions, many feel that the term refugee carries a stigma, and contains negative connotations which follow refugees in all aspects of social life. It is difficult for refugees in collective centers to get involved in community life because of years of physical isolation and poor living conditions. In some cases, animosity towards refugees exists, primarily among socially vulnerable members of the domestic population. They view refugees as undesirable competition for the few available jobs and blame them for the current situation (Group 484 2005). Research has also shown that refugees are not welcome in certain parts of Serbia (such as Vojvodina6), where national minorities fear changes in the ethnic structure of the population (Group 484 2004).

6 Region in Serbia where a significant number of national minorities live (Hungarian, Slovakian, Ruthenian, Romanian, Croats etc.).


Female refugeesFemale refugees are in a less favorable position. During the first

years of displacement, they more or less bore the entire burden of family preservation and survival. Their position has not changed very much since the end of the war. On the contrary, even today they are victims of “double discrimination”, that is, discrimination based on gender and ethnicity. They have a harder time finding employment than men; their social mobility is limited and they are mainly tied to home and family.

Internally displaced Persons

Population numberFollowing the adoption of the UN Resolution 1244 and the

consequent establishment of the Protectorate, the majority of the non-Albanian population left Kosovo and Metohia. Because they did not come from the territory of another country (since Kosovo and Metohia are still integral parts of the Serbia), they do not have the status of refugees, but of internally displaced persons.

Since 2000, there have been about 210,000 displaced persons in Serbia. Their ethnic structure is: Serbs (78%), Roma (12%) and Montenegrins (8%). Return is not a realistic option for the vast majority of these persons because their lives would be in danger. According to UNHCR estimates, less than 2% of internally displaced persons have returned to Kosovo and Metohia. More than half of those who have returned are non-Serb citizens (Roma, Egyptians, Bosniaks). In 2005 the age and gender structure of internally displaced persons in Serbia was as follows (Group 484 2006):

Age M % F % Total %0-4 1,569 0.76 1,440 0.69 3,009 1.45

5-17 26,128 12.59 24,565 11.84 50,693 24.4218-59 60,574 29.18 60,268 29.04 120,842 58.2260+ 14,716 7.09 18,294 8.81 33,010 15.90

Total 102,987 49.62 104,567 50.38 207,554 100.00


Basic rightsLegally speaking, displaced persons are citizens of Serbia, which

means they have the same rights and duties as all other citizens. In practice, however, many of them have had problems exercising their rights due to poverty, complicated administrative procedures, and unresolved property issues.

The poverty issueAccording to some estimates, 10.6% of the Serbian population

lives below the poverty line (Government of the Republic of Ser-bia 2004). The ratio of refugees and internally displaced persons among the poor is twice that of the general population; it is esti-mated that about 25% of refugees and displaced persons live on or below poverty line (WFP/CES MECON 2001). If the poverty line were moved up just a bit, the percentage of poor people in general, and thus among refugees and displaced persons, would increase by about 20% (Government of the Republic of Serbia 2004).

The position of internally displaced persons has worsened since 2003 and 2004 due to constant problems with the use of the property left behind in Kosovo and Metohia, limitations in available social welfare programs, the closing of collective refugee centers, and a reduction of humanitarian assistance (International Committee of the Red Cross 2005). Roma from Kosovo and Metohia are in a particularly difficult position and are often exposed to various forms of outright and subtle discrimination. They have dark complexions and Muslim names, and many do not speak Serbian. Many do not have any personal documents, which makes it difficult for them obtain a displaced persons ID and access available rights.

Freedom of movementCompared with the domestic population, displaced persons have

limited freedom of movement. If they wish to change their place of residence, they need approval from the Commissioner for Refugees in the place they wish to reside. This approval can be obtained with a statement from a host, by which the host becomes obliged to provide accommodation and food (called “acceptance by the host”).


Most displaced persons are temporarily registered and have to renew their residence at the local police station every three months. The regulation of residence is of crucial importance for the realization of their rights. Displaced persons who live in unofficial collective centers cannot be registered, as they do not have a legal address. Because it is impossible for them to legally register a place of residence, they register themselves at relatives’ or friends’ addresses.

HousingAbout 93% of displaced persons live in private accommodations

(Norwegian Refugee Council 2005). Paying rent and other expenses is not easy, particularly for those without permanent employment. One gets the impression that the standard of living in collective centers is lower, but often quite the opposite is true. The Commissioner for Refugees covers food and lodging expenses; some have an income and are officially employed or work in the gray economy. This generally makes their position more favorable than that of persons residing in private accommodations. Unlike refugees, displaced persons cannot apply for funds for housing programs, seeing as the government is officially committed to their return to Kosovo and Metohia.

The right to work and pensionsFormally, displaced persons have the same rights to work as every

other citizen. In practice, a majority of them are unemployed and earn their living in the “gray economy”. Internally displaced persons who were employed in state-owned companies in Kosovo and Metohia before 1999 are entitled to temporary compensation. The maximum amount of this compensation is about 60 Euros. The sustainability of this program is questionable, seeing as payments were delayed for six months in mid 2005.

Internally displaced persons receive pensions on the basis of em-ployment booklets. If they do not have this document, they receive a pension from the Fund for Health and Social Insurance of Serbia. The amount of this pension is determined provisionally and is sig-nificantly lower than it should be. Many workers’ booklets were left in Kosovo and Metohia, and this is a major obstacle for those who would like to find employment or receive a pension.


Access to education Education is free for displaced persons, as it is for the entire

population. The enrollment rate for children is 92 %, which is 5% below the national average (Group 484 2005). Roma children from Kosovo and Metohia often do not have any personal documents, making their rate of absence much higher. Poverty makes the further education of secondary school graduates very difficult.

Access to social welfareDisplaced persons received financial support from the International

Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) up until 2004. When it stopped, they could only receive social welfare if they fulfilled legal conditions, just like other citizens. Due to rigid criteria, complicated administrative procedures, or a lack of documents (some of these documents were burnt or destroyed in Kosovo and Metohia), many have not managed to realize this right. Only 20% of the 6,000 families that once received financial support from the ICRC have managed to exercise their right to social welfare (ICRC 2005).

Access to health care and integrationDisplaced persons have the right to free health care provided they

have an identity card for internally displaced persons. Like refugees, they rarely use private health care services. The integration problems that these people face are similar to those faced by refugees. In fact, their position actually appears to be even more difficult if we keep in mind the government’s official stance regarding their status (return to Kosovo and Metohia).

return or (re)integration

Return to Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia

Returns to Bosnia and Herzegovina take place on the basis of the bilateral agreement from 2003. By 1996 over 40% of refugees had returned, mainly to the territory where their ethnicity was a majority. In recent years, the number of returnees has declined significantly. In 2005, the number of those who decided to return was twelve times less than in 2002 (UNCHR 2005). The reasons for this are the


difficult economic situation and a lack of funds for rebuilding. Today there are fewer foreign donors in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and those that remain require a person to dwell in the area where the property is being renewed; also, reconstruction is approved only if a house has not been totally destroyed. Minority returnees are exposed to various forms of pressure and discrimination. Their houses usually do not receive running water and electricity in time for their return. This is usually intentionally postponed. These persons also face employment discrimination (Helsinki Committee for Human Rights in Bosnia and Herzegovina 2006). For these reasons people mainly relocate to areas where they belong to the majority ethnic group, thus contributing to the formation of mono-ethnic regional communities.

According to official data 122,000 refugees had returned to Croatia from Serbia by 1996 (Human Rights Watch 2006). The Association of Croatian Serbs and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) in Croatia estimate that the actual number of returnees is significantly lower. Approximately half of the requests for property return have been positively resolved. About 8,000 units of real estate which should have been returned to their original owners have either been sold to the state or are still in the possession of temporary owners. Court appeals for property repossession are often postponed with the excuse that processes cannot be completed until adequate accommodation is found for the temporary users. Estimates state that about 3,000 flats were destroyed and looted (OSCE 2005). Also, thousands of sales contracts may have been forged. These contracts have left many refugees without ownership rights. In response, the OSCE has recommended that the Republic of Croatia pass an act that would annul such contracts. According to the Law on Areas of Special State Support, returnees are entitled to financial aid for building materials. A small number of people have exercised this right. Apart from the problems mentioned above, a number of other factors have cast into doubt the sustainability the return project (Group 484 2005). Personal security and unemployment are the leading factors.

According to the Constitutional Law on Minority Group Rights, the state has to ensure the proportionate representation of minorities


in state administration, legal and executive bodies, and local authority. However, the Serbian ethnic community in Croatia is not represented in the police force, legislative bodies, and regional offices of state ministries in many regions (Human Rights Watch 2006). On the other hand, private employers, who are not obliged to employ minorities, show a readiness to employ Serbs; this is not the case with state administration (ibid.). Generally speaking, returnees have greater difficulty finding employment than the local population and those who graduated in Serbia experience difficulties with the recognition of their diplomas.

Personal security is the most important factor of the sustainability of the return project. According to the data, four returnees were killed, and fifty reported attacks on Serbs occurred in 2005 (Human Rights Watch 2006). The fact that the majority of perpetrators were not apprehended leads to an even greater feeling of insecurity.

The government of the Republic of Croatia has implemented a series of positive changes pertaining to the return of Serbs7. These changes primarily concern legal procedures and the reconstruction of the infrastructure which was damaged during the war. Nonetheless, there is still a considerable discrepancy between normatively proclaimed rights and their realization in practice (Group 484 2005).

Return to Kosovo and Metohia UN Security Council Resolution 1244 states that all displaced

persons have the right to a safe return to Kosovo. This includes the right to safety and security, freedom of movement; civil, religious and national rights, and the right to normal living conditions. In order to fulfill these conditions, the government of Kosovo should work on developing and implementing standards that would confirm its democratic position and commitment to the return of displaced persons. Unfortunately, the right to return is a mere promise. Approximately 14,553 people have returned to Kosovo and Metohia over the last six years, following the end of the armed conflict: 6,616 Serbs, 3,927 Askalia/Egyptians, 1,576 Roma, 1,324 Bosniaks, 7 One positive example is the introduction of a telephone information service at the Croatian

Embassy in Belgrade. The service offers basic information to refugees about their property, social insurance, pensions, vacancies, and other important issues.


484 Gorans, and 623 Albanians (UNHCR 2005). Most returned to rural areas of Kosovo with predominantly Serbian population. A vast majority of Serbs live in mono-ethnic enclaves, and have very limited freedom of movement. Health care, education, and social services are provided by the government of Serbia. Serbs practically do not participate in the institutional life of Kosovo. The reasons for this are sometimes political, but fear for personal security is the main reason. With the exception of Kosovska Mitrovica, which is the largest Serbian enclave where industry still partially functions, the participation of Serbs in institutional life in Kosovo is non-existent. Serbs are generally unemployed and mainly work on farms. The government of Serbia, as well as local and international humanitarian organizations, provides these persons with material support and humanitarian assistance. It seems that Serbs and other non-Albanian persons are not safe in Kosovo since ethnic conflicts are common. According to UNMIK (United Nations Mission in Kosovo) data, 260 Serbs have been killed since the establishment of the Protectorate. Serbian sources report significantly higher numbers (ERP KIM 2004).

Property repossession is a lengthy process. Only 5,000 of the 29,000 persons who have attempted to repossess their property have met with success (Group 484 2006). The Department of Housing and Property Issues is responsible for property protection and im-plementation. However, there have been numerous examples where this department’s decisions were not respected and recognized by local courts. The property repossession procedure is not easy for non-Albanian persons, and they often encounter many problems.

Some of these include:- lack of money to start the court procedure;- there is no possibility to visit Kosovo, since the UNMIK office

responsible for cooperation with the court organizes transport from the administrative border to only a few locations in Kosovo;

- the inability to engage local lawyers and experts;- ignorance of new regulations;- the inefficiency of local courts overloaded with cases;


- forged authorizations and sale contracts (Group 484 2005).

In spite of the efforts of the Serbian government and the international community, the majority of Serbs probably will not return to their homes in Kosovo. According to pessimistic, but very realistic, predictions another exodus of approximately 85,000 people from Kosovo to Serbia may be expected in the near future (UNHCR 2005).

Persons deported to serbiaThere exists yet another unofficial category – individuals who

were refused asylum in western European countries and returned to Serbia. Estimates state that between 100,000 and 150,000 persons have been or will be sent back to Serbia from the EU countries in the following years (Petronijević 2005). About 80% are Roma who once lived in Kosovo and Metohia (Ministry for Human and Minority Rights 2005). These persons belong to the most vulnerable group and are not welcome anywhere, neither in western Europe nor in Serbia. They cannot go to Kosovo, although most of them originate from there. Some countries practice forced deportations, despite the fact that the conditions for a safe return have not been fulfilled.

Many returned persons had been fully settled in their new communities; they had had jobs and friends, their children attended schools, etc. Most of them are Roma from Kosovo and Metohia. When they were deported to Serbia they were left hanging in limbo, so to speak. They are neither internally displaced persons nor refugees. They receive neither international nor local permanent assistance. Many were left without personal documents and therefore cannot claim their citizenship rights. This situation shows the lack of available mechanisms for the realization of basic human rights. These persons are in a de facto apatrid (i.e. stateless) position.8 Many had lived in another country for many years; their children had learned the language of their host country and any cultural, social and, economic ties they once had to Serbia were 8 The Report of the International Committee of the Red Cross 2005.


severed. A significant number of young people speak neither Roma nor Serbian; their diplomas are not recognized and, due to a lack of personal documents, they cannot enroll in schools. Unlike refugees and displaced persons, these individuals are generally not accepted by their local communities. “By bringing them back into a social and cultural context in which they do not belong and with which they are not familiar, these people are left on their own, to total social isolation and economic poverty” (Group 484 2006: 20).

In December, 2005 the United Nation Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK 2005) issued a document on forced return which states that the members of most ethnic groups (Serbs, Roma, Bosniaks, Albanians in mixed marriages, persons with mixed ethnic backgrounds, Gorans,9 Albanians who experienced personal threats) should not be forcibly returned to Kosovo. One must wonder who exactly will be allowed to return. According to UNMIK the only people who may safely return are members of the Ashkalija10 or Egyptian community. Nevertheless, members of all the above mentioned groups are being deported from Germany and other western countries. What is to be done with these people? The international community has suggested a “solution”: even though they come from Kosovo, the vast majority of these persons should be settled in Serbia. But their situation in the Serbian state and society is rather grim: according to Serbian laws they cannot obtain the status of refugees or displaced persons; many do not speak the Serbian language and the local population seems reluctant to accept them. These facts have simply not been taken into consideration. These people have become outcasts of the modern age, political collateral damage. A survey conducted among persons who were forcibly deported from Germany illustrates the character of their needs:

- 100% of them are unemployed, 66.08% would like to get a job and 4.48% would accept vocational training;

9 Gorans are a Slavic ethnic group who live in Kosovo, in the north-west of Macedonia, south-ern Serbia and the north-east Albania. They were Ortodox Slavs who adopted Islam by the end of the 18th century.

10 Ashkali are an ethnic group in Kosovo and Albania; they are Muslims who speak Albanian language. Their culture is similar to both Roma and Albanian culture.


- 100% of them would accept financial support;- 7.75% need medical help;- 80% need assistance to obtain personal documents or with other

administrative needs;- 35% need assistance to enroll their children in schools and

additional Serbian language lessons;- 7.41% need scholarships for their children;- 4.34% are interested in obtaining micro credits for private

business;- 85% need assistance with accommodation (building or

reconstructing a dwelling, or renting a flat) (Group 484 2006).

If we keep in mind their uncertain status in Serbia, it seems unlikely that their needs will be met in an organized and systematic manner.

Conclusion

When masses of refugees started to arrive from different parts of the former Yugoslavia, social workers were the first to offer support, not only as professionals, but also as people who comprehend the tragic nature of these events. Comfort, assistance in finding accommodation, and the provision of necessities were the first interventions. Even though this period was marked by strong emotions, from a professional point of view it was rather clear-cut. People gave unselfish support to refugees, humanitarian assistance was provided, refugees and later displaced persons were accepted by their friends and relatives. The degree of solidarity and mutual support was rather impressive. As time passed, a significant number of refugees and displaced persons fell into an extremely difficult social and economic position. Solidarity and mutual support faded away. Serbian citizens were faced with their own problems. Exhausted from the war, bombing, and organized theft by the political oligarchy, they became more and more ambivalent toward refugees and displaced persons.

A national refugee strategy was adopted in 2002 through the support of UNHCR, UNDP, and UNOCHA. This strategy of the


Serbian government mainly relied on the assistance of international donors; it defined return or integration measures, based on the free will of refugees. In September 2004, in an effort to encourage the integration of refugees, the government formed the Commission for the Coordination of Continual Refugee Integration. In 2004 and 2005 there was a shift toward a more concrete solution regarding refugees from the territory of the former Yugoslavia. UNHCR, OSCE, and the European Union mediated talks between Serbia and Montenegro, Croatia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina. At the meeting in Sarajevo a declaration was signed and a regional initiative for refugee return and integration was launched. According to this declaration the governments who signed the documents should adopt their own action plans (with objectives, tasks, and deadlines) that would be combined following negotiations and evaluation by the international community. The states of the region should offer favorable conditions and allow refugees to decide freely on their integration or return. Since then, two chapters of the mutual agreement have been defined: a chapter on statistics and a chapter on rights.

The integration of internally displaced persons has not been sys-tematically addressed by the government. The eventual return of these persons to Kosovo and Metohia is standard policy, meaning that there are no government programs aimed at their integration. Keep-ing in mind the actual situation in Kosovo and Metohia, we could say that these people are political hostages in their own country.

Deportees are in the worst position. Their basic human and civic rights are non-existent. Their legal status is not regulated, they do not have basic personal documents, and they do not speak the Ser-bian language. In order to improve their situation, the Ministry of Human and Minority Rights and the Migration, Asylum and the Refugees Regional Initiative (MARRI), in collaboration with the local non-government organisations, are preparing a strategy for the reintegration of deported persons. Until this strategy is ratified, these people will be in the position of apartrids (i. e. stateless persons), excluded from social life and the institutional and legal entitlements enjoyed by other citizens.

Many deported persons were returned to Serbia without person-


al documents and basic living resources and do not have the slightest idea how to integrate themselves into their new (old) environment. The Ministry for Human and Minority Rights, supported by the Swedish Embassy in Belgrade, opened a readmission office at the Belgrade Airport in December 2005. The team consists of a lawyer and a social worker. The social worker’s task is to identify deported persons, assess their basic needs, and inform them about their basic rights (health insurance, employment, education) and how to realize them (however unrealizable they may be). The social worker also disseminates information on local government and non-government services. Ideally, the readmission office would be a link to further support and assistance. Since such systematic support is not provid-ed, this readmission office only serves to reduce the strain caused by the immediate crisis situation and provide basic information.

The tasks of the profession of social work in this particular situ-ation should include the creation of a social services’ network that would provide suitable and effective assistance. Social workers have an ethical obligation to serve as advocates on behalf of the rights and interests of marginalized groups such as refugees and internally displaced and deported persons. Advocating these rights is a pro-fessional challenge for social workers; a true test of their courage, professional devotion, and the principles of social justice in action. Social workers cannot be politically neutral; they must be “aware of the influence they have on the political stage through their practice, they should stand for the users’ interests by changing the authorities’ system in order to improve social conditions, satisfy basic human needs, and promote social justice” (NASW Code of Ethics 1996). For this reason, legislative advocacy is one of the mechanisms that can improve the position of refugees and internally displaced and deported persons. The formation of coalitions is required because in-dividual efforts rarely result in changes. The regional organization of social workers and the establishment of professional coalitions and partnerships are ways to initiate desired changes, regardless of the country or region. This is one of the very few potentially powerful weapons that social workers, together with refugees and displaced or deported persons, can use. The living conditions and rights of the


internally displaced, refugees, and deported persons in Serbia are a true test of the county’s tolerance, equality, respect for diversity, and commitment to democratic values.


References

ERP KIM (2004), UNMIK-ove grube manipulacije brojkama. Available on: www.kosovo.net/news/archive (21.09.2004.)

Government of the Republic of Serbia (2003), Nacionalna strategija za rešavanje problema izbeglica i raseljenih lica. Vlada Republike Srbije.

Government of the Republic of Serbia (2004), Strategija za smanjenje siromaštva Republike Srbije. Beograd: Vlada Republike Srbije.

Group 484 (2004), Godišnji izveštaj o stanju ljudskih prava prisilnih migranata. Beograd: Group 484.

Group 484 (2005), Godišnji izveštaj o stanju ljudskih prava prisilnih migranata. Beograd: Group 484.

Group 484 (2006), Siromaštvo i pristup pravima izbelih i raseljenih lica. Beograd: Group 484.

Helsinki Committee for Human Rights in Bosnia and Herzegovina (2006), Human Rights. Sarajevo: Helsinki Committee for Human Rights in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Human Rights Watch (2006), Croatia: A Decade of Disappointment Continuing Obstacles to the Reintegration of Serb Returnees. Zagreb: Human Rights Watch.

Human Rights Watch, Country Summary for Croatia. Available on: http://hrw.org/wr2k6/pdf/croatia.pdf (January, 2006).

International Committee of the Red Cross (2005), Situacija interno raseljenih lica u Srbiji i Crnoj Gori. Belgrade: International Committee of the Red Cross.

Milosavljević M., Todorović L., Kotal J. (1998), Grad otvorenog srca: Beograd i izbeglice 1991-1996. Beograd: Crveni Krst.

Ministry of Human and Minority Rights (2005), Izveštaj o procesu readmisije. Beograd: Ministarstvo za ljudska i manjinska prava

National Association of Social Workers (1996), Code of Ethics. Washington: NASW Press.

Norwegian Refugee Council and IDMC (2005), IDPs from Kosovo: Stuck Between Uncertain Return Prospect and Denial of Local Integration. Belgrade: Norwegian Refugee Council.

OSCE (2005), Background Report On Refugee Return in Croatia and the Status of Implementation of the January 2005 Sarajevo Ministerial


Declaration On Refugee Returns. Available on: http://www.osce.org/documents/mc/2005/07/15886_en.pdf (29.07.2005).

Petronijević V. (2005), Problem azilantske zaštite - uporedna iskustva. Beograd: Group 484.

UN Security Council Resolution 1244 (1999), Available on: http://www.un.org/Docs/scres/1999/sc99.htm (10.01.2006).

UNHCR (2005), Internally Displaced Persons in Serbia and Montenegro (other than Kosovo) by Current Place of Asylum. Belgrade: UNHCR.

UNMIK (2005), Office of Returns and Communities, Background Note on Forced Returns Policy. Available on: www.proasyl.de/fileadmin/proasyl/fm_redakteure/ Newsletter_Anhaenge/108/pdf_filename_UNMIK_20Dez._202005.pdf (5.11.2006).

WFP/CES MECON (2001), Siromaštvo u Srbiji. Beograd: Centar za ekonomske studije.

159

Jelka Zorn

new borders, new exclusions

Introduction1

This article focuses on Slovenia, a state which has a sort of dual identity. Slovenia was once part of socialist or Tito’s Yugoslavia and as such shares historical characteristics with other states in the region. On the other hand, Slovenia has been a member of the European Union since 2004. I believe, however, that this duality extends beyond Slovenia’s political and symbolic belonging, and that Slovenia in fact has a dual border. The simultaneous presence of both a national border and a new European Union border significantly broadens the gap between Slovenia and other states of the former Yugoslavia. The situation surrounding visa requirements is quite telling: who needs a visa to travel to Slovenia? Citizens of the European Union or the United States, or those with whom Slovenes shared a country until recently? The price of this dual border is high, extremely high, since the border is not merely a line that one must cross to enter Slovenia. Borders have taken over the country; they’ve extended into the interior, and now run through local and state public services, from social services to health care, from education to the labor market (Balibar 2004). Of course this is a question of the concept of rights and thus concerns the very concrete rights of very concrete individuals. External borders determine internal ones, and have become essential for the functioning of state institutions, regardless of the complexity of actual situations (ibid.). This article will examine the internal borders that currently define policies regarding citizenship, resident permits and asylum; these have changed significantly since the end of the cold war and the disintegration of Yugoslavia. These personal legal statuses often 1 This article is part of the research project Transnational Citizenship (no. Z5-7309-0591) funded by

the Slovenian Research Agency (Javna agencija za raziskovalno dejavnosti Republike Slovenije.

160 J E L K A Z O R N

serve as vehicles for exclusion, racism and oppression. Slovenia provides an example of extreme oppression through administrative procedures, which have stripped certain persons of their social, economic, political, and basic human rights – this happened with the erasure from the Register of Permanent Residents (see below).

The problem of the ethnic divisions and oppression that have accumulated in Slovenia and in the territory of the former Yugoslavia in general, should not be perceived as being external to Europe, but rather as a projection of European race relations, as defined by renowned French philosopher Étienne Balibar (2004). Here, the notion of race doesn’t have any content other than a historical mixture of religious, linguistic, and genealogical identity references. Europe, like the former Yugoslavia, is diverse; it has always been home to a number of different religious, cultural, linguistic, and political affiliations; to different readings of history, and to various views on relations with the rest of the world (ibid.). As Balibar wrote, “The fate of European identity as a whole is being played out in the former Yugoslavia and more generally in the Balkans” (Balibar 2004: 6). One of the problems is that the Balkan region is perceived as external to Europe and thus excluded from Europe. This is reflected in an emerging European citizenship which is evermore becoming a citizenship of borders. As a frontier of the European Union, Slovenia, unfortunately, is a good example of the negative aspects of this conceptualization of citizenship and will allow me to show the ways in which many current problems pertain to the concept of borders. The ways in which persons perceived as foreign, immigrant or culturally different have been excluded will be described within the conceptual framework of borders.

the Case of Ali berisha

As I have already pointed out, the external border has been re-produced in the form of internal boundaries within the notions of citizenship and asylum. Detention centers for “aliens”, for exam-ple, can be viewed as institutions where internal and external bor-ders intersect – where different types of exclusion meet. Moreover,

161 NEW BORDERS, NEW EXCLUSIONS

some of the “aliens” have been produced by the Slovene state in a very peculiar way.

I would like to illustrate this by using the example of Ali Berisha, a man in his late thirties, a father of five children and a human rights activist. Born in Kosovo to a Roma family, Ali moved to Slovenia in 1985. Seven years later, after Slovenia had declared its sovereignty, he was deported to Albania, where he had never even set foot prior to his deportation. Albanian authorities returned Ali to Slovenia, where he was immediately placed in a Center for Aliens, the predecessor to today’s detention center. In order to avoid yet another deportation, Ali illegally fled to Germany, where he claimed asylum as a refugee from the former Yugoslavia. In 2005, German authorities decided to deport Ali, along with his wife and children, to his birthplace, to Kosovo. The Berisha family decided to come to Slovenia, where Ali had been a permanent resident before being unlawfully erased from the Register of Permanent Residents. In order to protect themselves from immediate deportation to Germany and thus to Kosovo, the Berisha family applied for asylum in Slovenia.

To understand Ali Berisha’s situation, both the erasure from the Reg-ister of Permanent Residence of Slovenia and issues pertaining to asy-lum in Germany, Slovenia and Europe in general have to be explained.

the erasure

Ali Berisha was one of the 18,305 persons erased from the Register of Permanent Residence, which took place in Slovenia in 1992. The term erasure was developed post festum by the victims of this act to signify the cancellation of their legal resident statuses. These legal statuses had been cancelled for all persons who did not become Slovene citizens in 1991 or 1992, when Slovenia’s citizenship policy was initially adopted. The erasure was carried out in secret by the Ministry of the Interior. The term in secret refers to the fact that the erased were not notified about the change of their permanent resident status, and usually found out about the erasure only after they had suffered its consequences. For example, during routine visits to local administrative offices they were asked to present personal


documents, which were confiscated and promptly destroyed. These persons became de facto stateless. The enforcement of the Aliens Act annulled all the rights they once possessed; in the eyes of the law they were equated with illegal immigrants (Dedić et al. 2003).

The cancellation of these persons’ permanent resident statuses stripped them of the right to live in Slovenia (in their homes with their families), the right to cross the state border, and all other eco-nomic, social and political rights. Certain individuals were even de-tained and deported. Some were forced to emigrate, fleeing to Italy, Germany, Belgium, and the newly established states in the region of the former Yugoslavia (Lipovec Čebron 2006). Some of the erased even went so far as to pretend to be refugees or asylum seekers in their home country, in Slovenia, where until recently they had lived on equal footing with all other citizens.

Without legal status, these persons were not eligible to receive social benefits. They were deprived of health insurance and were thus denied access to public health services. There are cases which resulted in death and even suicide due to insufficient health care and poverty (Dedić et al. 2003, Zorn 2005a, Blitz 2006).

As already mentioned, the erased could not legally cross the state border. Because Slovenia is a small country, and many of these persons have relatives and friends in other republics of the former Yugoslavia, this caused a great deal of grief and stress. Some were deported and had great difficulty returning to their families in Slovenia. This erasure greatly affected the lives of many, both as individuals and family members. Some parents were separated from their children for months or even years. Many suffered from constant fear of the police and other forms of psychological strain; some even experienced a physical torture (ibid.).

Many not only lost their jobs but were also denied the possibility of looking for employment. Many lost the pensions which they had earned in Slovenia. In contrast with other Slovene residents, these persons were not entitled to purchase the apartments (of collective ownership) in which they had lived (Lipovec Čebron 2006). Further-more, they were no longer able to drive, as their driver’s licences – issued in Slovenia – had been confiscated and destroyed by the


authorities. These individuals had become de facto stateless: “Like Jews in Nazi Germany, the Erased existed within a state that had robbed them of their rights but still subjected them to its jurisdic-tion” (Blitz 2006: 454).

The possibility of attaining new legal residence was in most cases limited to persons with privileged economic status. The case of the erased shows how borders are in the function of social or class discrimination. It is true, as Balibar wrote, that borders “have been transported into the middle of political space”, together with the institutional practices that are their result (Balibar 2004: 109, emphasis as in the original). “In other times we would have called this their ‘class function’” (ibid.: 113). Moreover, this social or class discrimination have resulted in the production of illegality of residence. A clear example of a state’s production of illegality is the erasure. This erasure and similar examples make it very clear that states do not attempt to eliminate illegality, but rather produce it, and show how this illegality is consequently used as a pretext for repressive measures (Balibar 2004).

At this point it is necessary to go a bit further back in time in order to understand how the Aliens Act could have been applied to people who had lived in Slovenia for years. The legal foundation of this exclusion lies in the administrative ethnic categorisation of citizens of the former Yugoslavia. The 1974 Yugoslav constitution introduced a special legal status, republican citizenship, a kind of sub-category of citizenship that at the time had no meaning, but was to play a vital role in 1991. Once this distinction had been established, it could be manipulated in a number of ways. In Slovenia it was used against immigrants.

On the basis of this distinction, the citizenship policy of the new state provided two legal possibilities for acquiring citizenship status. First, ethnic Slovenes, that is, those citizens who had been registered in the Slovene citizenship book, were automatically granted citizenship (i. e. ius sanguinis principle). The second possibility was created for those residents who had immigrated from other republics of the former Yugoslavia: they could only receive citizenship if they had filed an application (according to article


40 of the Citizenship Act, i. e. ius domicili principle). Most residents of non-Slovene ethnic origin, approximately 171,000 people (out of a population of 2 million) acquired Slovene citizenship in this manner. However, a total of 18,305 persons, which is almost 1% of the Slovene population, either did not apply for citizenship or had their application rejected. These individuals were erased from the Register of Permanent Residents on February 26, 1992 (Dedić et al. 2003).

The ideological background which made this erasure possible and effective was racism. Here, racism is understood as in Balibar’s notion (1991) of “racism without races”, that is, “race” as a symbolic status of otherness and not merely as the colour of one’s skin. The erased included a wide range of diverse individuals whose only unifying factor was the perception of these individuals as non-Slovenes, pejoratively referred to as “Southerners”, which implies that they were alien to Slovene “culture” (Blitz 2006: 459). This kind of racism, manifested as “anti-balkanism”, became widespread and normalised in society after Slovenia had gained its independence. For example, hate speech against immigrants even included public discussions about the revision and withdrawal of their lawfully acquired citizenship statuses (Dedić et al. 2003). In a public discourse Slovene citizenship was treated as if it were a privilege and not a right, thus concealing and distorting the experiences of the erased (ibid.).

Asylum seekers

Roma, one of the ethnic minorities in Slovenia were greatly af-fected by this erasure; it has been estimated that there were about 2,000 Roma individuals among the erased (Perić 2001).2 Ali Beri-

2 Beside the erasure there are other highly problematic issues such as the concept of “autoch-thonous” and “non-autochthonous” Roma, introduced and used by Slovene officials. All official Roma-related discourse in Slovenia and most legislation related to Roma, has addressed only the so-called “autochthonous” Roma (ibid.). The term has been commonly held to refer to those Roma whose families have lived in Slovenia for more that a century, while the “non-autoch-thonous” Roma are understood to be those who came as economic migrants from other parts of former Yugoslavia in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. There are no available statistics of the numbers of the later, however the Romani activists estimate that there might be about 2,500 to 3,000 of the so-called “non-autochthonous” (Perić 2001: 35). They also estimate that at least two thirds of this group does not have Slovene citizenship (ibid.). A new bill on Roma community omits the legal discrimination on the basis of autochthonity and non-autochthonity, however, it


sha is one of them. After being erased and deported from Slovenia, he fled to Germany in order to avoid being deported yet again. Like many other refugees from the former Yugoslavia, he had what the German law calls “Duldung” (i. e. temporary suspension of depor-tation), a kind of tolerated status. In 2002, the German government signed an agreement with Yugoslavia (now the Republic of Serbia), whereby almost all refugees were forced to return (Kreickenbaum 2003). The Berisha family applied for asylum but were nonetheless marked for deportation in 2005. In order to fully grasp the vulner-ability of Berisha family’s position, the issue of asylum must be critically examined.

In Germany, as well as in Slovenia and other European Union countries, only a small number of asylum applications are approved; instead, key asylum and migration strategies revolve around deten-tion and deportation. For example, in Germany only about 4.2 % of asylum applications are resolved in favour of refugees (Kreicken-baum 2003), and in Slovenia this percentage of refugees approved for asylum status is even lower (Zorn 2006). In three year time, be-tween 2002 and 2004, about 72,000 refugees or asylum seekers were removed from Germany;3 most of them to Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq. This means that on average 65 persons per day were deported.

Fleeing to Slovenia, the Berisha family managed to avoid de-portation from Germany to Kosovo. But Slovenia attempted to send them back to Germany – the Ministry of the Interior issued two decisions (in 2005 and 2006) without the possibility of appeal. On both occasions, anti-deportation campaigners were successful. Slovenian authorities justified their decision to return the family to Germany by citing the Dublin convention (RTV Slovenia 2006). This document states that asylum applications are to be considered and decided upon within the state in which they were initially filed; for instance, if someone applies for asylum in Germany, the matter is to be resolved in Germany. Not only does this convention allow human beings to be shuffled around as if they were furniture and

does not deal with the issues of the erasure or Roma individuals without citizenship. 3 The source of this number is Proasyl 2005. According to the European Commission report the

number of forced deportations from Germany in 2002, 2003 and 2004 is even higher: they estimate that 77,137 people were forcibly removed (Europa 2005).


give precedent to states’ interests over the rights of people, but it also constructs the European Union as single entity, meaning that asylum seekers rejected in one state have been rejected in the entire European Union.

According to the European Commission report, Germany has the highest number of deportations, although current trends are more or less uniform throughout the Europe (Europa 2005). For example, in the UK, nearly 50,700 persons were removed over three years (from 2002 to 2004). This means that on average 46 persons per day were deported from the UK; most often to the same countries mentioned above: Serbia and Montenegro, Afghanistan and Iraq.4 In the same period of time, approximately 8,200 persons were removed from Slovenia.5 This means that on average 7 persons per day were re-moved from Slovenia.

The European Commission (ibid.) estimates that in these 3 years more than half a million (520,000) people were forcibly removed from the European Union states. This means that on average 475 per-sons per day were deported. The institution of the asylum has been further distorted by non-arrival measures (i. e. visa requirements) (Gibney 2006). These measures result in unauthorised or illegal bor-der crossings which cost lives and money. Illegal border crossings degrade people and stigmatize them as unwanted and redundant, threaten their health and even their lives, and strip them of economic, social, political, and basic human rights. About 500 deaths due to illegal border crossings have been reported in each of the last ten years; this number would be even higher if we took into account all the cases that go unreported (Zorn 2005b).

In spite of these tragic consequences, non-arrival measures are becoming even tighter and have even begun to extend beyond the borders of the European Union (Gibney 2006). At the EU summit in Thessaloniki, Greece in June 2003, various ministers and vice presi-4 For example in 2005 there were 15,685 principal asylum applicants removed from the UK. In

the UK, 7% of applicants were granted asylum, and 10% were granted humanitarian protec-tion or discretionary leave to remain (Home Office 2006).

5 In 2005 in Slovenia there were 767 persons deported to their countries of origin, and 2,024 were returned to the countries from which they had arrived, which means that they were handed over to the police of those countries (Policija 2006).


dents approved an expenditure of nearly 400 million Euros in order to further extend European border protection, with an emphasis on the establishment of closer ties with transit countries and countries of origin of refugees (Proasyl 2005). Therefore, it should come as no surprise that the number of asylum seekers has been drastically re-duced in recent years. Each of the last few years has seen about 20 % fewer asylum applications than the year before (Slovenia is the only exception to this rule). In general, in the countries of the European Union the number of asylum applications has decreased, while the number of detained and deported persons has risen.

Another figure that shows the extent and normalisation of extreme-ly repressive measures that target refugees and immigrants is the use of detention. For example, in 2005 1,639 persons were detained in Slovenia.6 Data about how many asylum seekers are detained every year in the whole Europe is not available, but the constantly rising number of detention centers can give us some idea: in the countries of the European Union, there are currently 178 detention centres for asylum seekers and undocumented immigrants (Zorn 2006). These detention centres are prison, but prisons for people that have commit-ted no crime. One could argue that asylum no longer exists in Europe, seeing as Geneva refugee status has become so restricted and deten-tion and deportations so widespread (Lipovec Čebron 2006).

Human rights discourse as an attempt to normalise restrictive measures The normalization of restrictive measures has found support not

only in anti-terrorist and ethnic conflict prevention discourse, but also in discourse on human rights. I would like to use two cases to point this out.

The first case concerns the protection of the rights of “real” refu-gees as opposed to “bogus” asylum seekers. The discourse on “real” versus “bogus” is a political invention which slanders and vilifies all asylum seekers. According to the Slovene and other European governments, the deportation of “bogus” asylum seekers is justified 6 The UK for example doesn’t keep a record of annual detainee figures (Welch and Schuster

2005). The only available data is the number of persons detained on a given day: for example, on the last day of December 2005 there were 1,950 persons detained across the UK among these there were 1,450 asylum seekers, including 30 minors (Home Office 2006).


by the protection and rights granted to “real” refugees. Promoting respect for the human rights of the “real” refugees has become a pretext for the oppression of other refugees who, according to the government’s criteria, have not been sufficiently tortured to be rec-ognized as Geneva Convention refugees. Both deterrence measures and a culture of disbelief have become key elements of asylum (cf. Humphries 2004). The well known Convention on Common Minimal Standards in European Asylum Policy from 2003, if con-sidered from the perspective of asylum seekers, should instead be titled Standards of Maximum Deterrence (Kopp 2003).

The second case of the discourse on human rights pertains to detention and deportation. European directives on this matter paint a paradoxical picture: they clearly state that detention and removals must respect basic human rights, but do not question detention and removals as such (Zorn 2007). Let’s return to the case of Ali Berisha: he moved to Slovenia in 1985 and fled to Germany in 1993 (because he was not allowed to remain in Slovenia). He has not been to Kosovo (his birthplace) in more than 20 years; his children have never been there, and have no desire to go there. According to the European directives, their human rights would have to be respected during detention and deportation, but the deportation itself – after 12 years in Germany, where his children attended school – would not be a violation of human rights. No matter how courteously and respectfully refugees are treated during detention and deportation, at the end of the day they are still deported: they find themselves in a hostile or even, to some, alien world, without any possibility of integration, and without any guarantee of a life free of violence and extreme poverty (cf. Brkić in this book). If he were deported, Ali Berisha would have start from scratch for the third time in his life. As Hannah Arendt, herself a Jewish refugee from Germany, wrote 60 years ago: the most unfortunate circumstance refugees and other immigrants experience is not necessarily the loss of home and the entire social environment they are attached to – although already this is heavy enough; even more unfortunate is the lack of the possibility of finding a new home and a new community of their own (Arendt 1967). The result of common European policy is that Ali is no longer welcome anywhere.


If we examine common European migration and asylum poli-cies, we will see that the erasure from the Register of Permanent Residents of Slovenia in fact does not contradict current European principles; the difference is that the erasure has been officially rec-ognised as unconstitutional,7 whereas detention and deportation from European countries have not.

The Struggle for Regularisation: Re-inventing Citizenship and Asylum in europe The situation of formal inequality and oppression described above

could be defined as an emerging European apartheid. This apartheid, however, is being constantly challenged by resistance that is emerg-ing both locally and globally. The Erased, asylum seekers and the undocumented are important protagonists in the transnational strug-gle for social justice and citizenship rights. This struggle itself is a manifestation of active citizenship; it is actively creating a new type of political subjectivity (Sassen 2006). Despite their lack of legal sta-tus, the Erased are involved in public matters and thus participate in the creation of citizenship and democracy (cf. Balibar 2004). They formally do not belong to the communities in which they live, but in-stead form an indispensable part of a community acting in solidarity beyond national frames of reference (ibid.). As Balibar wrote: “We are not ‘citizens’, but we can ‘become’ citizens; we can enter into one or several processes of the creation of citizenship. And we enter all the more deeply into them the more numerous and more different (I would almost say the more divergent) we are” (Balibar 2004: 199, emphasis as in the original).

The struggle of Slovenia’s Erased is encouraging and inspiring. It took 10 years, however, for the truth to come out; for individuals to meet and share their experiences and for them to recognize that their erasure was a collective, ethnically motivated act of hatred and not merely an accumulation of individual administrative errors. To-day their struggle is growing even stronger. After several years of campaigning in Slovenia and abroad, the Erased and their support-7 The Constitutional Court of the Republic of Slovenia ruled in 1999 and 2003 that the erasure

from the Register of Permanent Residents is in violation of the Constitution.


ers have adopted a more strategic approach to their situation. In July 2006, they filed (with the help of Italian human rights advocates) a lawsuit against Slovenia with the European Court for Human Rights in Strasbourg. To strengthen their case and make their struggle vis-ible and politically relevant, the Erased and their supporters cre-ated an event called the “Caravan of the Erased”. This was a 4-day bus trip across Europe to Brussels, where their case was presented to the European Parliament. On the way to Brussels, the caravan stopped in Trieste, Monfalcone and Paris to meet members of the Italian regional Parliament and French Parliament, trade union or-ganisation and Sans Papier activists. All these groups and institu-tions welcomed our8 struggle and offered their support. The journey of 46 very different individuals (in terms of age, social and ethnic background etc.) travelling together was a moving experience and gained a great deal of media support.

The purpose of the campaign is to see justice served in this and similar cases. This is to demand not only the re-registration of the Erased and compensation for the rights they lost, but also a change that would be more profound and widespread: “We demand a re-invention of belonging, and access to full citizenship rights in Eu-rope” (Dostje! 2006). Hopefully the caravan has made a contribu-tion to intensify the conflict surrounding issues of belonging, and brought this conflict to the highest spheres of political authority in the EU. The Erased and their supporters believe that, if justice will be won, they will have made a small but important contribu-tion to the fight for citizenship rights of other immigrant groups and asylum seekers in Europe (Lipovec Čebron 2006). Therefore a key to this struggle is the development of solidarity networks with other oppressed groups. Much like exploited workers, for instance, who themselves are often immigrants, the Erased are a symptom of neo-liberal politics and policies. Only together, through mutual activities and solidarity, we can become powerful enough to fight neo-liberalism and its other face, racism.

Social workAs far as social work is concerned, and social justice is its core

8 Author of this article is among the supporters of the Erased and has attended the Caravan of the Erased.


value, I believe that the struggle for the right to stay, that is, for the regularisation of all people living in our communities, should be on every social worker’s agenda. This is easier said than done, since social workers are almost never completely independent and au-tonomous employees, answering solely to professional ethics and values, but rather find themselves having to comply with demands and objectives which can significantly detract them from a commit-ment to justice and the social services user’s perspective.

Those considered undocumented immigrants are detained in prison-like institutions, whereas asylum seekers live in semi-open, but nonetheless completely segregated type of housing. The Ministry of Interior, a governmental body responsible for the implementation of asylum and immigration policies, has incorporated a certain type of social work within the Asylum Home and Detention Centre. The Ministry and the Police have ultimate authority, which means that social work cannot function independently. The role of social services is more or less limited to issues of everyday survival and interpersonal relations of the housed asylum seekers and immigrants. The key issue of the right to remain in Slovenia is therefore out of the social workers’ hands. It seems that in these repressive environments the task of social workers is highly limited: it is more about making utterly inhumane practices such as segregation, detention and deportation look as humane as possible than engaging in the social service users’ perspective (advocating their rights and responding to their essential needs).

The issues pertaining to social work with asylum seekers and immi-grants demand more than individual social worker’s commitment since prevailing police conceptualisations resulting in practices of segregation and detention need to be challenged. The way we conceptualise issues reflects our practices, policies, and even legislation. The social work community needs to act in unison as a pressure group to fight inequali-ties on the individual, collective and structural levels. Forming alli-ances and networks with movements for global justice (the struggle of the Erased in Slovenia, for example) can empower members of oppressed groups and help to create sufficient pressure for adopt-ing measures aimed at generating a more egalitarian and inclusive


society. This would also enable social workers to assist individuals and families in finding their new home in Slovenia instead, as it is currently the case, social workers assist people in coping with their detention and deportation.

Conclusion

Even though there were no illegal residents in the former Yugosla-via, one can hardly imagine that Ali Berisha lived a life free of dis-crimination and oppression. Due to traditionally negative attitudes and stereotypes, as well as Roma’s political and cultural invisibil-ity, he faced oppression as a member of the Roma community. It is also well known that internal immigrants from other republics of the former Yugoslavia were constructed as a cultural Other, especially in the 1980’s, and were often targets of nationalism and racism, which were on the rise at that time. Oppression functioned through stere-otyping and prejudice aimed at both internal economic immigrants and Roma communities. Following the disintegration of Yugosla-via, racism underwent a significant metamorphosis. New forms of exclusion were added to the oppression which already existed. The construction of cultural otherness and stereotypes pertaining to skin colour have been enhanced; racist communities have learned to use legal measures to achieve segregation and exclusion.

In response, social work must explore these problems and create practices that will confront and overcome these new forms of exploitation and exclusion. Therefore, social work must not only look for ways to challenge a role that has been, in some cases, imposed on social workers (assisting with detention and deportation), but also, and above all, seek ways to change the whole situation of global inequality that is reflected in Europe’s immigration and asylum policies. This requires both an understanding of how racism in today’s Europe functions by erecting administrative borders around and within countries and research into the experiences and knowledge of the (potential) users of social services, in this case immigrants, asylum seekers, and the Erased.


References

Arendt, H. (1967), The Origins of Totalitarianism. London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd.

Balibar, É. (1991), Is There a “Neo-Racism”?. In: Balibar, É. and Wallerstein I., Race, Nation, Class: Ambiguous Identities. London, New York: Verso.

Balibar, É. (2004), We, the People of Europe? Reflections on Transnational Citizenship. Princeton, Oxford: Princeton University Press.

Blitz, K. B. (2006), Statelessness and the Social (De)Construction of Citizenship: Political Restructuring and Ethnic Discrimination in Slovenia. Journal of Human Rights, 5, 453-479.

Dedić, J., Jalušič V., Zorn, J. (2003), The Erased. Organised Innocence and the Politics of Exclusion. Ljubljana: Peace Institute.

Dostje! (2006), www.dostje.org (15/3/2007).Europa (2005): Available on: http://europa.eu/rapid/pressReleasesAction.

do?reference=MEMO/05/288&format=HTML&adged (12.11.2006).Gibney, J. M. (2006),“A Thousand Little Guantanamos”: Western States

and Measures to Prevent the Arrival of Refugees. In: Tunstall, K. E. (ed.), Displacement, Asylum, Migration. The Oxford Amnesty Lectures 2004. UK: Oxford University Press (139-169).

Home Office (2006), Home Office Statistical Bulletin. Asylum Statistics, United Kingdom 2005. Available on: www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/pdfs06/hosb1406.pdf (15.11.2006).

Humphries, B. (2004,) An Unacceptable Role for Social Work: Implementing Immigration Policy, British Journal of Social Work, 34, 93-107.

Kopp, K. (2003), European Asylum Policy. Minimum Standards – Maximum Deterrence, in Proasyl. Available on: www.proasyl.info/texte/english/European_Asylum_Policy_04.htm (12.11.2006).

Kreickenbaum, M. (2003), Germany: Fewer asylum seekers and more deportations. In: World Socialist Web Site. Available on: www.wsws.org/articles/2003/aug2003/asyl-08_prn.shtml (12.11.2006).

Lipovec Čebron, U. (2006), Personal conversation, 21.3.2006.Perić, T. (2001), Insufficient: Governmental Programs for Roma in


Slovenia. Roma Rights. Quarterly Journal of the European Roma Rights Center, 2/3, 34–49.

Policija (2005), Letno poročilo 2005. Available on: www.policija.si/si/statistika/lp/2005/lp2005.pdf (14.11.2006).

RTV Slovenia (2006), Pravni zapleti ob vrnitvi Berishe. Available on: www.rtvslo.si/modload.php?&c_mod=rnews&op=sections&func=read&c_menu=1&c_id=125492 (12.11.2006).

Proasyl (2005), Available on: www.proasyl.info/texte/english/Newsletter/2005_June.htm (12.11.2006).

Sassen, S. (2006), The Repositioning of Citizenship and Alienage: Emergent Subjects and Spaces for Politics. In: Tunstall, K. E. (ed.), Displacement, Asylum, Migration. The Oxford Amnesty Lectures 2004. UK: Oxford University Press, 176-203.

Welch, M., Schuster L. (2005), Detention of asylum seekers in the US, UK, France, Germany, and Italy: A critical view of the globalizing culture of control, in: Criminal Justice. London, Thousand Oaks and New Delhi, Sage, 331-355.

Zorn, J. (2005a), Ethnic Citizenship in the Slovenian State. Citizenship Studies, 2, 135-152.

Zorn, J. (2005b), Strategije izključevanja begunk, beguncev oziroma prosilcev za azil in oseb brez statusa. Socialno delo, 4/5, 259-275.

Zorn, J. (2006), Od izjeme do norme: centri za tujce, pridrževanje in deportacije. Časopis za kritiko znanosti, 226, 54-73.

Zorn, J. (2007), Borders, Exclusions and Resistance: The case of Slovenia. In: Lavalette, M., Ferguson, I. (eds.), International Social Work and the Radical Tradition. UK: Venture Press, 117-144.

175

Christine Labonté-Roset

ethnicity and Intercultural Practice in social Work Curricula

Social work addressing the issues of ethnic minorities is a comparatively recent development, and consequently the discussion of these issues is also new to social work training.

Although immigration has been ongoing since the early 1960s – or earlier in the case of certain former colonial nations such as France and Great Britain – predominantly in the form of workforce migration, most European countries viewed themselves as nations with homogeneous populations until the end of the 1970s. Issues of ethnic and/or cultural diversity were not foregrounded and workforce immigration was viewed as temporary.

It was assumed that workers, who mainly came from countries bordering the Mediterranean, would work in Europe for a few years and then return to their home countries, to be replaced in turn by oth-ers. This “rotation principle” was the basis, for example, of Germa-ny’s “foreigner policy”, as it was officially known. In a similar vain,

“support for foreigners” was a common concept, which meant that “guest workers” (another German euphemism for workforce immi-grants) could turn to the advice centres of large independent welfare associations if they encountered difficulties. For the sake of simplic-ity, responsibilities were assigned along religious lines. Caritas was to offer support to Catholics (Italians and Spaniards), the Protestant Diakonisches Werk to those from the former Yugoslavia and Greece, and the non-denominational Arbeiterwohlfahrt (Workers’ Welfare) to Moslem Turks. The consequence of this was that no political or social attempts at integration were made. Those who came to Ger-many were simply expected to adapt. This also applied to refugees from eastern bloc countries, who were very much welcome during

176 C H R I S T I N E L A B O N T É - R O S E T

the Cold-War Europe, as they were proof of the lack of freedom within the eastern bloc.

The parallel process of Europeanisation had other causes. The creation of the European Economic Community was intended to strengthen the European economic sector in the face of other eco-nomic superpowers such as the USA. Furthermore, the reconciliation of “arch enemies”, such as France and Germany, was supposed to make conflict a thing of the past. Naturally, this played a considerable part in the formation of blocs during the Cold War (Lorenz 2006).

It was not until the 1980s and 1990s that the highly visible mul-ticulturalism of our societies was publicly discussed. There were, however, still differences between countries. For instance, until re-cently many German politicians denied that Germany is a country of immigration. In France it was argued that there were no ethnic minorities because nationality laws state that anyone born in the country has the right to French citizenship. Everyone was equal before the law and had the same rights and obligations.

The fact that this does not guarantee the full integration of immi-grants into the host society was dramatically illustrated by the riots in the outskirts of French cities. Anyone who had been involved with these issues, however, realized this much earlier. At this point it is worth mentioning the Ni Putes, Ni Soumises movement found-ed by Fadéla Amara, which has grown into a mass movement. In her book of the same title, she analyses with a rare clarity the failed integration of workforce immigrants. Starting with the story of her own family she shows that, while the first generation tended to be more isolated and hoped to return to their homeland, subsequent generations wanted to integrate via education and employment, but were prevented from doing so, as they were the first to be affected by the mass unemployment of the 1990s (Amara 2004).

What effect did the realisation that we are living in multicultural societies have on the study and practice of social work? Over the past 20 years new, sensitive ways to tackle the issues of ethnic minorities have been developed. This first occurred through an analysis of the existing situation of ethnic minorities that had immigrated to the

177 ETHNICITY AND INTERCULTURAL PRACTICE IN SOCIAL WORK CURRICULA

country, or of those that had been there for a longer period of time such as Roma (Rommelspacher 1999, Bergold 2002), and also via new forms of social work developed on the basis of this analysis. These were given different names in different countries, including anti-racist or anti-oppressive social work or inter-cultural work. The latter mainly addresses the coexistence of the majority and minorities in a society, although it occasionally gave rise to uncritical ideas about a multicultural coexistence in which all groups can mutually enrich one and other. Also, “culture” was often viewed as fixed and static. At least in the early stages, the inequality of power between the majority and minority and their respective socio-economic situations were not given sufficient consideration. It was not until recently that structural affinities between ethnic minorities and other social minorities, such as the disabled, became a topic of discussion.

Great Britain has been a pioneer in this field, and forms of “anti-racist” or “anti-oppressive social work” developed there have influenced the development of similar theory and practice in other countries (Lorenz, Aluffi-Pentini 1995, Dominelli 2002). All British curricula include a main focus on “ethics and values, including anti-oppressive practice” (Lyons, Manion 2004: 81).

Recently, however, serious criticism has been levelled at anti-oppressive practice, claiming that it does not take into account the respective conditions under which it is carried out. Kenneth McLaughlin (2005: 286) expresses this as follows: “Anti-oppressive social work, rather than being a challenge to the state, has allowed the state to reposition itself once again as a benign provider of welfare, which, via the anti-oppressive social worker, is able to enforce new moral codes of behaviour on the recipients of welfare.”

In other European countries, the status of this topic varies greatly. In the Netherlands, it is usually dealt with under the heading of “social exclusion”. In Scandinavian countries it has only recently been acknowledged as an important topic, particularly after right-wing and explicitly anti-foreigner parties such as the Danish Dansk Folkeparti had had election success. Subsequently, the party, as a supporter of the governing liberal party after 2001, was able to pass


highly restrictive laws targeting immigrants (Mason 2004). In other Nordic countries, such as Finland, the topic is dealt with more in the context of globalisation and less in terms of indigenous ethnic minorities (Lasonen 2005). At the same time, and similar to other Scandinavian countries, the number of workforce migrants here is low compared to central European countries, but in all of these countries the indigenous Sami exist as a minority. The topic now seems to be becoming more significant, at least in Finnish social work research. For instance, the notice for a conference in May, 2006 read:

Little social work research has been done specifically on migrant perspectives and experiences in social and health care services or developing conceptual frameworks that tackle these complex issues. There are few welfare professionals or social work researchers from ethnic minorities or migrant backgrounds in Finland and cultural competence has not yet been introduced as a core element of social work curricula (Clarke 2006: 1).In Belgium, too, the subject of inter-cultural coexistence has been

taken more seriously since the success of the Vlaamse Block. Southern European countries such as Italy, Spain, and Portugal, which had been countries of emigration for a long time, still have difficulties with this topic in social work research. This topic is more likely to be found in training in Spain, for example at the University of Barcelona, which is without a doubt also related to the fact that Spain is one of the countries most affected by so-called “illegal” immigration, mainly from Africa.

In many countries, courses of this type can occasionally be found in social work study programmes, depending on whether this is a practical or research speciality of the individual teaching staff. In Masters pro-grammes that deal with European social policy, such as the MACESS (Comparative European Social Studies) joint Masters programme, the topic is dealt with under the heading of “marginalisation and social exclusion”. In the context of human rights, the question of full citizens’ rights for immigrants and their dependants is at least broached.

In Germany, inter-cultural social work is now an integral part of the curricula of social work study programmes; this is partly due to the fact that in recent years working groups of the Fakultätentag für Soziale Arbeit (Association of Schools of Social Work) have focused on this topic. At my own university we have a “Diversity

179 ETHNICITY AND INTERCULTURAL PRACTICE IN SOCIAL WORK CURRICULA

Studies” module in the foundation course, with the subgroups “inter-cultural work” and “Gender and queer studies”. In the main study programme we provide project seminars lasting four semesters, including a four-month practice period, in this subject area. Similar to the gender issue, a queer topic should be dealt with in all areas, from academic social work to the health-care sector etc. Since 2000 we have been offering an English-language Masters programme “Inter-Cultural Conflict Management”, which to my mind is unique in Europe. To date, students from 30 countries have participated. This study programme arose mainly from our experiences with establishing or restructuring social work faculties after the Balkan war and the disintegration of Yugoslavia into individual countries. In the first three years, the DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service) financed the establishment of the course. The focal points of the curriculum included international law and human rights and diversity training and mediation.

In summary, it can be said that issues of multicultural societies in social work training have gained ground in recent years, which can also be seen in the appearance of various conferences on the subject. This is partly to do with the fact that the multiculturalism of European societies has become obvious, and the percentage of immigrants is constantly increasing, at least in the cities – in Ber-lin, for example, over 40% of children and young people have a migrant background (Labonté-Roset 2006) .This is also to do with the increase and success of racist parties and groups in most Euro-pean countries, and with the fact that ethnic minorities have started demanding their full rights to participation, sometimes in an ag-gressive manner, as in France. Nonetheless, these topics are not satisfactorily covered in many curricula in Europe.


References

Amara, F. (2004), Ni Putes, Ni Soumises. Paris: La Découverte Poche.Bergold, J. (2002), Feindbilder und Verständigung. Grundfragen der

politischen Psychologie. Opladen: Leske + Budrich.Clarke, K. (2006), Migrant Community Research in Finland: New Per-

spectives in Producing Social Work Knowledge. Available on: www.uta.fi (22.11.2006).

Dominelli, L. (2002), Anti-oppressive Social Work Theory and Practice. Hampshire. Palgrave: Macmillan.

Labonté-Roset, C. (2006), Ist die Berliner Politik gerecht? Die Tageszeitung, 10/9/2006, p. 27.

Lasonen, J. (2005), Réflexions sur l’interculturalité par rapport à l’éducation et au travail. Higher Education Policy, 18, 4, 54-66.

Lorenz, W., Aluffi-Pentini, A. (eds.) (1995), Anti-racist Work with Young People. Dorset: Russell House.

Lorenz, W. (2006), Perspectives on European Social Work. From the Birth of the Nation State to the impact of Globalisation. Leverkusen Opladen: B. Budrich Publishers

Lyons, K., Manion, K. (2004), Education for the Social Professions in the United Kingdom. In: Hamburger, F. et al. (eds.), Ausbildung für soziale Berufe in Europa. Band 1. Frankfurt am Main: ISS-Eigenverlag.

Mason, T. (2004), Denmark. In: Campanini, A., Frost, E. (eds.), European Social Work. Commonalities and Differences. Rome: Carocci

McLaughlin, K. (2005), From ridicule to institutionalization: anti-oppression, the state and social work. Critical Social Policy, 25, 3, 283-305.

Rommelspacher, B. (1999), Dominanzkultur. Texte zur Fremdheit und Macht. Göttingen: Lamur Verlag.

181

Milanka Miković and Udžejna Habul

The Effects of Ethnic Divisions on Social Work Education in Bosnia and Herzegovina

Introduction

With the secession of the Republic of Slovenia from the former Socialist Federative Republic of Yugoslavia in late 1991, it became evident that disintegration along the lines of inter-republic borders was inevitable. Even die hard utopists could no longer believe in the survival of “Tito’s Yugoslavia”. The idea of independence for all the republics of the former Yugoslavia was irreversibly bringing about circumstances in which chaos, fueled by older Balkan divisions, was to ultimately prevail. Previous values such as brotherhood and unity were paradoxically transformed into hatred, thanks to a multi-ethnic system which scattered people such a way that this imaginary melting pot of religions and peoples could no longer be sustained. The unpredictable effects of unleashed savage passions led a country which had been “normal” until this point into a war of everyone against everyone and a clash of everything against everything.

The independence of the Republics of Slovenia and Croatia led to an independence referendum in the Republic of Bosnia and Her-zegovina, through which this small European country in the middle of the Balkan peninsula gained independence and became a mem-ber of the United Nations in 1992. In line with its description as a

“small Yugoslavia,” the referendum and consequent independence produced a division of the peoples of Bosnia which was marked by the atrocities of a fratricidal war.1

1 Bosnia and Herzegovina has a population of 4,3 million, according to 2001 estimates. The data should be viewed cum grano salis, as a census of the population has not been carried out since 1991. Also, seri-ous errors are possible in light of the displacement of the masses as a result of military activity and ethnic cleansing. According to the 1991 census, Bosnia and Herzegovina was inhabited by the following ethnic groups: Bosniaks 44%, Serbs 31%, Croats 17%, Yugoslavs 5.5%, others 2.5%. (The term “Bosniak” re-placed the term “Muslim” as an ethnic term, partly to avoid confusion with the religious term Muslim as a follower of Islam). Languages used are: Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian (Mayer, Nash 2002).

182 M I L A N K A M I K O V I Ć A N D U D Ž E J N A H A B U L

Those famous words, “nothing is as it used to be”, can be ap-plied to Bosnia and Herzegovina today. Fierce attacks have been carried out against the traditional Bosnian values of tolerance, re-spect for others, and the belief that one’s neighbor is more important than one’s brother. “Voluntary” resettlement and forceful expulsion during the war (Mazowijecki 1995) has resulted in a large number of ethnically pure territories in both regions of Bosnia and Herze-govina (see below). The return of displaced and expelled residents of different ethnic backgrounds, 12 years after the end of the war, re-mains obstructed and very slow. It would seem that the masterminds of Bosnia’s destruction had vehemently insisted on the annihilation of moral and ethnic values. For example, religious buildings belong-ing to other groups were razed to the ground, depending on national i.e. ethnic supremacy; especially frightening is the destruction of almost all religious buildings belonging to the Moslem communi-ty in Bosnian Serb controlled areas during the war (Association of Citizens from Five Municipalities of Bosanska Krajina 1995). The war ended with the Dayton Agreement in December 1995, and with a definite division of the country into two entities, the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina and Republika Srpska. Such a conclu-sion led to a period of European integration which can only be de-scribed as agonizing. This peace often resembles a war after a war. The return of refugees of different ethnic background to their prewar residences, the majority of which had been “ethnically cleansed,” is often strategically obstructed even today. The inability to find work, lawlessness, threats, and even the murder of returnees are an ev-eryday occurrence in contemporary Bosnian society. This situation calls for the strengthening of the rule of law, along with reforms in the economic and civil sectors which would provide the founda-tion for a refugee policy and create opportunities for the exercise of the various rights of ethnic groups (Mayer, Nash 2002). In such circumstances, alienated forms of education are “normal” and are reflected in national divisions in the educational system, whereby children of different ethnicities, as a result of divisions along ethnic lines, do not end up in the same class. In Bosnia and Herzegovina this is customarily called “two schools under the same roof.” The presence of nationalistic ideology in curricula is another reason for this phenomenon. Simply put, in communities inhabited, for ex-ample, by a majority of the Croatian population, students study cer-

183 THE EFFECTS OF ETHNIC DIVISONS ON SOCIAL WORK EDUCATION. . .

tain subjects, such as history, from different textbooks than those used by students of Bosniak or Serb ethnic backgrounds, etc. This phenomenon is particularly present in some parts of western Her-zegovina and central Bosnia. Divisions also occur in the selection and hiring of teachers; “Croat” children in these communities are taught almost exclusively by Croat teachers, and “Bosniak” and

“Serb” children by Bosniak and Serb teachers. These relations hin-der the return of minority ethnic groups and compel young people to leave the country for good.

The situation in elementary and high school education is inevi-tably reflected in higher education. In Bosnia and Herzegovina we find two universities in the same city, whose division is signified by the two sides of the world, east and west; east (“Serb”) and west (“Muslim”) Sarajevo; University of Mostar in the east (“Muslim part of the town”) and University of Mostar in the west (“Croat part of the town”). This has effected the education of social workers. It should be noted that the recently established Department of Social Work in Banja Luka (founded in 2000, when 72 students were en-rolled), as well as the Department of Social Work at the University of Tuzla (2004, 152 students enrolled), should not be structured exclusively around ethnic divisions, but around the extremely com-plex social situation in a country which is characterized by poverty, and also around an increasing interest in these studies among young people.2 Nonetheless, the existence of social work studies in three of eight Universities cannot be viewed using objective criteria, free from the demagogic notions of ethnic divisions. This is especially true because this is a unique phenomenon in the region. A similar model can be found only in Serbia and Kosovo, where, besides Belgrade, social work studies have been established in Kosovska Mitrovica (in 2004). Furthermore, it appears that cities with their own social work education programs are in the state’s interest. This can be discerned in the decision of parliamentary and university au-thorities to establish a Department of Social Work (2003) in Monte-negro, at the University of Podgorica Law School.

2 Along with Banja Luka, where the fifth class of students was enrolled in the 2006/07 academic year, and Tuzla, where the third class was enrolled, in Sarajevo a total of 327 students were enrolled in 2006/07 (162 full-time and 165 part-time students).


The effects of ethnic divisions on social work education in Bos-nia and Herzegovina cannot be examined without a comparative analysis and research on the education of social workers. This re-search covers the time period from the founding of the two-year School for Social Workers of Sarajevo in 1958, through the estab-lishment of a four-year study, i.e. social work studies as an aca-demic discipline at the Faculty of Political Science of Sarajevo in 1985, all the way to today. For the sake of convenience, the educa-tion of social workers and the potential influence of ethnic divi-sions on this segment of social activities will be examined in three stages: 1958-1991; 1992-1995; and 1996 and after. Each of these periods has certain unique characteristics, which are the result of changes and amendments to curricula; such changes were partly conditioned by social processes and relations. These processes and relations were to eventually culminate in war and the atrocities of ethnocentrism in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The Beginnings of Social Work Education at the Two-year School for Social Workers in Sarajevo (1958-1984)

The need to provide the most vulnerable categories of the popu-lation following World War II (which was at least partly stimulated by an ideological rift between the Communist Party of Yugoslavia and the government of the Soviet Union, i.e. the direct Stalin-Tito clash in 1948) with better social protection and security brought about – with a primary focus on collective values and the state care of a person – the need to introduce expert, professional social work, especially in the social security institutions of the socialist Yugo-slav state (Zaviršek 2005). With the founding of two-year Schools for Social Workers in the five socialist republics3, the last of which was established in Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1958, professional education was established in the field of social work. In this man-ner Yugoslavia diverged from the generally accepted concepts and

3 Two-year Schools for Social Workers were founded in Croatia (1952), Slovenia (1955), Serbia and Macedonia (1957).


prevalent ideological orientation of other socialist countries, which had done away with education for social workers and did not even implement such programs until the last decade of the 20th century.

The first curricula in all five newly founded Schools for Social Workers were almost identical and completion of the two-year pro-gram conferred a diploma and the professional title of social work-er. “Similarities in social work education in the different schools in Yugoslavia were a result of the similar formal structure of social work institutions in the whole country, as well as the fact that the first curricula were designed either by special UN commissions or with support provided by foreign experts” (Zaviršek 2005: 34).

The unique characteristics of the first generation of social work-ers at the School for Social Workers in Sarajevo arose from the fact that the “school was founded as a vocational school with the aim of educating promising and prominent workers in the area of social protection, who will be trained to deal with increasingly complex social problems, phenomena, and needs which can no longer be ad-dressed without specially trained staff” (Collection of Papers 1979: 39). We may note the following:- Upon the founding of the School for Social Workers in 1958, two

classes enrolled in the first year of studies: the first in March, and the second in September;

- The first class of students and graduates, in accordance with the Law of the School for Social Workers in Sarajevo, had certain privileges which later classes did not enjoy. For instance, the Law of the School for Social Workers, Article 7, paragraph 2, stipulates that, along with candidates with a high school degree, this school could be attended by “persons who had graduated at least from an eight-year school, or school of equal value, or if a relevant school degree is acknowledged and they have had 8 years of professional practice in a social protection service or other administrative services of state bodies, institutions and organizations, that perform public services.” A second privilege is stipulated in Article 10 of the same Law: “Servants who are sent for regular education by the bodies, institutions or organizations where they are employed are entitled to paid leave, as well as all other labor rights.” The same article specified the rights of part-time students who were enrolled in the School with the approval


of their employers. This category of students was “entitled to paid leave and the reimbursement of travel expenses for attending compulsory courses and taking examinations.” Simply speaking, the first generations of full-time students at the School for Social Workers in Sarajevo consisted of students who were already employed and received regular salaries or scholarships during their studies.

Due to the benefits and opportunities of education most students and graduates of the first classes were men employed in local gov-ernance bodies. The average age of students in the first five classes was over 35 as shown in the overview of graduates in the first 19 classes at the School for Social Workers in Sarajevo (1960-1978), by gender and average age:

Group Graduating ClassSex

Average ageFemale Male

1. I-V (1960-1963) 36.2% 63.8% 35.22. VI-X (1964-1968) 45.9% 54.05% 293. XI-XV (1969-1973) 61.3% 38.7% 27.14. XVI-XIX (1974-1978) 58.65% 41.35% 23.8

AVERAGE 52.1% 47.9% 27.5

Source: Collection of papers (Zbornik radova) (1979), Social Work in Development of Social Policy and Social Protection (Socijalni rad u razvoju socijalne politike i socijalne zaštite). Sarajevo: School for Social Workers.

The data in the above table show that, starting with the sixth class, the average age of graduates, as well as the number of male graduates, declined. This is partly due to the fact that workers of this kind were no longer scarce. The “employed” category now mostly consisted of people holding lower positions, unlike in the first five generations, where 18.9% of graduates held management positions and 26.1% were independent officers, mostly males. Only 6.6% of students in the first five generations of graduates were high school students who continued their studies immediately after completing high school (Collection of papers 1979).


In the third group, study and employment no longer overlap. The average age of graduates continued to drop (27.1) as did the number of males, 38.7%, compared with 63.8% in the first five generations. With the cancellation of various privileges, the sex structure of the student body gradually returned to “normal”, from 36.2% female graduates in the first group, to 45.9% in the second and 61.3% in the third. In the first 19 graduating classes of the School for Social Workers in Sarajevo more than half of the total number of graduates are females (52.1%). The increase of female and decrease of male graduates was to contin-ue in all subsequent generations. Less than 10% of the 1,000 students enrolled at the Department of Social Work at the Faculty of Political Science in the 2005/2006 academic year were male. These facts lead to the conclusion that the profession of social worker “came in handy” for men at a time when survival in an appropriate position required a “formal” diploma. With the appearance of new jobs and opportunities, which paid better and were more attractive, men lost interest in this “female” profession. Today, social work is performed almost entirely by female social workers.

Ethnic Divisions

Research on the education of social workers at the two-year School for Social Workers and four-year Faculty of Political Science of Sarajevo before 1991 shows that ethnic divisions simply did not exist. This is perhaps surprising, seeing as this area of social functioning could indeed have provided fertile ground for such divisions. On the contrary, a cross referencing of the number of enrolled students and graduates and the ethnic background of these students shows that ethnic representation at the school was closely proportionate to the ethnic make up of the Socialist Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina at the time. For example, in the class of 1960 (that is, the first graduating class), over 40% of students were of Muslim descent: 28 out of a total 67 graduates. Near identical proportions can be seen in all subsequent generations, until 1991.

The absence of ethnic divisions is also confirmed by the fact that, over a period of 27 years (1958-1991), social work education


programs were completed by a number of students from other republics of the former Yugoslavia, who on average made up around 20% of the total number of graduates. Overview of the first 19 classes at the School for Social Workers in Sarajevo (1960-1978) by republic shows the following ethnic structure:

Generation Bosnia and Herzegovina Montenegro Croatia Macedonia Slovenia Serbia

I-V1960-1963 85.5% 5% 4.1% 0.4% - 5%

VI-X1964-1968 77.6% 7.3% 6.7% 0.6% - 7.8%

XI-XV1969-1973 75.3% 5.7% 7.6% 0.2% 0.65 10.6%

XVI-XIX1974-1978 82.7% 7% 2.3% - 0.5% 7.5%

Average 80% 6.3% 5.3% 0.25% 0.25% 7.9%

Source: Collection of papers (Zbornik radova) (1979), Social Work in Develop-ment of Social Policy and Social Protection (Socijalni rad u razvoju socijalne politike i socijalne zaštite). Sarajevo: School for Social Workers.

Most graduates from other republics came from Serbia (7.9%), Montenegro (6.3%), and Croatia (5.3%); the fewest came from Mace-donia and Slovenia (0.25% each). Such a graduate structure confirms beyond all doubt the absence of the effects of ethnic divisions on the education of social workers at the School for Social Workers in Sa-rajevo. The reason why so many students from other republics chose to be schooled in Sarajevo (apart from a common language) can be found in the proximity of Sarajevo to certain border areas of neigh-boring Republics. The development of curricula for social work stud-ies at the School for Social Workers in Sarajevo, and even later at the Faculty of Political Science, also leads to the conclusion that ethnic divisions were not present or did not influence the education of social workers in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Nonetheless, some nuances of transition, which also marked the period of the socialism in other social segments, are visible in this period. For example, curricula for social work studies in Sarajevo, were almost identical to curricula at other advanced and university institutions for the education of social workers in the Socialist Federative Republic of Yugoslavia. Hence, it is entirely understandable that a diploma from any one of these insti-tutions was valid and recognized anywhere in Yugoslavia.


The Education of Social Workers at the Faculty of Political Science of Sarajevo, with an Emphasis on the Period During the War in Bosnia and Herzegovina (1992-1995)

A particular turning point in the development of the education of social workers in Bosnia and Herzegovina was the introduction of a four-year social work program at the Faculty of Political Science of Sarajevo in 1985. The groundwork for social work as an academic discipline and for the development of the science of social work was thus laid; especially important were the introduction of postgraduate and doctoral studies and new opportunities for practical social work.

During the 1992-1995 war and siege, none of the faculties in Sa-rajevo discontinued classes. Classes were held using the old curricula and with the staff that had remained in a besieged Sarajevo. The war-time circumstances of this period affected the ethnic structure of both teachers and students, and the work during these years may be called

“study in wartime conditions.” In April, 1992, large numbers of Serb teachers and instructors left Sarajevo4. As the conflict escalated, teach-ers from other ethnic groups began to leave. At the Faculty as well as at the Department of Social Work remained predominantly “Bosniak staff”. In order to understand this process, it is important to remember the political concept that divides the country into three ethnic territories with government bodies established upon ethnic principles – the Ser-bian Republika Srpska, the Croat Community of “Herzeg-Bosnia” (re-named a Republic in the summer of 1992), and the remaining territory, which resumed the continuity of the Republic of Bosnia and Herze-govina, where members of the Bosniak ethnic group formed a majority. Nonetheless, a small number of non-Bosniak teachers, instructors, and administrative staff who refused to accept the ethnicization of the uni-versity and life in general remained at the Faculty of Political Science and the Department of Social Work.5

4 The Yugoslav People’s Army and Serb volunteer forces began shelling Sarajevo on April 6, 1992 and this date is considered to be the beginning of siege of the city and the official start of war in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Many people left the city even before the conflict broke out, which can lead us to conclude that they had been informed in advance that the conflict would start.

5 The Serb Democratic Party – SDS, first secretly, then publicly, conducted a campaign telling all Serbs to leave territories not under their control. In the fall of 1992, an identical call came from the authorities of the self-declared Herzeg-Bosnia, which first withdrew its ministers and officials from Sarajevo, thus denying the legitimacy of institutions of the internationally recognized Bosnia and Herzegovina.


Strategies focused on the preservation of the Faculty of Political Science and the departments operating within the Faculty, despite the hardships of wartime circumstances. The continuation of studies was ensured, but regular enrollment did not take place during this period.

Ethnic structure of graduates (1990-1995)

Ethnic background 1990 1991 1992 1995

Bosniaks 18 15 8 10Croats 11 4 / 1Serbs 2 19 10 1Total 31 38 18 12

Source: Faculty of Political Science, Department of Social Work Students Record Office Data

It is plain to see that war conditions and “war geography” objec-tively resulted in an enormous increase in the number of Bosniak graduates at the University of Sarajevo, including the Faculty of Po-litical Science and Department of Social Work. Around 150,000 Serb citizens left Sarajevo during the war, moving to areas controlled by the Republika Srpska Army. Persons who remained in the city con-tinued their education; these were mostly Bosniaks.

The above table illustrates how the circumstances of the war were reflected in the ethnic structure of students enrolled in the Department of Social Work. Six Serb students graduated from the Department of Social Work in 1992, but only one in 1995. “Re-duced studying” is also indicated by the total number of graduates

– 18 (1992) and 12 (1995). Furthermore, a decline in the number of Croat students is also evident. Croat students made up 30% of the graduating class of 1990; a mere five years later this figure had plummeted under 1%.

Military and political factors largely explain the changes in the structure of the student body, as well as the siege of Sarajevo and accompanying humanitarian crisis, which forced students from


other parts of Bosnia and Herzegovina, as well as Yugoslavia, to return to their prewar residences and to join their ethnic groups. As for Sarajevo itself, the conflict had forced the population to resettle and generally instigated a policy of ethnic division. This resulted in an enormous increase in the number of Bosniak graduates. It should be noted, however, that the ethnicization of the University of Sarajevo was not an official policy of the authorities at the time; it would be more accurate to say that the University was not able to resist a process which was sweeping through all areas of life in Bosnia and Herzegovina. During the siege of Sarajevo and the war there were no academic discussions on the issue of the ethnicization of faculties. The teachers who stayed focused on the survival of their organizations and sought to merely maintain some kind of study in the face of constant artillery fire, despite the fact that they were virtually cut off from the outside world and had had their resources reduced to chalk and blackboards.

Education of Social Workers at the Faculty of Political Science, Department of Social Work, after 1996

Following the signing of the Peace Agreement in Dayton on No-vember 21, 1995, a new phase of constitutional arrangement began in Bosnia and Herzegovina. This would inevitably affect the education process on all levels. The Peace Agreement and Annex IV of the Con-stitution are based on an ethnic principle which provides the basis for the organization of the entire state and social structure6. The loose state structure was not given any powers in the area of education. This field is delegated to the entities – Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina and Republika Srpska. Republika Srpska is organized as a centralized entity, while in the Federation the field of education is shared by the Federation and the cantons. Higher education is regulated by cantonal legislation (the Federation is composed of 10 cantons) and thus completely decen-tralized. The laws themselves do not favor an ethnic principle, but the 6 Under the Constitution (Annex 4 of the Peace Agreement from Dayton), Bosnia-Herzegovina is

made up of two entities – Republika Srpska and Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina – as well as Brčko District. Republika Srpska is centralized and its government has full jurisdiction in all fields, while the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina is organized as a decentralized entity in which jurisdiction is divided between cantons and the entity.


territorial and ethnic organization of the state (composed of two enti-ties), with the further division of the Federation into 10 cantons, ulti-mately determines the ethnic structure of both teachers and students. In order to understand this complicated situation, several points must be clarified. The Republika Srpska independently regulates the field of education and higher education, which also includes the establishment of universities and faculties and the selection of curricula and staff. In terms of staff, universities and faculties in this entity are exclusively Serb (we have not heard of a single Bosniak working at institutions of higher education in this entity). In the Federation entity, as we have already pointed out, entity law defines general principles, while indi-vidual cantons enact their own laws. The overall environment in which institutions of higher education operate – demographically, ethnically, and politically – is reflected in the faculties themselves. In Croat-major-ity cantons (such as Herzegovina-Neretva, seated in Mostar), the ethnic factor is stressed – hence the Croat University of Mostar.

Ethnic structure of social work graduates at the Sarajevo university (2000-2005)

Ethnicbackground 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 TOTAL

Bosniaks 17 24 54 60 88 76 319Croats 2 2 5 3 1 5 18Serbs / / 3 1 2 2 8Total 19 26 62 64 91 83 345

Source: Faculty of Political Science, Department of Social Work Students Record Office Data

The data show an absolute predominance of Bosniak students. A slight change in the ethnic structure is evident, however, especially in the years 2002 and 2005, when non-Bosniak students – Serbs and Croats – made up around 8% of graduates; this can be explained by a more favorable political environment in Bosnia and Herzegovina7. However, ethnic/entity and regional grouping is still present in the country. An illustration of these divisions is the existence of two

7 General tension is mostly alleviated and freedom of movement is complete, which creates an opportunity to choose where to study.


universities in Mostar, of which one has a Croat ethnic prefix, hav-ing been established during the war in the part of town under Croat rule8. The prewar Džemal Bijedić University continued to operate during the war and is today situated on the east bank of the Neretva River – in the Bosniak part of town.

In this context, the education of social workers reflects our general reality. The Department of Social Work at the Faculty of Political Science of Sarajevo has maintained its multi-ethnic character, although in a scaled down form. The same cannot be said about the Banja Luka faculty. Unfortunately, institutional cooperation between these two departments does not exist today.9

Conclusion

As we have already seen, three institutions educate social workers in Bosnia and Herzegovina: in Sarajevo, Tuzla and Banja Luka. Although they operate in the same country, the faculties in Sarajevo and Banja Luka have not established any form of institutional cooperation – common textbooks, exchange of teaching staff, harmonization of curricula (here we will exclude participation in a project under the auspices of the Stockholm Faculty of Social Work and supported by SIDA).

By respecting consocial10 models (and practice), ethnic elements in education would not have an a priori negative connotation, provided that certain universal criteria are respected – referential studies and di-plomas recognized beyond state borders. This entails the foundation of universities on an ethnic basis and the inclusion of ethnic elements, such as nationally uniform courses and the right to use the national language. With this goal Bosnia and Herzegovina joined the Bologna process, and, by ratifying the Lisbon Convention, became obliged to recognize diplo-8 During the war Mostar was a divided city – the western part had a Croat majority and the eastern

part had a Bosniak majority. Although a joint, multi-ethnic administration has been operating for several years now, Mostar is still divided by an invisible line of division based on ethnic principles.

9 This is confirmed by Z. Mirjanić in: Razvoj nastavnog plana i programa za odsjek za socijalni rad na Univerzitetu u Banjaluci [Development of Curriculum for the Department of Social Work at the University of Banja Luka], p. 122 in Zbornik – Održivi razvoj i socijalni rad [Collection of papers – Sustainable Development and Social Work], Banja Luka, 2005.

10 The consocial model includes strong mechanisms that ensure the inclusion and effective repre-sentation of all ethnic groups, according to John McGarry, Federalizam (federacija) kao metoda reguliranja etničkih sukoba [Federalism /Federation/ as a Method of Regulating Ethnic Con-flicts], magazine “Status,” no.10/06, Mostar, p. 63.


mas. According to this treaty, Bosnia-Herzegovina must create condi-tions that will ensure the right to an education that is accessible to every-one and in line with the religious and philosophical beliefs of students and their parents, and must also acquire an approach to education that is free of discrimination and segregation.

In this regard, a state Law on Higher Education must be passed which would regulate general criteria and standards for study and provide for the creation of a licensing agency. After all, this was laid out in the Feasibility Study for Bosnia and Herzegovina as a prerequisite for this country to enter into a higher phase of relations with the European Union – talks on stabilization and association. The OSCE Mission to Bosnia and Herzegovina organized a public discussion in 2005 about the draft of a state Law on Higher Educa-tion as part of an education reform campaign; this law has under-gone parliamentary procedure since the spring of 2004, but has yet to be passed. Public discussion to date has stressed that passing The Law on Higher Education at the state level is a priority; this law will provide the foundation for the standardization of higher education and further fulfill the requirements of the Bologna Dec-laration. Ethnic sensitivity was acknowledged in the public discus-sion11. These discussions stressed that the decision on the constitu-ency12 of peoples in the entire territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina should be obeyed, as well as the equal representation of the official languages13 at the universities. The greatest obstacles this Law has faced have come from the Republika Srpska. Participants in the public discussion organized in Banja Luka concluded: “The Law on Higher Education should be a framework document and as such should be a result of political consensus and respect a decentralized structure, which means preserving the entities’ control and powers in the field of education and higher education.”11 For a thorough report on the public discussion, see www.oescebih.org.12 The Constitutional Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina passed a decision on constituency of

people in the summer of 2000. This term can be described as equality. Consequential imple-mentation of the decision means that Bosniaks, Serbs and Croats are fully equal in the entire territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina, regardless of whether they are in majority or minority in a certain region. There is also an obligation to align the structure of employees in all public institu-tions with the 1991 census in order to reverse the results of “ethnic cleansing.”

13 Under the Constitution of Bosnia and Herzegovina the official languages are Serbian, Croatian and Bosnian. These are basically three names for one language.


There is still no indication as to when the Law will be passed, although this is required by the Stabilization and Association Agree-ment with the EU.


References

Association of Citizens from Five Municipalities in Bosanska Krajina (1995), Genocid u Bosanskoj Krajini. Zločin, 2, 5-23.

Collection of papers (Zbornik radova - 1979), Socijalni rad u razvoju socijalne politike i socijalne zaštite. Zbornik radova. Sarajevo: Advanced School for Social Workers.

Law of the School for Social Workers (1957). Official Gazette of the People’s Republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina, 43/57.

Mayer, C. E., Nash, L. W. (2002), Balkan 2010: Izvještaj samostalne specijalne grupe. Sarajevo: Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Mazowijecki, T. (1995), Deveti izvještaj o ljudskim pravima sa teritorije bivše Jugoslavije, 9.13.1994. Zločin, 2, 24-33.

Mc Garry, J. (2006), Federalizam kao metoda reguliranja etničkih sukoba. Status, 10, 50-67.

Mirjanić, Z. (2005), Razvoj nastavnog plana i programa za odsjek za socijalni rad na Univerzitetu u Banjaluci. In: Faculty of Philosophy of Banja Luka, Održivi razvoj i socijalni rad. Banja Luka: Faculty of Philosophy of Banja Luka.

Zaviršek, D. (2005), Između nelagode i entuzijazma: Razvoj edukacije za socijalni rad u Jugoslaviji. In: Faculty of Philosophy of Banja Luka, Održivi razvoj i socijalni rad. Banja Luka: Faculty of Philosophy of Banja Luka.

197

Eva Anđela Delale and Vanja Branica

ethnicity in the Curriculum and research of the Croatian school of social Work

IntroductionEleven years after the ethnic war in Croatia, the possibility of an

open dialogue on the subject of ethnicity and ethnic sensitivity in Croatian social work education must be explored. The aim of the re-search presented in this essay was to determine how well ethnicity is-sues are represented in: (a) the curriculum of the Department of Social Work (Faculty of Law, University of Zagreb); (b) the research of the Department staff from the 1990s to today, and (c) the Department’s evaluation of social workers’ sensitivity to ethnicity issues in daily social work practice and the process of creating rights and services in the field of social policy.

ethnicity in higher education and everyday life

Ethnicity and race issues have been shaping social work in west-ern societies for decades. In the USA, multiculturalism was one of the fastest growing college courses from 1991 to 1995 (Hollings, Wantz 1990, 1994; Ponterotto, Casas, Suzuki, Alexander 1995 in Walker, Sta-ton 2000). By 1999, the National Association of Social Worker’s Code of Ethics underwent major content changes pertaining to the concepts of diversity and multiculturalism. The latest Croatian Code of Ethics for Social Workers (2004) has been aligned with International documents related to ethics in social work and contains contents pertaining to op-pression and ethnicity (national minorities).

According to the latest national census from 2001 (Central Bureau of Statistics), Croatia is an ethnically homogeneous country; 89.63% of the population is Croatian, and 7.47% declared themselves to belong to

198 E V A A N đ E L A D E L A L E A N D V A N J A B R A N I C A

other ethnicities (the largest being the Serbs, with 4.54% of the popula-tion; 2.01% of the population did not declare their ethnicity). Even with such an ethnic majority (as well as a religious majority, with an 87.83% Roman Catholic population), in many respects Croatia became a di-verse, and multi-ethnic society in the period following the Homeland war (1991-1995). Work on the social reconstruction of communities and work with refugees and returnees showed that many communities had undergone a change in their ethnic structure (Gregurović 2005; De-lale, Vrdoljak 1998). For example, war and migration have, since 1998, led to the formation and cohabitation of four ethnic categories in certain parts of Croatia: indigenous Croats, indigenous Serbs (both returnees), indigenous Serbs or indigenous Croats (depending on the area) who did not leave the community during the war, and finally Bosnian Croats who had taken refuge in Croatia or immigrated. Since areas inhabited by these communities are poor, many people, especially immigrants from Bosnia, were in transit to European countries, in search of better job opportunities and standards of living. Outside of these communities, the prospect of a new, European identity has been bringing about politi-cal changes, even though “Euro-scepticism” and “Euro-optimism” are still present (Čaldarović, Švob, Brčić 2005).

Gregurović (2005) has researched forms of ethnic identification in such communities and concluded that individuals are not necessarily aware of their ethnic affiliation or ethnic identity. She claims that eth-nic identity does not necessarily receive precedence over other iden-tities. Furthermore, even those who are aware of their ethnic identity do not necessarily share the common goals of their ethnic group. The author emphasized processuality as an important trait of ethnicity and confirmed the hypothesis that ethnic identities have, in addition to a dynamic character, a constantly shifting nature. Gregurović based her conclusions on the observation that people affiliated with groups with formal and poor communication tend to emphasize differences rooted in tradition, language, customs etc. Those belonging to groups which have developed healthy interactions and cooperation within the com-munity, on the other hand, tend to emphasize similarities in religion, language, customs, and behaviours regardless of ethnicity. Wallerstein (in Gregurović 2005) has pointed out that “Belonging to one ethnic

199 E T H N I C I T Y I N T H E C U R R I C U L U M A N D R E S E A R C H . . .

group is a matter of social definition, a matter of interaction between the group members’ self-definition and other groups’ definition.” Even ear-lier, Rotherdam and Phinney (in Robbins, Chateerje, Canda 1998: 131) had stressed that “ethnic identity is not a static attribute, but evolves with personal identity in response to… changes and new environmental challenges.” A group may emphasize its ethnicity when it is useful to do so and downplay it when it is seen as a handicap (Stavenhagen in Hokenstad, Midgley 1997).

Ethnicity is a shared cultural identity containing a range of distinc-tive behavioural and, occasionally, linguistic features which are handed down from one generation to another through socialization. Ethnic groups are never delimited by clear cultural or geographic boundaries, even though many people treat ethnicity as if it were naturally deter-mined. An ethnic community can be understood as a unit of population that shares a common proper name, myths of common ancestry, his-torical memories, and one or more distinctive elements of culture, such as language or festivities. It also includes an association with a given territory and a sense of social solidarity (Mehta 1997). “Ethnicity can be understood as a psychological need for a sense of belonging, as a framework for social organization, and, most importantly, as a political and economic recourse, that is, a major factor in the distribution power and wealth” (Stavenhagen in Hokenstad, Midgley 1997: 95).

Fandetti and Goldmeir (in Devore, Schlesinger 1998) have identified three levels of ethnic assessment: the person, the family/client group, and the local and non-local community. Devore and Schlesinger (1998) suggested that these three levels may be viewed as several components of ethnic reality. One can approach ethnic reality and social work practice theory in a number of different ways: he/she may follow the psychosocial approach, problem/solving approaches, structural approach, systems approach, ecological perspectives, approaches focused on cultural awareness and minority issues, empowerment and strength perspectives, etc. Different theories focus on different elements of the human condition and different ways of human understanding. These differences are reflected in the definition of problems, emphasis on particular needs, the structure of the worker/client relationship, and the types of activities undertaken. In this manner, every type of


social work practice and social work education can be viewed from an ethnically sensitive perspective. Devore and Schlesinger (1998) have differentiated social work practice and ethnic reality in many areas: ethnically sensitive macro-practice, ethnically sensitive practice with refugees and newcomers, ethnically sensitive practice with families, ethnically sensitive practice in the public sector, ethnically sensitive practice in health care, etc.

In line with the principles of ethnically sensitive social work practice, social workers must develop systematic approaches in order to assess the key components of ethnic reality and integrate this understanding into social work practice and education. If social work education does not contain a broader view of ethnic knowledge, competence and per-spectives, social workers do not stand a chance of developing a com-prehensive understanding of ethnic sensitivity and multiculturalism. Self-assessment of one’s own values, biases, and prejudice and their impact on practice and research; critical thinking as a basis for the trans-formation of current education systems and society in general; thinking about ethnicity in categorical or transactional terms; and the impact of the intersection of social class and ethnicity (ethclass); these are issues that must receive more attention in social work education if we are to improve the quality of ethnically sensitive social work.

ethnicity in social Work Curricula

The following research was conducted between September and November, 2006 and consists of two parts. The first part analyses the names and content descriptions of obligatory and elective courses within the two curricula of the Department of Social Work at the University of Zagreb. The “old” teaching program was adopted in the 1993/1994 academic year and used until 2005. The new program, which was adopted in 2004 and implemented in the 2005/20061 academic year, is aligned with the Bologna Process. Both programs

1 Upon completing four years of study at the Department of Social Work of the Faculty of Law students earn a BA in social work. In order to obtain a masters degree, student can continue education in the fifth year and chooses between two programs: the Social Work Program and Social Policy Program.


are currently in use, depending which year a student was initially enrolled. An analysis of the curriculum of the undergraduate program and of the social work and social policy graduate programs was conducted. Although the Department offers postgraduate studies, these programs were not analysed.

For the second part of the research, a questionnaire about the frequency of issues of ethnicity in the curriculum and research of the Department of Social Work was created. The questionnaire consisted of three thematic units. The first unit addressed the relevance of ethnicity issues in social work and the frequency of courses that deal with ethnicity issues in different forms of education. The second unit covered the integration of ethnicity issues in the research work of department staff. The third unit consisted of an evaluation of social workers’ sensitivity to ethnicity issues in daily social work practice and in the creation of social policies.

The questionnaire was circulated to all the teachers at the Depart-ment of Social Work (26 teachers). 17 questionnaires were completed, representing 65% of the teachers employed (10 women and 7 men).The largest portion of the professors who participated in the survey had been working at the Department for 5 to 15 years (8 teachers). Six research participants had 15 years of experience or more at the Department, and 3 participants had less than 5 years of experience. In regards to aca-demic rank, an even number of professors (6), assistant professors (5) and assistants (6) took part in the research.

An analysis of the titles and content summaries of the 31 required2 and 10 elective courses within the old program (which will be soon replaced with the Bologna program) revealed that none of the courses explicitly contained the concept of ethnicity in its title or summary. One of the courses, Marginal Groups, refers in its title to a field related to ethnicity. The content of this course also shows that the question of eth-nicity is addressed in certain teaching units. The course summary, for example, mentions an analysis of the marginality concept, as well as topics concerning the displaced and refugees. Displaced persons and refugees can also be found in the content summary of the course enti-tled Croatian Social Policy, which could be a result of the relevance of 2 Foreign language lessons were not analysed.


this topic at the time the curriculum was created.The situation is somewhat different in the new Bologna Program

for social workers. Extended course descriptions of 30 required and 18 elective courses on the undergraduate level were analysed. Much like the “old” program, only one course alludes to topics pertaining to eth-nicity in its title (again, the Marginal Groups course). On the graduate level, no course in the social work or social policy curriculum mentions the concept of ethnicity or other concepts pertaining to ethnicity in its title.

An examination of course summaries also points to a somewhat different situation in comparison with the old program. On the under-graduate level, ethnicity issues are once more the subject matter of the Marginal Groups course. The course description treats issues pertaining to immigration, multiculturalism and the Roma population. In the de-scription of the Social Work with Individuals course, however, ethnicity is referred to in the context of the development of skills required by social workers, such as an appreciation for diversity.

On the graduate level, the social work track contains two courses that mention ethnicity issues and multiculturalism in their content summaries: Community Organization and Development and Human Rights and Social Work. The description of the Community Organization and Development course mentions the acquisition of knowledge and skills for work with multinational communities and minorities, while the Human Rights and Social Work course description indicates content related to fighting all forms of discrimination, including discrimination on the basis of national affiliation. In the graduate study specializing in social policy, the Human Rights course summary also includes topics pertaining to cultural diversity and minority protection.

The analysis of the course titles provides insight into the curricula of both programs, and shows that the concept of ethnicity or ethnicity-related fields are explicitly mentioned in the title of only one course. Content analysis allows us to conclude that ethnicity-related topics are present in two courses within the old program, and in six courses within the new one. This difference between the old and new program could also be the result of a different unit of analysis; the old program did


not provide us with extended course descriptions. Therefore, we cannot claim that ethnicity and related topics were not featured in lectures. It is certain, however, that ethnicity was not transparently stressed by the course lecturers when the course summaries were created.

According to the course contents, teachers within the new program refer to ethnicity issues in only two courses on both the undergraduate and graduate levels. The number of courses that clearly contain ethnicity issues as a separate teaching unit, however, is small.

The second part of the research included an assumption that certain courses which do not mention ethnicity and ethnicity-related topics in their description address these topics in lectures.

Assessment of the relevance and frequency of ethnicity Issues in the Curriculum

Teachers were asked to generally assess the relevance of ethnicity issues in social work using a scale from 1 to 5 (1-not relevant at all, 5-extremely relevant). The average rate was 3.81, which indicates that teachers view ethnicity issues as highly relevant to social work. In their explanations, teachers traced the importance of ethnicity issues to the need for an understanding of the clients’ needs, the exercise of social rights, and the planning and implementation of social interventions. They also stated that the ethnicity issue is closely linked to ethical social work practice and the application of the code of ethics. One response makes this particularly clear:

Social policy and the resulting proclaimed social rights should be harmonized with the clients’ particularities in the area of their whereabouts. In doing so, ethnicity (much like certain other variables) has a crucial relevance and should be one of the indicators of the clients’ actual needs.

The teachers’ replies when asked about the current representation of this topic in the curriculum also say much about the perception of ethnicity and relevance of ethnicity-related subjects: 13 out of 17 teachers consider ethnicity issues to be under-represented in the De-


partment’s curriculum. The results indicate that ethnicity issues are represented in the

classroom to a greater degree than the curriculum content analysis showed. According to the teachers’ reports, the ethnicity issue is represented in 20 courses, while in 7 courses teachers do not address this subject.

Furthermore, the questionnaire presented teachers with a list of possible approaches and topics relevant to ethnicity and multiculturalism and asked which of these have been used as separate thematic units or covered within the framework of other teaching units. These topics pertained to the acquisition of knowledge, skills, work methods and competencies in ethnically sensitive social work and other fields of social work practice.

A number of ethnicity-related topics and approaches were mostly represented in different teaching units. For example, Appreciating Culturally Different World Views, Sensitivity to Cultural Differences, Stereotypes was addressed in another teaching unit by 10 teachers; the Specific Needs of Individuals and Groups Concerning Ethnicity; Eth-nic Minorities by 7 teachers, and Appreciating Multiculturalism and Sensitivity to Context of the Social Work Services Clients by 6 teachers. The topic Appreciating multiculturalism and sensitivity in the context of social work services clients, however, is taught as a separate teach-ing unit. Other topics are also covered as separate thematic units, such as: Knowledge of Cultural Determinants Shaping Behaviour and Eco-nomic Migration, Relocation, Displacement, Exile and Asylum, Related to Ethnicity (Appendix, Table 1).

These topics are represented within courses in all years of study (from 1st to 5th year of study), so that students can become familiar with ethnicity issue in different contexts. The topics most taught by teach-ers correspond to the reasons given for the relevance of such topics to social work: sensitivity and an acknowledgement of the ethnically specific needs of social welfare service clients.

The topics listed in Table 2 (Appendix) are only used as part of other teaching units. The most represented topic is Social Exclusion and Inclusion, covered by 6 teachers. Other topics, such as Identity and


Human Rights Issues; Ethnic Groups in a Multi-ethnic Environment; Sensitivity to Ethnicity Issues in Local and International Context are more or less evenly represented.

Reviewing the courses that deal with these topics, one can conclude that ethnicity issues are represented in all three courses that cover basic methods of social work practice: Social Work with the Individual, Group Social Work, and Community Social Work. They are also represented in courses on social policy.

If we compare these results to the results of a content analysis of individual courses we can conclude that the number of courses that address ethnicity issues is substantially larger than the course summaries would lead us to believe. This research has elucidated the depth and diversity of content used by teachers in their classes. We can reasonably assume that not even the teachers themselves are aware of the large number and diversity of modalities that address issues pertaining to ethnicity. Furthermore, teachers stated that there is no difference in the representation of ethnicity issues between the old and new program.

research Work in the field of ethnicity Issues

The part of the questionnaire pertaining to the integration of ethnicity issues in research was left blank by half the respondents. This failure to respond indicates somewhat of a lack of research in this field. Due to the war, teachers have not included ethnic topics in their research, although it is also possible that there was a lack of general interest in these topics. The following data may therefore only serve as a general overview and do not allow for more in-depth interpretations. A total of five teachers have researched ethnicity-related topics3, but only three mentioned research in which the participants were questioned about ethnicity. Furthermore, two teachers stated the same research project: Longitudinal Monitoring of Mental Health of Children in Public Care. When asked why they did not include ethnicity as a socio-demographic variable, teachers most of-

3 Such as: “Work with Refugees and Displaced People”; the international project: „Welfare and values in Europe: transition related to minorities, religion, and gender“ (February 2006 – Febru-ary 2009); “The Quality of Life of Families of Disabled Persons in Croatia”, “Identity and Fear” and “Stronger Together” – Action Research.


ten stated that this variable was not relevant to the research topic (3) and that they would expect the interviewees to feel reluctant and uneasy when faced with such an inquiry because of the war (3).

In the nineties, the question of ethnicity was a very delicate subject due to the Homeland war. For instance, experience with the dis-placed has shown that certain persons were able to reveal to help-ers that a grandmother, grandfather, or parent was of non-Croat origin only after they had worked with social workers in the exile centre for several years. Certain participants might have felt threat-ened by insistence on this variable, while others might have only produced a “socially acceptable” reply.The interviewee’s reactions to ethnicity questions were described by

three teachers. The reactions have been described as absence of reply to the question and as interviewees belonging to certain minorities being under-represented than compared to the situation in the society.

Concerning the longitudinal research of children in public care, the counsellors i.e. the social workers who should have filled out the socio-demographic variable section of the questionnaire would often leave this part blank and state that they do not know the ethnicity of a child’s parents. Other children, however, as well as the child himself, often did know and teased the child on account of his ethnicity – especially if he/she were Roma.

As for future research, seven teachers said that they plan to include ethnicity issues in future research.

Assessment of social Workers’ ethnic sensitivity in daily social Work Practice

When asked about ethnic sensitivity in social work practice in Croatia, six teachers replied that they could not answer this question due to insufficient knowledge of social work practice. Four teach-ers felt that social workers are not ethnically sensitive. A somewhat larger number thought that social workers were ethnically sensitive in their practice. When asked to explain their response, they men-tioned social workers’ frequent encounters and work with problems concerning the Roma community. Also, a belief that “everyone is equal” was cited as a reason for a lack of emphasis on ethnicity is-sues in social work practice.

They are sensitive to this issue because their daily practice shows


that they should appreciate its context and the diversity of the clients’ needs that stem from ethnicity; for instance, in their daily work they deal with the problems of the Roma community. Unfortunately, such sensitivity arises more from a personal awareness, and less from systematic education.I believe that they take care not to stress the ethnicity issue and are rather benevolent towards Roma culture.

Most teachers felt that ethnicity-related issues are not taken into consideration in the process of developing and creating social policy (6). Several teachers think that ethnicity issues are only partially taken into consideration (3), and that these issues are only considered while creating social policies. When asked why this is, they referred to the fact that uniform regulations and procedures are valid “for all people”, and do not take the specific needs of individual groups into account. The teachers recognized programs created specifically for the Roma population as exceptions, while issues pertaining to the Serbian national minority were viewed as politicised.

Because the legislative framework for work in the field of social welfare is equal for all, and practice often shows that successful interventions require a selective approach and consideration of ethnicity issues.In terms of actual rights and services very few of them are ethnically specific; the exception are pilot-programs connected to Roma employment.

When asked why they feel a lack of sensitivity to ethnicity is-sues exists among social workers, teachers mentioned social work-ers’ insufficient awareness of work in practice. As many as 14 teachers said that activities for promoting the ethnic sensitivity of social workers working in the field are necessary. As a solution they suggested additional seminars and workshops, through which social workers could become better acquainted with the particularities of different national minorities.

Additional education, workshops, supervision…Seminars with the purpose of presenting the particularities of certain national minorities: customs, family values, cultural determinants, needs, etc.


The teachers also recognized the importance of this subject in the frame-work of ethical issues and work in accordance with the profession’s Code of Ethics.

Interestingly, few teachers (3) pointed out that it is important to introduce the subject of ethnicity to students during their education.

I think that it is important to reach joint a decision by which courses should contain ethnicity issues as a specific teaching unit, and by which an issue/topic would be covered in different teaching units. It is important to encourage students to think about these things; to not overwhelm them, but rather find a proper limit in the cases chosen for class, seminars.

Conclusion

An analysis of titles of obligatory and elective courses showed that the concept of ethnicity or ethnicity-related topics are explicitly stated in the title of only one course within the social work curricula. A course analysis has shown the presence of ethnicity issues in two courses of the old program, and within six courses of the new, Bologna program. According to titles and summary analyses, ethnicity is not particularly visible within Department’s curriculum. Conversely, teachers’ statements show that this topic is addressed in different ways in almost half of the courses (20), most of these being obligatory. Ethnicity issues are represented in all three courses that cover basic methods of social work practice, and are also represented in courses on social policy. Ethnicity topics are also present in courses taught in different years of study, from the 1st all the way to the 5th year of study; they are not taught explicitly, but addressed within other topics. Such a representation in the curriculum has led the authors to conclude that professional training for work in a multicultural context and ethnic-sensitive social work practice do not represent separate competencies, but rather guidelines for effective practice. For example, these guidelines and principles include understanding the client’s behaviour, reasoning, and emotions within the complete socio-cultural, religious, ethnic and economic context (Green 1998).


Walker and Staton (2000) state that cultural sensitivity pervades all levels of practice and is difficult to isolate from other topics as a separate variable or competency.

This research has revealed the wealth and diversity of content used by the teachers in their classes. Ethnicity, however, appears in the classroom more often in the framework of different teaching units than as a separate topic.

The teachers who responded to the survey felt that it is important to raise social workers’ sensitivity to ethnically sensitive social work practice and that the current degree of sensitivity is inadequate. Most teachers felt that ethnicity-related issues are not taken into considera-tion in the area of social policy. As a reason, they stated the fact that uniform regulations and procedures are valid “for all”, and do not take into account the specific needs of ethnic groups. After searching for appropriate intervention strategies that would maximize success and minimize cultural oppression, Sue and Sue (1990:170) conclud-ed: “Equal treatment in counselling may be discriminatory treatment. Because groups and individuals differ from one another, the blind application of techniques to all situations and all populations seems ludicrous. What is needed are differential approaches consistent with the life experiences of the person. Not equal treatment, equal access and opportunities.” In their replies, the teachers have pointed out a problem which has not been adequately addressed in the practice of many social workers.

Research showed that teachers consider ethnicity a relevant issue, and that they implement ethnicity and related topics in the courses they teach. Possible overlapping of topics pertaining to ethnicity in different courses and information on the theoretical concepts that teachers use to approach this topic, as well as a potential lack of certain basic concepts within the curriculum, could be the subject of further analysis and the next step in the research project. The life-long education of social workers, as well as an undergraduate and graduate curriculum in which ethnicity issues and ethnically sensitive social work are integrated, are a starting point for over-coming obstacles to an ethnically competent approach to clients and the advancement of the practice and theory of social work.


References:

Central Bureau of Statistics (2005), Statistical Yearbook of the Republic of Croatia. Zagreb: Central Bureau of statistics.

Code of Ethics of the Croatian Association of the Social Workers (2004), Zagreb: The Croatian Association of the Social Workers.

Čaldarović, O. M., Švob, Brčić, C. (2005), Integration of Youth: Ways of Perception and Understanding of “Others“. Migracijske i etničke teme, 21, 4: 299-314.

Delale, E.A., Vrdoljak, Lj. (1998), Posttraumatske stresne reakcije djece u ratom oslobođenim područjima: iskustva iz Hrvatske Kostajnice. In: Šeparović, Z. (ed.) Zbornik radova Prvog hrvatskog žrtvoslovnog kongresa (487-494). Zagreb: Hrvatsko žrtvoslovno društvo.

Devore, W., Schlesinger, E. G. (1998), Ethnic-Sensitive Social Work Practice. USA: Allyn and Bacon.

Green, J. W. (1998), Cultural Awareness in the Human Services, A Multi-Ethnic Approach. Boston: Allyn and Bacon.

Gregurović, S. (2005), Relacijska dimenzija etničkog identiteta: istraživanje etničkih kategorija na primjeru Petrinje. Migracijske i etničke teme, 21, 3: 221-242.

Hokenstad, M.C., Midgley, J. (eds.) (1997), Issues in International Social Work, Global Challenges for New Century. Washington DC: NASW PRESS.

Mehta,V. (1997), Ethnic Conflict and Violence in the Modern World. In: Hokenstad, M.C., Midgley, J. (eds.), Issues in International Social Work, Global Challenges for New Century. Washington DC: NASW PRESS.

Robbins, S. P., Chateerje P., Canda, E. R (1998), Contemporary Human Behaviour Theory. Boston, New York: Allyn & Bacon.

Sue, D.W., Sue, D. (1990), Counselling the Culturally Different, Theory and Practice. NY: A Wiley - Interscience Publication.

Walker, R., Staton, M. (2000), Multiculturalism in Social Work Ethics. Journal of Social Work Education, 36, 3: 449-462.


APPendIx

Table 1: Ethnicity issue represented in courses according to the teaching unit

toPICs

Content is a separate topic or teaching unit

Content included within a different teaching unit

tItle of the Course (lectures (l), seminars (s) and exercises (e))

Methods of working in multicultural environment and ethnically sensi-tive approaches to social work practice

1 3

Family therapy – ESocial Work TheorySocial Work with Disabled People - S

Knowledge of cultural determinants shaping behaviour

3

4non-verbal communica-tion, status of disabled persons in society

Social Work TheorySocial Psychology – L Social DemographyIntroduction to Social PolicySocial Work with Groups – E Social Work with Disabled People

Appreciating cultur-ally different world-views, sensitivity to cultural differences, creating stereotypes

10sexual ste-reotypes, ste-reotypes and prejudice, stigmatization of disabled

Family Therapy – L and E Social Work in Community Manage-ment – L Social Work Ethics – L Marginal Groups – S Social Work TheorySocial Psychology – L, SSocial Work with Individuals Social Work with Disabled People Spirituality and Social Work

Appreciating mul-ticulturalism and sen-sitivity in the context of social work

2

6 knowing the client, group work with clients of different demographic backgrounds

Counselling - EFamily Therapy – E Social Work Ethics – LMarginal Groups – SSocial Work Theory Social Work with Individuals


toPICs

Content is a separate topic or teaching unit

Content included within a different teaching unit

tItle of the Course (lectures (l), seminars (s) and exercises (e))

Economic migra-tion, relocation, displacement, exile and asylum, related to ethnicity

2 3

Social Work in Community Organizing – LMarginal Groups – SSocial Demography – S Penal Social WorkSocial Work with Individuals Social Demography

Professional networking in the international and intercultural context

1 1

Juvenile Delinquency – L Social Work with Disabled People Social Work with Individuals

Concepts: nation, state, and culture in terms of ethnicity

2

1EU compara-tive studies on disabled

Social Work with Disabled People Introduction to Social PolicySocial Work with Individuals

Specific needs of in-dividuals and groups concerning ethnicity; ethnic minorities

1

7Forum – the-atre, anti-discrimina-tory practice, stereotypes and prejudice, planning and programming

Drama ExpressionSocial Work in Community Manage-ment - L Social Work Ethics – LMarginal Groups – SSocial Work TheoryPenal Social WorkSocial Work with Individuals Social Work with Groups – L and EInterpersonal Communication


Table 2: Ethnicity issue represented in courses within a different teaching unit

toPICsContent included within a different teaching unit

tItle of the Course(lectures (l), seminars (s) and exercises (e))

Practical issues of identity, human rights, racism, xeno-phobia related to ethnicity

3Social Work Ethics – L Marginal Groups – S

Social exclusion and inclu-sion

6 social work with per-sons with disabilities

Family Therapy – ESocial Work in Community Organiz-ing – L Social Psychology – LSocial Work with Individuals Introduction to Social Policy

Ethnic groups in a multieth-nic environment

3 ethnic minorities, Croats and Serbs, guest lecturer, Roma

Social Work in Community Organization – L Marginal Groups – SSocial Psychology – S

Status regulation 3 migrations

Particularities related to ethnicity issues: immigrants, asylum-seeking, border territories

Marginal Groups – SSocial Work TheorySocial Demography

Sensitivity to ethnicity issues in local and international context

4 ethnic minorities, communication barriers

Social Work in Community Organiz-ing– L Marginal Groups – SSocial Work TheoryInterpersonal Communication

Relation between ethical and gender/sex issues, mental health and disability

3 ethnic minorities, particularities of gen-der and sex approach, class lineage

Family Therapy – EMarginal Groups – SSocial Work with Individuals Social Work with Groups

215

Suzana Bornarova

Promoting Multicultural education Within and beyond social Work training in Macedonia

Introduction

The vulnerable situation in the multi-ethnic Republic of Macedonia, a country still dealing with the transitional process and its accompanying economic crisis, unemployment, and poverty, has resulted in changes in the traditional perception of multi-ethnic cohabitation and the spread of intolerance. The state, with its bodies and structures, has been pursuing solutions to mitigate and overcome the undesirable side effects of a multi-ethnic society.

Science in general and education in particular play an active role in the search for solutions and the development of multi-ethnic cohabitation and tolerance. The education of social workers has been accordingly extended to include contemporary contents pertaining to the methods and techniques of professional social work in multi-ethnic environments. One such adaptation is the parallel education of social work students as addition to social work undergraduate education at the Institute for Social Work and Social Policy which is the first university social work training in Macedonia.

The education of social workers has undergone several stages of development. In the initial phase of social work education, the education of social workers dealt mostly with theoretical, philosophical and social contents, focusing on theoretical concepts rather than on their practical application. With the rise of social problems in society, programmes have become more practice oriented. The regular curriculum now encompasses exercises, field

216 S U Z A N A B O R N A R O V A

work, and practice in relevant social welfare institutions. To keep up with the constant globalisation of social problems, new theories and practical social work approaches are constantly emerging. Since they cannot be fully incorporated in the regular curricula, which focuses predominantly on basic and general educational contents, the process known as “university extension”, that is, the spreading out of the activities of the university curricula through lectures, courses, and educational seminars on contents that supplement knowledge and skills obtained on the undergraduate level, has become very common. All these extra-curricular forms of social work education are known as non-formal parallel education which complements formal education in social work.

These changes were initiated by the transitional process in the Republic of Macedonia. In 1998, the Teaching Council of the Fac-ulty of Philosophy established a Training Centre for Social Devel-opment at the Institute for Social Work and Social Policy. This not only intensified parallel education; more importantly, it legitimized it. Although the Training Centre offers continuing professional edu-cation mainly to graduated social workers, the pressing need to con-tinuously upgrade the knowledge base has led to the inclusion of students of social work in this process. Students themselves show an ever greater interest in broadening or specialising their knowledge and skills through programs that supplement their regular studies.

The article presents three parallel education programmes/projects which have been implemented at the Institute for Social Work and Social Policy. The programmes have multi-ethnic dimensions and are aimed mainly at students of social work.

key Concepts of the Parallel education of social Work students

Social work is rooted in a belief in the dignity and value of every human being. Social workers should therefore respect people regardless of their age, limitations, or differences and strive to enrich and improve the life of every person. In social work, every human being is special and has the right to be treated as an individual. Although each separate

217 P R O M O T I N G M U L T I C U L T U R A L E D U C A T I O N . . .

group is characterized by common values and behaviour, the social worker should avoid stereotyping the members of any group. Due to this specific mission, the social worker should be familiar with the values and habits of different cultures when communicating or interacting with different systems. Also, knowledge of the concept of human diversity is a necessary reference in the actions of the social worker. Social workers are involved in strengthening and changing all sectors of society. They are in a position to strive for social justice in social services, policies and programmes. They can contribute to the promotion of a just and balanced distribution of goods and services in the local community. They should ensure that all people, regardless of their race, ethnic background, religion, gender, sexual orientation, or class are treated with dignity and respect. For this reason, students of social work should be familiar with the historical and cultural traits of the various ethnic groups that they might work with; this would help them to understand the nature of the client population, to plan interventions and develop helping skills suitable to all cultural groups, and to understand the values and cultural norms of a particular group in a multicultural society. The multicultural knowledge and skills and the development of competence for efficient multicultural practice is today based on the following concepts:

1. The concept of human diversity. It refers to a continuum of differences among people and groups as a result of biological, cultural and social factors. These differences are the result of culture, ethnicity, race, social class, religion, gender, age, disability, etc. Even people’s “common” needs, are manifested in many different ways because of biological, cultural, or social diversity (Federico 1980). The concept of human diversity, recently introduced in social work, implies an understanding of the nature of culture and its influence on people’s development and functioning, and the issues of power relationship. The human diversity concept is especially important for cultural groups that face difficulties due to the fact that they are different from the dominant culture (Johnson 1995).

2. The concept of dual perspective. This perspective treats the indi-vidual as a part of two systems: 1) the socio-educational system, which includes family and immediate surroundings (the indi-


vidual’s culture); and 2) the support system, which includes the organisation of goods and services, political power, economic resources, the educational system, and broader social systems. If discrepancies occur between these two systems, the individual will encounter difficulties in his/her functioning (Johnson 1995). One side of the dual perspective is the manner in which indi-viduals perceive themselves, and their own behaviour, accept-ance, and values; this is defined to a large extent by one’s imme-diate surroundings, most importantly by family. No individual, however, is alone in society, and this is acknowledged by the other side of the dual perspective, which consists of those values which broader society transfers to the individual. For instance, members of a minority group may face discrimination and preju-dice in the outside world, but enjoy love and acceptance in their own homes. If there are considerable differences between these two environments, people live in an unstable balance. The con-sequence of a dual perspective differ from one individual to an-other and among groups (Hoffman, Sallee 1994).

3. Cultural diversity. Culture is the learned, shared, and transferable behaviour and preserved experience of a group that shapes its thinking and future conduct. In addition to material elements, cul-ture also comprises values and ideas. The guidelines for a group’s interaction with its surroundings are defined by its culture. There-fore, culture is a key source of human diversity. Cultural tradition contains within itself more than can be manifested at a specific moment in time and is constantly enriched through new experi-ences and exposure to new cultures. Membership in different cul-tural groups determines one’s attitude towards social institutions, other people, other groups, other members of the same cultural group, and towards himself/herself (Federico 1980).

4. Values and religion. Religion and values are variables of the “human diversity” concept. Religion can refer to organised institutions or to individual or collective system of beliefs or conduct. Social workers should understand religion and its in-fluence on human behaviour, regardless of whether they are believers or not. A system of values is a sum of beliefs and


preferences; people, both individually and collectively, have different systems of values. One’s system of values is predeter-mined by the culture of his/her immediate environment; at the same time, however, his/her beliefs, viewpoints, and values are under the influence of systems of values that are dominant in the broader social environment (McMahon 1996).

5. Cultural pluralism. Cultural pluralism stresses that every group should preserve its cultural heritage and the specific features of its culture and at the same time actively participate in so-cial life. In cultural pluralism, diversity and differences are ac-cepted and awarded, not sanctioned. As the highest level of a continuum, cultural pluralism is quite promising, although the need to acknowledge diversity and a mutual desire for life in a multicultural society must be accompanied by a change in the views of citizens themselves. A change of views should be stim-ulated, along with respect for and understanding of different cultures. Multicultural education could play an important role in this process. Society should also offer opportunities for unit-ing the members of different cultural groups not as members of different cultures, but as people with similar needs, desires and hopes, and with cultural experiences that should be shared and respected. Cultural pluralism stresses the need for such changes because discrimination rooted in views and perceptions is much more difficult to eliminate than discriminatory laws or policies.

In order to curb discrimination, we must find ways to address the diversity of the cultural groups that comprise society. This requires a change in the attitudes of those in positions of power, as well as an understanding of the nature of human diversity, tolerance for differences, and respect for those who are different from us (Johnson, Schwartz 1994).

6. Ethnocentrism vs. multiculturalism. While ethnocentrism is a tendency to perceive cultures through the prism of one’s own culture, i.e. is based on one’s confidence in the superiority of his/her culture (Van Wormer 1997), multiculturalism implies open-ness towards diversity and the application of such an attitude in


contact with clients. For instance, helping stigmatised groups come closer to the “core” of the political, economic and educa-tional agenda is one aspect of multiculturalism. Multicultural-ism acknowledges the unique, specific, and authentic cultural resources that members of various groups posses and use in their everyday lives. A network of assistance tailored to a particular culture is a very important potential source of help in situations where social welfare is needed. Multiculturalism demands that we learn what we do not know and rethink what we thought we knew. It implies openness to other ways of life and considera-tion and reaction to the circumstances of life (Burwell 1995). The concept of multicultural social work demands that the social worker is led by the ideals and values of cultural pluralism instead of ethnocentrism, and, at the same time, focus his/her interventions on achieving not only individual changes, but also structural changes in institutions and society as a whole. Social workers should possess considerable cultural knowledge about the ethnic and racial groups they work with. This includes knowledge of a cultural group’s history, values, family values, views and conduct, religious customs, parenting habits, and ways of dealing with changes and stress. Also, social workers should be familiar with a particular group’s experiences in relation to the dominant group and with the process of acculturation and its results. The specific characteristics of various subgroups within the framework of a single cultural group should also be taken into account (Johnson 1995).

7. Cultural competence. It implies the ability to conduct professional social work in a manner that members of different cultures consider appropriate. This means that social workers should be aware of their own cultural limitations, open to cultural diversity, and able to activate their clients’ resources; they should direct their work towards clients and their system, and acknowledge their cultural integrity, etc. (Kilpatrick 1995). Mere knowledge of the general characteristics of ethnic groups (and their subgroups, which have a specific history and culture) does not, in and of itself, constitute cultural sensitivity. In addition to


knowledge of the history of various cultures, the social worker should also know how a certain group perceives and constructs understanding of time, inter-personal relations, agency etc. At the same time, the social worker should be aware of his/her own culture, because this makes it possible for him/her to respect the diversity of cultures and to recognize prejudice or ethnocentrism within himself/herself (McMahon 1996).

8. Ethnically sensitive practice. It strengthens social workers’ awareness of racism in broader society and shows them how the social conditions and feelings of powerlessness affect the life experiences of individuals. Social workers should also be aware of their own prejudice and fears; this is crucial if they are to help their clients achieving self-awareness (Van Wormer 1997). The development of cultural competence could be viewed as a continuum, with cultural destructiveness on one end and advanced cultural competence on the other. Destructiveness implies views, policies, and practices that have destructive effects on different cultures and the members of these cultures, while advanced cultural competence signifies culturally competent practice that is characterized by the promotion and advocacy of the concept of cultural competence in the social system and by improved relations among the different cultures of a given society. Advanced cultural competence should be the goal of multicultural social work; this level of competence should be promoted not only among students of social work, but also in society in general.

Inter-cultural Communication and social Work

The sections bellow will present three parallel educational pro-grammes that have been implemented at the Institute for Social Work and Social Policy and are based on the concepts described above.

One of them was the project entitled Development of Personnel Co-operation in Civil Peace Service (2002-2005). It was intended to teach social workers about multi-ethnic tolerance, mediation, peace keep-


ing, and inter-cultural competence in professional practice. The project was supported by the German Agency for Development Cooperation (AGEH) and coordinated by the National Centre for Training in So-cial Development, which is part of the Institute for Social Work and Social Policy of the Faculty of Philosophy in Skopje. In addition to its research activities, the Training Centre also offers continuing education for social workers and similar professionals and parallel education for students of social work.

The Development of Personnel Cooperation in Civil Peace Service project had the following objectives:

- to contribute to the development and strengthening of civil society in the Republic of Macedonia;

- to support initiatives, associations, students, NGOs and local social work authorities that focus on peace building and the promotion of mutual understanding among people of different social and educa-tional status, religious affiliation, cultural background and/or ethnic association;

- to support initiatives for the development of inter-ethnic tolerance and (cross)cultural values that could lead to the reconciliation of conflicting sides in civil society.

The project was implemented through two distinct practice-oriented specialization courses: Inter-cultural Communication and Social Work (66 participants) and Non-government Organizations (NGOs), Their Role in the Social System and Strengthening Civil Society (53 par-ticipants). The courses were taught by 2 German experts (an eth-nologist and a social worker), whose services and residence in the Republic of Macedonia were supported by AGEH. Courses were aimed at students of social work, NGO representatives, and profes-sionals from social institutions.

In addition to specialisation courses, several other events took place within the Inter-cultural Communication and Social Work course: 1) Community Mediation – a seminar offered by a German expert; 2) Inter-cultural Mediation as a Method in Social Work - the Transcendent Method – a workshop offered by two experts from Aus-


tria, in cooperation with the Konrad Adenauer Shtiftung Foundation, 3) Study visits to Germany for students of the specialisation course (visits to the Plotzensee youth prison, the Youth Agency in Reiniken-dorf and the Lebenswelt NGO); 4) the participation of two students in the seminar entitled Civil Coping with Conflicts, organised by the Austrian Study Centre for Peace and Coping with Conflicts in Schatschlining, Austria; and 5) Round table discussion on the topic of Theoretical Approaches in the Education of Social Workers and Challenges of Social Work Practice in a Multi-ethnic Environment - which resulted in the publication of a collection of scientific papers (by German experts and domestic teaching personnel).

The above mentioned Inter-cultural Communication and Social Work specialisation course (2 semesters) was offered to students in their final year of undergraduate study. The course consisted of a combination of academic lectures, group work, exercises, readings, video presentations, as well as ethnographic field research, supple-mentary workshops in topics such as civil conflict resolution, and school social work; scientific excursions to Balkan countries, field practice in foreign countries and similar. The contextual and me-thodical transfer of inter-cultural competency to course participants served as a unifying factor for the various course activities. This was further enhanced by the long-term process of acquiring ethnic sensitivity, that is, the discovery of the cultural and behavioural pat-terns of one’s own culture and other cultures.

The specialisation course followed a cultural-scientific and eth-nographic orientation which encompasses both in its theoretical and practical base and through methods of qualitative social research, contents from other disciplines, such as peace studies, conflict re-search, inter-cultural education, and social work. Besides adopting strategies for violence prevention, it embraced the long-term devel-opment of concepts for the peaceful coexistence of nations, ethnic groups, and minorities within the framework of local and national integration measures.

The curriculum was built around the concept of inter-cultural communication. One of the most important and most complex ob-jectives of inter-cultural social work in multicultural societies is


the initiation of inter-cultural dialogue. Before such inter-cultural dialog can begin, the differences and similarities between culturally determined systems of people orientation must be acknowledged and understood. If inter-cultural social work is to contribute to flex-ible and mutually satisfying inter-cultural interaction, social work-ers who act in society must adopt and apply inter-cultural compe-tency. Here we will define inter-cultural competency as the ability to effectively and successfully communicate with people belong-ing to different ethnic groups in a foreign cultural environment. It not only demands that social workers be familiar with the client’s language, tradition, culture, and way of life, but also emphasises the need for empathy, awareness of one’s own cultural attributes, and the ability to accept differences. Inter-cultural competence can therefore be understood as the sum of “abilities for communica-tion or interaction”. Social work views inter-cultural mediation as a measure aimed at decreasing misunderstanding, acknowledging and formulating conflicting interests, and developing strategies for dealing with conflicts.

In the first phase of the specialisation course, the core teaching contents were aimed at achieving a clearer understanding of culture, the adoption of culture, cultural characteristics, and cultural adjust-ment. In other words, students could obtain theoretical knowledge about the essence, function, and changes of cultures and lifestyles, and so gain insight into the individual mechanisms of cultural dis-tinction that are developed in the course of the socialisation process. During their internal confrontation with their own cultural norms, students learned to confront their attachment to their own culture and, by eliminating ethnocentric modes of thought, to comprehend and accept the values and behavioural models of other cultures. Stu-dents also gained a basic knowledge of the history, migration, and settlement of ethnic and religious minority groups in the Republic of Macedonia. This objective was addressed within the framework of multiculturalism in the state protection of minorities.

The development of inter-cultural competency through interaction with other cultures often causes feelings of uncertainty and anxiety among students. The course addressed these emotional challenges


using teaching methods such as role play or simulations, and the use of actual case studies from the Centers for Social Work, which are the leading welfare institutions in Macedonia. This active confronta-tion with potential inter-cultural conflict situations was aimed at the further development of tolerance among students, and to differenti-ate picture of themselves and realistic self-evaluation.

Change of perspective techniques played an important role in the course by creating emotional assumptions which students could integrate into their strategies for interaction with other cultures. These techniques teach students that their culture and point of view are just one of many. This approach included a socio-scientific re-view of the culturally heterogeneous ways of life of ethnic groups and religious minorities in multi-ethnic settlements in Skopje and the Republic of Macedonia. In this part of the specialist course, stu-dents were expected to conduct ethnographic field research. Us-ing qualitative social research methods, such as participatory observation and narrative interviews, students confronted the cultural identities and perceptions of inhabitants of these settle-ments. For this reason, the narrative interview which each student conducted with a family from a multi-ethnic community focused on personal perceptions of multicultural coexistence and individu-al or collective subjective perceptions of “self” and “others”, or, if you will, on the construction of the social and cultural relations in which the interviewees lives take place (Jaroshek 2005).

During the specialisation course, students had an opportunity to learn about cultural sensitivity by examining the different values, norms, and cultural models of behaviour of the heterogeneous social groups of the Republic of Macedonia. This could contribute to more efficient practical responses to ethnic-specific situations. Several instruments for the evaluation of the project were designed and used: evaluation of the work of instructors, evaluation of the quality and relevancy of course contents, and a practical evaluation carried out by students. The evaluation results were quite favourable and show that students were satisfied with the course and considered it highly beneficial to their professional development as social workers.

This programme also had a broader impact on the development of


the multicultural curriculum at the Institute. Influenced by the posi-tive experiences and outcomes of the project, the Institute for Social Work and Social Policy has incorporated two elective courses into the curriculum of its newly developed credit transfer system, which was introduced in the 2005/2006 academic year: Social Work with Ethnic Minorities and Social Work in the Non-governmental Sector.

The project also gave an opportunity to purchase relevant domes-tic and foreign literature, which will serve as a valuable learning and teaching resource both for the students and teaching staff of the Institute.

the legal and social Aspects of the Protection of refugees The second educational project was the Social Work with

Refugees - a Non-credit Course Specialisation (October-December 2005). It was implemented within the Institute for Social Work and Social Policy through the initiative and support of the Citizens’ Centre for Information Society, a Skopje-based non-government organization. 29 third and fourth year students attended the course; those who participated regularly in instructional sessions and field visits (22 hours of lectures and 24 hours of practice/field work) and successfully completed the final exam were presented with course certificates. Two key trainers from the National Training Centre for Social Development at the Institute and three supporting trainers from the Citizen’s Centre for Information Society, UNHCR, and the Asylum Department of the Ministry of Interior of the Republic of Macedonia participated in the project.

The curriculum was developed around practice and field work. Each instructional session was followed by discussions, group work exercises, work on specific case studies, task assignments, and other activities which allowed students to confront refugee problems as social workers. The students were encouraged to gather information about countries of origin of the refugees. They could use the facilities at a Computer Centre in Skopje and went on field trips to the Rosh Centre and the Transit Centre for Refugees in Skopje.

In the preparatory phase, curriculum development was guided by the Competence Development Network Process (CDNP) and


their Minimum Standards for Curricula Development of the Higher Educational Programmes. The Standards were subsequently modified to suit the target group and circumstances in the Republic of Macedonia. The themes included: 1) an introduction to the course/migration theme; 2) refugee experiences; 3) a framework of international refugee protection; 4) national asylum systems; 5) the framework of social protection; 6) socio-cultural norms in social work with refugees (values, norms and ethical issues); 7) gathering information about countries of origin (Internet search); 8) social work with refugees and asylum seekers (with a specific focus on women refugees); 9) social work with refugees and asylum seekers (with a specific focus on children refugees). One can plainly see that the contents of the project fully correspond to the CDNP’s Minimum Standards. The key instructors were also provided with resource materials listed in the CNDP’s Minimum Standards, which they further amended with additional, social work related, material. The project presented a holistic approach to the issue of refugee protection, which covered the legal, social, economic, cultural, and political aspects of this issue. Students were therefore able to receive information about the refugee protection competencies of all the institutions in the country that work with different aspects of the refugee population. The curriculum also included field visits and practical exercises, which, keeping in mind the practical orientation of social work, proved to be an effective tool for capacity building. Finally, UNHCR policy priorities enabled further elaboration of the instructional sessions, especially the last two sessions, which were devoted to social work services for vulnerable refugee groups, such as women, children, and people with disabilities.

The evaluation provided valuable information about the impact of this programme and showed that the course addressed a theme that had not been specifically addressed in the regular curriculum. This was also made clear by the large number of students interested in enrolling, although not everyone could participate due to the limited class size. Overall, the course was successfully implemented because of the time devoted to preparation and curriculum development


thanks to the support of the key instructors from the Training Centre provided by the Citizen’s Centre for Information Society. Students themselves expressed satisfaction with the organization of the course, quality of the training sessions, trainers, field visits, and materials that were distributed to them. This course was offered to students of social work as a form of specialization, yet was a non-credit course. The certificates that students obtained were signed and stamped by the National Centre for Training in Social Development and the Citizen’s Centre for Information Society, and are valuable proof of a form of continuing education which is increasingly in demand in the labor market today. It was not the nature but the fact that our new Curricula was already developed, the factor that made the implementation of such a course in the regular study programme difficult. Nonetheless, efforts have been made to incorporate some of the key course contents within regular post-graduate courses. It is an indisputable fact that courses of this type require practice-oriented classroom sessions and, more importantly, field trips and activities at relevant institutions. The sustainability of this type of training may be possible if some of them could be incorporated into the regular courses at the Institute for Social Work and Social Policy.

romaversitas

The third project which will be described is the project for the promotion of the enrolment of Roma students in higher education and also in social work training. In the last decade, Foundation of the Open Society Institute Macedonia (FIOOM) has been working on the implementation of several projects aimed at the improvement of the conditions and integration of Roma in the Republic of Macedo-nia. Education has been one of the most essential priorities since the very beginning. In 1997, FIOOM initiated a scholarship programme for Roma secondary school students, providing financial and men-torial assistance. In the years that followed, the motivation among young Roma for extended education and their number among stu-dents, gradually rose.

In 2001, FIOOM developed a new programme called Romaver-


sitas. This programme originated from a joint initiative of FIOOM and the Programme for Support of the Higher Education of the Open Society Institute in Budapest (HESP). It is part of a continuous ef-fort to promote equal opportunities and equal access for marginalised groups in higher education.

In 2004, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), in partnership with the Foundation Open Society Institute Macedonia (FIOOM), began the implementation of a Programme for the education of Roma. Due to positive results of the Romaversitas programme and the interest on the part of the Roma community and project donors, Romaversitas became an integral part of the USAID and FIOOM Programme for the Education of Roma. USAID is now one of the major sponsors of Romaversitas activities. Today, Romaversitas is tailored to the academic needs of Roma students and contributes to the advancement of their educational achievements. In general, the goals of Romaveritas are:

- a higher entry degree of entry into higher education for Roma students;

- greater success and academic achievements; - strengthening self-respect and improving the integration of

Roma with non-Roma students; - decreasing the number of drop-outs and promoting timely

graduation; - the creation of high quality professionals – Roma who could

actively participate in the social life of the country and become active participants in the creation of the national educational policy;

- contribution to the future advancement of the educational status of Roma in general.

The Romaversitas programme is implemented through several programme packages:

1. A scholarship programme - financial support for a limited number of Roma students in the form of a scholarship. The scholarship is used to cover participation expenses,


travel expenses, textbook costs, and even 50% of the accommodation expenses of Roma students who study outside their place of residence. Financial bonuses intended to stimulate and motivate Roma students are also available to students with a grade point average of 8 or higher.

2. A mentorship programme for Roma students – assistance is provided by university professors and student peers.

3. Continuing academic support for Roma students – improving study skills and achievements in specific subjects.

4. Additional training for the development of individual abilities and skills (English lessons, computer literacy courses, etc.).

5. Support for student initiatives (academic projects, research, small grants to support travel for academic purposes).

6. Summer school.

Romaversitas centre is equipped with computers and provide stu-dents with internet access. The centre is used for meetings, debates, courses and similar activities, and also has library with textbooks and other resources to aid students in their studies. The Institute for Social Work and Social Policy became actively involved in the implementation of the Romaversitas programme in the 2004/2005 academic year. Teachers of the Institute of Social Work and So-cial Policy provided additional instruction to Roma students which contained 24 hours of lectures and 6 hours practical work. The in-volvement of Institute staff was important for the implementation of mentorship and academic support programmes. In that year a total of 6 students attended lectures.

Based on the experiences of the programme carried out by the ISWSP staff during the 2004/2005 academic year, cooperation with Romaversitas continued in the following years, though in a slightly different form. In the 2005/2006 academic year, the programme was substituted with a mentorship programme for Roma students in order to provide individual assistance and guidance during their general studies. In the academic year 2006/2007 mentors guide Roma students and provide them with counselling and assistance


only in specific subjects of the curricula. Today a total of 20 Roma students are enrolled at the Institute of Social Work and Social Pol-icy undergraduate studies.

Even though the results of the programme can only be evalu-ated over time, it is viewed as highly beneficial for Roma students because it expands their knowledge in particular areas and provides continuing assistance and support. The programme has improved their academic success, increased motivation to persist in their studies assisted in solving problems encountered during studies, and offered continuing support and guidance up to graduation.

Conclusion: Multicultural Education

The need for the multicultural competence of the social workers inevitably imposes the need to amend social work curricula with contents covering ethnic minorities, multicultural social work, the particularities of diverse population groups, human behaviour and social environment, practical social work skills, and a combina-tion of the macro- and micro-practice of social work. This would strengthen social work as a profession by dealing with the client in the environment in which he/she lives. Ideally, these contents should be integrated into several both regular and parallel educa-tion courses for students of social work; they should not only be integrated into lectures, but into textbooks as well.

In order to achieve this goal, however, changes to curricula and knowledge and skills of students are not enough. Systematic chang-es within educational institutions must also occur, as well as educa-tional reforms that would lead to multicultural education. This idea represents a movement for educational reform and a program that has yet to be implemented. It is based on the need to create equal opportunities for all students, including those of different ethnic, cultural, and social backgrounds. A multicultural education implies an educational environment in which the different cultural and eth-nic groups present in society may freely and fully reflect on the educational process. Some of the elements of this process include


integration into the context of social structures, knowledge building as a process, overcoming prejudice, affirmation of the principle of pedagogical equality, and the strengthening of cultural tolerance and social structure.

In the framework of this process, the teaching staff is expected not only to teach skills for social work with members of different cultures using a multicultural perspective whenever possible, but also skills for confronting personal and institutional racism, dis-crimination, prejudice, and stereotypes.

The participation of the minority groups both as staff and students is particularly important for multicultural education. An example of a good practice is the Romaversitas project presented in this text, which supports both higher enrolment rates of Roma students in higher education and assistance to Roma students aimed at improving their academic achievements. In general, Macedonia devotes considerable attention to the involvement of minority groups in higher education. This is predominantly achieved through affirmative action and quotas that guarantee a minimal number of minority students. Also, academic institutions which provide a supportive environment through cultural tolerance and respect for diversity greatly contribute to the equality of all students, regardless of their cultural background.

Nonetheless, it can certainly be said that social work is, by its very nature, much more in touch with the issues and everyday problems of minority groups. This of course does not mean that building cultural competence among students of social work and enabling them to practice a multicultural model of social work based on the human diversity concept is a simple process. If anything, it is a life long process. Furthermore, this process can succeed only if the education of social workers stresses its importance from the very beginning. Today we are facing a rapid development of new approaches and forms of social work. This boom of new knowledge means that regular curricula (which cannot be frequently modified) are not able to encompass all of the contents that could upgrade students’ knowledge in specific areas of social work. The multicultural social work is not the key reason for the current popularity of parallel education, however, the parallel education


is popular as it serves the purpose of filling in knowledge gaps in some and extending knowledge in other areas – one of which is multicultural social work. The Institute for Social Work and Social Policy has begun to practice this form of education more intensively in the last decade, and has already reaped the fruits of its efforts.


References

Burwell, Y., N. (1995), Human Diversity and Empowerment. In: Johnson Wayne, The Social Services - An Introduction. F. E.: Peacock Publisher.

Federico, C. R. (1980), The Social Welfare Institution - An Introduction. Lexington, Maryland D.C: Heath and Company.

Hoffman, S. K., Sallee, L. A. (1994), Social Work Practice - Bridges to Change. Boston: Allyn and Bacon.

Rainer, J. (2005), Distinguishing Marks of Inter-cultural Social Work in Multi-ethnic Regions of Macedonia. In: Bornarova, S. (ed.), Collection of scientific papers “Theoretical Approaches in the Education of social Workers and Challenge of Social Work Practice in Multi-ethnic Environments”. Skopje: Faculty of Philosophy Skopje.

Johnson, C. L. Schwartz, L. C. (1994), Social Welfare - A Response to Human Need. Boston: Allyn and Bacon.

Johnson, C. L. (1995), Social Work Practice - A Generalist Approach. Boston: Allyn and Bacon.

Kilpatrick, C. A. (1995), Contexts of Helping: Commonalities and Diversities. In: Holland, P. T. (ed.), Working with Families - An Integrative Model by Level of Functioning. Boston: Allyn and Bacon.

McMahon, M. O. (1996), Social Work Practice - A Generalist Perspective. Third edition. Boston: Allyn and Bacon.

Van Wormer, K. (1997), Social Welfare - A World View. Chicago: Nelson-Hall Publisher.

235

Marina Ajduković, Vanja Branica and Lucija Vejmelka

the Male and/or female beginnings of social Work Education in Croatia: An Analysis of graduation theses topics

Introduction

Social work education was introduced in Croatia in 1952 through a two-year study program offered at the School of Social Work. The first generation was enrolled in the 1952/1953 aca-demic year and contained 34 students. Classes began in March 1953. In the fall of 1953, the second class, also containing 34 students, was enrolled. There were more men (19) than women (15) in the first generation. The first graduation theses were pub-lished in 1955.1 Sources dealing with social work as a profession and with social work education in this period are rather scarce. They include curricula, some professional literature, narratives of the first generations of students and graduated social workers (Ajduković, Kljaić 2006), analyses of documents of institutions where the first social workers were employed, etc.

One way to learn about the profession of social work at the time is to look at which issues were considered crucial for social work in this initial period. This can be done by analyzing the topics of graduation theses. It can be assumed that the selection of topics for graduation theses was influenced by two sets of circumstances – the professional interests of advisers and the general social con-sensus about major social problems, socially appropriate methods for dealing with such problems, and the public perception of this 1 A list of students and graduates, as well as the program curriculum, is presented in a monography

published on the occasion the 50th anniversary of the Social Work Study Program in Zagreb. Ajduković, M. (ed.) (2002). 50 godina Studija za socijalni rad: 1952-2002. Zagreb: Social Work Study Center, Faculty of Law, University of Zagreb.

236 A J D U K O V I Ć , V E J M E L K A , B R A N I C A

new profession.Of course, the profession of social work must be viewed in

context. In this case, one must bear in mind that the establishment of the School of Social Work in Zagreb, and later in Ljubljana, Slovenia and other Republics of the Socialist Federative Republic of Yugoslavia, took place under unique social, political, and ideo-logical circumstances. Although administrative socialism was being abandoned at the time (Puljiz 2006), the authorities’ need to promote socialism was still very strong. According to Puljiz (2006: 18, 22):

At the very beginning, the socialist authorities tried to first, strengthen the new order by controlling basic production assets and main economic resources; second, solve acute social prob-lems caused by the war, especially the problems of fighters in the National Liberation War and victims of fascism, and establish basic social welfare systems for workers and public officials; and third, push for the rapid modernization and industrial develop-ment of the country by attempting to open up new possibilities for the poor, decrease agrarian overpopulation, and improve the living conditions of the rural population, which was the largest and poorest social stratum. However, given that the socialist authorities were promoting the egalitarian values of a classless society, their ideological dogma compelled them to take into con-sideration the aspirations of the working class (on whose behalf they were in power) for a better life. This meant that they had to improve the living standard and social security of the poor work-ing class. In short, professional work began to be more highly valued, and the bureaucratic and voluntary approach to social problems declined.

In addition to representing the working class and improving living conditions, other values, such as the idea of gender equal-ity (Zaviršek 2006) and the idea of brotherhood and unity among different nations and ethnic groups, were also present.

These values, together with the governing structure’s wish to protect the socially endangered strata of society and deal with social problems in a comprehensive manner, and in line with the abandonment of the view that social problems would disappear with the development of socialism, formed the preconditions for the development of a comprehensive system of social welfare

237 THE MALE AND/OR FEMALE BEGGININGS OF SOCIAL WORK EDUCATION. . .

which would distinguish Yugoslavia from other socialist countries. They also sparked the development of social work education in the republics of the former Yugoslavia in the 1950s. The first school for social work was founded in Zagreb. Later, schools were estab-lished in Slovenia, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Macedo-nia (Zaviršek 2006). The school for social work in Croatia was founded by prominent figures like Eugen Pusić, Valerija Singer and Tatjana Marinić who had visited foreign countries through the UN exchange program and gained valuable experience, which they later used in the creation of the curriculum (Ajduković 2002; Puljiz 2006).

The values and knowledge that the teachers at the school for social work imparted to their students laid the groundwork for the further development of the profession. Over time, this set of values and knowledge was modified, supplemented, and developed. Although the establishment of social work education is considered a turning point in the development of the social work profession in Croatia, recent research has shown that social work in fact has a much longer history, one which begins with the activities of civil society and other organizations, which are considered the predecessors of social work (Prlenda 2005; Ajduković, Branica 2006). Nevertheless, the development of social work education marks its institutionalization, and is an unmistakable sign of the existence of social work as a profession. By transferring the values they had learned in class to the workplace, the first educated social workers set out on the long journey to establish this new profession in Croatia.

research Methodology

The following study considers the particularities of the devel-opment of social work education in the 1950s in Croatia, as well as the development of social work as a “female” profession in the late 19th and early 20th century in the socio-political context of capitalism. The goal of this study is to determine to what extent the theses of the first graduates maintain the described situation in Croatia and concur with the traditional development of social


work as a female profession in Europe and North America. This is all the more interesting because women played a key role in the establishment of the School of Social Work. Professor Eugen Pusić, a member of the Croatian Academy of Arts and Sciences, described the establishment of the school as follows (2004: 146):

The situation after the Second World War in Croatia was a result of a combination of general policy and particularly favorable circumstances. Croatia had a very strong tradition in all three areas: law, pedagogy, and medicine, and had a fine tradition of voluntary charity organizations. There was sufficient knowledge and determination to continue on this journey. But something unique to Croatia, something that others did not have, was perhaps of crucial importance – a group of social activists who participated in the national liberation movement and the National Liberation War. I am referring to women such as Tatjana Marinić, Jana Koh and Valerija Singer. These Partisan women, who later came to Zagreb and worked on social policy, wielded authority even over the Party. Only in this way was it possible to overcome the regime’s strong opposition to the idea of educating social workers. This must be made clear. The authorities worked on the assumption that the destiny of the people can be shaped only by sweeping social changes. Means of production and production technology develop and clash with relations of production. Relations of productions are abolished in revolutions, and new relations of production come about and solve all problems. The individual approach was considered wrong; it was considered an indication of civic individualism. If capitalism is abolished and socialism is introduced, then there are no social problems. This opposition to the education of social workers could hardly be overcome by anybody else but us, in Croatia, primarily because of the Partisan women who were active in this field.

Taking this into account, our research focused on the following:1. Determining whether any differences in topics of graduation

theses can be traced to the gender of the authors. Were there “female” and “male” research topics?

2. To determine the extent to which topics directly connected with the socialist system are present in the graduation theses.

3. To determine the extent to which the issue of ethnicity is addressed in the graduation theses.We conducted a content analysis of the titles of graduation

theses written in the first five years of the program (1955 to 1960). There were 171 graduates during this period, 99 men and 72


women; the gender make-up of the first classes was quite different than today. The analysis encompassed all graduation theses of the first five classes. Analysis criteria suited to the objectives of the research were constructed.

The topics of the graduation theses can be divided into two general fields: social work and social policy. There are a number of thematic subcategories within each field. The field of social work includes more subcategories than the field of social policy. Students wrote more theses dealing with social work, and fewer theses dealing with social policy (Table 1). If we compare the fields and subcategories with the curricula from the academic years 1952/53 to 1960/61, it is evident that most categories can be connected with courses that the students attended.

The curricula in different academic years vary in terms of the number of courses and the titles of particular courses, but there do not seem to be any essential differences. A greater number of courses deal with social work and the methodology of social work than with social policy. At the time, social policy was not a separate course, but was incorporated into courses such as Social Welfare and Working Relations and The History of Social Services. Courses directly connected with social work dealt with particular social problems and user groups, such as Children and Youth, In-valids, and The Elderly. In addition to these courses, the curricula contained courses pertaining to legislation and other fields (psy-chology, sociology, pedagogy, social medicine).

If we examine the topics that students opted for most frequent-ly, we see that Social Policy in General is the largest subcategory. The term reflects the diversity of thesis titles; today all these the-ses would fall under the heading of social policy. A closer look at the curriculum, however, makes it clear that the theses were connected with courses dealing with social problems and the structure and functioning of the social welfare system. Two other topics frequently appear: Child Welfare and Persons with Special Needs. Each of these two topics is associated with a particular course. In the curricula of the 1956/57 to 1960/61, the subtopic persons with special needs was covered in two courses: Social


Protection and Rehabilitation of the Mentally Disabled and So-cial Protection of War Invalids, Victims of Fascist Terror and the Families of Functionaries.

Analysis of the topics of graduation theses with regard to the Authors’ genderData on the number of enrolled students show that professional

social work attracted both women and men. Nevertheless, an analysis of interviews with representatives of the first graduating classes of social workers (Ajduković, Kljajić 2006) showed that the key reasons for choosing this profession were somewhat different than today. Interviews with students of social work from this period showed that scholarships awarded to students of social work, as well as the possibility of residing at the School of Social Work, were significant factors for both men and women. On the other hand, female students mentioned that they had chosen to study social work in order to help others and work with people more frequently than male students. This is clear in the following statements (Ajduković, Kljajić 2006: 131, 181,182):

I was trying to decide between agronomy and social work. I am really interested in nature and I love animals, but the circum-stances in my family were difficult, and my father directed me towards the field in which I could start working sooner. However, the main reason for social work was my love for humanity (Mil-eva Arbutina).My social background was the deciding factor, because I could not study anything else since I did not have a scholarship. My parents could barely feed their five children. I wanted to study mathematics. The Ministry was awarding 2200 dinars for social work, and this was a good decision, because you would have a profession after that… I enrolled because I could not study what I wanted, and it was like this with many people in my generation. We enrolled because we were poor, and with social work you could both live and study, and the professors would transmit the spirit of taking care of the poor (Ivan Hržić).If we look at the thematic subcategories of graduation theses with

regard to the authors’ gender, we can see that an equal number of men and women wrote about social work. On the other hand, men wrote more frequently about topics pertaining to social policy.


Within the category of social work, men and women generally opted for different subcategories. Women more frequently select-ed topics concerning child welfare and casework. Men tended to write about socio-pathological phenomena, such as delinquency and alcoholism. Two topics can be called male topics, because women did not write about them at all: social medicine and lei-sure. Men and women exhibited an equal interest in topics which deal with persons with special needs and the elderly.

Men wrote about social policy more frequently than women, focusing on family policy, social security, and demography, which was not the topic of any graduation theses written by women.

Table 1. Particular graduation theses topics with regard to the author’s sex

soCIAl Work – fIelds soCIAl PolICy

TOPICS M f ∑ TOPICS M f ∑

CHILD WELFARE 9 17 26 SOCIAL POLICY IN GENERAL 23 14 37

PERSONS WITH SPECIAL NEEDS 11 11 22 FAMILY POLICY 7 3 10

GERONTOLOGY/ THE ELDERLY 6 5 11 SOCIAL SECURITY 8 3 11

DELINQUENCY 7 3 10 DEMOGRAPHY 5 5SUBSTANCE ABUSE 3 1 4 MARGINAL

GROUPS 1 1SOCIAL MEDICINE 7 7

LEISURE 6 6

CASEWORK METHODOLOGY 2 11 13SPECIFIC AREAS 3 4 7 RESEARCH 1 1

∑ 54 52 106 ∑ 45 20 65

- the most frequent topics of graduation theses are marked in gray - the topics that women did not write about are marked in light dark gray


We also wanted to find out if any social problems were more closely connected with a particular gender. On the basis of our analysis, we can conclude that graduation thesis topics are not gender sensitive. Out of a total of 171 graduation theses, eight dealt with women’s issues. These mostly dealt with working women (Appendix 1).

In the titles of graduation theses dealing with particular social problems, the category of social welfare users was usually writ-ten using a gender-neutral plural which does not reveal whether these theses dealt with men or women. For instance: Demografs-ka i ekonomska analiza staraca smještenih u domu (Demographic and economic analysis of the elderly living in homes) or Kako sprovode slobodno vrijeme učenici u privredi koji se nalaze na izučavanju zanata u Karlovcu (How do trade school pupils learn-ing their trade in Karlovac spend their leisure time).2

In 8 cases, the title reveals that a thesis dealt with a particular social problem among men or women. Most of these theses (5) were on delinquency. Four of them dealt with delinquency among men and one with delinquency among women. Two dealt with the issue of alcoholism among men (Appendix 2).

This clearly shows that there are no indications of gender sen-sitivity with regard to some typical women’s issues of the period, such as the exposure of women to domestic violence or balancing work and family. Such a lack of gender sensitivity can also be seen in the use of the male grammatical gender when addressing particular problems, user groups, etc.

the Analysis of topics on the socialist system

The titles of the graduation theses were analyzed according to two criteria: a) connection with the socialist political system and b) connection with the war.

The analysis of the titles in the first five years of the social work study program (N=171) shows that there were more gradu-ation theses dealing with the socialist system in general (23, or 2 The two plurals are: starci (“old persons”) and učenici (“pupils”). They may refer to both males

and females.


13.45%) than with the war (13 or 7.6%).Even fewer theses reveal a clear connection to the socialist po-

litical system in their titles (6). Those that do primarily deal with social management.

Table 2. Topics of graduation theses dealing with the socialist system. Graduation theses written by men are marked in gray and graduation theses written by women in white.

student graduation date graduation thesis topic

Latas đorđe September 25, 1956Elementi populacione politike SFRJ

(Elements of the population policy of the Socialist Federative Republic of Yugoslavia)

Rajman Ivan December 30, 1957Društveno upravljanje socijalnim

ustanovama (Social management of social institutions)

Ceran-Dulibić Marija

November 11, 1958Društveno upravljanje u socijalnom osiguranju za grad Zagreb (Social

management in the social security in the city of Zagreb)

Kaneki Stevo December 22, 1958

Uloga narodnog odbora kotara Virovitice u poslovima socijalne zaštite (The role of the national committee of the district of

Virovitica in social welfare)

Ćirić Jelka November 12, 1959Društveno upravljanje u soc. ustanovama Zagreba (Social management in the social

institutions in Zagreb)

Vučetić Vicko November 18, 1959

Socijalna politika i socijalna zaštita kroz program SKJ (Social policy and social welfare through the program of the The League of Communists of Yugoslavia)

Interestingly, however, some graduation theses (12) do in fact seem to be indirectly connected with the socialist system. The titles of these theses show that they deal with the influence of a particular company (founded under socialism and in accordance with the socialist economic dogma) on the community where it was founded and on the occurrence and solution of a particular social problem.


Table 3. Topics of graduation theses dealing with the socialist system – companies . Graduation theses written by men are marked in gray and graduation theses written by women in white.


Čavec Vladimir

October 6, 1956

Žene u Varaždinskoj industriji svile (Women in the Varaždin Silk Factory)

Švarcer Ksenija

October 13, 1956

“Dalmatinka”kao ekonomski, socijalni i društveni faktor u području Sinjske krajine (Dalmatinka as an

economic, community and social factor in the area of Sinjska krajina)

Pospihalj Mirko

March 18, 1958

Analiza nekih socijalnih faktora radništva Tvornice šibica “Drava” Osijek (An analysis of some social

factors of the laborers at the Drava Match Factory in Osijek)

Cukrov Ante December 9, 1958

Analiza ozljeda na radu u brodogradilištu “3.maj” Rijeka (Analysis of industrial accidents in the 3. maj

shipyard in Rijeka)

Mekić Nusret October 21, 1958

Seljaci-industrijski radnici (u tvornici “đ.đaković” u Slav.Brodu) (Peasants – factory laborers (in the Đ.

Đaković factory in Slavonski Brod))

Milihram Franjo

October 30, 1958

Provedba socijalnog osiguranja u poduzeću “Varteks”Varaždin s posebnim osvrtom na socijalni rad

u poduzeću (Social security in the Varteks factory in Varaždin, with special emphasis on social work in the

factory)

Mikić Dušan November 23, 1958

Seljaci radnici u “Jugomontu” (Peasant laborers at Jugomont)

Hečimović Kaja

March 10, 1959

Analiza problema radnica s umanjenom radnom sposobnosti u tvornici “Josip Kraš” (Analysis of

problems of female laborers with diminished working capacity at the Josip Kraš factory)

Vučinić Radovan June 9, 1959

Potreba organiziranja društvene prehrane u Novoj industriji Vrbovsko (The need to organize a mess at

the Nova Industrija Vrbovsko factory)

Ćulić Stevan December 15, 1959

Sindikalna podružnica tvornice keksa i kruha “Sloboda” kao faktor u rješavanju socijalnih problema

u kolektivu (The Union branch of the biscuit and bread factory Sloboda as a factor in solving social

problems in the collective)

Dujaković Nikola

November 4, 1959

Neki problemi radnika poluseljaka Tvornice vijaka Knin (Some problems of laborers-peasants in the

Knin Screw Factory)

Radotović Tomislav

October 16, 1959

Neki problemi samohranih majki trikotaže “Biser” u Bjelovaru (Some problems of single mothers in the

Biser Knitwear Factory in Bjelovar)


Theses which do not explicitly mention the socialist system, but deal with a particular phenomenon (primarily leisure) of a particular social stratum (laborers and the rural population) can also be found. Such a division clearly reflects one of the dominant values of socialism. Examples of such topics are given in Table 4.

Table 4. Topics of graduation theses dealing with a particular social stratum. Graduation theses written by men are marked in gray and graduation theses written by women in white.


Gašparić Ivan March 22, 1955Kako se koristi slobodno vrijeme u radničkoj

obitelji (How is leisure time spent in a laborer’s family?)

Orban Miroslav March 22, 1955Kako se u porodici službenika koristi slobodno vrijeme (How is leisure time spent in a clerk’s

family?)

Požega Branko March 22, 1955Kako provode slobodno vrijeme oni koji privređuju

(How do family providers spend their leisure time?)

Despi Vladislav March 22, 1955Kako porodica provodi slobodno vrijeme

(zemljoradnici, zanatlije, penzioneri i studenti) (How does a family spend its leisure time (farmers,

artisans, old-age pensioners and students)?)

Ferega Zora December 5, 1955

Kako naši radni ljudi provode svoju starost (What do our working people do in their old age?)

When dealing with the war, graduation theses most commonly mention pali borci (“killed partisans”), the problems their children face, and ratni invalidi (“war invalids”). These topics represent problems common to all post-war periods. Taking into consideration the extent of the Second World War and its consequences, however, it is logical to suppose that, even ten years after the end of the war, these topics were still relevant from a political and social standpoint. Furthermore, the curriculum of the School of Social Work included a separate course dealing with the problems of war invalids and their families until 1961.


Table 5. Topics of graduation theses dealing with the war. Graduation theses written by men are marked in gray and graduation theses written by women in white.


Kolaković Zora

March 28, 1955

Zaštita djece palih boraca žrtava fašističkog terora (The protection of children of fallen fighters, victims of the

Fascist terror)

Pešut Neda March 28, 1955

Oblici dječje zaštite i djece palih boraca i žrtava fašističkog terora (The types of protection of children and of children of the fallen fighters and the victims of the Fascist terror)

Kuničić Jozica July 2, 1955Usporedbe zakona o RVI-a iz god.1929.sa Zakonom RVI-a od 1946. (A comparison of the War Invalids Act of 1929

and the War Invalids Act of 1946)

Vučičević Pavle

September 22, 1955

Usporedba zakona iz 1929.sa zakonom RVI-a iz 1946.god. (A comparison of the War Invalids Act of 1929 and the War

Invalids Act of 1946)

Kostovski Zdravko

October 25, 1956

Zdravstvena zaštita i snabdijevanje ortopedskim pomagalima ratnih vojnih invalida od rata 1914-18 do

danas (Healthcare and providing orthopedic devices to war invalids, from the 1914-1918 war to the present)

Ninković-Vobaški

MilosavkaMay 8, 1957 Zaštita žrtava fašističkog terora (Welfare of the victims of

the Fascist terror)

Gareljić Miljenko

June 20, 1958

Razvoj zaštite RVI u NR Hrvatskoj s osvrtom na financijsko-materijalna davanja (The development of the

welfare of war invalids in the People’s Republic of Croatia, with regard to levies)

Mikoci đuro October 17, 1958

Zaštita djece palih boraca i žrtava fašističkog terora na području općine Ludbreg (Welfare of children of the fallen fighters and the victims of the Fascist terror in the Ludbreg

Municipality)

Ragužin Ivan October 15, 1958

Briga NOO-a Slav.Brod za djecu palih boraca i žrtava fašističkog terora od njegova osnutka do danas (The care of the People’s Committee of the Slavonski Brod

Municipality for the children of the fallen fighters and the victims of the Fascist terror, from its foundation to the

present) Stojčević

GavroOctober 10,

1958 Utvrđivanje ratnog invaliditeta (Establishing war invalidity)

Delijanis-Kovačević

VeraOctober 2,

1959

Faktori koji utječu na slabije učenje djece palih boraca u školi učenika u industriji “Prvomajska” (Factors that

influence poor academic achievement in children of the fallen fighters in the Prvomajska trade school)

Jolović Branko December 7, 1959

Zbrinjavanje djece palih boraca i ŽFT-a na ustaničkoj Romaniji NR BiH (Caring for the children of fallen

fighters and the victims of the Fascist terror in the region of Romanija of the People’s Republic of Bosnia and

Herzegovina)

Poropat Ivan October 31, 1959

Zaštita vojnih invalida i porodica poginulih boraca na području Istre za vrijeme Italije i danas (The welfare of war

invalids and the families of fallen fighters in Istria during Italian rule and today)


The thesis titles also show that some theses compared a particular social problem before and after the Second World War. Examples of such topics are given in Table 6.

Table 6. Topics of graduation theses comparing social problems before and after the Second World War. Graduation theses written by men are marked in gray and graduation theses written by women in white.


Hržić Ivan October 10, 1955Razvitak dječjih domova u NRH od oslobođenja

do danas (Development of children’s homes in the People’s Republic of Croatia from liberation to the

present)Komlenac Jovanka March 19, 1955 Dječja zaštita u Beogradu prije i poslije rata (Child

welfare in Belgrade before and after the war)

Višekruna Piljo September 13, 1955

U kojima se sve pravcima osnovna načela novog porodičnog prava FNRJ proizvela reforma ranijeg porodičnog prava i kako se to očituje na osnovnim propisima porodičnog prava FNRJ (how were the basic principles in the Family Act of the Federal People’s Republic of Yugoslavia in reformed in

relation to the earlier Family Act, and how is this reflected in particular provisions?)

Overall, more graduation theses are directly connected with the socialist system and the National Liberation War (21.5%) than with child welfare (5.26%) or the welfare of the elderly (3.5%). Of course, this in no way means that the texts of all other graduation theses were not ideologically marked. We can also see that these topics are predominantly “male”, i.e. that male social workers dealt with cur-rent political issues more often than female social workers.

ethnicity in graduation theses

The analysis of the topics of graduation theses dealing with ethnicity included an analysis of the nationality of students enrolled in the School of Social Work. 519 students were enrolled in the social work study program at the School of Social Work in its first six years, that is, in the academic years 1952/53 to 1959/60. Data in the admission register included each student’s nationality and sex. No data was provided for 3 students, and one student was ethnically uncommitted.


Croats were the largest group (70.93%), and were represented by a roughly equal number of men and women. Serbs were the next (20.15%), and were represented by more men than women. There were also mem-bers of national minorities: Montenegrins (2.90%), Slovenians (2.13%), Macedonians (2.13%) and Czechs (0.77%). 0.58% of the students were Albanian. Interestingly, one student was Pakistani. There were no wom-en of Czech or Albanian descent among the students enrolled.

Table 7. Students with regard to nationality

nAtIonAlIty nuMber %Croats (men) 183 35.46

Croats (women) 183 35.46Serbs (men) 56 10.85

Serbs (women) 48 9.30Montenegrins (men) 14 2.71

Montenegrins (women) 1 0.19Slovenians (men) 6 1.16

Slovenians (women) 5 0.97Macedonians (men) 9 1.74

Macedonians (women) 2 0.39Czechs (men) 4 0.77

Czechs (women) 0 0Albanians (men) 3 0.58

Albanians (women) 0 0Pakistani (men) 1 0.19

Ethnically uncommitted 1 0.19total 516 100

If this data is compared with data from the 1953 census, it can be seen that the make-up of the student body was roughly proportionate to that of the country. The population of Croatia was 3, 936, 022, and was 78.18% Croat, 14.98% Serb, 1.07% Slovenian and 0.90% Czech. There are no data about the number of Montenegrins, Macedonians or Albanians. It is worth noting, however, that, in comparison with the census data, there was a larger percentage of students of Serbian nationality and a smaller percentage of students of Croatian nationality.

Although there were students from different national backgrounds, the analysis of the topics of graduation theses showed that ethnicity was not dealt with. Out of a total of 171 thesis titles, only one


mentions ethnicity. This is the graduation thesis entitled Cigani na području općine Koprivnica (Gypsies in the area of the Koprivnica Municipality), written by Ivan Grgić, who graduated in 1958.

It is reasonable to assume that the proclaimed values of brother-hood and unity made ethnicity an undesirable topic; in any case, it was not emphasized by the advisers (who were mostly the founders of the study program, Partisans, and members of the “establish-ment”) or the students.

This is corroborated by a statement of a female student from one of the first generations, who, when asked whether the issues of women’s equality or ethnicity were discussed while she was study-ing, said the following:

We did not discuss it… but there were Macedonians, Montene-grins, one student from Kosovo. But it was not very noticeable or very crucial, important to us at the time (Ksenija Bralić-Švarcer, graduated in 1995, personal communication).

Conclusion

On the basis of the analysis of graduation theses from the period between 1955 and 1960, we can observe the following:1. At the inception of the vocational training (School of Social Work

in Zagreb), the profession of social work appealed to both men and women, although their motivation seems to have been different. This shows that, regardless of the crucial role of women in the foundation of the social work education, social work did not begin as a “female” profession, as was the case in many European countries where social work education was developed in the first half of the 20th century (cf. Zaviršek 2005).

2. Since the founding of the School of Social Work, men have been more interested in social policy topics, while women have primarily focused on practical approaches and social work interventions.

3. Topics directly connected with the social system and the Na-tional Liberation War are relatively frequent (21.5% overall).

4. Gender sensitive issues are very infrequent in the graduation the-ses, and topics dealing with ethnicity do not occur at all.


Furthermore, the analysis of the graduation theses showed that values proclaimed by the social and political system of the time were deeply embedded in the education of social workers. It is evident that graduation theses can be a relevant source of information. A more in-depth analysis of graduation theses, which would take into account the gender perspective and influence of ideology on the values of the social work profession in the period of recovery following the Second World War, when the authorities clearly needed to promote socialism as a social and political system, is required.

Further research based on oral history and the work of female social workers in socialism, as has appeared in recent publications (Dijanić et al. 2004), is also required. Conducting parallel research into this issue in several socialist countries from this period would grant us significant new insights into gender issues and the ideol-ogy of the development of social work in this particular social and political context.


References

Ajduković, M. (ed.) (2002), 50 godina Studija za socijalni rad: 1952 - 2002. Zagreb: Social Work Study Center, Faculty of Law, University of Zagreb.

Ajduković, M. and Branica, V. (2006), Počeci socijalnog rada u Hrvatskoj između dva svjetska rata. Ljetopis Studijskog centra socijalnog rada,13, 1: 29-45.

Ajduković, M. and Kljajić, S. (2006), Susret prvih diplomiranih socijalnih radnika. Ljetopis Studijskog centra socijalnog rada, 13, 1: 177-187.

Dijanić, D., Merunka-Golubić, M., Niemčić, I. and Stanić, S. (2004), Ženski biografski leksikon – Sjećanje žena na život u socijalizmu. Zagreb: Centre for Women’s Studies.

Narodni i vjerski sastav stanovništva Hrvatske 1880-1991 po naseljima (1998), Central Bureau of Statistics, 1.

Prlenda, S. (2005), Žene i prvi organizirani oblici praktičnog socijalnog rada u Hrvatskoj. Revija za socijalnu politiku,12, 3-4: 319-332.

Puljiz, V. (2006), Socijalna politika i socijalne djelatnosti u Hrvatskoj u razdoblju 1900. -1960. godine. Ljetopis Studijskog centra socijalnog rada,13, 1: 7-28.

Pusić, E. (2004), Povijest socijalnog rada u Hrvatskoj: Intervju. Ljetopis Studijskog centra socijalnog rada,11, 1: 141-154.

Zaviršek, D. (2005), “You will teach them some, socialism will do the rest!” History of Social Work Education in Slovenia during the Period 1940-1960. in: Schilde, Kurt and Schulte eds.: Need and Care. Glimpses in the Beginnings of Eastern Europe’s professional Welfare. Opladen & Bloomfield Hills: Barbara Budrich Publishers.

Zaviršek, D. (2006), Spol, socijalna skrb i obrazovanje za socijalni rad u početku socijalističke vlasti u Sloveniji. Ljetopis Studijskog centra socijalnog rada, 13, 1: 63-74.


APPendICes

Appendix 1. Content analysis – analysis criterion: women’s issues Graduation theses dealing with women’s issues

1. Čavec Vladimir October 06, 1956

Žene u Varaždinskoj industriji svile (Women in the Varaždin Silk Factory)

2. Mišković Branko December 14, 1956

Sociografski odnosi uposlene ženske radne snage u Linjskoj Krapini

(Sociographic relations of the female workforce in

Linjska Krapina)

3. Medak Ante January 15, 1959

Socijalna zaštita trudnih žena i majki rodilja u

radnom odnosu (Social welfare of working pregnant women and young mothers)

4. Radotović Tomislav October 16, 1959

Neki problemi samohranih majki trikotaže “Biser” u

Bjelovaru (Some problems of single mothers in the

Biser Knitwear Factory in Bjelovar)

5. Cmrk Marija October 13, 1956

Ekonomski i socijalni elementi zapošljavanja ženske radne snage u

Linjskoj Krapini (Economic and social elements

of employing a female workforce in Linjska

Krapina)

6. Eskenazi-Kos Bina December 30, 1958

O problemu prostitucije (About the problem of

prostitution)

7. Smesnik-Takač Mira March 30, 1959

Mjere za pomoć radnoj majci u FNRJ (Measures to help working mothers

in the Federative People’s Republic of Yugoslavia)

8. Petrović Radojica January 14, 1959

Žensko prihvatilište u Zagrebu; zadatak, organizacija i uloga socijalnog radnika u

prihvatilištu (Women’s shelter in Zagreb: its

organization and the role of social workers in the

shelter)


Appendix 2. Analysis of graduation theses based on whether or not gender issues are dealt with

1. Logožar Ladislav April 2, 1955

Da li postoji razlika u socijalno-psihološkoj strukturi delikventa i

nedelikventa u istoj porodici (Is there a difference in the socio-psychological

structure of a delinquent and a non-delinquent in the same family?)

M

2. Novak Josip

November 8, 1958

Resocijalizacija omladinaca koji su prošli kroz odgojni zavod Klinča-sela

(The resocialization of young men who were detained in the Klinča-sela juvenile

detention center?)M

3. Krajna Cvjetko

February 18, 1959

Pojava recidivizma kod maloljetnih prestupnika (Recidivism in underage

delinquents) M

4. Kljaić Slavko

September 17, 1955

Nekoliko obilježja liječenih alkoholičara na stanici za psihohigijenu (Some

characteristics of alcoholics treated at the psychological hygiene clinic)

M

5. Jurak Ljubomir July 3, 1956

Zaštita porodice na temelju socijalnog osiguranja na području sreza Tuzla, iza

smrti osiguranika hranioca porodice (Social welfare of a family from the district of Tuzla following the death of an insured

person who was the family provider)

M

6. Rodica Ljubomira

September 28, 1956

Neke soc. karakteristike maloljetnih prestupnica (Some social characteristics

of underage female delinquents)F

7. đukić Mirjana

January 27, 1959

Problemi maloljetnih prestupnika na području grada Brčko (Some problems of underage delinquents in the town of

Brčko)M

8. Počuča Milica

October 20, 1958

Neki sociološko demografski elementi alkoholizma s posebnim osvrtom na djecu u porodicama alkoholičara na

području grada Zagreba (Some socio-demographic elements of alcoholism,

with special emphasis on children in families of alcoholics in the city of

Zagreb)

M

255

Jelka Zorn

An Interview with Christine Labonté- Roset and Lena Dominelli

This Interview with Professor Christine Labonté Roset and Professor Lena Dominelli took place on December 4, 2006, dur-ing the Conference ‘Ethnicity and Education in Social Work’, at the Faculty of Social Work in Ljubljana. Their analytical approach to societies offers insights into complex social problems such as racism and other forms of inequality, as well as issues pertaining to social security and welfare in the age of globalization.

Zorn: In the last two decades we’ve heard more and more talk about globalization, that is, the process towards a single neo-liberal economic agenda. Multiculturalism is an indispensable counterpart of globalisation, and yet racist violence and right wing politics are on the rise. Isn’t this somewhat of a contradiction?

Labonté Roset: Globalisation has caused feelings of power-lessness in many people. It has taken their jobs, which in turn have been transferred to so-called third world countries. They are also paid less. One possible reaction to this phenomenon is a return to old right wing ideologies and strategies, in line with a belief that everything was better in the past; even Hitler was able to provide jobs. One can find arguments of this kind in Germany. Racism and racist attacks have been on the rise, especially since the last few years. In eastern Germany, right wing parties have seats in three of the five regional parlia-

256 I N T E R V I E W

ments. In Saxony, for example, they got about 7% of the vote. This is new. These right wing parties are openly working to-gether with groups of young right wing extremists who even carry out attacks. In Berlin, for example, several attacks on parliament members from the Green and Social Democratic party have occurred. This surge in racist violence is fright-ening. Another alarming phenomenon is the growth of anti-Semitism among youngsters from immigrant backgrounds, mostly from Arab countries, but also from neighboring coun-tries. These youths are becoming more and more open about expressing their hatred.

Zorn: The increase of racist violence and right wing politics in Germany is not an isolated occurrence, but rather a typical European development. The UK, famous for its appreciation of ethnic diversity is, I believe, headed in the same direction. How do you explain the growth of racism in the UK and in general?

Dominelli: I think that growing racism is part of globalisation. Globalisation erodes borders for capital, but not for people. In the process of opening borders jobs have been taken away from people: for over a decade, manufacturing jobs have been disappearing to low paid countries like China and India at the rate of 400,000 jobs a year. So it makes people in Eu-rope feel vulnerable. Because the governments have not re-sponded to that feeling of vulnerability, people look for scape-goats. People who are different are obvious scapegoats. In that context, people are individualized: globalisation creates the individual consumer, not people with solidarity or people who belong to anything. In that kind of very uncertain, vulner-able situation, people look for certainties and they think there were certainties in the past. Of course this is a myth. The na-tion state was developed by destroying heterogeneity. I think that racism is a very predictable reaction, because there have been no interventions at the political level to counteract it. In that context, the right wing has a very fertile ground. In the UK, we have had a history that allows us to say that we are proud of not having had far right parties, because they were


all seen as lunatic fringes. But now, they have got 49 local counselors elected in the country. That is more scary than scary to me. The reason for the right wing politicians’ success is that they have approached the people who have been say-ing for years “we want housing, we want jobs, health care and good education”. Mainstream politicians haven’t deliv-ered that. People don’t know where to go, so they are will-ing to listen to right wing politicians, who of course won’t be able to deliver these public goods either. Because the prob-lem of global neo-liberalism is much more complex, I think international social action is necessary in order to solve the problems of social justice. We all have to sit down and figure out how to share the earth’s resources equally. Ironically the old idea of socialism was that it couldn’t happen solely in one country. Already Marx had claimed that the struggle has to be international.

The other scary thing is that over 50% of racially aggravat-ed assaults were committed by young thugs under 16. One begins to wonder why. They are the ones with the smallest stake in the system. They know they are going to get low paying jobs and poor housing. They know they are not going to be heard, that nobody is interested in them, so what else can they do? They get locked into competing for resources against each other, and who can they exclude? “Race”, rac-ism, and other differences are very handy when competing for resources.

Zorn: It seems that racism is one of the ideologies that has gained support among young people today. How is the German government responding to this?

Labonté Roset: In Germany the government is reacting to this development. In the last three years they have created vari-ous programs, Xenos and Civitas for example. These pro-grams support youth groups, including anti-fascist youth groups. They are creating possibilities for youth with anti-fascist sentiments to get together, to meet each other. They also work with youngsters who are in danger of becoming


members of right wing groups. I think awareness is growing. At our university, Birgit Rommelspacher has evaluated these programs and concluded that they are not ideal, but can cre-ate other environments in which youngsters who are against right wing orientation won’t feel so lost. They have felt isolated and alone in schools, and this is changing. It is also very im-portant to work with youngsters who are in danger of becom-ing members of right wing groups. I must say that this is very difficult work. In a way it is dangerous, because it sometimes seems that you are not clearly opposed to right wing opinions and actions. As a social worker you do not agree with racist attitudes, of course, but you nevertheless invite these young-sters to work with you in order to show them alternative orien-tations. I believe one must have and display clear boundaries in this type of work. There is very lively discussion nowadays in Germany about how to work with people who are in dan-ger of becoming right wing orientated, while at the same time avoiding to work with people who are already members of extreme right wing groups. This is a very dangerous field and I think that we have yet to engage in discussions which are necessary in order to gain a clearer perspective.

Zorn: The empowerment and networking of youngsters who have clear anti-fascist attitudes is a very innovative approach to fighting racism. Another possible response is work with youth who are in danger of becoming perpe-trators of racist acts. What is your experience or opinion, Lena, regarding this kind of approach? Not long ago the British government adopted a new law to counter anti-social behavior: how do you find its implementation in regards to racism as anti-social behavior?

Dominelli: In the UK there have been attempts by communities and social workers to work with racist individuals, young skin-heads, particularly in the East End of London. Phil Cohen, for example, has written a lot on this subject and his experience is that it is virtually impossible to change the racist attitudes of these youngsters. I’m not surprised, because the structural


issues that confront them in every day life are often ignored. They live in really appalling conditions. We wouldn’t want to live in such conditions, so why should we expect them to be happy living in such a miserable situation?

The other point is that black people have organized themselves to fight back against racism and discrimination. This has been going on as long as I can remember, and alliances across racial divides have always been present. But in the long run this has not been successful either. The government, to give it its due in Britain, has set the social cohesion agenda, which has tried to encourage people to interact more – not in the multicultural sense of keeping our differences intact, but by saying what we have in common. Multiculturalism no longer works and the government, by introducing the Anti-social Behavior Orders (ASBO), has missed the point. Nowadays kids are criminalized for writing graffiti saying something like “my life is shit, what can you do about it?”. The number of vicious assaults has risen, but one can end up in jail even for graffiti. These strategies have not worked; ironically, ASBO’s have been used primarily on black kids, because they are the ones who are seen as dangerous and deviant. There’s been debate about what has to be done, and there have been attempts to work with the skinheads, but I personally feel that the government is still using the pathology model. Poor people want employment, education, health care and nice places to live. It’s what we all want. These are structural problems that have to be dealt with. Poor people are not getting a response on that. I don’t think it is going to matter how much anti-racists play around solely with attitudes. That won’t solve this problem. If you really want to make a difference, you have to deal with what I call the scarcity issue. People are scared; it is scarcity and uncertainty, competition.

Zorn: The problem of racism invites an examination of the socio-economic conditions in which people live. Social class and mobility issues come to the fore, whereby education is seen as one of the strongest components of social mobility. How is this issue addressed in Germany, for example?


Labonté Roset: We have an institute at our university for 15 years now. It’s called The European Institute for Productive Learning. It was developed to bring “dropouts” back to school. The institute has been very successful with these types of youngsters. In Berlin, the number of dropouts with migration background is around 40%. It is very important that they get another chance in another kind of school, or that they can switch programs and get involved with practical work, which tends to interest these youngsters. New schooling methods are based on such interests. About 80 to 90% of these youngsters are successful on their final exams. Afterwards, they have far more opportunities. That’s why I think that we have work on both sides; that means that we also have to look for ways to change the living conditions of these young people.

Zorn: Despite the success of certain programs for young people, there is still a general feeling that Europe is regressing: welfare systems have been transformed into systems of control, people are not getting jobs, and there are no decent places to live; free education and reliable social and health services for everybody without discrimination are slowly coming to an end.

Dominelli: I agree. I would not want to say that education is not important. In the UK, if you live in a “sink estate”, you are going to have the worst schools and teachers, the worst of everything. Therefore, in Britain we have middle class parents leaving an area and moving somewhere else because there is a good school nearby. Why? Because they know that if you don’t have a good education the chances of getting your children anywhere in life are minimal. But even a good education is being devalued because you need more and more degrees. In the old days, you could be a professor at a university with one publication and BA. Now the demands are several publications every year and at least a PhD. So the question of education still doesn’t get to the heart of structural issues. We have to find a way to create jobs that people want, but I’m not sure how we could


do this. I worked with young people as a probation officer in the 1980s, in west Yorkshire, England. I worked with young boys and girls who were in trouble with the law. When I asked them what they wanted, the young men all said they wanted women, cars, jobs, houses and no gaffer (boss) around to tell them what to do. Women wanted the same things – jobs, boyfriends and a place to live. And when I thought about it, why do we like our middle class jobs? Because, yes, we do have bosses but it is a light touch on what we do, isn’t it? We still have considerable autonomy at work. So I asked these young people what they would like to do instead. They said they want to be educated and self-employed, because then they could be their own bosses. In those days, we had the possibility of setting up small, community based workshops where you could get them into self employment. My friends in probation have informed me that some are still working. Opportunities like this are gone.

Zorn: Why?

Dominelli: I am very angry at the development of bureaucratic competence based professionals (bureau-technocrats, as I call them) such as social workers, probation officers and community workers, because bureaucratic competence is an obstacle to creativity. I may have been privileged because I was a community worker who had gone into probation and so I had connections. I think we need to develop communities and bring community work skills into social work – something we have failed to do in the UK since the mid-1980s. Communities are not going to be self sustaining if we don’t develop education, health care, transport, the environment, and jobs; all these things have got to come together for us to make progress on this front. But whether we will solve this problem by doing this in the individual community, in the nation state or in the European region or the world as a whole, I don’t know. But I think that is the real crunch question for all of us.

Instead, we have had lots of what the UK government calls job creation schemes. I have done the analysis and


evaluated these employment schemes in southern England, and they are not successful. Training for the unemployed is not recognized as proper training, in other words, a real education that gives you a degree or a qualification. The jobs in these job creation schemes are: a) low paid, so people can’t get out of poverty (even though the government in the UK has been saying work is the only way out of poverty) and b) without job security. These low paid jobs keep people below the poverty line and often disappear in six months. People in my research said that they wanted real jobs. And it doesn’t seem to me an unreasonable thing to want.

Zorn: Are there any positive examples in this pessimistic trend?

Labonté Roset: There are local social economy systems, like those in Luxembourg and Switzerland, which are creating small jobs for people who are unemployed. These networks are a result of the unemployment movement. The unemployed came together to look for ways to change their situation. They developed the idea of creating small enterprises. With the help of others, including social workers, they received some financial support. They created, for example, a local kinder-garten and a small publishing house and are reinforcing the local economy by implementing the local currency. There are several articles about these local social economies.1 This model is being used in Italy as well. The Italian constitution says that if you are creating cooperatives in order to develop small enterprises, you are entitled to tax reductions. In Italy there are around 800 such initiatives, local cooperatives. Hu-manitas, for example, is a cooperative near Florence which I am familiar with. It was created by social workers in order

1 Institute for Productive Learning in Europe: Ingrid Böhm, Jens Schneider (1996), Productive Learning – An Educational Opportunity for Young People in Europe. Milow, Schibri-Verlag.

IPLE (Institute for Productive Learning in Europe (2006/06), Productive Learning – a Bridge between School and Life (DVD – English and German Version), Berlin, IPLE. website: www.iple.de

Elsen, Susanne and Isidor Wallimann (1998), Social Economy: Community Action towards Social Integration and the Prevention of Unemployment and Poverty. In: European Jour-nal of Social Work, Vol 1, Issue 2, July 1998.

Piñeiro, Esteban and Isidor Wallimann (2004), Sozialpolitik anders denken. Das Verursacher-prinzip von der umweltpolitischen zur sozialpolitischen Anwendung. Zürich, Haupt-Verlag.


to help young people who have mental health problems or mental disabilities. This is an agrarian cooperative; people live and work in the countryside, cultivating lettuce and other veg-etables. They are very successful.

Dominelli: There are lots of other examples like that. In England, the middle class has set up local area networks to primarily exchange services amongst each other. For example, there are communities who share their cars to reduce the impact they have on the environment. Another example: somebody can leave a car at the station and another person comes along and drives it home. It is a very interesting idea.

There is a long history of self-employment and coopera-tives in the UK, and they are still being used. Black people in the UK have always used self-employment as their way up the social ladder. So it is not surprising that the people who have risen the most in terms between 1991 to 2001 in the UK have been Indians, who are very successful entrepreneurs, whereas the Bangladeshi and Pakistanis who came later had very little space in the self-employment market and ended up working for others. They are still very poor.

In the UK, groups of people who have dropped out of so-ciety have set up communes, in Wales for example. These communes are built around the idea of self-sufficiency; al-though this model has worked for a few individuals, it is not necessarily good for everybody

In Chile, for example, I visited a small cooperative in a rural area, which was set up specifically to deal with issues per-taining to neo-liberalism and the fact that there never was a welfare state. They lost their bread winners, so there was a number of women and children who needed help. They got together to make their own way in life and now they have a very successful commune.

Zorn: Governments are not necessary part of the solution; ironically, they are becoming part of the problem, be-cause they divide people, often don’t support local initia-tives, and waste tax payer money on bad ideas.


Dominelli: The welfare state has been developed in Europe be-cause the private market and the NGO’s had failed to pro-vide for the majority of people. Why are we going back when we know the laisser-faire model didn’t work in the past, and people’s expectations now are much greater than they were before. I think we have to start holding industry, the private sec-tor, NGO’s, and the state accountable for the situation we are in. I think there is a role for everybody because the task of getting everyone a decent quality of life is huge. But the state has got to take the lead; after all, they are the ones who are taking our money. In Britain taxes are very high, over 40% for most middle class people, and I’m asking what are they giving me for my money, what are they giving to my community for our money? A war in Iraq? A further 6 billion pounds a year is needed to create the welfare state in terms of funding health care and other ser-vices we need. But no, we haven’t got money for that, but we do have money to fight a war in Iraq. I think we need to become much more demanding about what the government delivers for the money that we give them. I believe there is a parasiti-cal relationship between the private sector and the state sec-tor that is not acknowledged. Firms can suddenly leave people without jobs and no discussion needs to take place between them and the trade unions or people in the community. These companies can go because the border is open for capital to come and go. But the borders are not open for job seekers to go elsewhere and find a job there.

Zorn: The governments’ inability to control such situations, especially when it comes to the protection of workers’ rights, has been fixed by a neo-liberal ideology and dis-guised by racist attitudes. One example is the discourse surrounding the reproduction of the “nation” and its work force: instead of appreciating immigrants and their contri-butions, some have argued that ”we will die out”.

Dominelli: It is like the new eugenic movement. Women have al-ways been used as breeding machines. Social policy, even in Sweden, which is still the best model of a welfare state, started by saying “we want women to give birth to more kids”, and that’s


why they supported single mothers. They said, “we are not go-ing to stigmatize them, they’re producing kids”. The French tried to introduce high levels of payment for child benefits to those who have more children. Britain has gone the other way. Tony Blair has been saying that all we need to do is to bring in the right kind of immigrants, the skilled ones. This sets up another set of dynamics and the end results are worrying. I think this is how we start appropriating skills from other peoples countries, which in turn are not replaced, because the sending country cannot afford to do so. Social workers are good example. In Birmingham, for example, we have got 69 social workers who come from Zimbabwe. That is three-quarters of the workforce in Zimbabwe. This action can set up a skills-shortage and ruin the social services infrastructure in Zimbabwe. What do the Zimbabweans get for these workers? Nothing, because they were all brought over on an individual basis. The British state should at least pay for their education so that at least some more people could be educated as social workers in Zimba-bwe. But this suggestion is not very popular. Many of us have been protesting about it to the British government. We now have a code of ethics for international recruitment, but I do not think it will change any of these dynamics. It focuses largely on treating recruited workers with respect. This should go with-out saying. But how do we establish mutuality in exchanges of workers? That is the nub of the question.

Another interesting labor recruitment is within the EU. Since 2004, when eastern European countries joined the EU, there have been attempts to stop people from the eastern countries from coming to the western countries. Britain was criticized by other countries for not stopping them, but Germany, Italy, Ire-land all did. Now, in the UK there is a heated debate about the “huge” numbers of eastern European immigrants. And if you look at what are they doing, they are doing all the jobs that no British person would ever consider doing. And for less money. They are driving buses, they are plumbers, they are all highly skilled people. And they are the right color. But they have the wrong religions – Catholicism and Islam. These two religions


are not popular in Britain. The oppressive discourses are not just about the color of ones skin or eyes, but about lan-guage, religion and other personal characteristics. Racism has always been about more than simply skin, hair and eye color.

Labonté Roset: We had similar discussion regarding birth rates in relation to immigrants, because Germany has one of the lowest birth rate in the world. Well educated women with academic backgrounds simply don’t have children. This also has to do with the lack of a public welfare system that would give working mothers a chance to work and have children. So they often decide to work and have no children in order to continue their professional life. Now the system has been changed. Before, parental leave was a small, fixed sum of money, which parents received from the government. Now the amount of parental leave depends on one’s salary. This is a system that primarily supports middle class families, because now they see that they can make money even if they take one or two years of parental leave.

On the other side, the eternal question is which immi-grants are welcome. Experts are most desirable, especially in the field of information technology. They have the possi-bility of receiving green cards (i.e. working permits) in order to come to Germany. But their recruitment has not been a success. Very few people came, because green cards are for a limited period, 5 years, for example. Another obstacle is the experience that they are not allowed to come with their families, so they rather go to other countries. They are also afraid of the racism. And often people who are coming to Europe are not coming from poor families, be-cause poor people cannot afford to emigrate. Immigrants therefore tend to be well educated. Recently, Germany changed its asylum law. According to the old law, rejected asylum seekers who could not be sent back to their coun-tries were not allowed to work, they used to depend on so-cial benefits. Now the asylum law provides a possibility to


get permanent residency within one year if they could find an employment in Germany. This is an important change.

Zorn: As your answers have clearly shown, racism and op-pression have been constantly changing their forms and arguments as to whom to “protect” and whom to exclude, and also that combating exclusions and inequalities is a very complex, structural issue. I thank you for sharing your insights.

268

ContrIbutors

dr Marina Ajduković is a Professor, a head of the Chair for Social Work at the Department of Social Work and a head of the Postgraduate Studies in Social Work at the University of Zagreb, Croatia. Areas of teaching and research: history of social work, social work with youth, children in care, supervision. E-mail: [email protected]

vanja branica, BA, is a junior researcher and lecturer at the Department of Social Work, Faculty of Law, University of Zagreb, Croatia. Areas of research and teaching: interpersonal communication, theory of social work, child care, history of social work, gender and social work. E-mail: [email protected]

dr suzana bornarova is a senior lecturer at the Institute for Social Work and Social Policy, Faculty of Philosophy, University of “Ss. Cyril and Methodius” in Skopje, Macedonia. Areas of teaching and research: social work with families, social work in education, education policy and social policy for elderly. E-mail: [email protected]

Dr Miroslav Brkić is a senior lecturer at the Department of Social Work and Social Policy, Faculty of Political Sciences, Belgrade, Serbia. Areas of teaching and research: community social work, social work advocacy, social work management, social work with juvenile delinquents. E-mail: [email protected]

Eva Anđela delale, MA in psychology, is a researcher at the Department of Social Work, Faculty of Law, University of Zagreb. Areas of teaching and research: individual and group psychosocial interventions, developmental and social psychology, emotional intelligence and parenting style theories and research, multicultural social work. E-mail: [email protected]

dr lena dominelli is a Professor at the School of Applied Social Sciences at the University of Durham. She is a former president of the International Association of Schools of Social Work (1996 to 2004) and a current IASSW’s Liaison Officer for the United Nations. Areas of research and teaching: sociology, social policy and social work, globalization, social and community development, women’s welfare, children’s rights. E-mail: [email protected]

269 C O N T R I B U T O R S

Dr Udžejna Habul is a senior lecturer at the Department of Social Work, Faculty of Political Science, University of Sarajevo, Bosnia and Hezegovina. Areas of teach-ing and research: family law and social protection. E-mail: [email protected]

dr Christine labonté-roset is a Professor and rector of the Alice-Salomon University of Applied Sciences, Berlin. From 1999 to 2007 she was president of the European Association of Schools of Social Work and a vice-president of the International Association of Schools of Social Work. Currently she is a president of the European Network for Quality Assurance for Social Professions (ENQASP). Areas of teaching and research: marginalisation and social exclusion in Europe, ethnic minorities and migration, racism and antiracist work, history of social work education, international social work and higher education policy in Europe. E-mail: [email protected]

rosa logar is a director of the Domestic Abuse Intervention Program in Vienna and a lecturer at the Department of Social Work, University of Applied Sciences, Vienna, Austria. She is also a member of the Council of Europe, Task Force to Combat Violence against Women. Areas of teaching, practice and research: violence against women, domestic violence, women’s human rights, gender and social work, gender-specific social work interventions. E-mail: [email protected]

Dr Milanka Miković is a Professor at the Department of Social Work, Faculty of Political Science, University of Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina. Areas of teaching and research: psycho-social disorders among children and youth, juvenile delinquency, domestic violence, community mental health, gender, poverty and social policy. E-mail: [email protected]

dr Ilona Pešatová is a senior lecturer of social work and a deputy head of the Department of Social Studies and Special Education at the Faculty of Education, Technical University of Liberec, Czech Republic. Areas of teaching and research: minority issues and community planning in social services. E-mail: [email protected]

dr dagmar schultz is a Professor of social work at the Alice-Salomon University of Applied Sciences in Berlin, Germany. Areas of teaching and research: anti-racist social work, women’s health care, cultural competence in the psychiatric care of migrants and minorities. She was one of the founders of the Orlanda, the first women’s publishing house in Europe. E-mail: [email protected]

270 C O N T R I B U T O R S

svetlana trbojevik, BA, is a lecturer at the Institute of Social Work and Social Policy, Faculty of Philosophy, University of “Ss. Cyril and Methodius” in Skopje, Macedonia. Areas of teaching and research: theory of social work, social work in local community, non-governmental sector, history of social work, children’s rights, trafficking in human beings. E-mail: [email protected]

Špela urh, BA, is a junior researcher and a lecturer at the Faculty of Social Work, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia. She is currently preparing her PhD on the subject of ethnically sensitive social work with Roma which is her main area of teaching and researching. E-mail: [email protected]

lucija vejmelka, BA, is a junior lecturer and a secretary of the Department of social work, Faculty of Law, University of Zagreb. Areas of teaching and research: interpersonal communication and child welfare. E-mail: [email protected]

dr darja Zaviršek is a Professor and a vice dean at the Faculty of Social Work, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia. Since 2002 she serves as the board member of the International Association of the Schools of Social Work and has initiated the Sub-regional Network of the Schools of Social Work from the Eastern Europe. Areas of teaching and research: commu-nity mental health, disability studies, anthropology of gender and health, history of social work. E-mail: [email protected]

dr Jelka Zorn is a lecturer at the Faculty of Social Work, University of Ljubljana. Areas of research and teaching: asylum, immigration and citizenship issues in Slovenia, especially on the Erased people. She is active in campaigns which advocate their rights and NoBorder networks. E-mail: [email protected]

simona Žnidarec Demšar, MA, is a lecturer at the Faculty of Social Work, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia. She is also a community activist fighting for social inclusion of Roma. Areas of teaching and research: community social work and ethnically sensitive social work. E-mail: [email protected]

271

INDEX

A

Ajduković, M. 12, 239, 241, 244, 255, 272

Aluffi-Pentini, A. 181, 184Amara, F. 180, 184Andall, J. 41, 59anti-discriminatory practice 216anti-racism 32Arendt, H. 170, 171, 176Aris, R. 59assimilation 31, 128, 129asylum seekers (asylum policies) 16,

27, 28, 40-42, 95, 164, 167-173, 175-177, 231, 270

Atik, Z. 83Austria 42, 46, 47, 49, 60, 226, 227,

273

B

Balibar, E. 161, 162, 165, 166, 171, 176

Barth, F. 88, 103Bender, D. 67, 83Bergold, J. 181, 184Blitz, K. B. 164, 165, 166, 176Bologna Process 197borders 161, 162, 165, 169, 175, 185,

197, 260, 268Bornarova, S. 14, 15, 119, 120, 125,

219, 238, 272Bosnia and Herzegovina 8, 11, 12,

140-142, 148, 149, 155, 158, 185-188, 191-198, 200, 241, 250, 273

Branica, V. 12, 13, 201, 239, 241, 255, 272

Brčić, C. 202, 214Broughton, S. 111, 117-119, 120-122, 125Burwell, Y. N. 224, 238

C

Canda, E. R. 203, 214Carter, R. 60Carter, R.T. 82Cerar, M. 103Chateerje, P. 203, 214citizenship 12, 27, 36, 37, 42, 141,

152, 161-163, 165-167, 171, 172, 180, 274

civil society 107-115, 118, 121-124, 226, 241

Clarke, K. 182, 184‘colour-blind’ approach 34Crawford, M. 44, 59Croatia 11, 12, 17, 69, 140, 141-144,

148-150, 155, 158, 185, 188, 192, 201, 202, 209, 210, 214, 239, 241, 242, 250, 251, 252, 272

cultural competence 31, 182, 225, 226, 228, 236, 273

culture 9, 20, 21, 28, 29, 31, 34, 41, 43, 63, 74, 76, 79, 85, 87-89, 97, 98, 103, 110, 117, 122, 131, 132, 153, 166, 170, 177, 181, 203, 211, 216, 221-225, 227-229

curricula 11-14, 57, 181-183, 186, 188, 189, 192, 193, 196, 197, 204, 206, 212, 220, 235, 236, 239, 243

Cyrus, N. 68, 82Czech Republic 127, 128, 131, 134,

137, 273Čaldarović, O. M. 202, 214

D

Dearing, A. 48, 59Dedić, J. 164, 166, 176Delale, E. A. 13, 201, 202, 214, 272deportation (deported persons) 43,

272

55, 163, 167, 170, 171, 173, 174detention (detained persons) 12, 163,

167, 169, 170, 171, 173, 174, 257Devore, W. 96, 97, 103, 203, 204,

214Dijanić, D. 254, 255discrimination 63, 66-68, 76displaced persons: -internally 12, 139, 142, 145, 146,

148, 152, 155 -refugees 11, 12, 27, 34, 35, 40, 41,

95, 139-150, 152-157, 164, 167, 169, 170, 179, 186, 202, 204, 205, 230, 231

diversity 7, 12-16, 32, 96, 100, 101, 131, 136, 157, 179, 183, 201, 206, 209, 210, 213, 221-225, 236, 243, 260

domestic violence 39, 42, 43, 46-48, 50, 51, 55, 57-60, 246, 273

Dominelli, L. 11, 12, 17, 19, 22-24, 30, 32, 33, 38, 93, 94, 96, 97, 103, 104, 181, 184, 259, 260, 262, 264, 265, 267, 268, 272

Dragidella, L. 8, 17

E

egalitarianism 32Eichenberg, C. 75, 82empowerment 76, 79, 100, 109, 116,

117, 203, 262Erased: -struggle of the Erased 174 -erasure from the Register of Per-

manent Residents 162, 171Eriksen, T. H. 92, 103ethnic division 92, 195ethnic minorities: -discrimination of 63, 66-68, 76 -indigenous 72, 117, 182, 202ethnicity 7, 19, 39, 85, 103, 179, 201,

203, 204, 207-209, 212, 213, 215,

217, 251, 259Europe 7-11, 13-15, 17, 19-21, 26-29,

31, 36, 43-46, 57-59, 61, 111, 114, 122, 125-127, 136, 137, 149, 152, 162, 163, 168, 169, 171, 172, 175, 176, 179, 180, 183, 209, 241, 255, 260, 264, 266, 268, 270, 273

European Union 32, 40, 59, 112, 127, 155, 161, 162, 167, 168, 169, 198

exclusion 44, 87, 88, 96, 102, 118, 128, 129, 134, 162, 165, 174, 181, 182, 217, 273

F

Far Right 19, 20, 27Federico, C. R. 221, 222, 238Foucault, M. 25, 38Fraenkel, E. 111, 117-122, 125France 17, 20, 29, 177, 179, 180, 183

G

Galtung, J. 42, 60Gartner, R. 44, 59gender perspective 254Germany 20, 29, 40, 49, 59, 67, 77,

80, 83, 114, 153, 154, 163, 164, 165, 167, 168, 170, 176, 177, 179, 180, 182, 227, 259-263, 269, 270, 271, 273

Gerovska, M. 108, 125Gibney, J. M. 168, 169, 176Gilman, S 9, 17globalisation 182, 220, 259, 260graduation theses 239, 242-251, 253,

254, 257Green, J. W. 214Gregurović, S. 202, 214Griese, H. 74, 82Grünke, M. 67, 82Gün, A. K. 80, 82

273

H

Hague, G. 54, 59Hall, S. 38Haller, B. 48, 59, 60Hanonina, K. 90, 103Hanžek, M. 88, 93, 103Hauss, C. 109, 125health 7, 10, 42, 53, 61, 67, 87, 110,

122, 123, 128, 131, 141, 143, 148, 156, 161, 164, 168, 182, 183, 204, 217, 261, 263-265, 267, 268, 273, 274

Hermann, C. A. 64, 67, 82Hessle, S. 8, 17, 125Hildenbrand, B. 67, 84Hoffman, S. K. 222, 238Hokenstad, M. C. 203, 214human rights 27, 36, 40-42, 45, 50,

58, 60, 87, 89, 91-93, 101, 109, 110, 112, 119, 128, 140, 152, 162, 163, 168, 169, 170, 172, 182, 183, 217

Humphreys, C. 44, 60Humphries, B. 170, 176Husband, C. 103

I

Ilievski, V. 109, 125immigrants: -undocumented 169, 173innovative project 86integration 28, 29, 76, 79, 80, 113,

122, 128, 129, 131, 135, 136, 140, 144, 148, 155, 170, 179, 180, 186, 205, 209, 227, 232, 233, 236

intercultural: -competency 63, 227, 228 -conflict management 183 -practice 179internationalism 7, 16islamophobia 20, 29

J

Jackson, J. S. 67, 84Jalušič, V. 176Janko Spreizer, A. 88, 103Jaroshek, R. 229Johnson, C. L. 221-224, 238Josipovič, D. 85, 87, 88, 92, 105

K

Kahn, S. 97, 103Karlsen, S. 67, 82Kilpatrick, C. A. 224, 238Klemenz, B. 64, 83Kljajić, S. 244, 255Kopp, K. 170, 176Koray, S. 63, 83Kotal, J. 140, 158Kovačič, G. 89, 103Kreickenbaum, M. 167, 176Kuhar, R. 85, 88, 103, 104, 105

L

Labonté-Roset, C. 179, 183, 184, 273Lakinska, A. 119, 120, 125Lane, M. 97, 104Lasonen, J. 182, 184Leskošek, V. 17, 87, 90, 91, 103-105Lipovec Čebron, U. 164, 169, 172,

176Logar, R. 13, 39, 47, 48, 56, 60, 273Lorenz, W. 103, 104, 180, 181, 184Lösel, F. 67, 83Lyons, K. 181, 184

M

Macedonia 11, 14, 107-123, 125, 153, 188, 192, 219, 220, 226, 228-230, 231-233, 236, 238, 241, 272, 274

274

Malahleka, B. 96, 97, 104Manion, K. 181, 184marginal groups 205, 206, 215, 216,

217Mason, T. 182, 184Masten, A. S. 67, 75, 83Mayer, C. E. 185, 186, 200Mazowijecki, T. 186, 200Mc Garry, J. 200McLaughlin, K. 181, 184McMahon, M. O. 223, 225, 238Mehta, V. 203, 214mental health 217, 267, 273, 274Merunka-Golubić, M. 255Midgley, J. 203, 214Milosavljević, M. 140, 158Mirjanić, Z. 197, 200Mirzoeff, N. 9, 17Mullender, A. 54, 59multiculturalism 7, 31, 32, 180, 183,

201, 204, 206, 208, 215, 223, 224, 228

N

Nash, L. W. 185, 186, 200nationalism 12, 103, 174Nazroo, Y. J. 67, 82Neighbors, H. W. 67, 84Nelson, G. 100, 104, 238Niemčić, I. 255

O

Ozankan, M. 80, 83

P

Patel, N. 94, 104pathologies 13, 263Payne, M. 94, 96, 104Perić, T. 166, 167, 176Petronijević, V. 152, 159

poverty 10, 13, 19, 43, 108, 127, 128, 139, 146, 153, 164, 170, 187, 219, 266, 273

Powell, J. L. 67, 75, 83Prilleltensky, I. 100, 104Prlenda, S. 241, 255professional coalitions 157Puljiz, V 240, 241, 255Pusić, E. 241, 242, 255

R

race 20-22, 25, 26, 28, 32racism 7, 11, 12, 20-24, 26-29, 31,

32, 34, 36, 42, 52, 66, 76, 86, 88, 89, 93, 95, 96, 97, 162, 166, 173-175, 217, 225, 236, 259-263, 270, 271, 273

Ramesh, M. 87, 104Razack, N. 93, 104refugees 11, 12, 27, 34, 35, 40, 41,

95, 139-150, 152-157, 164, 167, 169, 170, 179, 186, 202, 204, 205, 230, 231

Republika Srpska 186, 193, 194, 195, 196, 198

Robbins, S. P. 203, 214Roma: -community 85, 86, 88, 90, 97-101,

115, 118, 122, 128, 129, 130, 135, 136, 167, 174, 210, 211, 233

-inclusion 105 -exclusion 87, 127, 137, 176, 208 -stereotypes and prejudice 215Rommelspacher, B. 181, 184, 262Rotman, J. 105

S

safety 50, 55, 57, 150Sagor, R. 79, 83Sallee, L. A. 222, 238Sassen, S. 171, 177

275

Schlesinger, E. G. 96, 103, 203, 204, 214

Schultz, D. 11, 63, 79, 80, 83, 273Schuringa, L. 97, 98, 105Schuster, L. 169, 177Schwartz, L. C. 223, 238segregation 128, 135, 173, 174, 198Serbia 11, 12, 139-147, 149-159, 167,

168, 187, 188, 192, 241, 272service users 34, 36, 54, 94, 96, 102,

173Simon, Z. 125Slovenia 10-12, 14, 28, 86-88, 90-93,

95, 104, 140, 161-174, 176, 177, 185, 188, 192, 240, 241, 255, 274

Sobczyk, M. 64, 83social inclusion 129, 274socialism 9, 17, 136, 192, 240, 242,

247, 249, 254, 255, 261social policy 120, 131, 182, 201, 205,

206, 209, 211-213, 242-245, 253, 272, 273

social services 14, 48, 101, 102, 119, 130, 151, 156, 161, 173, 175, 221, 269, 273

social work: -advocacy 35, 50, 100, 119, 156,

225, 272 -anti-oppressive 95, 104, 129, 132,

181 -community 7, 8, 9, 174 -curricula development 231 -department of 125, 187, 191, 193-

197, 201, 204, 205, 272, 273 -development of the science of 193 -education 220, 259 -ethnically sensitive 7, 10, 13, 14,

16, 86, 94-97, 100, 102, 132, 203, 204, 208, 210, 213, 215, 274

-history of 272-274 -intercultural 7, 10 -multicultural 224, 225, 235, 236,

237, 272

-research 182 -resilience oriented 63 -resource oriented 64, 65, 67-69,

70, 73, 76, 78, 79, 81Sokalski, H. 111, 126Soumpasi, N. 15, 17Stanić, S. 255Staton, M. 201, 213, 214stigma 68, 73, 95, 144struggle of the Erased 174Stubbs, P. 14, 17Sue, D. 214Sue, D.W. 214support 9, 11, 26, 43-53, 55, 56, 64,

76, 78, 79, 81, 97, 99-102, 110, 113-115, 122, 124, 129-131, 134, 136, 144, 148, 151, 154-156, 169, 172, 179, 189, 222, 226, 230, 232-235, 261, 266, 267

sustainable development 17, 125, 197Škerl, U. 88, 105Šumi, I. 85, 87, 88, 92, 105Švob, B. 202, 214

T

Thiara, R. K. 49, 60Thompson, N. 93, 94, 96, 97, 105Todorović, L. 140, 158

U

UK 17, 20, 21, 28, 35, 168, 169, 176, 177, 260, 262, 264, 265, 266, 267, 269

Ule, M. 105undergraduate program 205Urh, Š. 105

V

Van Wormer, K. 223, 225, 238Vrangelovski, Lj. 107-109, 126Vrdoljak, Lj. 202, 214

276

W

Walker, R. 201, 213, 214Walsh, F. 67, 75, 84war 8, 10, 14, 16, 20, 29, 139, 140,

143, 145, 150, 155, 161, 183, 185, 186, 188, 193-197, 201, 202, 209, 210, 240, 246, 249, 250, 251, 268

Weil, M. 97, 99, 105Welch, M. 169, 177Welter-Enderlin, R. 67, 84Werner, E. E. 67, 84whiteness 21, 22, 26, 27Williams, D. R. 67, 84Wohlfart, E. 80, 84women: -immigrant and minority 42, 49 -prevention of violence against 44 -violence against 45, 57Woolfe, S. 96, 97, 104Wustmann, C. 67, 84

Y

Yugoslavia, former 7, 8, 10, 11, 15, 20, 70, 108, 116, 118, 139, 140, 154, 155, 161-167, 174, 179, 183, 185, 188, 189, 192, 194, 240, 241, 247, 251, 256

Z

Zarifoglu, F. 66, 67, 72, 75, 84Zaumseil, M. 80, 84Zaviršek, D. 7, 8, 17, 88, 89, 105,

125, 188, 189, 200, 240, 241, 253, 255, 274

Zeiler, J. 66, 67, 72, 75, 84Zorn, J. 10, 12, 17, 161, 164, 167-

170, 176, 177, 259-268, 271, 274Žnidarec Demšar, S. 12, 85, 88, 90,

105, 274

Documents

Ethnicity in Eastern Europe