Antiracism Discourse: The Ideological Circle in a Child World

Antiracism is a dominant discourse in contemporary societies. The understanding of antiracism, however, varies. Government, through its own textually mediated organization of apparatus, tends to homogenize the discourse. This paper is to demonstrate, by employing institutional ethnography, how a child\u27s act can ignite the socially organized textual engine to include the children\u27s world in the ideological circle of antiracism discourse dominated by the government. Institutional ethnography, as demonstrated in this paper, is a useful tool for social workers to deconstruct the textual condition in which social work practice is embedded. The ideological circle is a powerful concept to help social workers to understand our social location in the ruling relations of the society

Democratic Social Practice and the Emergence of Social Work in China : A Call for Dialogical Engagement

The paper contrasts the conference focus on the democratic renewal of social practices, an internal process particular to the European and North-American contexts, with the development of social practices in China, where both external and internal forces influence social workers’ dealings with democratization and indigenization of well-established Western concepts. The goals of the authors are to problematize the questions of democratic renewal and to promote international communication among social practitioners.Ce manuscrit établit un contraste entre le renouvellement démocratique des pratiques sociales tel qu’il est discuté dans les contextes européen et nord-américain et le développement des pratiques sociales en Chine, où des forces tant externes qu’internes influencent les conditions de travail des acteurs sociaux. D’une part, l’intervention sociale est limitée par la lenteur du processus de démocratisation et, d’autre part, les praticiens chinois sont aux prises avec l’« indigénisation » de concepts bien établis en Occident. Les auteurs tentent de problématiser les questions du renouvellement démocratique et de promouvoir la communication entre les travailleurs sociaux de différentes parties du monde

The Politics of Indigenization: A Case Study of Development of Social Work in China

Internationalization and indigenization are dialectical processes of knowledge transfer. However, social work literature has paid scant attention to the process of indigenization, which can best be understood as one of recontextualization. This paper introduces Basil Bernstein\u27s theory, which contends that recontextualization is a political process, as an analytical tool for us to understand the politics of indigenization. To demonstrate the usefulness of this tool, this paper analyzes how, in China, the Ministry of Civil Affairs and social work academics interactively compete for this control

Exploring Community-based Research Values and Principles: Lessons Learned from a Delphi Study

Community-based research (CBR) is a relatively new methodology characterised by the co-generation of knowledge. As CBR is integrated into institutional frameworks, it becomes increasingly important to understand what differentiates CBR from other research. To date, there has been no systematic study of CBR values and principles, which tend to be offered as a list of considerations that are taken as given rather than problematised. Similarly, research has not explored the ways in which understandings of CBR's underlying values differ among individual researchers compared to the broader research values of a large university. In this article, we report the findings of a Delphi study which addresses these gaps through a systematic, cross-disciplinary survey of CBR researchers at a large Canadian research university. Our findings indicate diverse and complex understandings of both the potentially political nature of CBR and the perceived values of the respondents' institution

Engaging the Canadian Diaspora: Youth social identities in a Canadian border city

This paper is based on qualitative interviews undertaken with immigrant youth of African descent in Windsor, Ontario; it describes their sojourner lives across geographic borders and their final settlement in Windsor. The paper also offers narrations of the activities that enabled them to formulate friendships and the barriers and facilitators to the development of friendships across races. Critical findings reported in this paper reveal the ways that youth use resources in their travels to construct and negotiate their identities and to formulate new friendships. An important resource used by the majority of the youth was that of an imagined homeland, which consequently impacted on how they viewed and acted on the racial boundary critical in the formation of friendships in the Diaspora.Inspiré d’entrevues qualitatives faites auprès de jeunes de descendance africaine établis à Windsor en Ontario, cet article décrit leur périple migratoire à travers les frontières jusqu’à leur établissement en Ontario. Il relate également ce qui les a aidés à bâtir des liens amicaux ainsi que les obstacles et les éléments facilitateurs au développement d’amitiés interraciales. Des résultats importants soulevés dans cet article expliquent les manières dont les jeunes utilisent les ressources au cours du voyage migratoire pour construire et négocier leurs identités et établir de nouvelles amitiés. Il explore comment la majorité des jeunes créent un concept imaginaire de leur mère-patrie, influençant ainsi la façon dont ils perçoivent et agissent sur les frontières raciales fondamentales à la création d’amitiés au sein de la diaspora

The Bridge, Winter 2022

Arts, Faculty ofSocial Work, School ofUnreviewedFacult

Final Report : Bridging the Newcomers

A legacy of the Settlement House Movement, neighbourhood houses (NHs) have been part of the history of immigration in Vancouver, one of Canada’s three major immigrant settlement locations, for more than 70 years. This study investigates the roles and functions of NHs in bridging newcomers to the community. Bridging is conceptually understood in this study as a form of social capital with two different natures: bonding (within a given group) and bridging (between different groups).Arts, Faculty ofSocial Work, School ofUnreviewedFacult