ABSTRACT
From an academic perspective, singling out culture when studying culturally plural settings is a risky business. Van Dijk claims that the Dutch health care sector continuously makes use of a static concept of culture. An internal research on working with allochtonous client's was conducted, an allochtonous social worker wrote a proposal for a so-called integral approach involving migrant women, the social work team followed a training on trans-cultural counseling, and social workers working with asylum seekers and refugees were offered auxiliary education. Migrant clients were reduced to their culture and de-individualized as a consequence, however much this appeared to be in contrast with the prevailing individualizing' anchors of social work. The social workers often failed to recognize that empowerment was also a hegemonic cultural framework that could be just as deterministic as the culture they perceived as being an obstacle for the counseling process.
