Introduction

This is a book about social workers and social work. It tells the story of the journey into and through social work of twenty-three social workers living and working in different parts of the world today. It demonstrates that although social work is a very diverse activity across the world, with different legal, policy and institutional contexts, the commitment and the passion that social workers demonstrate remain the same; social workers, wherever they are located, are people who fundamentally want to help others and to make society a better place. The book also provides evidence that social work is now a truly globalised profession. The social workers who have shared their narratives are a mix of people on the move and people who have chosen to stay, or to return, to their place of origin. For some, this has meant reclaiming indigenous practices and valuing traditional belief systems as viable alternatives to the ‘Western’ (or ‘Northern’) orthodoxy in social work. For others, becoming a social worker has been about leaving behind communities and countries, for all the familiar ‘push-and-pull’ factors that accompany migration stories. Whichever is the case, what we see is that we are in the midst of creating a new, global, ‘glocal’1 social work, one that is unique to specific settings, yet shares a value-base and commitment to social justice wherever it is located.