ABSTRACT

This chapter focuses on the organizational level in transnational social work with empirical case material, and uses it to discuss the issue of the agency of organizational members, which is necessarily complexified by the transnational context. It also focuses on the organizational interfaces and interaction in the context of nongovernmental organizations (NGO) cooperation, which crosscuts national borders on a relatively permanent basis in order to foster social work structures in the Global South. Transnational social work communities act beyond national borders and form transnational social spaces, as defined by Pries. The chapter presents a case study which investigates the institutional logic of a development cooperation program in Latin America. Community building creates a common identity for participants in transnationally organized social work, which is one of the most important sets of practices to cope not only with the complexity of partnerships as mentioned by Marta Fernandez and Jose Pacheco, but also with the neocolonial dilemma inherent in the transnational framework.