Reflective Practice,Reflexivity, and Critical Reflection in Social Work Education in Australia

Reflective practice, reflexivity, and critical reflection are now widely accepted as important in contemporary social work practice. Despite this, there remain differences in how the terms are discussed within the literature. This results in confusion in how students are instructed about reflective practice, reflexivity, and critical reflection. This paper presents a proposal for clarifying these concepts based on the results from an interpretive study of reflective practice in social work education and practice in Australia. The study utilised three different methods: autoethnography, an archaeological analytic, and qualitative interviews. It found that reflective practice is understood as a capability, a form of critical thinking, a discipline response to a changing sector, and a way of theorising from practice. Conceptual clarifications of reflective practice, reflexivity, and critical reflection are presented.

IMPLICATIONS

• There is a need for clarification about the meaning of reflective practice, reflexivity, and critical reflection within social work.

• Findings from a qualitative study on the meaning and use of reflective practice in Australian social work education may provide conceptual clarification of these terms.

     

Should I stay or should I go now? Exploring Polish women's returns “home”

At a time when there are more people on the move than ever before, it is pivotal to explore people's motivations and experiences of return migration. Whilst motivations for migration are comparatively well explored, return migrants' experiences are less well‐known and migrants' gender is rarely considered. This article addresses these gaps. It is based on qualitative research and in‐depth interviews with 32 Polish women: 16 migrants and 16 return migrants. Considered through the lens of agency and structure, this research uncovers how fluid the process of migration has become; migration motivations and patterns are blurred and interlinked with one another while classic migration theories seem outdated. The study uses an “intersection of motivations” to show how inseparable migration‐related motivations have become. This article contributes to the growing literature on East–West return migration and highlights women as migrants and the gendered nature of their mobility.     

Measures and Their Countermeasures: Reflexivity and Second‐Order Reactivity in Quantifying Immigrant Integration

Sociology is inherently reflexive. It deals with actors who themselves are constantly engaged in sociological reasoning. Concepts from academic sociology are thus prone to enter and affect the very dynamics they describe. The sociology of quantification is particularly attuned to such paradoxical effects of “reactivity,” that is, measurements and categories altering observed realities. The article builds on these insights but extends them by adding one more iteration of reflexivity. Examining administrative integration departments in Germany that have implemented statistical indicators for measuring immigrant incorporation, it attends to a case where bureaucrats are themselves anticipating “reactivity” of the measurements they use. Integration officers fear that integration indicators may inadvertently reify and stigmatize the statistical category of first‐ to third‐generation immigrants, or “persons with a migration background.” Consequently, they engage in various counterstrategies to offset such effects. Most notably, they launch a counter‐campaign against negative connotations of migration background that their own measurements are reinforcing as they frame migration background as an asset for society. The article argues that this is an example of second‐order reactivity, a phenomenon as yet neglected in the literature: Officers alter reality in reaction to an anticipated reactivity of their own integration statistics.     

Voices of Hispanic Caribbean Women

Abstract

Few studies on Caribbean women in the United States are based on women's realities or view these issues from their perspective and even fewer compare Caribbean women living in the United States to each other. Gender as an important factor of emigration experience has been neglected. This article presents (1) the results of a qualitative study describing changes in Caribbean women's lives after living in the United States for a period of ten or more years, and (2) a discussion of problems confronted by Latinas in a society different from their native countries of origin. The voices of Caribbean women on the process of migration, family values, and work experiences, are analyzed from a gender perspective. Implications for human services professions practice and recommendation for future research are also presented.     

Albanian women’s experiences of migration to Greece and Italy: a gender analysis

ABSTRACT

This article focuses on the experiences of Albanian women migrating to Italy and Greece, exploring their reasons for migration, their experiences abroad, and the manifestation of their entrepreneurial spirit upon return to Albania. The article also examines how migration can challenge and transform but also reinforce gender equalities; it might lead to new opportunities and liberation or to new gender inequalities and constraints.     

Rethinking about Civilizations: The Politics of Migration in a New Climate

Abstract

In this paper, I will lay out some useful conceptual/theoretical markets that will help us to understand, and resolve, significant political challenges to ‘action’ on climate change migration. Thus, while this paper is concerned with climate change and migration responses, it is also concerned with understanding how we understand migration in the context of climate change, and how climate change forces a radical shift in such understandings. To do so, I pick up on the work of Robert W. Cox and push it in a different direction. In particular, I am interested in his work on civilizations, and how this civilizational account of world politics opens up space for thinking about climate change broadly, and climate change migration specifically. I argue that Cox’s account of ‘inter-civilizational’ politics helps us to solve a pressing analytical problem: how to rethink the coordinates of contemporary cosmopolitics in the ‘Anthropocene’, and reconsider the frames of analysis that we adopt to understand and respond to climate change migration. I demonstrate this by considering two distinctly different ‘civilizational’ accounts of migration and mobility in the Asia-Pacific/Oceania region (one territorial and the other maritime), and consider how these might reveal an important source of future change. By sketching out this approach, my intention is to mobilize the resources offered by Cox in order to further his project of envisaging alternative world orders, and post-hegemonic political relations therein.     

Spatial Patterns of Marriage Migration in Turkey

Even though recent societal phenomena such as a heightened sense of individualism, economic well-being, and institutionalization have caused a shift in people's life course and made their lives less standard in developed societies, marriage still remains an important life course event in Turkey. Between the years 1995 and 2000 marriage migration comprised 7.4% of the interprovincial migration in Turkey, and of these marriage migrants 94% were woman. Young Turkish women tend toward marriage migration to escape the patriarchal family structure and gain more autonomy, economic security, and well-being. Focusing on the spatial patterns of marriage migration relationships in Turkey, this study seeks to reveal the economic and sociocultural background of male and female marriage migration and to visualize, explore, and model spatial data by using spatial data analysis (SDA) techniques. The results showed that marriage migration in different regions of Turkey varied by gender. Even though SDA techniques have previously been used in other social sciences studies, no other marriage migration study in the literature uses these techniques, thus enabling the article to contribute to the literature.     

Transnational migration and the commodification of eldercare in urban Ghana

ABSTRACT

Over the past 20 years, organizations to provide commercial nursing services, mainly to the sick and debilitated elderly, have sprung up in Accra, Ghana. This article assesses the degree to which transnational migration has generated social changes in ageing at the level of everyday practices. It argues that a range of social actors differently involved in transnational migration has created and sustained a market for home nursing agencies in Ghana through diverse processes involving the imagination of care work abroad, complex negotiations between the elderly at home and their anxious children abroad, increased financial resources among the middle class and the evaluations of western eldercare services by return and current migrants. These dynamics illustrate the complexity of the role of transnational migration in generating social change and highlight the significance of the needs of local families and the role of the imagination in shaping social remittances from abroad.     

The institutionalized corruption of the real socialist system: the herring barrel metaphor once again

Abstract

This article exploits the herring barrel metaphor, introduced by the author to describe the actual working of the real socialist or communist regimes. This metaphor, which can be treated as a proper model of the system, demonstrates that the system was based on the fundamental principle of shortage, from which power, founded on the exchange and distribution capacity, was derived. This capacity of exchange and distribution was organized as institutionalized corruption, meaning that it was recognized, partly tacitly and partly explicitly, managed and utilized, while the official doctrine denied its existence.

On the surface the system seemed to be coherent and consistent, and it looked as such very much from the outside as well as from the inside. The weak points were two: (1) the real shortage and (2) the inherent falsity. But these, as well, were the cornerstones of the system. In the long run, therefore, despite the apparent consistency, it had to collapse. Yet, beware, the (multiple) motivations to install one are still present. The article shows also some mechanisms behind these motivations and their place in the contemporary political processes.     

Consuming the transnational family: Indonesian migrant domestic workers to Saudi Arabia

Abstract There is heated debate in contemporary Indonesia about the rights and regulation of transnational women migrants, specifically about the ‘costs to families’ of women working overseas, but little attention has been given to women migrants' own views of family or women's own motivations for migration. In this article, which is based on field work in a migrant‐sending community in West Java, I focus on migrant women's narratives of transnational migration and employment as domestic workers in Saudi Arabia. I contribute to the literature on gender and transnational migration by exploring migrants' consumption desires and practices as reflective not only of commoditized exchange but also of affect and sentiment. In addition, I show in detail how religion and class inflect low‐income women's narrations of morally appropriate mothering practices. In conclusion, I suggest that interpreting these debates from the ground up can contribute towards understanding the larger struggles animating the Indonesian state's contemporary relationships with women and Islam.     

Women migrants in the global economy: a global overview (and regional perspectives)

ABSTRACT

Huge advances have been made in deepening and expanding our knowledge of gendered migration over the last decades in both theoretical and methodological terms. Empirically it is, however, still the case that North–South migration is at the basis of most theorisations, leaving the characteristics of South–South migration at the margins. In this paper we, therefore, shift the focus to intra- and trans-regional migration in a South–South context in exploring what this means for women migrants. While feminist scholars have highlighted care and the ways in which migration challenges social reproduction as an important issue, mainstream approaches continue to focus predominantly on the ‘productive’ lives of migrant workers. With migration theories still largely drawing on the experience of South–North migration, there continues to be relatively little understanding of South–South migration’s gender dynamics, despite the fact that many of the highly feminised, yet hyper-precarious, migration flows occur intra-regionally.     

Negotiating transnational ambivalence: how ageing parents grapple with family separation across time

ABSTRACT

This article uses older parents of parachute kids as an example to explore the ways in which the heads of transnational households assess intergenerational intimacy at a later stage of their life trajectories. I argue that transitioning to a later life stage motivates or even demands older parents reorient their perspectives on the separation from their children overseas. Specifically, I offer the concept of transnational ambivalence to analyse the processes whereby older parents grapple with the meaning of being physically separated from their children. This study demonstrates how the interplay between extended family separation and human ageing provokes complex feelings and emotions among parents. In addition, this research chronicles the factors that explain the variation in parental ambivalence. In so doing, this article contributes to the literature on transnational families by illuminating the temporal reflexivity of parents ‘left behind’.     

Education of Children Left Behind in Rural China

Despite China's substantial internal migration, long‐standing rural–urban bifurcation has prompted many migrants to leave their children behind in rural areas. This study examined the consequences of out‐migration for children's education using longitudinal data from the China Health and Nutrition Survey (N = 885). This study took into account the complex family migration strategies and distinguished various types of migration in China, including different forms of parental migration as well as sibling migration. The results showed that migration of siblings generates benefits for children's education, which is particularly pronounced for girls and children at middle‐school levels. But parental migration has not given children left behind a significant advantage in educational prospects as their parents had hoped. Younger children seem to be especially susceptible to the disruptive effect of parental out‐migration.     

Labour incorporation of young Southern European graduates in Mexico: the impact of the economic crisis

ABSTRACT

The 2008 economic crisis has had particularly negative effects on the youth labour market outcomes in Southern Europe. Thus, it is hardly surprising that many Southern European youngsters see migration as the only way to escape from under-employment and precariousness. In this context, the article studies the reasons for emigration to Mexico of a group of young graduates from Italy and Spain. The paper is based on 42 in-depth semi-structured interviews with young graduates, aged 29 years old or less on their arrival in Mexico. The article first explores the relevance of the economic crisis as the main reason behind the migration of this group. It is revealed that the interviewed graduates had a precarious labour incorporation back in their countries of origin, and migration appeared as a means to further their careers. Second, the paper analyses the interviewees’ labour incorporation in Mexico; in many cases this coincides with an extended university-work transition, since many of them had not secured full-time permanent jobs before their arrival in Mexico. Finally, the paper explores the interviewees’ future plans. These depend not only on their work experiences in Mexico but also on their degree of social and cultural integration in the host country.     

On reflexivity and the conduct of the self in everyday life: reflections on Bourdieu and Archer

This article provides a critique of the concept of reflexivity in social theory today and argues against the tendency to define agency exclusively in terms of reflexivity. Margaret Archer, in particular, is highlighted as a key proponent of this thesis. Archer argues that late modernity is characterized by reflexivity but, in our view, this position neglects the impact of more enduring aspects of agency, such as the routinization of social life and the role of the taken‐for‐granted. These concepts were pivotal to Bourdieu and Giddens' theorization of everyday life and action and to Foucault's understanding of technologies of the self. We offer Bourdieu's habitus as a more nuanced approach to theorizing agency, and provide an alternative account of reflexivity. Whilst accepting that reflexivity is a core aspect of agency, we argue that it operates to a backdrop of the routinization of social life and operates from within and not outside of habitus. We highlight the role of the breach in reflexivity, suggesting that it opens up a critical window for agents to initiate change. The article suggests caution in over‐ascribing reflexivity to agency, instead arguing that achieving reflexivity and change is a difficult and fraught process, which has emotional and moral consequences. The effect of this is that people often prefer the status quo, rather than to risk change and uncertainty.     

A Stage of Migration Approach to Understanding Nursing Home Placement in Latino Families

ABSTRACT

This article introduces a dual application of Drachman and Ryan's stage of migration framework by applying the framework to an analysis of experiences of 25 nursing home residents with a prior history of migration from Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Mexico, and Puerto Rico. The stages of premigration and departure, transit, and resettlement are discussed in relation to research findings about the residents' earlier migration to the mainland United States and more recent move into a nursing home. Implications for social work practice with residents, families, and as members of interdisciplinary teams are addressed.     

“From Her Side of the Gossamer Wall(s)”: Reflexivity and Relational Knowing

Drawing on a provocative metaphor from an award-winning novel, this article argues that reflexivity can be conceived as three gossamer walls through which researchers construct knowledge from within three sets of relationships, including relations with: oneself (and the ghosts that haunt us); with research participants; and with one’s readers, audiences, and epistemological communities. On the other side of a first gossamer wall are relations with our many selves as well as with ‘ghosts,’ deeply buried across time and space, that may come back to haunt us when we are physically and emotionally invested in our research. Behind a second gossamer wall are the multi-layered relations between researchers and research respondents, relationships that can involve oral, audible, physical, emotional, textual, embodied, as well as shifting theoretical and epistemological dimensions. Finally, a third gossamer wall lies between ourselves and our readers and audiences as well as the epistemological or epistemic communities wherein our work is located, read, reviewed, and received. Rooted in an ethnography of Canadian primary caregiving fathers, the article contributes to current discussions of reflexivity in qualitative research practice by expanding dominant understandings of reflexivity as a self-centered exercise towards a consideration of other critical relationships that are part of how we come to know and write about others. The metaphor of gossamer walls, combining the sheerness of gossamer and the solidity of walls, provides for creative ways of conceptualizing reflexivity in temporal and spatial terms as well as to consider the constantly shifting degrees of transparency and obscurity, connection and separation that recur in the multiple relations that constitute reflexive research and knowing.     

Teaching technologies for immigrant children: an exploratory study of elementary school teachers in Russia*

ABSTRACT

Educational institutions are an important setting where psychological, pedagogical, sociocultural, and language adaptation of immigrant children occurs. A number of teaching strategies, practices, approaches, and methods have been described in the literature. In the Russian context, such strategies have been called ‘technologies’. The purpose of the present exploratory study was to describe teaching technologies used by teachers in Russia when working with immigrant students in elementary schools. Responses of forty-five elementary school teachers to open-ended questions describing technologies they use when teaching children with migration backgrounds were analyzed using content analysis. Findings suggest that Russian elementary school teachers used ethno-cultural group, communicative technologies, games, individualized instruction, and differentiated teaching. Many approaches mentioned can be used inclusively with groups of immigrant and non-immigrant students. Importantly, while teachers supplemented classroom instruction with additional Russian language lessons, none mentioned specific techniques for teaching Russian as a non-native language. These findings are discussed in relation to teaching strategies described in the international literature focused on migrant students. Finally, implications for further research are discussed.     

The Collective Turkish Home in Vienna: Aesthetic Narratives of Migration and Belonging

ABSTRACT

This article explores how Turkish people in Vienna create a collective sense of belonging and position themselves in a complex web of diasporic relations, through the materiality and aesthetics of their homes. It aims to show how the efforts of displaced people to construct a belonging to the new place of dwelling are intertwined with the aesthetic and material practices of making homes. Based on ethnographic research, it will be argued that a particular “Turkish home” is collectively created through shared aesthetic practices and discourses and serves as a material and social medium both for imagining and building collectivities and for constructing and expressing ambiguities, conflicts, multiplicities and contests, played out in the aesthetics of the everyday. Challenging the common view that homes in diasporic or migratory resettlements reflect past lives and locations or a mixture of two cultures and two sets of different objects associated with them, it will be argued that Turkish homes in Vienna are made through a new and particular aesthetic, which serves to produce and reproduce a communal Turkish narrative of migration to and dwelling in Vienna.     

Addressing Barriers to University-Community Collaboration

Abstract

University-community partnerships, and COPC programs in particular, offer important opportunities for traditionally segregated groups to work together in collaborative relationships. The challenge of bringing people who possess distinct differences in background and social power together is a long-standing issue. Class, status, and organizational differences may impede collaboration. This article discusses the history of COPC as social policy and reviews an evaluation report of successful community-university partnerships. Drawing from the community organizing literature in sociology and social work, this article suggests community organizing methods that address structural obstacles to collaborative work. Especially in COPC programs characterized by multiple interactions, it is the community based organization (CBO) which has greatest facility to equalize the playing field between disparate groups. The role of community organizers in CBOs is to acknowledge and disrupt the structural inequalities inherent in these relationships. The community organizer must resist the role of expert or buffer between the community and university and instead strive toward authentic collaboration.