Internationale und transnationale Soziale Arbeit und politische Konflikte [International and transnational social work and political conflict]

Political conflicts are a difficult and visceral topic to engage with. Having experienced it in my native country, each time I return to work on it – something I have done regularly for almost thirty years – I struggle and stumble to find words to do it justice, and/or not to feel as if I have ‘written the conflict, the war, out of myself.’ The feeling, unfortunately, has to pass very quickly; conflicts continue to multiply and affect all our societies in different ways. Our connectedness to political conflicts near and far is inescapable. Kamali (2016: ix) claims that ‘the modern organisation of the world and established models of international relations have, in many cases, legitimisted the use of war and violence in the reproduction of the current world order.’ This chapter focuses on the relationship between social work and political conflict. These two topics have had limited, but growing attention in social work literature (see, for example, Duffy et al. 2019a; Lavalette and Ioakimidis, 2011; Ramon, 2008; Ramon and Zaviršek, 2012; Spalek and McDonald, 2012). Most of this literature focuses on particular conflict contexts. To date, there have been limited attempts at cross-country comparison, with varying degrees of analytical and methodological rigour (Ramon et al., 2006; Maglajlic and Bašic, 2019).