Suchergebnisse

The contemporary discourse around historical trauma and healing is site for debate and resistance in public spheres. Guided by critical scholars in language and power as well as post-and settler colonialism, this study analyzes texts and contexts of two public apologies in Canada – Chinese head tax, and residential schools for Indigenous children – to examine how historical trauma and healing were understood, and by doing so how the subject and object were re/constructed to maintain or resist social (dis)orders – postcolonial racial orders – in the past and the present of Canada. Findings included: (1) a split and temporal distance between the wrong past and the benevolent present with governments constructing themselves as the good subject reifying a sincere fiction of a liberal, benevolent, and just white-nation; (2) no acknowledgement of the cause of historical trauma, namely colonial governing; (3) ongoing construction of the other racialized population as victims/burdens/lesser citizens to current Canada; and (4) the explicit demand to collective forgetting of the past/historical trauma as current healing and inclusion. We discuss social responsibilities when historical wounds continue to leave injuries and the risk of perpetuating systemic violence to people with whom we currently share the nation all of us call home.

Authoritarian populism that fosters deep hate of 'Others' and a desire for obedience and order, has attacked the fundamental principles of social work and democracy. During the global health crisis, another global pandemic – xeno or racism – is evoked to corroborate authoritarian populism. We critically analyze the dynamics of populism that shift the focus from 'people' to 'problems' and how it has been intensified during COVID-19. Using narrative justice as a guiding framework, we invite social workers to critically reflect on how this politics has impacted marginalized populations and injuries done to democracy and how social workers can contribute constructing social justice narratives.

Since COVID-19, we have witnessed a rise in hate crimes and xenoracism globally. Some commentators on COVID-related racism claim that this hate is apolitical. We question this claim, and in this paper, we strive to reveal the underlying politics especially around the ramifications and impact of this hate on racialized (im)migrants and the multiculturalism ideal. Drawing from Foucault's construct of biopolitics and using Canada as a case study, we wonder how Canadian multiculturalism, which is a source of national pride, has been politically constructed to serve white settler hegemony from its inception to the present. We link political debates around the emergence of a multiculturalism policy in 1971 to the recent debates on multiculturalism and immigration during the 2015 and 2019 federal elections, and the current COVID-19 related national border policies in 2020. Our critical analysis illustrates how immigrants and racialized minorities have been systemically positioned in our legislation as a site to demonstrate the politics of governance, often scapegoated for national unrest and questioned on the legitimacy of their belonging and contribution to the nation. Meanwhile, the very ideal of multiculturalism in Canada has been evoked as the centre of biopolitics to govern 'Others' and all.

Using the theoretical framework of epistemic injustice articulated by philosopher Miranda Fricker as an analytic tool, we analyze recent victories of Indigenous feminist activism in gathering the stories of Indigenous women, challenging dominant meta-narratives and rewriting the herstory of Canada. We use the epistemic concept of the hermeneutic gap to consider the implications of this resistance in conjunction with the increased visibility of the intersectional positionality of Indigenous women. To illustrate our analysis, we focus on two case studies. Firstly, an individual perspective through the life journey of a feminist Anishinaabe Activist, Bridgett Perrier. Secondly, we conduct a systemic analysis of the recent Report on the National Inquiry into the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (MMIWG). We close with a discussion on how critical it is for social workers—especially non-Indigenous social workers—to relearn and document the meaning of the MMIWG issues. This includes recognizing Indigenous resistance, activism, and the newly formulated hermeneutic understandings that are emerging. Then, the final task is to apply these concepts to their practice and heed the calls to action which the report calls for.

Following the World Health Organization (WHO) declaration of COVID-19 as a pandemic in March 2020, a state of emergency was announced in many countries. This has had significant impacts on individuals, communities, and various systems-as-whole locally, nationally and globally. Among the various impacts the pandemic has on people, we would like to invite social workers who deeply care about social justice and equity to pause and reflect on how some populations are unjustly subject to pandemic related stigma and racism; how racist politics play out to maintain extreme nationalism and exclusion; and how we can resist these politics of the pandemic to foster humanity and equity.

Following the World Health Organization (WHO) declaration of COVID-19 as a pandemic in March 2020, a state of emergency was announced in many countries. This has had significant impacts on individuals, communities, and various systems-as-whole locally, nationally and globally. Among the various impacts the pandemic has on people, we would like to invite social workers who deeply care about social justice and equity to pause and reflect on how some populations are unjustly subject to pandemic related stigma and racism; how racist politics play out to maintain extreme nationalism and exclusion; and how we can resist these politics of the pandemic to foster humanity and equity.

The COVID-19 pandemic evoked a disruption to social work (SW) practice education and this brief note describes discoveries made in teaching SW practice virtually. One example is Virtual Practice Fridays, adapted to build SW practice competencies online, and another example is a re-designed course on cross-cultural SW practice using simulation-based learning.

Equity is inherent to democracy and the stated mission of the social work profession. We contend that neoliberal values re-define democracy, as if market-driven ideology, practices, and modes of governance are the essence of democracy, and this further precludes us from re-imagining democracy-to-come. To illustrate how democracy is undergoing a metamorphosis, we use the international education policies in Canada as a case study. Informed by Deleuze and Guattari's work on the construct of the rhizome, we illustrate how complex rhizomatic systems in the global market have been endlessly devised while legitimizing neoliberal products as the 'real'/democracy in international education.

Canadian multiculturalism is a source of national pride and Canada's national identity. Despite this, the marginalization of migrants, Indigenous, and non‐White Canadians has persisted while (re)constructing Canadian citizens and nationhood. Using a Foucauldian genealogical approach, we explored how the social work profession has addressed this paradox around shifting Canadian national identities and multiculturalism while developing its professionalization across various historical junctures in the 20th century. Our findings reveal that, since its inception, the social work profession has negotiated with dominant discourses. In the collective response as a profession, the omission of attention and subsequent inaction to exclusion and marginalization is apparent. However, through the construction of counter discourses, individual social workers' resistance to social injustice has been noteworthy. Identifying and documenting these counter discourses across significant historical periods thus contributes to rewriting Canadian social work history that reinvigorates our social work core values of justice and respect for all.Key Practitioner Message: • The study provides a critical analysis of the history of Canadian Social Work practice in relation to multiculturalism; • It can be used for pedagogical purposes (critical discussion and evaluation); • It raises awareness of historical social work blind spots.