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Social infrastructure in the form of community-based organizations such as neighborhood houses provides opportunities for relationship development among newcomers. In this paper, we ask if they also provide opportunity for newcomers to develop social capacity. We explore this question using survey data collected at 15 neighborhood houses in Metro Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada (N = 675). We find that newcomers report more change in social capacity than non-newcomers. In addition, we find that different types of involvement are differently associated with changes in social capacity. Participation in a wider scope of programs and activities is particularly important for increasing social capacity.

While acknowledging mutual alignment in their critique of social work’s dominant Eurocentric lens, indigenous and indigenization of social work have thus far forged separate routes. Indigenous social work predominantly focuses on groups in the settler colonial states of North America and Australia where the term ‘indigenous’ as an official identity category is embraced by groups to signify their a priori territorial claims, traditional way of life, and distinct world views. Indigenization of social work, on the other hand, primarily deals with the effective transmission of praxis in non-western regions. Yet complex linkages between the two exist that impacts the trajectory of indigenization of social work. This article draws upon indigenous theorizing and transdisciplinary learning to examine the neglect of highly charged concepts such as ‘indigenous’ and relationally notions of indigeneity within the social work indigenization discourse in China. Further, grounding the analysis within the liminal sphere of China’s ethnic minorities, particularly the case of Tibet Autonomous Region, it presents a preliminary discussion on potential ways to conceptualize ways forward.

Accessibility to public resources has been a major challenge to many service users. The fragmentation among different organizational stakeholders in social service generates a ‘wicked problem’ that creates an institutional barrier for service users in the community to navigate the maze of service networks. However, this institutional barrier has not been fully discussed and articulated in the social service literature. Based on the findings of a study on Neighbourhood House in Metro Vancouver, Canada, we argue that as a place-based community service organization it has successfully generated an institutional accessibility for service providers and service users to reach each other.

Ethnicity is a social construct that can be conceptualised as a social classification delineating certain boundaries between an ethnic group and the dominant group. Members of an ethnic group are a...

Community-based research (CBR) is a relatively new methodology characterised by the co-generation of knowledge. As CBR is integrated into institutional frameworks, it becomes increasingly important to understand what differentiates CBR from other research. To date, there has been no systematic study of CBR values and principles, which tend to be offered as a list of considerations that are taken as given rather than problematised. Similarly, research has not explored the ways in which understandings of CBR's underlying values differ among individual researchers compared to the broader research values of a large university. In this article, we report the findings of a Delphi study which addresses these gaps through a systematic, cross-disciplinary survey of CBR researchers at a large Canadian research university. Our findings indicate diverse and complex understandings of both the potentially political nature of CBR and the perceived values of the respondents' institution.

In-service training as a form of continuing professional education (CPE) is important for social work professionals to maintain their skills and enhance their knowledge for publicly accountable practice. These goals are concerns in Mainland China, which has experienced rapid development in social work since economic reforms started in the early 1980s. This article reports the findings of a qualitative study that explored the in-service training experience of 36 social workers in the major city of Shenzhen, an “important role model” for social work development in China. The findings reveal that participants expect in-service training to be practical and applicable, and their narrative accounts reveal first a disconnect between their needs and the in-service training provided, and second their quest for value-based training to sustain their commitment to the social work profession. To strengthen CPE for social workers in China, a more consultative, flexible, and customized approach, as well as an ex...

Summary This article discusses a missing but emergent role of social work with unemployed young people. The authors highlight the transitional and structural factors of youth unemployment. Using a social work lens, the “Youth Employment Network” (YEN) is discussed and the International Labour Organization’s “4Es” (employability, equal opportunity, employment creation, entrepreneurship) framework is elaborated. This article adds a fifth “E” (Ecological connection) and proposes a “5Es” model for social workers to support unemployed young people to overcome transitional and structure barriers for employment. Findings Limited social work programs, studies, or evaluations are targeted for unemployed young people despite historical concern with employment conditions of workers and suggest the instrumental role in research, policy and practice concerning the unemployed young people. Applications Recommendations are provided in terms of how to implement the 5Es in policy, education, training, and direct practice of social work in youth employment.

As a global movement, neighbourhood houses (NHs) are found in urban communities all over the world. Following the community-building tradition of early settlement houses, NHs have been actively nurturing and mobilizing community assets to serve the local community, but it is not known whether NHs have incorporated these assets in their infrastructure. This article reports the findings of a clearinghouse survey of 15 NHs in Metro Vancouver, Canada, which indicate that they nurtured community assets and incorporated them into their infrastructure as paid staff. Yet at the leadership level, the incorporation falls short of ethno-racial minority members from the community.

Although it is widely recognized that the most marginalized people tend to face extra barriers when accessing mainstream services intended to serve everyone, few studies have dealt with the specific barriers and challenges that immigrant and refugee youth from small, marginalized communities encounter when seeking access to services aimed at facilitating their settlement and integration into Canadian society. Our exploratory study of the participation of young African newcomers In youth programs In Metro Vancouver goes some way towards filling this gap. In this paper, we report our key findings and their policy implications. The central finding of this study is that there are many gaps between the needs of young African newcomers and the services available in the wider community. While gaps inhibit successful integration by maintaining a separation of youth from mainstream society, bridges create a continuum of services that offer a stable pathway for youth and promote their integration into mainstream society. Unfortunately, in their attempts to access formal support networks, young African newcomers encounter more gaps than bridges. While newcomers from all countries have particular needs and challenges, the experiences of the young Africans described in this study provide an important reference point for scholars and practitioners who are concerned about the predicaments of newcomer youth, particularly refugees and those from marginalised communities. Resume Bien qu'il soit largement reconnu que les personnes les plus marginallsees ont tendance a faire face a des obstacles supplementaires quand ils cherchent a acceder aux services conventionnels destines a tous, peu d'etudes ont porte sur les obstacles specifiques et les defis auxquels les jeunes immigrants et refugies, de petites communautes marginalisees rencontrent lorsqu'ils cherchent a acceder aux services pouvant faciliter leur etablissement et integration dans Ia societe canadienne. Notre etude exploratoire de la participation des jeunes nouveaux arrivants africains dans les programmes de jeunesse de Metro Vancouver, va dans le sens de combler cette lacune. Dans cet article, nous presentons nos conclusions principales ainsi que leurs implications politiques. La conclusion principale de cette etude est qu'il y a beaucoup d'ecarts entre les besoins des jeunes nouveaux arrivants africains et les services disponibles dans la communaute plus large. Pendant que les ecarts empechent l'integration reussie en malntenant la jeunesse separee de la societe principale, les ponts creent une continulte des services qui offre une voie stable aux jeunes et promeut leur integration dans la societe principale. Malheureusement, dans leurs tentatives d'acces a des reseaux formeis de soutien, les jeunes nouveaux arrivants africains rencontrent plus d'ecarts que de ponts. Alors que les nouveaux arrivants de tous les pays ont des besoins et defis particuIiers, l'experience des jeunes africains decrite dans cette etude fournit un point de reference important pour les chercheurs et praticiens qui sont preoccupes par les conditions precaires des jeunes nouveaux arrivants, particulierement les refugies et ceux des communautes marginalisees. INTRODUCTION Young people make up a significant portion of newcomers to Canada. In 2013, 30% of all immigrants were under the age of 25 (CIC 2014). Such newcomers face a kind of double jeopardy: being new and being young. Until now, most studies of young newcomers have tended to focus on their needs and challenges in the areas of mental health, education, and employment. Furthermore, they also treat immigrant and refugee youth as a group without considering how membership in a particular ethnic community affects settlement trajectories. However, little is known about the challenges faced by young immigrants when accessing social services. Anecdotally, it is understood that those from small and relatively marginalized ethnic communities do not have access to formal support within their own community and have to seek help from mainstream organizations. …

Social workers always strive for an intricate balance between the competitive demands of different discourses of accountability. However, the neoliberal welfare regime, which privileges the ideologies of free market choice and managerial control, has synchronized the different discourses into a neoliberal discourse of accountability. Using Hong Kong as an example, this article examines how this discourse is put into practice and how it demoralizes the social work profession. To resist this discourse, social workers may need to work reflexively with their service users in and outside their workplace.

The importance of supervision for social work practice has been recognized by the Shenzhen government, which has invested great effort into developing the mentorship model for supervisor training. This pioneering effort has resulted in the emergence of young local supervisors. This paper reports findings of a qualitative study which used in-depth interviews to explore the experience of 14 locally trained supervisors in Shenzhen. The findings reveal participants' pathways to becoming a supervisor, their perceptions about the role and functions of a supervisor, and their struggles in becoming a competent supervisor. These narrative accounts reveal the dominant theme of ‘driving ducks onto a perch’, a metaphor used by one of the participants. These supervisors regard the experience as being too rushed for them to be ready and putting them right on the spot. The findings reveal that policies and practices for nurturing local supervision in Shenzhen are too positive and ambitious. The implications of this stud...

This paper presents a qualitative participatory study of Canadian young people who identified themselves as visible minorities and who have experienced discrimination based on their skin colour or ethnicity. Eighteen participants aged 15–24 (12 girls and 6 boys), representing four ethnic minority groups, participated in focus groups and in-depth interviews and shared their responses to racial discrimination against them. Analysis of the data from the four discussion groups reveals that racism occurs in everyday situations and places, a lot of times manifesting itself as subtle forms of discrimination. Our findings also suggest that most of the participants tend to employ non-confrontational approaches when dealing with racial violence against them, and provide us with the rationale behind their intentions. Further, youth are not uniformly impacted by racialized events, and therefore the coping strategies they use vary based on individual and contextual factors. Three common strategies for healing can be d...

With the questioning of the neutral objective researcher, reflexivity has jumped to the forefront of qualitative research, thus positioning the embodied researcher within the research process. In its power to reveal tacit embodied social structures, reflexivity is touted as the hallmark of methodological validation while also being described as a messy process, particularly in participatory research. In this article, we use illustrative examples from our participatory research exploring the healing practices of racialized minority youth in Canada to highlight the limits of reflexivity and participation. We examine the messy processes in the preliminary phase of our research project and the invaluable insights we took into developing a creative methodology.

The instrumental role of government in the development of social work in China has led to questions about its political function. So far, little has been reported on how the government has “made” social work in China. To fill this gap, we first provide a brief chronological review of major policies and activities of the Chinese government in its making of social work in China. The state's intervention has indeed been massive and crucial although, politically, it may limit the mandate of social work in China. Yet, we argue that the development of the social work profession in China is generating institutional space for the emerging civil society to take a more active role in welfare service delivery. Situated and mediating between the state and the emerging civil society, the social work profession in China will need to constantly negotiate its mandate to meet the needs of both sides.

In a world where violence and healing are posited as oppositional, critical youth studies, youth work practitioners, and human rights and social justice activists often locate themselves on the healing side of the divide, shedding light on the suffering and alleviating the pain of the violence. However, current theoretical developments prompt us to critically engage this oppositional binary constructed between violence and healing. We have come to a crossroads where we can no longer innocently position ourselves on the side of healing because we are deeply implicated in the violence as well. In this paper, we draw on our research on the healing practices of racialized minority youth in Canada to think through the prevailing dichotomy of violence and healing. We use a poignant case scenario of an ordinary encounter in an ordinary place to explore the complexities of the space between youth violence and healing and make visible their inseparably relational and interactional nature. We draw on both foundatio...

Nurturing new, competent social work professionals requires multilevel preparation extending from school to the workplace. However, not much has been done to understand this school-to-work transition process in countries where the social work profession is still in an early stage of development. This paper reports the findings of an exploratory qualitative study of 28 new social workers in China, where social work is an emerging profession, on how they entered the field and what challenges they encountered. Their stories indicate that what they learned in school did form a foundation for the establishment of their professional identity in the workplace. However, due to workplace politics and to the lack of recognition of their professional status, they experienced an unsettling induction process. Coupled with the challenges of inadequate financial compensation, the careers of these new social workers may face an early end despite the great future for the profession promised by the government. Implications...

The circular movement of migrants between their homelands and adopted countries has problematized the previous linear understanding of return migration. However, the concept of circular migration tends to apply to migrants whose movement is enabled by their extensive pre-migration connections with their homelands. In this paper, we report findings of a study on a group of new-generation Chinese–Canadian youth working in Hong Kong. Although, like many return migrants, this group of young people had economic reasons for moving to Hong Kong (their parents' homeland), they do not position themselves as return migrants. Instead, they have kept a strong Canadian identity by maintaining unique friendship circles and perceiving Canada as a home to which they will one day return. We highlight in this paper some implications of their experiences for transnational migration studies.

The current discourse of indigenization has been dominated by a normative approach that puts culture and social work values at the centre of discussions of social work's transference ‘from the West to the rest’. Taking a social constructionist perspective, this article argues that we need to critically examine some underlying assumptions of this normative approach, which may have led to misunderstandings of indigenization. The pragmatic approach, which I suggest as an alternative, views indigenization as a process in which various actors with various cultural lenses select the components of Western social work that can be integrated with, or replace, existing local social care practices. The purpose of this integration and replacement is to better serve the needs of the receiving society and its people.

Over half of all migrants to Canada are under 29 years of age and one quarter arrive as refugees. Studies on occupational achievements and labour market status have been largely ignored in favour of studies on adult migrants rather than on youth. This paper uses data collected from two sources: a national study of newly-arrived newcomer youth living in Toronto, Hamilton, Winnipeg and Vancouver using qualitative interviews, and a quantitative analysis of the Longitudinal Survey of Immigrants to Canada (LSIC). The focus of this paper is to use these datasets to better understand the high school trajectory of recently arrived newcomer youth and compare their experiences. We are particularly interested in the influence of education attained in Canada compared to education attained outside of Canada and the differences, if any, in labour market outcomes. The findings reveal distinctly slower trajectories through high school among those arriving as refugees, those lacking English or French language instruction prior to arrival, and issues with grade placement. These are identified as significant barriers to entering post-secondary education and to subsequent labour market success. Resume: Parmi les immigrants au Canada, plus de la moitie ont moins de 29 ans et un quart sont des refugies. Les etudes sur ce qu’ils ont realise sur le plan professionnel et sur leur statut dans le marche du travail ont ete largement laissees pour compte en faveur de celles portant sur les emigres adultes plutot que sur les jeunes. Cet article s’appuie sur une collecte de donnees provenant de deux sources : une etude nationale sur les jeunes nouveaux arrivants qui vivent a Toronto, Hamilton, Winnipeg et Vancouver et reposant sur des entrevues qualitatives, et une analyse quantitative de l’Enquete longitudinale sur les immigrants au Canada (ELIC). Notre objectif est de se servir de ces donnees pour mieux comprendre la trajectoire scolaire au niveau secondaire de jeunes recemment arrives et de comparer leurs experiences. Nous nous interessons particulierement a l’influence de l’education acquise au Canada par rapport a celle recue a l’etranger et les differences, s’il y en a, pour les possibilites d’emploi. Ce qui se revele nettement, c’est une scolarite secondaire a un rythme plus lent parmi les refugies et ceux qui n’ont pas eu d’enseignement en anglais ou en francais avant de venir ici, et des problemes de niveau scolaire. Ce sont la des obstacles significatifs pour le passage au niveau post-secondaire et pour des chances de succes sur le marche du travail.

This paper reports the findings of a qualitative study of how 28 new social workers in China experienced challenges during the early formulation of their professional social work identity in the workplace. Through social work training at the school, they had been taught that some key social work values were core elements of their social work professional identity. These values have informed their daily practice. However, negative experiences in the emerging social work field in China have hampered not only the advancement of their long term commitment to social work, but also have constantly weakened their fragile professional identity. In light of these findings, the paper proposes that universities, social work organizations and governments should work together to promote a better environment for new social workers and to help them continue in the field. To obtain official support and public recognition towards social work, to delineate the role, responsibilities and authority of this profession in the ...

Individual and social are the two foci of the mission of change that drives the social work profession. This dual-focus provides not only a cultural mechanism by which the profession can negotiate its professional boundaries but the flexibility for the profession to adjust its focus when its social assignment changes. However, the uncritical pursuit of a full-fledged professional status within a neoliberal ideology is upsetting the balance of these two foci and may weaken the long term adaptability of the profession.

This article reports the findings of an online survey and 16 in-depth interviews that show family and friends are neither the predominant nor most useful social resource for young jobseekers from immigrant families. Instead, they tend to use more formal job-search strategies. In our sample, the employment outcomes of ethno-racial minority immigrant youth were less desirable than those of their counterparts from the dominant group. Based on the study's findings, this article argues that being an ethno-racial minority and being from an immigrant family become a double jeopardy for this group of new generation youth when they enter the competitive job market.

This paper is based on qualitative interviews undertaken with immigrant youth of African descent in Windsor, Ontario; it describes their sojourner lives across geographic borders and their final settlement in Windsor. The paper also offers narrations of the activities that enabled them to formulate friendships and the barriers and facilitators to the development of friendships across races. Critical findings reported in this paper reveal the ways that youth use resources in their travels to construct and negotiate their identities and to formulate new friendships. An important resource used by the majority of the youth was that of an imagined homeland, which consequently impacted on how they viewed and acted on the racial boundary critical in the formation of friendships in the Diaspora., Inspiré d’entrevues qualitatives faites auprès de jeunes de descendance africaine établis à Windsor en Ontario, cet article décrit leur périple migratoire à travers les frontières jusqu’à leur établissement en Ontario. Il relate également ce qui les a aidés à bâtir des liens amicaux ainsi que les obstacles et les éléments facilitateurs au développement d’amitiés interraciales. Des résultats importants soulevés dans cet article expliquent les manières dont les jeunes utilisent les ressources au cours du voyage migratoire pour construire et négocier leurs identités et établir de nouvelles amitiés. Il explore comment la majorité des jeunes créent un concept imaginaire de leur mère-patrie, influençant ainsi la façon dont ils perçoivent et agissent sur les frontières raciales fondamentales à la création d’amitiés au sein de la diaspora.