Abstract
In the article, the authors pose a question: to what extent can we speak of social work practice in support of refugees in post-socialist Southeastern Europe given that in the region, which was part of the Balkans Humanitarian Corridor in 2015 and 2016, state-supported social work practice is very limited and very prescriptive at the same time? The vocal anti-refugee sentiment in Central and Southeastern Europe that accompanied the migrants can be said to stem from the nineteenth-century primordialism: the one-state, one-nation ideology that also was embedded in the very construction of post-socialist states after 1991. Consequently, refugees are seen as the ultimate danger to everything “ours,” to women, men, and children of purportedly pure-blooded ethnonational origin, threatening “our” transgenerational sense of cultural and pseudobiological homogeneity. The rising post-socialist ethnonational primordialism, intertwined with conservative neopatriarchal ideologies, directly affects human rights observance and social work education and practice. The predominantly government-funded social workers generally are neither trained nor encouraged to work with refugees, while the popular and party politics of hatred is directed toward those who support refugees, social workers included. Anti-refugee sentiment, culturalization, and neopatriarchy are rationalized with arguments of fear and care; protecting the cultural and biological homogeneity of native residents leads to processes that turn care into violence, and ultimately into coercive care.
Highlights
In the article, the authors pose a question: to what extent can we speak of social work practice in support of refugees in postsocialist Southeastern Europe given that in the region, which was part of the Balkans Humanitarian Corridor in 2015 and 2016, state-supported social work practice is very limited and very prescriptive at the same time? The vocal anti-refugee sentiment in Central and Southeastern Europe that accompanied the migrants can be said to stem from the nineteenth-century primordialism: the one-state, one-nation ideology that was embedded in the very construction of post-socialist states after 1991
In March 2018, a Slovenian right-wing television station and a Christian fundamentalist online magazine attempted to stir up public outrage against a group of postgraduate social work students enrolled in the only social work-study program in the country after their return from fieldwork in Serbia, where they worked with refugees living in a Bjungle^ settlement
What can social work do in the present context of Southeastern Europe? For one, it would probably help if social work broke the chains of non-political Bhelping families and children^ and Bempowering everybody,^ and acknowledge the historic power inequalities and problems of diversity
Summary
In the countries of former Yugoslavia, people have been on the move, forcibly or voluntarily, escaping either from poverty or different forms of violence, throughout modern history. The former Yugoslav socialist republics have a long emigration as well as immigration history. The international NGO BMoving Europe^ documented violent push-backs of undocumented migrants from Croatia to Serbia in several instances during 2016.7 In 2012, the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Refugees defined Serbia as a country that should not be considered a safe third country for asylum seekers because of its lack of fair and efficient asylum procedures; the EU states should not return asylum seekers to Serbia. This same conclusion was reaffirmed in 2016 and 2017 (HRW Croatia 2017; HRW Serbia/Kosovo 2017).. Anti-immigrant protests unite people of different professional, political, ethnic, and class backgrounds
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