Abstract
This book deals with important questions concerning child welfare systems and migrant children and families in a number of Western countries. The issues discussed are particularly important in a time of rapid global transformations with increasing global social problems and the displacement of a huge number of people. Moreover, we are also experiencing, of course, the neoliberal (dis)organisation of many welfare regimes, generating adverse consequences for the living conditions of vulnerable groups.
Based on a cross-country study of the policies and practices of frontline social workers in Australia, Austria, Canada, England, Estonia, Finland, Italy, Norway, Spain, the Netherlands and the United States, the book examines how child welfare systems in these countries address the needs and rights of migrant children and their families. Practitioners were asked to answer a survey about how they assess the level of risk for migrant children. A total of 845 child welfare workers contributed to the data collection. Part I deals with Family service-oriented child welfare systems within social democratic welfare states including the cases of Finland, Norway, the Netherlands and Austria. Part II draws on the Family service-oriented child welfare systems within conservative welfare states and this includes the Spanish and Italian cases. Part III examines the Child protection-oriented child welfare systems within liberal welfare states including Canada, England, Australia, Estonia and the United States. Different chapters deal with the countries’ child welfare systems guided by key themes, such as law and policy, organisation, training, representation of migrants and existing practices. Usefully, every chapter also features an overview of migration trends in every country. In the final section of the book the editors summarise the findings and identify areas for possible future research.
The results show that migrant children cannot beneficially avail of specific legislation, policies and professional practices entitling them to significant intervention and treatment. This is true even in Scandinavian countries with strong welfare states and well-developed focus on child welfare. Child Welfare Systems and Migrant Children illuminates the fact that recent developments – new regulations and ‘reforms’ characterised by the decentralisation and fragmentation of public child welfare services – have influenced the type of services available for migrant children in different countries. In many states the focus of child welfare services is more on child protection interventions rather than prevention or ongoing supportive services. On occasion, services are provided by social workers with migrant backgrounds themselves. However, the case studies reveal the chief problem is frequently that migrant children and their families are subjected to severe poverty, marginalisation and discrimination. Unsurprisingly, the editors argue that this dimension requires further research examination, but this also demands urgent political action.
Child Welfare Systems and Migrant Children is mostly descriptive in its overall approach and arguably lacks a comprehensive and incisive theoretical framework. Such a framework would potentially have added to readers’ analytical understanding of the interaction between the different processes of globalisation, migration, integration and neoliberal ‘transformation’ of welfare states. Critical social theory might also have assisted the editors in arriving at a broader understanding of global inequalities, the different patterning of migration in the countries examined etc. Increasing socio-economic inequalities, the reinforcement of structural and institutional discrimination against migrants and their marginalisation are addressed in a number of the case studies, yet they are not explicitly responded to in the conclusion and final remarks. For example, the so-called ‘war on terror’ and the ‘securitisation’ of social policy and social work are vital contextual elements, impacting on many migrant families, which could have been incorporated in a more politically rounded analysis (see, for example, Kamali, 2015; McKendrick and Finch, 2016). The absence of this more expansive dimension dilutes, therefore, the book’s contribution to our continuing efforts to try to evolve a critical social policy on the issue of child welfare systems and migrant children.
Importantly, the book’s findings indicate that child welfare workers are insufficiently prepared for working with migrant children and their families. Indeed, practitioners are confronted with an array of complex and intermeshed issues related to ‘undocumented’ families and ‘unaccompanied’ minors requiring not only more skills, but a more flexible, rights-based, culturally competent and anti-discriminatory practice. The individual chapters, however, suggest that such issues are not being meaningfully taught and addressed in professional education curricula across a number of states. Furthermore, many services tend to have an ‘adult centred’ focus and consider children as vulnerable objects in need of adults’ care. In this way the agency and subjectivity of children is manifestly denied.
Marit Skivenes and her colleagues conclude that there is a need to address child protection as a global issue in which states recognise their responsibilities and duties beyond nationalised frames and practices. In this context, the book provides very valuable information about child welfare systems, policies and practices. The volume also highlights the tensions between global statements of promoting what are – rhetorically – supposed to be the ethical principles underpinning social work, international laws and conventions and actual daily welfare practices with migrant children and their families across the states examined.