Editorial

This will be the last issue for 2012. It will also mark the last regular issue of Qualitative Social Work (QSW) edited by the two founding editors of QSW, Ian Shaw and Roy Ruckdeschel. More on this later. This issue includes six articles, a thanks to our reviewers, a reviews section, and a Call for a QSW Special Issue on Ethnography.

The first two articles deal with the political, legal, moral and professional challenges represented by immigration. The authors take us into the world of undocumented immigrants. This is an issue of international importance and of key signficance in the US. These articles address the impact that national, state and local anti-immigration policies in the US have on undocumented Mexican migrant workers and their families. Both are presented from the perspective of those workers.

The lead article In this country, you suffer a lot: Undocumented Mexican immigrant experiences by Carol Cleaveland describes the toll that such policies take on the lives of these workers. The manuscript is based on ethnographic fieldwork and in-depth interviews with Mexican immigrant workers. Cleaveland challenges the widely held political and popular view that frames illegal immigration as primarily a law enforcement issue. Rather she argues that immigration is the product of wider economic and political realities that have their roots in neo-liberal economics. Utilizing a critical phenomenological research perspective, the study is built around extensive fieldwork, and semi-structured interviews with 32 respondents. These men feel that the suffering involved in the dangers of crossing the border and in being cast as illegal immigrants had to be borne in order to provide for their families. The study highlights the importance of understanding the policies and economic arrangements that shape migrants’ experiences and perceptions and in turn impact the role of social work in providing services. It also posits the need for advocating for this oppressed and marginalized population.

The next article titled Intended and unintended consequences of the employer sanction laws on Latino families by Cecilia Ayón, Maria Gurrola, Lorraine Moya Salas, David Androff, and Judy Krysik focuses on the implications of the the Legal Arizona Workers Act (LAWA) on the lives of Mexican immigrants. Twenty-six migrant workers participated in a series of focus groups. Like Cleaveland, the authors approached the topic with a critical perspective that highlights the injustices faced by the Latino immigrant community. The study, informed by a grounded theory perspective, shows the negative consequences, both intended and unintended of the LAWA act. Unfortunately, the seemingly intended consequences of the law were accomplished in that many undocumented migrants were not able to find or hold jobs. The presumably unintended consequences of the policy including exploitive employer practices and racial profiling have had a negative impact on the stability and functioning of Latino families. The authors argue that it is crucial that social workers understand the impact of such policies on the Latino immigrant community and that the task of social work is to provide services to these workers and to advocate for a change in those policies. It goes without saying that the debate over immigration policies still rages in the US.

The next two articles explore issues that arise in the world of foster care and for those who work with disabled youth. Emily Keddell in the article Going home: Managing ‘risk’ through relationship in returning children from foster care to their families of origin studies how child protection workers in New Zealand manage the reunification process. These workers have to balance the competing tensions of what the authors refer to as ‘risk’ and ‘safety’ issues if they are to sustain a professional relationship with the parents in the return home process. The author focuses on two case studies drawn from a larger set of data to examine the factors that lead to successful outcomes in working with parents and children. Keddell presents these cases as exemplars of how social workers using solution focused approaches can facilitate the construction and maintenance of a positive set of relationships with the key parties. She suggests that the creative management of risk helps to bring about an acceptable family life for those children and parents involved in the return home process.

Wendy Mitchell in Perspectives of disabled young people with degenerative conditions on making choices with parents and peers studies the choice-making processes of disabled young people. The role of parents and peers in this process is also explored. Using data from an English longitudinal study, a sample of 27 disabled young people with degenerative conditions were interviewed. A conventional semi-structured interview was used for young people without significant learning and/or communication impairments. However, those young people with significant such deficits were interviewed with a symbols-based model. Mitchell describes this innovative ‘Talking Mat Board’ approach and how it was utilized in the research. Mitchell concludes that these disabled young people very much value having choices, but also value input from parents and peers in this complicated choice-making process.

The use of the symbols-based approach in this study seems worthy of note on its own. In an editorial in Social Work (1998) Stan Witkin expressed the concern that social workers and other researchers typically do not include the severely disabled in their studies due to the assumption that they are not able to meaningfully participate. As a consequence, we are not hearing their voice and they are in effect invisible. Witkin referred to this process as chronicity. In contrast, Wendy Williams apparently found a way for the severely disabled to participate and to have a voice. There is much that can be learned here.

Margriet de Zeeuw Wright looks at the role of client satifaction within a community-based counselling centre in Canada. The study titled Client satisfaction and the helping/healing dance involved both client and worker participants. The author notes there is a growing body of evidence suggesting the importance of client satisfaction in determining the quality of care. This was a follow-up on a larger interview study. In addition to seven worker subjects, a theoretical/purposive extreme case sample was used to select 22 client subjects for detailed interviews. A grounded theory approach was used to analyze the data. Rather than using conventional coding tactics, de Zeeuw Wright uses the analogy of a dance to derive themes that describe the complexity of the helping process. The results are framed as an in-depth and rich ‘interpretive portrayal’ of the helping process rather than being presented as definitive findings.

The article by de Zeeuw Wright represents a form of postmodern thinking in rendering the research subject matter. A similar kind of postmodern theorizing is used by Philip Rozario in studying how social workers in Singapore implement the Maintenance of Parents Act (MPA). The article is titled He was your father, he raised you: Examining helping professionals’ narratives on filial piety in Singapore. This law attempts to hold adult children responsible for the financial well-being of their indigent parents. Although Rozario does not employ the analogy of the dance, there is a kind of dance that seems to take place in his description of the delicate relationship between social workers, adult children and their parents in implementing the MPA. Rozario maintains that the Confucian cultural precept of filial piety undergirds this interaction and is reflected in subject narratives. The narratives are often grounded in characterizations of subjects as innocent victims or treacherous villains. The effect is to shame the adult children into compliance with the law. Rozario notes that social workers in effect become agents of the state rather than advocates for their clients. In so doing, he importantly reminds us of the ever present possibility that social workers in other countries and other contexts are themselves in danger of becoming agents of the state and of social control.

As is typical of our closing issue, we include a ‘thanks to our reviewers’ dedicated to all those who reviewed for the journal over the past year. One personal reflection is that we do not say enough about our reviewers. They provide a vital function without which the journal could not exist. They are a diverse lot with even more diverse interests and opinions. They mostly come from universities but some come from social agencies, from research institutes and from various practice backgrounds. The rank and tenure policies of many US universities regard reviewing as a service to the profession. In my view it is that but also much more. Like editing, I believe it is a scholarly activity that shapes the nature of discourse in our field. Some of the most insightful comments I read over the last ten years came from our reviewers. Karen Staller, who is also one of the incoming editors of QSW, coined the expression ‘metalogues’ to refer to the dialogue that takes place between authors who have submittted manuscripts, and reviewers and editors (2007). Her view is that such dialogue should be published with the various parties and positions identified. This of course cuts against the idea that reviewing should be an objective and anonymous process. I find myself in agreement that our profession could well benefit from the occasional publication of such dialogue.