7 - Critical perspectives on social work and social policy practice with vulnerable migrants in an era of emergencies

Summary

Introduction

The acceleration of global warming and climate change (IPCC, 2021), alongside democratic decay and the escalation of authoritarianism worldwide (Daly, 2020), the COVID-19 global pandemic (WHO, 2021a), a rise in global inequality and extreme poverty (United Nations, 2020), economic and humanitarian crises affecting the safety and wellbeing of large groups of people (Save the Children, 2021), followed by the return of fascism and violent extremism in Europe and elsewhere (Coolsaet, 2017; Le Roux, 2019): all might be indicative that we may be living in an ‘Era of Emergencies’ (Celermajer and Nassar, 2020; Lopez, 2020). Contrary to what liberal internationalists preached at the end of the Second World War, the Universal Declaration on Human Rights did not pave the way for ‘a world made new’ (Glendon, 2002). In fact, we are facing problems similar to those of past generations, if not worse ones. The recent calls for hope in human rights activism in the twenty-first century (Sikkink, 2017) is contrasted with other far from hopeful empirical analyses that indicate that human civilisation and the economic growth-based world we live in might collapse in the near future (Spratt and Dunlop, 2019; Branderhorst, 2020; Helmore, 2021).

Extreme events such as pandemics, climate change and economic crises are all drivers of migration, either internally or transnationally. On top of these socio-environmental emergencies, vulnerable migrants often need to deal with institutional or structural violence (Artero and Fontanari, 2019), rights violations on a daily basis (Riley et al, 2020; Oxfam International, 2021), social welfare exclusion (Vintila and Lafleur, 2020), and the enduring effects of colonisation, racism and inequality (Adeyanju and Oriola, 2011). Every human being will experience some level of vulnerability throughout their lives, however, there are particular groups in society who are more vulnerable than others to abuse and/or human rights violations: for various reasons, they were historically put in weak and vulnerable positions and therefore require special protective measures. Legal protection of vulnerable groups has become a crucial component of human rights law (Nifosi- Sutton, 2017), for example. Equally, for the fields of health and social care, vulnerability has been a key concept in defining intervention strategies (Gitterman, 2001; Larkin, 2009).