coll. - Immigrants and Social Work

Immigrants and Social Work: Thinking Beyond the Borders of the United States

Immigrants and Social Work: Thinking Beyond the Borders of the United States has been co-published simultaneously as Journal of Immigrant & Refugee Services, Volume 2, Numbers 1/2 2004.

Immigrants and Social Work: Thinking Beyond the Borders of the United States

Diane Drachman, PhD
Ana Paulino, EdD
Editors

Immigrants and Social Work: Thinking Beyond the Borders of the United States has been co-published simultaneously as Journal of Immigrant & Refugee Services, Volume 2, Numbers 1/2 2004.

First published by

The Haworth Press, Inc.

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Binghamton, N Y 13904-1580

This edition published 2011 by Routledge

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Routledge

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Immigrants and Social Work: Thinking Beyond the Borders of the United States has been co-published simultaneously as Journal of Immigrant & Refugee Services, Volume 2, Numbers 1/2 2004.

2004 by The Haworth Press, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, microfilm and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

The development, preparation, and publication of this work has been undertaken with great care. However, the publisher, employees, editors, and agents of The Haworth Press and all imprints of The Haworth Press, Inc. including The Haworth Medical Press and Pharmaceutical Products Press, are not responsible for any errors contained herein or for consequences that may ensue from use of materials or information contained in this work. Opinions expressed by the author(s) are not necessarily those of The Haworth Press, Inc. With regard to case studies, identities and circumstances of individuals discussed herein have been changed to protect confidentiality. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

The Haworth Press, Inc., 10 Alice Street, Binghamton, NY 13904-1580 USA

Cover design by Jennifer Gaska

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Immigrants and social work: thinking beyond the borders of the United States / Diane Drachman, Ana Paulino.

p. cm.

Co-published simultaneously as Journal of Immigrant & Refugee Services, Volume 2, Numbers 1/2 2004.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 0-7890-1998-1 (hard cover: alk. paper)ISBN 0-7890-1999-X (soft cover: alk. paper) 1. Social work with immigrantsUnited States. 2. Return migration. 3. Transnationalism.

I. Paulino, Ana. II. Journal of immigrant & refugee services (Online) III. Title.

HV4011.U5D72 2004

About the Editors

Diane Drachman, PhD, is Associate Professor at the University of Connecticut School of Social Work. The grants she received from the National Institute of Mental Health and the Office of Refugee Resettlement have enabled her to develop curriculum on social work practice with immigrant and refugee populations; to work with and publish on varied immigrant and refugee groups; and to develop a generic framework aimed at understanding immigrant and refugee populations as well as understanding the individual or family in the context of migration. Her recent publications synthesize social work knowledge with immigration law, immigration history and migration studies. She teaches courses on direct practice with individuals and families and social work practice with immigrants and refugees. As a practitioner, she has worked in many regions of the United States in public welfare settings, family and childrens service agencies, and community mental health organizations.

Ana Paulino, EdD, is Associate Professor at Hunter College School of Social Work, City University of New York. She serves as a consulting editor for the Journal of Teaching in Social Work and is a former consulting editor for the Journal of Multicultural Social Work. Dr. Paulino is a Consultant for private and governmental mental health agencies and has extensive experience in child welfare, family services, health, and mental health. She is a member of various community and professional Advisory Boards. She is a former recipient of several training grants from the state and city government for programs focusing on cultural competence, child welfare, and mental health issues. Her research and writing have focused on the areas of immigration, Dominican families in the United States, death and dying, spirituality, and community mental health. She teaches in the area of Social Casework, Social Work Practice with Families, Clinical Casework Practice with Children, Social Work Practice in School Settings, and Human Behavior & the Social Environment. She serves as chairperson for Children, Youth, and Families Area of Specialization.

Immigrants and Social Work: Thinking Beyond the Borders of the United States

Contents

Jeanne M. Giovannoni

Diane Drachman

Ana Paulino

Raquel R. Marquez

Yolanda C. Padilla

Nancy A. Humphreys

Ludmila Haroutunian

Lynne M. Healy

Gregory Acevedo

Ramona Hernndez

Charles Guzzetta

Maria Zuniga

Irene Chung

Florence Samperi

Diane Drachman

Ana Paulino

The American profession of social work developed largely around the provision of services to immigrants. The writings of early pioneers in various fields of practice tell us of the importance of immigrant status. Charles Loring Brace, a founder of foster care headed the chapters in his book, The Dangerous Classes of New York City and Twenty Years Work Among Them, according to the national origins of the children whose characteristics he described. Mary Richmond in her research reports to the Russell Sage Foundation on Charity Organization Societies work among families similarly identified the groups served by the country of origin. In Jane Addams, Twenty Years at Hull House, she tells of the intense concentration of settlement house work among immigrants and ethnic enclaves. A consistent goal of these diverse social work efforts was the achievement of acculturation of the immigrants and their eventual assimilation into mainstream America. Given the enormous barriers of distance and expense, most of these immigrants were unlikely to maintain close and consistent ties to their home-lands.

Twentieth century social work, while following this traditional course, was evolving at the same time that the patterns of immigration were becoming increasingly diverse and complex. The evolving United States immigration laws and policies added to this complexity with their Byzantine array of multiple economic and political motivations. The reasons for migration and the conditions of the countries of origin varied greatly as did the accompanying experiences of the immigrants themselves. In previous work, Drachman and her colleagues have given the profession valuable directives for the adaptation of social work intervention to these ever changing complexities. They have stressed the importance of understanding not just the experience of immigrating but also the varying pre-migration situations and experiences of these individuals. Beyond the common subjective experiences of migration, i.e., the pain of separation and the angst of newcomer adaptationthe pre-migratory experiences can strongly influence subsequent adjustments.