It mainly asks questions on an inter- and transnational level and also social work is increasingly demanded and reflected in the context of international relations and development cooperations as well as in the work of international NGOs.
Actually, Social Work can look back on a long international tradition, as it always dealt with topics like street children, migration or ethnic oppression, which demonstrate a clear international perspective. Also it was and is involved in international solidarity contexts, that continually stress a liberating perspective and a political interference. Thus, a tingling tension is articulated, that leads to fundamental questions: What is "International" in social work?
So is it about an extension of specific perspectives of the Global North on global issues or is it about an activation of an own body, that results obligatorily from the problems of the Global South? On the one hand , the perspective of the Global North has tendencies to conceptualize a basic framework, that discusses theories and methods, that are valid everywhere, independent of space and time and that are linked to a self-conception of similarities that are reflected in a comparing research.
Internationally, a program for the extension of the national view is established. The former narrowed perspective should be widened and dissolved from the colonial self-conception after an intercultural relativization. On the other hand , from the perspective of the Global South, it can be seen that the respective initial positions of cultures, traditions and historical experiences are extremely different.
Thus, the problems to be worked on are hardly similar and require each a specific and independent social work. Various efforts can be noticed to gain independence by reflecting colonial roots and restrictions, without abandoning them completely. Thus, it can be integrated in global debates which do not ignore the local perspective. Without a doubt, social work with all its asynchronies of international relations is not only a complex, but also an extremely mined field.
