Ethical Challenges of Implementing Migration Policies in Social Work

Migration policies pose ethical challenges for social workers. On the one hand, social workers are compelled to follow the ethical principles of the profession. But on the other hand, in everyday practice, they are required to implement migration policies. Between these two dimensions of expectations, especially when the two are conflicting, the practice of social work may become challenging.

The profession of social work is intrinsically related to ethics. However, migration laws and policies may not match with the profession’s ethics and may, therefore, underpin challenges in every day working life for these civil servants.

Ethics of the Profession

According to the National Association of Social Workers, social work is defined as “the enhancement of human well-being and the help in meeting the basic needs of all people, with particular attention to persons who are ill or are experiencing mental, physical, or intellectual challenges, and to populations that are vulnerable, oppressed, and living in poverty” (NASW 2015).

This definition covers the guiding ethical values for the profession of social work, including its six fundamental ethical principles:

“(1) Service to help people in need and to address social problems, (2) social justice to challenge social injustice, (3) dignity and respect to the individual and differences, (4) the importance of human relationship and the engagement in the process, (5) integrity and trustworthy manner, and (6) competence in the practice and enhancement of professional expertise” (Reamer 2013).

Consequently, ethical values are at the core of the profession of social work and may be challenged by implementing migration policies.

Implementing Migration Policies in Everyday Practice

On a day-to-day basis, social workers are at the frontline performing a multitude of tasks and activities, while being directly in contact with their clients. Traditionally, social workers are most often in charge of interviewing their clients to understand their situation and obtain a full picture of a situation to process their needs. In some cases, they even visit the homes of their clients to grasp the entirety of contextual and social issues affecting the individual. The information and data gathered during these visits is then shared with other social actors and authorities.

Taking the example of the current Foreign Nationals and Integration act (FNIA), social workers are now even expected to notify migration authorities when their clients are making use of financial aid and assume responsibilities such as reporting clients to the migration authorities for failure to meet given requirements set in the act, as mentioned in a recent blog post by Lisa Borrelli and Stefanie Kurt. The implementation of such migration policies imposes relational, emotional, organizational, and ethical dilemmas for the practitioners of social work.

Discrepancy Between Professional Ethics and Daily Working Life?

Between the ethics of the profession of social work and everyday life, there is a set of discrepancies and issues that arise, which are often not considered. These professionals encounter problems when having to follow and implement the profession’s core ethics simultaneously with migration policies. Although, as C. Bolzman (2002, 2009) in his study found, these civil servants would often try to find ways to circumvent the law and find modalities to continue to support their clients and construct their interventions accordingly.

While considering the discrepancies between the work ethics and policy implementation, it is safe to assume that some migration policies, such as FNIA, impose an emotional burden and circumscribe social workers’ engagement to the fundamentals of the profession. In such cases, they are left to their own devices to choose to either leave professional ethics aside complying with the stringent and, at times, socially unjust policies or to go against them in the interest of their clients.

Maria Acosta is a part-time master’s student in the Master’s program in Social Work at the HES-SO, School of Social Work in Lausanne. She is currently research intern in the nccr – on the move project on Governing Migration and Social Cohesion through Integration Requirements: A Socio-Legal Study on Civic Stratification in Switzerland.

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