Project management: Prof. Dr. habil. Monika Alisch (coordinating), Prof. Dr. Manuela Westphal (University of Kassel)
Staff: Anke Freuwört, MA, Jens Vogler MA
Funded by: BMBF, funding line Migration and Social Change
Duration: 4/2018 - 9/2021
Project description
ProZiS empirically examines the role of professional and civil society actors in social work for the success of diversity in the community, using the two case municipalities of Kassel and the district of Hersfeld-Rotenburg as examples. The study uses a multi-perspective approach, which is implemented in three research questions and research steps:
Research questions
- What institutional changes can be identified in relation to interactions between professional and civil society social work?
- What forms of relationships and self-understandings are evident in the relationship between engaged persons and immigrants, especially with regard to the initiation and intensification of interethnic contacts?
- What learning effects for community work can be specified?
Research steps and methodology
Reconstruction of the interactions of professional and civil society social work in the socio-spatial context through problem-centred, guideline-based interviews with professional and civil society social work actors who are active in two differently structured regions (metropolitan and rural).
Determining the motives, competences and educational and relational experiences of volunteers and immigrants through narrative-based individual or pair interviews with volunteers and immigrants or corresponding tandems.
Transfer of the results into the practice of professional and civil society social work with and by immigrants through feedback of the findings in the form of group discussions or in a practice conference, with the aim of reflecting on one's own actions and the possibility of change, as well as deriving guidelines for successful diversity in communal or local processes of social participation in the migration society. Methodologically, the project follows an approach of transdisciplinary practice research by making scientific findings and insights from practice mutually compatible.
Practice Conference - Shaping Diversity - Municipal Migration Work in Transition
In a participatory exchange of expertise and experience between science and practice, the research results of ProZiS were discussed in a digital practice conference on 3 September 2021. The conference report can be downloaded here.
ProZiS transfer impulses
From the analysis of
- 41 problem-centred, guideline-based interviews with professional and civil society actors in social work,
- 15 narrative pair interviews with people with and without a current migration history and
- 3 participatory interpretation events in the form of feedbacks in group discussions
insights for practice could be elaborated, which were summarised in five result pillars that show how diversity can be shaped. The opportunities for appropriate municipal migration (social) work that lie therein were identified as impulses condensed.
Publications (as of 10/2021)
Freuwört, Anke; Alisch, Monika; Vogler, Jens; Westphal, Manuela (2023): Friendships as solidarity potential for migration societies. In: Österreichisches Jahrbuch für Soziale Arbeit (in preparation).
Vogler, Jens; Alisch, Monika; Westphal, Manuela; Freuwört Anke (2022): Friendship relations as cohesion in the migration society. In: Baier, F.; Borrmann, S.; Hefel, J.; Thiessen, B. (Eds.): European Society(s) between Cohesion and Division. Rolle, Herausforderungen und Perspektiven Soziale Arbeit (Arbeitstitel) (in. E.).
Vogler, Jens/Alisch, Monika/Westphal, Manuela/Freuwört, Anke (2021): The promise of strangers becoming friends. Analysis of tandem interviews between immigrants and non-immigrants. In: Theory and Practice of Social Work, 3, pp. 220-227.
Freuwört, Anke/Westphal, Manuela/Alisch, Monika/Vogler, Jens (2021): Migrantisches Engagement auf der politischen Agenda - kommunale Migrationsarbeit zwischen Handlungsspielräume und Abhängigkeiten. In: Voluntaris - Zeitschrift für Freiwilligendienste und zivilgesellschaftliches Engagement, 2, pp. 86-98.
Alisch, Monika/Vogler, Jens/Freuwört, Anke/Westphal, Manuela (2021): Professionalism in migration-related social work. In: Social Work, 6, pp. 223-229.
Alisch, Monika/Westphal, Manuela/Freuwört, Anke/Vogler, Jens (2020): When diversity becomes a problem: Structural changes in municipal migration work. In: Blätter der Wohlfahrtspflege - Deutsche Zeitschrift für Soziale Arbeit 167, 5, pp. 177-179.
Westphal, Manuela/Alisch, Monika/Vogler, Jens/Freuwört, Anke(2020): Helping in the context of new divisions of labour!? On the Change of Social Work through Immigration. In: Migration und Soziale Arbeit 42, 3, pp. 260-267.
Alisch, Monika (2019): Accessing social relations in the community through transdisciplinary practice research. Westphal, Manuela/Behrensen, Birgit (eds.): Flüchtlingsforschung im Aufbruch: Forschungsansätze und Reflexionen im Kontext von Flucht und Migration. Springer VS: Wiesbaden.
Alisch, Monika/ Westphal, Manuela 2019: Zwischenräume professionell und zivilgesellschaftlich organisierter Sozialer Arbeit mit Zugewanderten. In: Zwischenräume. Sozialraumentwicklung in der Migrationsgesellschaft. Beiträge zur Sozialraumforschung Vol. 20. Barbara Budrich Publishers. Opladen, Berlin, Toronto. S. 99-114.
