The thesis is a qualitative study from critical theory perspectives to enhance
understanding of how systemically mainstream organizations marginalize social work
practice with ethno-racial minorities. It also explores strategic implications for systemic
change based on field research findings. Ten social workers from Edmonton – the
provincial capital city of Alberta, Canada - participated in investigative dialogues for the
thesis field research. These research participants’ workplace stories lend themselves to
explore three questions: what does marginalization of practice with ethno-racial
minorities look like in mainstream organizational settings; what is there to understand
about it as a systemic issue and what the research findings imply for change strategies.
A critical analysis of dialogic data thematically identifies everyday work issues
that describe how practice with ethno-racial minorities is kept at the operational and
service-delivery fringe of individual workplaces. These thematic findings point to
broader issues of the mainstream human service organization sector. These broader
issues further highlight how the practice marginalization of concern in this thesis is a
systemically constructed issue. These broader issues are mainstream benevolence, social
work as an employment regime, multicultural service delivery as a thrill and clientization
of ethno-racial minorities.
In consideration of these sector-wide issues, implied change strategies reveal
three thematic directions for systemic transformational change: (i) continued dialoguing
involving concerned social workers and ethno-racial minority community leaders, (ii)
community social work to build and foster coalitionary activist work and organizations,
and (iii) participatory research involving a community sharing concern of the practice
marginalization issue so as to build a strong knowledge-base to support and empower broad-base activist endeavour to effect change about mainstream human service
organizations. / Social Work / D. Phil. (Social Work)
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:unisa/oai:uir.unisa.ac.za:10500/3751 |
| Date | 07 1900 |
| Creators | Ip, Eugene Yiu-Chung |
| Contributors | Van Delft, Willem Friedemann, Styn, Pieter V. |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Format | 1 online resource (viii, 204 leaves) |
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