Critical Perspectives on Social Work and Social Policy Practice with Vulnerable Migrants in an Era of Emergencies

Abstract

The acceleration of global warming and climate change (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [IPCC], 2021), alongside democratic decay and the escalation of authoritarianism worldwide (Daly, 2020), the Covid-19 global pandemic (World Health Organization, 2021a), a rise in global inequality and extreme poverty (United Nations, 2020), economic and humanitarian crises affecting the safety and wellbeing of large groups of people (Save the Children, 2021), followed by the return of fascism and violent extremism in Europe and elsewhere (Coolsaet, 2017; Le Roux, 2019): all might be indicative that we may be living in an ‘Era of Emergencies’ (Celermajer and Nassar, 2020; Lopez, 2020). Contrary to what liberal internationalists have preached at the end of the Second World War, the Universal Declaration on Human Rights did not pave the way for ‘a world made new’ (Glendon, 2002). In fact, we are facing similar, if not worse problems than the past generations. The recent calls for hope in human rights activism in the twenty-first century (Sikkink, 2017) is contrasted with other far from hopeful empirical analyses that indicate that human civilization and the economic growth-based world we live in might come to a collapse in the near future (Branderhorst, 2020; Helmore 2021; Spratt and Dunlop, 2019).