Imagined Life of Transnational Zimbabwe Social Workers in England

Abstract

The recruitment of internationally qualified social workers has become an important strategy to address increased vacancy rate and chronic difficulties in attracting and retaining qualified social workers in the English social work sector. Using the Zimbabwean case, this chapter exemplifies social work’s global connectedness, colonial historical, and push and pull factors that produce and reproduce challenges, opportunities, local inequalities, and human rights and social justice aspects of the phenomenon of transitional social work. In view of the identified challenges, a call for more attention to be paid on the structural mechanisms that might perpetuate inequalities in England, in this case, due to not offering a more well-prepared structure in the workplace to address the challenges for international social workers. The importance of interdisciplinarity global social work as a collective responsibility, with multidisciplinary, multi-stakeholder engagement approaches, is highlighted.