Migration and Internationalization in Higher Education : Social Work Education in a Local and Global Context

The purpose of this article is to problematize and detail how Social Work Education can be seen in higher education from the perspective of migration and internationalization out of a swedish context. With internationalization is intended everyone the activities that aim to stimulate exchange and knowledge development, irrespective of it concerns students, teachers or other staff category. Migration problems and challenges needs to be seen in a local and global context and the education needs to be characterized by this. In social work education, migration and internationalization means that one creates conditions for cooperation and understanding between the average nations, at home in our professional daily and abroad through various exchanges in studies, research and practice placements. Education in migration intends a deeper cross-border integration in which students coming from different cultures, traditions develop their skills and understanding through different pedagogical and didactic aspects. The language of migration and how we face it is to a high degree incomplete and how we use terms and words is very much based on our contexts in which media is a part not the least when it comes to the role of metaphors and stigmatization. The purpose of this article is to problematize and to show how curriculum in International Social work education from a Swedish perspective can be developed and seen in the aspects of migration and integrative didactics in internationalization. Empirical base is observations and interviews. The theoretical frame of reference is provided by a Social Ecology modified model. A main contribution is that a continuous cross-border cooperation in international education in which teacher´s work closely together with permanent meeting places, the social context in itself for students and teacher´s may create a new framework for the planning and development of a deeper understanding of migration and education in the Social work discipline. The main conclusion is therefore that migrations issues in Social work education need to be seen in practice as a concept of ‘acting locally, thinking globally and should be viewed as a major input for developing migration in higher education and Social Work Education—A Glocal approach