Good morning, welcome, here in Zaragoza,
to those of you who follow us online.
I'm Inés Martínez, professor at the
Department of Social Work at the UNED.
It's an honour and a pleasure for me to
introduce you to Professor Vasilios Ioakimidis.
He is one of the most recognised figures internationally
in the field of historical and comparative social work.
Vasilios is a professor at the University of West Attica in Greece
and maintains honorary ties with the University of Essex in the UK,
where he founded and promoted the Social Work and Social
Justice Centre in a very important way until 2020.
He also maintains ties with the
University of Johannesburg in South Africa
and was previously a professor at the University of Durham in the UK.
That's where we met almost 15 years ago.
He is currently the Global Education Commissioner
of the International Federation of Social Workers
and has just completed his work as co-editor-in-chief
of the British Journal of Social Work,
as you know, one of the most prestigious and
important academic journals in our field.
He is also a founding member of the Social Work Action Network, SWAN,
a critical and radical social work network
founded in the UK but now international,
from which professionals, academics, students
and users of social services work together
to promote social justice and defend social rights.
Vasilios' research focuses on what he calls "social work in extremis",
that is, the study and practice of social work in contexts of
political, social, economic, rapid and unpredictable change.
This field of research has led him to unveil and
become a reference in the study of what we
can call the dark stories of social work.
Vasilios has given master's lectures around the world, in six continents,
and is undoubtedly a voice in the critical and
global reflection on the role of social work
in times of crisis and transformation.
From the incipient social work network and democratic memory,
we thank Vasilios for his enthusiastic support in our
initiatives and his participation in this seminar,
in which he will offer us a brief guest lecture
entitled "How to understand the past of social work,
professional identity, collective memory
and the search for historical justice".
Welcome, Vasilios. Thank you very much and go ahead.
Welcome Vasilios, thank you very much for joining us today.
Over to you.
Thank you so much Inés.
I'd like to begin with, of course, thanking everyone
for attending this session today,
thanking the students who are in the classroom, all the UNED team,
and of course, you know, within this group,
there's a couple of people that I would like to thank in particular,
and this is Inés Martínez and Melisa Campana,
people whose work I've been following a lot, and I respect a great deal.
Before I start with the lecture, is it okay if I share a PowerPoint?
It might help with the students.
If you just give me a...
Right, it doesn't give me the option.
I don't know.
I cannot hear you Inés, but I have emailed it to you.
I'm asking the technicians if they can help with that.
He says the function should be ready in... Do you have this shared?
I do, but it doesn't... Let me see again, Microsoft...
Yeah, you need to click twice apparently.
But it says it's not...
Yeah, you need to send that request,
and then you should be able...
Right.
Great. Can you see that now?
Yes, very well, thank you.
Excellent.
Right. Apologies for this short technical glitch.
Once again, I'd like to thank you for inviting me to speak about a topic
I think it's very, very important for social work,
not only in terms of understanding our past,
but more importantly, in terms of understanding contemporary practice,
understanding why and how social work today
in much of the world has been shaped the way it does,
the way it operates and the way we recognise.
So, in the next 20 minutes or so, I will try to discuss
social work history through its own complexities.
So, the way, the narrative I will be developing
in this lecture is not a narrative of continuous,
is not a narrative of descriptive history,
is not a narrative of a horizontal timeline.
The narrative I will be presenting in the next 20 minutes
is a narrative of complexity,
a narrative of contradictions and, sadly,
a narrative of depressing examples.
But at the same time, a history of resistance as well as complicity.
When I start these lectures, I very often think
of the painting you have in front of you.
This is the Angelus Novus painting by an artist called Paul Klee.
This painting was owned, it was bought in the
20s and 30s by the philosopher Walter Benjamin.
And although I'm not an art critic, actually, I think
its artistic value, at least for my taste, is pretty modest.
This is not really the kind of painting
that I would say is a beautiful one.
Having said that, Angelus Novus has a particular importance
and significance in the history and in philosophy
because of a very important essay that Walter Benjamin wrote in the 30s,
the essay Thesis on the Philosophy of History.
And in this thesis, actually, Walter Benjamin tells us
the angel of history is a metaphor, apparently,
is very often fixed in staring, in looking at
the miseries and destruction that history produces.
Please remember that this is in the 30s.
This is a time of the rise of fascist and nazist
ideology engulfing much of Europe.
So Benjamin says the angel of history looks at the destruction,
looks at the wreckage, looks at the misery
and wants to intervene, wants to do something
to stop this sadness and misery.
And then all of a sudden, a greater force pushes him
away, pushes him forward into the future.
And while he travels into the future, his eyes are still fixed in the past,
even though he cannot intervene to fix the past.
And Walter Benjamin calls this historical progress.
And I thought: what a nice metaphor.
Historical progress is really moving into the future
while keeping our eyes into the past,
into legacies that shape our future.
And only through understanding history we're able to change the future.
And this is very much relevant in social work
because I have long thought
that, as a global profession,
we have failed to look at our own past.
We have failed to explore our history in meaningful ways,
in ways that would help us understand our present.
And what we actually need and what we need to develop
is a progressive understanding
that will help us move into the future
without forgetting our complex history.
And I will start with a few examples or episodes,
if you like, of what I call in my research,
historical complicity, episodes of oppression.
Historical chapters where social workers operated in ways
that sadly were abusive to the population
and communities we were meant to work with.
And I have created here, for the purposes of this lecture,
a pretty simplistic typology,
but I think it will help understand the main categories.
The first one is about how social work engaged
with what I call children of the nation.
How social work, for much of our history, became part
of a state effort to care for children,
to care for families, but at the same time
produce mechanisms of social control.
In a sense, shape children and families the way,
the political ways, the state would want,
trying to create the citizen of the future, the supercitizen.
And one needs to think, for example, of Nazi Germany,
how in the 40s in Nazi Germany,
social workers were fully immersed
in supporting the Nazi regime and doing exercises,
doing assessments of worthiness.
They would be doing home visits and they would be selecting
which children are worthy of living
as the Aryan race and which children are unworthy.
And by unworthy, of course, we mean that for children
who were of minority background,
for children with disabilities,
for young people from the LGBT communities,
unworthiness would mean destruction.
Other examples, of course, not of the same brutality,
brutality, destructiveness, but of great trauma
and mental health harm is, of course, the example of Spain.
I won't speak a lot about Spain
because I suspect you know this better than I do.
And how many children were removed from their families,
very often because of social class
and politics and political reasons.
And they would be given for adoptions, illegal adoptions
in families who were... in loyalist families.
The same example, the removal of children
as a political tool to control society,
we have seen in Greece after the Second World War and the Civil War,
in Chile during the dictatorship in the 70s,
and a number of other countries.
I'll give you more examples.
Very often the ideology behind these aggressive processes was eugenics.
I'm sure you have heard eugenics before.
It's the idea that human societies and the human species
follow positivistic, let's say, understandings
through the creation of a hierarchy
where on top one would put the populations
that look European, they act European, they understand European culture
and then through colonial policies and policies of segregation,
other communities would be considered as less worthy in this hierarchy.
Eugenics would also mean social engineering
and social engineering in turn would also mean
not allowing the unworthy populations to reproduce.
So, for example, apart from adoptions, we discussed before,
forced sterilization would be a mechanism
of controlling the oppressed communities.
And it's quite stunning that the practice of sterilization
was used in the United States
up until the 1970s as a tool to control Afro-American communities
and in particular Afro-American citizens with mental health problems.
We can see that... what we discussed, these policies
are not necessarily a thing of the long past.
We shouldn't really trace them far back
as they also operated in the 20th century.
Very often, social work tries to understand this path
through what I call the Bad Apples Theory.
So, the Bad Apples Theory goes like this.
Yes, you're right, there have been examples where
social workers acted in an unprofessional criminal,
I'd like to say, way, but they should not characterize our profession.
These were, as they say in English, bad apples.
These were just a few bad-meaning individuals,
few bad individuals, unethical individuals.
So, we should not generalize and characterize
the profession as a complicit one.
Well, our own research demonstrates, there seems to be a pattern
that sadly, this is not a few bad apples.
In a number of countries and in a number of paradigms,
the majority of social workers engaged with these processes.
And this was most evident in the colonial histories of social work.
And here, of course, we can use the example of Canada,
where within 10 and 15 years, in the 1960s,
more than 20,000 children, indigenous children,
were forcibly removed by their families.
They were removed from their communities by social services.
And they were placed either in residential institutions
or they were placed with white, middle-class Canadian families.
This was a destructive history.
We now know that the fate of these children was one of trauma,
addiction, depression, destruction.
Similar examples, of course, can be seen in Australia,
same pattern, stolen generations,
where again thousands of indigenous children
were stigmatized as different, as criminal.
And they were removed from their families and placed mostly
in church-related, in Christian institutions,
where sadly many of them experienced emotional, physical and sexual abuse.
And I need not talk to you about apartheid,
where we know how policies of segregation in South Africa
failed millions of children this time.
So, the answer to the question "is historical complicity
just a case of few bad individual social workers?"
The answer to this is that not really, as in much of our history,
social work was used as an instrument of cultural erasure.
As I will explain in a second, what I'm saying is pretty depressing
and demoralizing,
but, thankfully, for every history I described so far,
there has been a wonderful history of resistance.
There has been a wonderful tale of social workers
who said: "We're not part of this system.
We don't agree with this politics.
We didn't get into social work for this
and we will create different examples of social work."
Before we do this, let's remember that there were
three main reasons in the examples I used
that made social workers engage in oppressive practices.
This was when social workers presented their work
as a purely technical, neutral activity,
saying: "We're technicians. We don't deal with politics.
We do as we're being told."
Or when social work prioritizes its own self-image
and the status of the profession
and their only interest in public relations
and not the substance of what they're doing.
And of course, when social work ignores its complex political histories.
And in front of you, you can see a couple of examples
to the opposite of what I described so far.
To the left, you can see Irina Sendler, a Polish
social worker who in the '40s disobeyed Nazi Germany.
The Nazis asked her... she worked in a child protection
setting in the ghetto of Warsaw in Poland
and her employers, Nazi Germany, asked her to give
lists, full names of all the Jewish children.
And of course, she knew that if she gave these lists,
thousands of these children would be killed,
as we know, as it happened during the Holocaust.
So, Irina Sendler resisted, she joined
an underground network of resistance
and she falsified birth certificates in order to save children
and also smuggled many of them out of Poland and Germany.
To the right, you can see Thyra Edwards,
an African-American social worker
who is the pioneer of anti-racist social work.
And in the '30s, she travelled all the way from Chicago to Spain
to support democratic forces in the Civil War, the pro-democracy forces
and protect children, refugee children from Spain,
creating some really democratic and participatory projects for children.
So, resistance within social work then, again, is not an exemption.
It goes through all the political crossroads
that our profession has faced over the years.
We mentioned Spanish Civil War before, Thyra Edwards, Irina Sendler.
In the modern day struggles, one, of course,
can see how social workers in the United States
opposed separation of children from their families
at the borders with Mexico,
or Munther Amira, another Palestinian social worker
who used the social work activism
to protect children and some of them have faced
imprisonment, torture and murder.
So, the question then that starts helping us wrap up
is "why reckon with the past?"
When we wrote, we developed the book
on the histories of complicity and resistance,
at the beginning there was some...
let's say, anxiety within the profession.
Sadly... the book has been very welcomed, but at the beginning,
in the initial discussions I had with national associations,
there was some anxiety about the impact of the book.
And there were three common objections
to discussing the past of the profession.
The first one was the fear, if we talk about our past,
what if this affects our professional status?
What if people think bad of social work?
The other example was legal liability.
If we start uncovering our involvement in these horrible histories,
what happens if people start legal action against social workers
and they ask for reparations and advocacy?
And the third one was the argument of performativity.
I very often would say that, okay, apologies are meaningless.
I mean, what's the point of an apology?
I know in the past week this debate has kind of engulfed Spain as the...
there's been a discussion about an apology to Mexico,
if I'm right,if I understood well.
And this generates discussions about the purpose of an apology
and the performativity of this.
The fact of the matter is that if we don't address
our past, as the cliché has it,
then we will be condemned, then we'll be trapped into repeating it.
There is no professional status that can be enjoyed
within our societies and our communities.
If we're not transparent and open,
only then our communities will trust us
and develop a relationship of trust which is
necessary for social workers to operate.
And of course, when it comes to apologies,
very often, as part of my work,
I have asked the affected communities: "do you want an apology?"
And you know what? In most cases, they would say
but only if this is the beginning of something,
the beginning of the quest to justice.
And I will be closing by demonstrating what are the paths to justice
that our social work profession has used so far.
In our book, we analysed how a number of countries
have used retributive justice to address the past.
That is, hold individuals accountable, have trials.
Chile and Argentina, to some extent, are examples
where retributive justice took place.
A number of cases actually in Argentina, where social workers
went to prison for crimes against humanity.
Restorative justice, the archetype of which
is truth and reconciliation commissions,
for example, in South Africa,
in Canada and Australia, have a different approach.
They say, of course, when horrible crimes
have been committed, they will be retributed.
But the important thing here is to restore trust,
is to hear the histories of trauma,
the histories of survivors, make sure that all this
enters our social work textbooks
and our codes of ethics and shapes our practice.
And of course, the third approach is "we don't do nothing" approach.
In the past, Spain was an example of this,
where speaking about the past was not encouraged.
My native country, Greece, was an example of this,
where, in the 80s, after the restoration of democracy,
the state decided to destroy all records of human rights abuses.
And they called this a reconciliation.
Of course, if you don't hear the stories, if you don't
document oppression, you cannot speak of justice.
So, in our book, you will find this comparative table
that demonstrates in each country
what kind of human rights violations that involve
social work appeared and how social work responded.
It's an interesting one and I hope a useful one.
What we need to remember, nevertheless,
and I will close with this slide,
and this is actually a wonderful graffiti from Chile,
is that, despite the fact that this is a difficult discussion
and remembering the past is painful, what is truly important
is to remember that social work,
that genuine social work, is one that leaves traces on people's lives.
Let's make sure that the traces we leave in people's lives
are ones of change, of support, of democracy, of human rights.
And the impact is not one of oppression and violation of human rights.
Thankfully, we have important histories
of resistance that we can feel inspired by
and we can cherish and celebrate.
So, I hope in this wonderful seminar you'll have the space
to discuss about the complexities and challenges in doing this work.
Thank you very much.
Thanks so much to you, Vasilios.
Well, I love the graffiti, first time I see that one.
I really appreciate it. I think it's very important for everyone in Spain
that are committed and interested in exploring
this darkest history of social work.
The lessons you bring and the knowledge that you share with us,
it really gives key points.
That path that you've already walked in a way and the kinds of obstacles,
the kinds of responses I find particularly important and interesting.
But I also hope that this presentation is useful
and interesting for the students and practitioners over there.
For many people, this will be the first time they hear about
the dark side of social work, the dark past.
It was the same for me when we met several years ago
and we were discussing all this.
Okay, over there...
Hello Mel.
I don't know if there are any questions or...
Mel, if you don't mind, we will ask the
students if they have any questions.
Okay, we are gathering some comments and questions from the students.
You can ask a question, we are taking advantage of this opportunity.
Do you have any questions? A fact you didn't know...
How can we convey this?
Is there any other comment?
Do you hear the audience, Inés?
I can hear you, yes. But not them.
Vasilios,
the comments and impressions and the reactions
that we are getting are kind of... surprise,
even shock, kind of "wow".
Because it really comes as news that social work has
this dark history globally in Spain.
Mel was mentioning that yesterday I was at their university,
Complutense University, with social work students as well.
They invited me to speak about social work during
the dictatorship in Spain, Francoism.
And it was the same. I saw the faces then.
I have not seen the faces now, but it was a bit overwhelming.
So, I don't know, what can you say to them about
how they are feeling and how to maybe look forward?
You are right. The reactions we get, especially from students,
is very often a reaction... you know, is a revelation, right?
It felt like a revelation.
As I said before, the intention here, the intention of this research
is not to demoralise students.
I mean, the message here is not that you have chosen
a bad profession, a bad discipline, an unethical one.
The message here is the opposite.
Social work, like any other social profession,
any other institution, any other social activity, is political.
And because politics are never neutral, in your career,
in your studies as well,
you will be asked or you will have to choose sides.
And understanding our history means
that we cannot pretend anymore that we are ignorant
of the importance of this decision that we will all have to make.
We need to learn from the past and while we are engaging
with present or future practices,
make sure that we select the path
of genuinely supporting people and human rights.
Because neutrality in tense political environments
always means siding with oppressive structures.
Thank you very much.
Thank you very much, Vasilios, again, once again.
Thank you very much, Inés, for all the support you have given.
We have to take a short break and then go to the second part.
I don't know if you have thought about staying there
to talk with us or whatever you want.
And now we will take a break for about 10 minutes.
Five minutes.
A round of applause.
Thank you very much. It was wonderful to be here.
Thank you again for the invite.
Thank you so much for the truths but also for the encouraging messages.
Thanks a lot.
Wonderful.
Bye, bye, thank you.