Family life across borders

"For me, social work has a lot to do with social justice. The goal should be to help people get their rights, and that also and especially applies to the issue of migration. Migration has existed as long as humanity has, and it is never a finished process. I am particularly interested in transmigration: people leave their home country, perhaps move to different countries several times, return, and maintain their relationship with their home country throughout.

After a bachelor's degree in social work in Munich, I moved to Sweden to study for a master's degree and then worked there for several years in refugee care. In the process, I had to realize that theory and practice are often not combined. Often the theory does not arrive in the practice and vice versa. This is a problem when working with refugees, especially with unaccompanied minors. There was often a lack of knowledge and professionalism among Swedish social workers, which frustrated me. Always the migration debate is about the big numbers, but behind every number is a person struggling with the everyday challenges in a foreign country.

In my dissertation, I am looking at transnational family life. I am looking at how the lives of children function who have fled to Germany alone and whose parents still live in their home countries. I am particularly interested in how this affects the children, how and what contact they keep with their parents, and what social work can do to help such children. We need to learn to adapt our work more to our clients, and think more internationally. That's what I want to draw attention to."