Walter Lorenz – Wegbegleiter und Orientierungspunkt in der interkulturellen Sozialen Arbeit

First meeting, common interests and ways together The European Centre for Social Welfare, Training and Research situated in Vienna, was our first meeting place. W. Lorenz was interested in the international comparison of the different concepts and perspectives of social welfare problems in the European countries and the different developments in the training of social professions in Europe. The challenge of intercultural, antiracist social work in the context of Erasmus-Intensive Seminars To organize an intensive seminar with the aim to train students and colleagues for intercultural and antiracist competence in social professions, we formed an European network of European universities and schools of s.w. in Vienna (VIENNET), with the support of ECCE (European Centre of Community Education) in Koblenz. “The group discovered that working on these issues in an international context raises issues of ‘difference’ with renewed acuteness”(cit. W. Lorenz). We learned to cope with a variety of differences: biographical, language, theoretical and institutional backgrounds and discourse traditions. A Venue for an Intensive Seminar In choosing a venue for an Intensive Seminar we were relatively free. We locked for a place, “one dream about”, to support in the best way our seminar aims, to promote a base built on knowledge, skills and values particularly in the area of inner/outer borders, disadvantage, ignorance, minorities, majorities, vulnerable groups, racism and xenophobia. In a small village in Burgenland (Austria), very close to the Hungarian border, we thought to have found it. Future Prospect Are we only representatives of our background institutions or did we act and exposed ourselves as persons with a very specific biography and training experience. Can we sustain this created network, as a network of experts and friends in the field of intercultural, antiracist social work? This question is still open.

Beyond the Margins: Analyzing Social Exclusion with a Homeless Client Dataset

A great share of literature on social exclusion has been based mainly on the analysis of official survey data. Whereas these efforts have provided insights into the characteristics and conditions of those people living at the margins of mainstream social relations, they have however failed to encompass those who live beyond these very margins. Meanwhile, research on these hidden subpopulations, such as homeless and other vulnerable groups, remains generally less abundant and is significantly detached from the theoretical core of the debate on social exclusion. The concern about these shortcomings lies at the heart of our research. We seek to bring some light to the area by using data made available by an organization that provides services to people experiencing homelessness in Barcelona (Spain). The data sample contains clients in early stages of exclusion and others in chronic situations. Thus, we attempt to identify some of the variables that operate in preventing the "chronification" of those individuals in situation of social exclusion. Our findings suggest that certain variables such as educational level, income and housing type, which are considered to be central predictors in the analysis of poverty, behave differently when analyzing differences between stages of social exclusion. Although these results cannot be extrapolated to the whole Spanish or European reality, they could provide useful insight for future investigations on this topic.