Skip to Main Content

Start of breadcrumb trail navigation

SWK 4304H – Social Work Policy Practice and Advocacy in the Context of Neoliberal Globalization - Required

In this course, students will critically analyze the contradictions of globalization and transnationalism as experienced locally, and explore ways in which social workers and other service providers can respond effectively to these forces using different policy tools and strategies. The course encourages students to consider policy as a negotiated practice where social workers, clients, communities and other stakeholders take up a range of practices to create, resist, influence and enact social policies.

Students will investigate different approaches to policy practice including activism, community building, ally work in addition to more conventional approaches like policy brief writing and lobbying. We will address key concepts related to globalization, transnationalism, local/global sites, and legacies of colonialism. Students will investigate examples and possibilities of local, international and transnational policy practice and community mobilization to work against/with/around globalization. Labour systems (including gendered, racialised nature of care work), human rights struggles, indigenous rights, and immigration and citizenship serve as investigative sites for developing this critical policy practice.

The course will employ activities that foster reflexive analysis of students’ subjective positions while identifying strategies to address complex issues facing social work policy practice in today’s globalised world.