International social work education: the Canadian context

Abstract

In this chapter I analyse themes that emerge from scholarship on international social work education in the Canadian context. I focus on international student exchanges in my analysis through a centring of the multicultural/settler identity of Canadian society. I reflect on the definition of global oppression, student outcomes and the Canadian liberal welfare state, through the lens of the multicultural/settler identity of Canadian society, which serves to collapse the binary that exists between national and international as the basic assumption within which international social work education normatively operates. It also highlights different motivations present when minority students undertake international social work exchanges. It emphasises the geo-political nature of space and boundary crossing and makes explicit the colonial nature of power relationships that divide the world into a global north and south.