When addressing a societal problem like right-wing extremism, Social Work is fundamentally capable of establishing a systematic and differentiated spectrum of attitudes and actions, as demonstrated in the context of specialized institutions in particular. However, it is in spaces where the everyday work assignment is initially something else – such as debt counseling, addiction counseling, or eviction prevention – that overstress and dilemmas occur as experts are confronted with attitudes and convictions that they share neither on a professional nor on a private level, and when, at first, responding to them is (seemingly) not part of their job description.
How these situations can be analyzed and designed is hardly taken into account at all on the disciplinary level at the moment: How can Social Workers plan and conduct successful conversations in the context of right-wing radicalization? Which techniques are helpful when it comes to enabling successful support processes and rejecting inhuman ideologies at the same time?
This teaching/research project develops and tests a practical inventory of actions for dealing with situations, especially in everyday case work, where practitioners are confronted with right-wing extremist or inhuman statements and attitudes. A central element involves training and applying the method of biographical narrative interviewing as well as further tools for situation analysis, assignment clarification, and self-reflection. On this basis, creative mediation formats are to be designed that should make the developed inventory of actions accessible for the professional community.