Legal Struggles and Social Work
The Contribution of Social Workers for the Legal Mobilization of Human Rights
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 8249642 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Maximilian Pichl (0009-0008-5879-9392, Goethe University Frankfurt, corresponding author), Hannah Franke (Leipzig University) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Volume | 11 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 67-78 |
| Publication date | 2025-12-05 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of Human Rights and Social Work (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 2365-1792 • E-ISSN: 2365-1792 |
| Publisher | Springer Science and Business Media LLC (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1007/s41134-025-00420-9 |
| OpenAlex | W4417061213 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 36 |
The contribution of social workers to strategic litigation is still underexposed in research on legal mobilization. However, social workers are essential for the identification of cases and provide the courts with important information about the facts of the cases. They also are essential for preventing affected individuals from being instrumentalized within legal struggles. Building on our respective backgrounds in legal and political science on the one hand and in social work studies on the other, we bring these perspectives together to make an initial theoretical attempt to examine how the role of social workers in legal struggles can be studied. Both authors bring theoretical and practical experience in human rights work with refugees in Germany from their respective disciplines, and they incorporate these perspectives into the analysis. Therefore, we illustrate our theoretical considerations with a concrete example of a legal struggle over the social rights of asylum seekers in Germany. In this context, we engage in our article how — at least as is often observed in Germany — human rights in social work are all too often, to put it pointedly, reduced to little more than a rhetorical slogan , rather than being applied as a concrete tool in individual cases or to influence structural change
Human rights · Identification (biology · Legal science · Politics · Refugee · Social rights · Work (physics · Criminal Justice and Corrections Analysis · Historical and Contemporary Political Dynamics · Social Work Education and Practice · Social Work
Subjectivation and Cohesion
The Rights Revolution
Florence Kelley’s Struggle against Child Labour
Integrative learning through the interdisciplinary Social Law Clinic — learning experiences of law and social work students
Verfassungswidrigkeit der „Zwangsverpartnerung“ im Asylbewerberleistungsgesetz
Jane Addams
Jane Addams (1860–1935) als Begründerin einer „kritischen Sozialen Arbeit“
Soziale Arbeit als Handlungswissenschaft
Litigating Change? Social Movements and the Court System
Law and Social Movements
Legal Struggles
Gramsci Reconsidered
The Signaling Effect of Pro se Status
Reforming a System That Cannot Reform Itself
Geschichte der Sozialen Arbeit 2
Human Rights and Social Work
Social Work and Human Rights—Linking Two Traditions of Human Rights in Social Work
Representing Immigrants
Legal care work
Resource Mobilization and Social Movements
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |