In search of better opportunity: Transnational social workers in the United Kingdom navigating the maze of global and social mobility

Social workers are increasingly becoming global professionals, both in utilising their professional qualifications as a means to achieve international mobility, as well as in the expectations of an internationally transferable set of skills.However, there is a continued dilemma in defining such professional international identity due to contradictory processes of 'indigenisation', or the extent to which social work practice fits local contexts; 'universalism', finding commonalities across divergent contexts; and 'imperialism' where Western worldviews are privileged over local and indigenous cultural perspectives (Gray, 2005).Many regard social work to be especially context-sensitive in that a good understanding of language and cultural clues is an essential element in the ability of workers to perform their work effectively.In that sense, while global professional mobility facilitates transnational social work (Hanna and Lyons 2014), social work is not yet a global 'common project' and clear differences remain at the level of training, qualifications and practice (Hussein, 2011 and2014;Weiss-Gal and Welbourne, 2008).Despite these disagreements, there is growing evidence that international social workers contribute significantly to the national workforce of many developed countries including Canada (Pullen-Sansfaon et al., 2012); England (Hussein et al., 2011); Ireland (Walsh et al., 2010) and New Zealand (Bartley et al., 2012).While transnational social workers' (TSWs') contributions to the host countries are not to be disputed, these transnational movements are happening within a set of constraints at different stages from application, qualifications recognition, securing jobs to practicing in a new environment.Some of these difficulties may arise from how social work practice has evolved as a profession within different national and local contexts and how it connects to wider policies and national priorities.Others may relate to international agreements and processes of qualifications and experience recognition.Thus, different TSWs are faced by a multitude of challenges and hurdles, some of which are similar to professionals from other domains, such as medicine or engineering, yet others are specific to the nature of social work itself.These layered challenges are observed by and impact on

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