La relazione con utenti di minoranze etniche nella percezione degli operatori dei servizi sociali

Globalization and migration processes are affecting the population living in metropolitan areas and therefore also the users of territorial social services. Drawing from the results of a qualitative research recently carried out in the city of Genova, the author is set to answer some questions arising from this transformation with regard to the professional activity of social workers. The analysis of twenty semi-structured interviews with social workers of the municipal services has shed light on the difficulties they meet setting effective relationships with ethnic minority service users, mainly because of differences in their respective cultural frames of reference. While the latter often do not have a clear idea about the role and the functions of social services and Italian laws, the former have to learn how to cope with a multiethnic professional environment and sometimes must change their cultural perspective in order to work successfully on cases involving these service users.