Field Practice, Emerging Technologies, and Human Rights: the Emergence of Tech Social Workers

Structural inequalities, historical oppression, discrimination, social exclusion, power, and privilege are some of the most pressing human rights issues that social workers deal with in everyday practice. In the recent past, all these issues are not only prevalent in offline communities, but they are also active in online communities. The digital divide and online polarizations perpetuate power and privilege within and outside of social work practice. Social work practices are moving beyond boundaries, expanding, and adopting emerging technologies in all aspects of social work education, research, and practice. This paper has been prepared based on my last decade of transnational social work practice experience and fieldwork supervision. There is an emerging need for tech social work practices in all fields of social work. This paper discusses the challenges and opportunities for tech social work in the field and explores a possible model for tech social work practice to support safe and inclusive communities on and offline to promote human rights.