Arab minority social workers trained in a foreign language: linguistic challenges and coping mechanisms

The research highlights challenges involved in ensuring professional authentication faced by social workers working in cultural minorities. The findings contribute to the knowledge corpus that discusses authentication. They describe and explain possible consequences of linguistic difficulties arising in Arab minority social workers' work in Israel. These workers acquired their profession in a foreign language (Hebrew) but work with their native minority population whose mother tongue is Arabic. A phenomenological study elicited data from semi-structured in-depth interviews with 19 Arab welfare bureau social workers. The workers encounter three language difficulties when working with their service users: They are accused of identifying with the hegemon because they adopt its language; they are viewed as foreign because they have difficulty conveying professional messages accurately; and are seen as alien because the Hebrew terminology they use is anchored in a secularist-individualist culture. The research also identified three coping mechanisms: Ignoring the language barriers; being aware but passive, and adopting three active strategies: self-improvement, getting help from the immediate professional milieu and harnessing external resources. The findings reinforce the requirement of ethical codes for language competence in three fields: lifelong learning, policy design (laws, procedures and guidelines) and implementation (interventions, mentoring and supervision).