Local Practice in Transnational Social Realities
This conceptual article uses Mittelsachsen, in Saxony, Germany, as an illustrative case to examine why international learning may seem distant to social work students whose professional plans are largely local. Yet local practice is shaped by transnational interconnections. The article therefore asks how social work education can prepare future practitioners for local work shaped by migration, global inequalities and political polarisation. It considers Internationalization at Home as a curricular response.
Many students in the Faculty of Social Work at Mittweida University of Applied Sciences are strongly rooted in Mittelsachsen and nearby regions and see their studies primarily as preparation for local practice. This regional orientation provides a starting point for making international and transnational learning relevant to them. Local social work in Mittelsachsen is shaped by migration-related diversity, questions of belonging, unequal access to resources, experiences of racism and global inequalities. A solely regional or national perspective may overlook how transnational conditions shape everyday local practice.
At the same time, social work as a human rights profession is challenged by authoritarian attitudes in Germany (Zick et al., 2025; Decker et al., 2024). These tendencies have implications for social work education. Future social workers need to analyse local conflicts and social problems without reducing them to culturalised, nationalised or exclusionary explanations. They need reflexive, human rights-based professional judgement that is sensitive to the transnational dimensions of local life worlds. Social work education therefore has a democratic responsibility.
Regional Rootedness as an Educational Challenge and Chance
The challenge in social work education is to create learning opportunities that help students recognise how local practice is shaped by international and transnational connections. At the Faculty of Social Work at Mittweida University of Applied Sciences, such opportunities can prepare locally rooted students for practice in settings shaped by diversity, inequality and cross-border social relations.
Many students at the Faculty are first-generation students and some work alongside their studies and/or have caring responsibilities for children, relatives or others. These conditions can limit the extent to which international mobility is a realistic or central part of their studies. The first-semester surveys suggest that many students plan to remain in Mittelsachsen or nearby regions after graduation and work in local fields of social work practice (Mittweida University of Applied Sciences, 2023, 2024, 2025). This makes it important to embed international and transnational learning in the curriculum, rather than relying on study abroad.
Rather than treating students’ regional rootedness as a limitation, higher education institutions can use it as a resource for development. Professional orientations developed during their studies can later inform practice in the region, especially when students learn to connect local work with wider social and transnational conditions. Transnational competence should therefore be framed not as an additional qualification only for students who want to work internationally, but as a local professional competence for social workers in rural and regional contexts in Germany, Europe and beyond.
Transnationality as a Condition of Local Practice
Glick Schiller and Levitt (2006) define transnationalism as “the ongoing interconnection or flow of people, ideas, objects, and capital across the borders of nation-states, in contexts in which the state shapes but does not contain such linkages and movements” (p. 5). According to Köngeter (2010), transnationality challenges the image of the nation-state as a bounded container of culture, politics, economy and community. Instead, the author directs attention to cross-border social fields. In this article, transnationality refers to life worlds, social relations, affiliations, resources and institutional arrangements that cross borders and shape everyday practice in concrete settings (Schröer & Schweppe, 2018). Transnational competence, in turn, means the capacity to analyse and respond professionally to these conditions.
Schirilla (2018) argues that many conditions, problem constellations and possible responses in social work can no longer be adequately described within a purely national framework, since migration, support networks, social rights and forms of agency increasingly unfold across borders. Frieters-Reermann (2018) similarly warns that social problems are often located too narrowly in national, regional or communal contexts, although individual life situations and social challenges are entangled with global dynamics. His proposed competence areas for transnational social work include analytical, reflexive, communicative, ethical and action-oriented competences. Schrooten et al. (2024) describe transnational learning as a way of combining local learning with international exchange.
These perspectives shape a curricular aim. Students should learn to analyse how rights, resources, identities, obligations and experiences of exclusion are produced across social and political spaces and become relevant in local practice. They should also reflect on their own assumptions, avoid culturalised or nationalised explanations and justify professional action in human rights-based terms (e.g. Schirilla, 2018). Transnational competence can thus support professional judgement and connect it to human rights-based social work practice.
Internationalization at Home as a Curricular Response
To make this aim accessible to all students, Internationalization at Home offers a way to integrate international perspectives into the domestic curriculum. Mobility formats such as semesters abroad are valuable, but they reach only part of the student body and may reproduce inequalities of access. First-generation students, students with care responsibilities, paid work or financial constraints may face greater barriers to long-term mobility-based internationalisation (e.g. Kommers, 2020; Netz & Finger, 2016). For these students, approaches that integrate international dimensions into the domestic curriculum are especially relevant.
Beelen and Jones (2015) define Internationalization at Home as “the purposeful integration of international and intercultural dimensions into the formal and informal curriculum for all students within domestic learning environments” (p. 69). Internationalization at Home does not emerge automatically when international topics are occasionally added to a course. Robson, Almeida and Schartner (2017) show that institutional strategy, teaching development, student services, student associations and everyday classroom practice need to be connected if Internationalization at Home is to be implemented meaningfully.
Applied to rural contexts such as the Faculty of Social Work at Mittweida University of Applied Sciences, this approach means that students do not need to spend a longer period abroad. They need structured opportunities within their studies to encounter international perspectives and reflect on how global and transnational dynamics appear in their own professional fields. Internationalization at Home can therefore serve as a curricular response for students who are regionally rooted and expect to work locally, connecting their regional commitment with the transnational competence needed for human rights-based social work in globalised societies.
Preparing Students who Stay
One possible approach is to integrate Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) with partner universities. Students from different institutions can collaborate online over several weeks on shared social work questions, for example by comparing local responses to migration, family support, youth welfare, anti-discrimination practice or unequal access to social rights. Erasmus+ Blended Intensive Programmes combine virtual collaboration with a short physical mobility component. They could enable students to analyse practice examples, engage with local organisations and connect these observations to human rights-based social work. Both COIL and blended formats can be integrated into regular coursework, assessment and guided reflection. Their suitability will depend on local resources and partner arrangements.
Implementation can also involve challenges. Soulé, Parmaxi and Nicolaou (2025) find that virtual exchange can strengthen intercultural sensitivity, collaboration and related skills, but that challenges often concern “language, technical, personal, pedagogical, or organizational aspects” (p. 39). For Blended Intensive Programmes, the short mobility component may create an additional barrier. Thus, the programmes should be designed inclusively, taking into account the different circumstances of students, so that as many as possible can participate.
With guided and intensive reflection that connects international exchange to students’ future professional action in their own region, Internationalization at Home is intended to challenge taken-for-granted explanations and culturalised or nationalised interpretations of social problems. It may also strengthen students’ ability to justify professional action in human rights-based terms.
Conclusion
Local social work can be strengthened when social workers recognise the transnational realities already present in individuals, families, institutions and communities. In regions where authoritarian or exclusionary discourses shape everyday perceptions of “normality” to a certain extent, this competence is also part of social work’s democratic and human rights-based responsibility.
Mittelsachsen illustrates a broader challenge for social work education in regional contexts. Education always takes place somewhere specific, yet that place is embedded in wider transnational relations. Internationalization at Home offers one way to connect the global, regional and local dimensions of students’ learning and to support professional judgement and human rights-based practice in local settings. Whether and how this approach contributes to democratic responsibility in the region depends on how it is implemented and should be investigated empirically.
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