Global challenges, opportunities and developing and new social phenomena have always had an impact on and change the circumstances under which social work is practised. Whilst social work can take many ‘local’ forms it is also a global profession which strives to advance the causes of vulnerable and marginalised people with the aim of promoting human rights and social justice. In the recent years, the increasing impact on social work of global processes, changes and challenges have emerged. This has led to increased diversity of individual, community and citizen identities, experiences, and needs, but also plurality of all these factors. As a result, needs have diversified even further and pose more and serious challenges that social work needs to respond to.

The Routledge International Handbook of Glocal Social Work emphasises ‘glocal’ social work, defined as the constant interplay between global issues and their local relevance, and between transnational topics and practice and their local application. Chapters highlight glocal social work as interwoven with an awareness of the impact of multiple structural transformations at a global level and highlight the structural mechanisms which reproduce global/local inequalities, and human rights and social justice aspects of sustainability. It also demonstrates the importance of interdisciplinarity in glocal social work as collective responsibility, with multidisciplinary, multi-stakeholder engagement approaches.

The book is divided into four parts:

§ Foundations and perspectives

§ Local responses to global phenomena

§ Preparing social workers for global-local engagement

§ Broader issues and future directions

The range of topics discussed in this volume will enrich our understanding of and capacities in exploring the contextualisation of global phenomena and the dissemination of local learning onto global thinking. This volume is a helpful reference to social work practitioners, professionals in social care and welfare services, social work students, academics and researchers, in an attempt to continuously explore new ways to respond to the challenges that glocalisation is revealing.