Social work and social justice in Northern Ireland: Towards a new occupational space

This article considers the concept of social justice by reference to the experience of social work in Northern Ireland during the past forty years of communal, paramilitary and state violence. It notes the contested nature of the concept and its chequered history within the professional ideology of social work generally and its absence as a significant explanatory and motivational concept for social workers in Northern Ireland to date. It argues that in the emerging post-conflict situation social work as a profession needs to operationalize a view of social justice that acknowledges social and cultural diversity in order to redefine the profession itself and direct its relationship to both the state and civil society.