En droppe i havet : Professionellas syn på sin roll och funktion inom NGO:s i Chiapas, Mexiko

Sammanfattning: Social workers today have the whole world as their work field and the global social work is often carried out in international non-governmental organizations (NGOs). To work internationally and in NGO's have according to previous research shown to be complex. Therefore the aim of this study was to examine international professionals and their views on their role and function working in NGO´s situated in Chiapas, Mexico. This region has a well-developed ”NGO society” that has been developed since 1990 and is a place where local, national and international NGOs are acting. Data was conducted through six semi-structured interviews in three different languages, with five women and one man with different academic education; NGOs, ages, and all originate from Global North. Social constructivism was used as the scientific perspective to understand the collected data. The analysis is based on the theory of post colonialism and a theory I named Global civil society. Global civil society is based on two theoretical concepts regarding political globalization to challenge or conform to existing structures and models for agency – the activist – and the liberal model. Overall the study shows that the professionals international background is significant in several aspects: they can operate in the country and the region quite freely because of their ”Global north” citizenship, but not be too activist in the sense that they interfere in the country’s political affairs. It appears that the perception of their role and function are linked with how they look at their freedom of action and the restrictions from donors, State of Mexico (socio-political context) and other parts of the civil society, further their own NGO. These various phenomena control the degree to how much they feel they can accomplish with the international social work. Furthermore producing that they see at their responsibility as restrained – “a drop in the ocean”.