Crossing thresholds: Hospitality and professionalism in Aotearoa New Zealand social work

This article aims to offer a consideration of hospitality in organizations, occupations and thresholds to illustrate the sociocultural dimensions of hospitality spaces. Our aim is to open up thinking around spaces of hospitality offered by organizational members, particularly those employees who work with the vulnerable ‘other’, across thresholds into homes and organizational spaces. Community social workers illustrate the practice of hospitality as they offer advocacy and inclusion for those individuals excluded from the wider community. The move towards professionalism has been argued as one way of establishing value, authority and confidence in the role of the community social worker and the decisions these individuals make in their work. However, critics have indicated that professionalism emphasizes practices of ideological control, norms and exclusion, in effect undermining key social work values, ethos and practice. Our results illustrate that community social workers developed asymmetric relationships of trust within their community and negotiated with other organizational members in order to create spaces for their work and inclusion.