Dr. Sina Motzek-Öz, lecturer for special tasks at the Institute of Social Work at the University of Kassel, taught in the summer semester of 2020 as part of the Klara Maria Faßbinder Visiting Professorship for Women and Gender Studies of the State of Rhineland-Palatinate under the working title "Gender, Diversity and Power to Act" at the Department of Social and Health Care at Ludwigshafen University of Business and Society (HWG LU). In addition to various keynote speeches, including on inclusive and anti-discriminatory university teaching, Motzek-Öz held two (virtual) courses there: Motzek-Öz gave an "Introduction to the theory and practice of intercultural and socio-educational counseling" in the Bachelor's degree program in Social Work and the seminar "Research in the context of multilingualism and interculturality" in the corresponding Master's degree program. In her inaugural lecture, Motzek-Öz spoke about "Empowerment and diversity: Theoretical and methodological search movements around two central concepts for gender-conscious social work". Dr. Elena Wassmann spoke with Dr. Sina Motzek-Öz about the challenges of a visiting professorship during the coronavirus pandemic, the focus of her education and future challenges.
What significance did the Klara Marie Faßbinder guest professorship have for you?
S. Motzek-Öz: First of all, I was absolutely delighted when the dean's team approached me with the topic. It was a great opportunity for me to return to the beginnings of my academic work in terms of subject matter and to take a more fundamental look at gender and intersectionality. As part of my doctorate under Professor Dr. Elisabeth Tuider at the University of Kassel, I dealt intensively with the fundamentals and debates of gender and difference theory. That really shaped my perspective. I now work in social work in Kassel and work closely with Professor Dr. Manuela Westphal, who is also involved in migration research as well as gender studies. As a result, I have repeatedly dealt with the (socio-)educational contexts of migration and gender.
For me, the guest professorship opened up a window of opportunity that allowed me to immerse myself in the topic of gender once again. At the same time, it was a great opportunity for me to try myself out in a different university context after my long period as a lecturer for special tasks in Kassel.
Trying things out in a different university context had to take place under very unusual, difficult conditions due to the coronavirus pandemic. How did you feel about that?
In fact, the pandemic initially threw all plans and arrangements overboard: In addition to my actual courses, guest lectures, the inaugural lecture and a workshop with students were planned. None of this could take place as planned. And in my private life too - I had just come back from parental leave and had organized childcare for my daughter around the guest professorship - the planning was no longer possible. There was even a brief question as to whether the visiting professorship should be postponed altogether. In hindsight, however, I'm glad we didn't do that. I had the luxury of being able to familiarize myself very intensively with the possibilities of digital education due to my relatively low teaching commitments, so that I was able to get started with both seminars and work constructively as early as the end of March. For example, we worked with video conferencing, digital group work and reflection exercises in breakout rooms, and the students were able to prepare for the sessions with audiovisual material collections. It was still not easy to maintain close contact with the students - especially as I and some students on the Master's in Social Work were completely new to the university. However, learning diary entries in online portfolios, among other things, were a good medium for getting into closer personal contact.
In retrospect, I learned a lot and got to know some digital formats that I like to keep under "normal circumstances".
The working title of your guest professorship was "Gender, diversity and agency: areas of tension, irritations, professional challenges and opportunities in social fields of action". How did you fill this major topic with content?
The topics of gender, diversity and agency accompany me in my work as a social worker as well as in my academic-theoretical work. In education, I have taken this up under the keyword 'interculturality'. Especially in so-called intercultural situations, it becomes clear where - even in professional action - there are often shortcuts or gendered perceptions, for example of the migrant woman. For example, the Master's students addressed the question "How can we design research while taking multilingualism and interculturality into account?" We also drew on and worked with gender theory concepts such as situated knowledge (Haraway). We wanted to look at the extent to which the researcher's point of view influences the research and the object of research under consideration.
The question of the possibilities of intercultural-reflective sensitization and professionalization was also the topic of a guest lecture in the nursing education degree programs, which I was actually able to give. The focus on nursing was also new and very exciting for me.
The connection between interculturality, diversity and gender runs like a common thread through your academic work. Always with a focus on the female perspective?
Often yes, but the current refugee migration has broadened my perspective to include the group of male refugees, who make up two thirds of the current refugee migration, both in public perception and in reality. Here, too, very strongly gendered and culturalized attributions can be observed: those of foreign, fearful masculinity.
You have dealt intensively with the topic of intercultural counseling in your courses. Of course, you can't summarize the content of an entire semester in just a few sentences, but what is particularly important here?
In my opinion, it is important that counselors do not automatically make intercultural attributions simply because their counterpart is an immigrant client. It is also important in professional work to be aware of one's own often essentializing, culturalizing or gendered images from a kind of bird's eye view and to ask oneself with a focus on micro and differentiation pratices: When do situations become 'intercultural' and what happens as a result?
We have to take a close look at how culture becomes relevant and whether it is relevant at all in the specific situation or whether it is not rather necessary to apply completely different explanatory approaches to the acute problem situation.
You also gave a keynote speech on inclusive and anti-discriminatory university teaching. What was the bottom line?
My quintessence was to understand university education primarily as a social situation, as a meeting of different educational biographies of students and teachers, who have different prerequisites for learning and teaching and can be affected differently by discrimination. 'Inclusive education' as a very comprehensive term means that everyone comes to university with different opportunities and we have to ask ourselves how we can meet them where they are. 'Discrimination-critical education' was also important to me because this is often ignored by universities. As an educator who stands out with a headscarf and evokes different associations, I also deal with diversity at the university from a personal perspective.
In your view, is there a lot wrong here?
At universities, there is often the assumption that discrimination and racism do not play a major role due to the relatively high level of education of students, lecturers and staff. However, empirical studies show that universities only appear to be 'above' prejudice and discrimination. A study conducted by Bielefeld University in 2016, for example, shows that there are a relatively high number of discriminatory incidents in the context of seminars and lectures.
At the HWG, however, there has already been an intensive examination of the topic of diversity-sensitive education. There is also a working paper with didactic considerations that I was able to build on. My personal experiences with students and lecturers in Ludwigshafen have also been very positive. In my opinion, the only thing that needs to be done here is to focus even more on the processes of exclusion, including with regard to sexual orientation and national-ethnic-cultural difference, and to encourage teachers to reflect on their own involvement in social power imbalances and the effects on their education and the perception of their students. Especially in social and health-related degree programs, I think it's crucial to think about the image of family or society that we reproduce as educators, for example, and whether biases creep in due to our own position.
In your work, you deal a lot with the psychological constitution of migrant women and the topic of (powerlessness) power. Why this focus?
As a social worker, I worked in the field of social psychiatry and dealt intensively with the intercultural opening of the organization. From this, I also developed the topic for my doctorate, in which I conducted interviews with women who had migrated to Germany from Turkey and were suffering from depression. There is a glaring gap here, which I became increasingly aware of: In psychiatry and psychotherapy, migrant women with mental health complaints are often viewed in a culturalizing way and as a group that is very difficult to reach and very deficient. In migration research, which is characterized by concepts such as transnationality, diversity/intersectionality and agency, very vulnerable, sometimes multiply disadvantaged groups in particular are now often ignored. I was interested in countering the public and sometimes also professional stereotypical perception of these women as passive victims with a differentiated, social-scientific analysis of their biographical confrontation with agency and vulnerability. In fact, I was able to show that the women's health actions, which are often professionally perceived as inadequate, are justified actions in view of their resources, possibilities and action orientations. Among other things, it is characterized by transnational and/or religious coping strategies.
The guest professorship in Ludwigshafen is coming to an end. What are you taking away with you?
I am taking away very positive experiences with committed students and great colleagues who welcomed me very openly and warmly. In terms of content, I take away the insight that there is still a lot to do in the field of gender and diversity. There are very differentiated concepts and models, whether in the context of practice, social work research or in universities. Nevertheless, inequalities continue to exist in society - in the context of gender, diversity and migration. In view of the social shift to the right, we should pursue and demand goals of equality even more strongly, not only in research, but also in (university) policy. I believe that social work in particular has a duty to demand this.
In terms of education, I realize that there is sometimes potential where we don't expect it: In digital education during the pandemic, hurdles fell for students with parenting/care responsibilities and students with impairments. Conversely, of course, we must not lose sight of those who are excluded by the use of digital education, for example due to a lack of technical equipment.
What projects await you now?
I am returning to the University of Kassel and, as part of my position as a lecturer for special tasks, I am completing a small research project that I carried out with students in collaboration with my colleague Professor Dr. Manuela Westphal. It's about multi-professionalism in the context of integrating young refugees into schools. In the fall, I will then take up a postdoctoral position in the DFG research project "Change and dynamics of familial generational relationships in the context of flight and asylum" under the direction of Prof. Dr. Manuela Westphal.
All the best and much success! And thank you very much for the interview!
(Interview: Elena Wassmann)
