Viewing the Organisations
AASW Practice Standard (2023) 3.5 demands that social workers must analyse, influence and engage with organisational systems to support ethical, responsive and socially just outcomes. It is this standard that is at the centre of the asylum seeker detention situation, where even the organisational structures themselves often generate harm. Australian detention centres are planned as securitised spaces where the concerns of border protection and political deterrence are placed above those of the detainees. Briskman, Zion & Loff (2012) illustrate how the privatisation of detention control to commercial contractors resulted in fractured accountability, less transparency and a culture that encouraged barbarity. Social workers in such settings should not just offer care, but also question how organisational policies perpetuate oppression, and question practices that are opposed to human rights.
A more in-depth analysis of this organisational context is achieved with the application of a political frame using a critical theory. Critical theory focuses on the way power is enacted and reproduced through organisational structures and discourses (Spicer & Alvesson, 2024). In detention, asylum seekers were systematically dehumanised: many were deprived of their names in favour of numbers, which symbolised and embedded their depersonalisation. The system gave guards the power to block access to the medical services and determined who should and should not see nurses. The unfortunate case of the death of Fatima Erfani on Christmas Island due to late treatment points to the combination of bureaucratic regulations and distance to take the lives of others (Briskman et al., 2012). Likewise, the plight of five-year-old Shayan Badraei, who learned to have serious psychological distress after detention, demonstrates the systematic harm of organisational priorities which put more emphasis on control than care (Briskman et al., 2012). These illustrations reveal the detention centres as a position where human needs are secondary to the political goals more than as a welfare provision area.
The language and narratives used to conceal systematic violence in the critical theory are also revealed. Briskman et al. (2012) observe the attempts of the authorities to consider detention as a duty of care and a good order, instead of punishment. This bureaucraticism disguised the truth of the fact that indefinite imprisonment of the detainees under conditions that induced hopelessness and self-mutilation was experienced. The organisation justified the otherwise human rights violations by normalising cruelty by using the discourse of corporations and administration (Drake, 2025). A political frame makes social workers fight against these discourses and acknowledge that in such situations, there can be no neutrality: silence is to be a collaborator of oppression.
A critical theoretical approach will enable the social workers to achieve AASW Standard 3.5 in a better manner (Australian Association of Social Workers, 2023). This frame helps in making them challenge organisational structural conditions of practice, recognise how organisational rules reproduce harm and invoke their own professional authority to promote change. Practically, this can involve making a record of abuse, facilitating investigations like the People's Inquiry into Detention or giving a voice to detainees in policy making. Social workers shift the passive compliance into active transformation by advocacy both inside and outside the organisations (Gross, 2025). By doing so, the critical theory helps to not only understand oppressive structures, but also offers a framework of ethical action that is consistent with the social work obligation to social justice and human rights.
Viewing the Recipients of Services
The AASW Practice Standard (2023) places a requirement on social workers to understand the inherent dignity, worth and autonomy of each person as outlined in AASW Practice Standard (2023) 3.1 (Australian Association of Social Workers, 2023). The standard is especially applicable in the context of detention of asylum seekers, where organisational practices and cultural discourses tend to deny the detainees their humanity. Briskman, Zion and Loff (2012) report how the asylum seekers were treated as numbers and not as persons; they were detained under securitised circumstances and decisions that compromised their well-being were made. In this kind of setting, the maintenance of Standard 3.1 is not merely a matter of providing care at the individual level only, but also the struggle against systemic dehumanisation which suffuses organisational life.
The research produces two opposite perceptions of recipients. On the one hand, other nurses treated detainees like human beings who required sympathy, empathy, and compassion (Tunks et al., 2025). Here, an example of a nurse (Susan) cogitated about her work as a source of kindness and hope, even when she was not able to transform the injustices of the system. She recounted prisoners requesting whether she was a nice lady or was capable of assisting them, and she promised to do what she could to assist the detainees. Likewise, Louise mentioned that she had been honoured to sit at the same table with detainees and hear their experiences and even confront guards, who taunted or denigrated asylum seekers (Vusio et al., 2025). These narratives explain how a few health workers, despite working under tight conditions, attempted to assert the dignity and the value of detainees.
Guards and administrators, in contrast to, tended to evaluate recipients in terms of insecurity and domination. Briskman et al. (2012) describe how guards often served as the gatekeepers to medical services and would decide who was allowed to see nurses and could reject complaints like headaches as worthy of time. Sometimes, self-harm was not seen as a manifestation of distress but as a manipulative behaviour (Samways, 2021). One nurse remembered a time when she heard guards bragging about beating up detainees as a demonstration of a culture where recipients were viewed as a problem that had to be dealt with instead of people who had rights. It even hindered simple access to health, with one practitioner recounting how the detainees were made to queue outside in poor conditions to take medication and even being closely monitored to make them conform instead of assisting them with respect.
Consistent with the AASW Standard 3.1, a more ethical approach to seeing the recipients of services is to consider a rights-oriented and trauma-informed perspective (Australian Association of Social Workers, 2023). This policy recognises that the asylum seekers are survivors of persecution and displacement, and they must be treated as rights-bearing individuals and not as security threats or administrative burdens. It demands practitioners to recognise the extensive physical and psychological damages of detention, to legitimise the experience of detainees, and to promote humane options (Dirkzwager et al., 2021). An example of such social workers is criticising the language and practices that tend to dehumanise people into numbers, and instead promoting frameworks of care that recognise cultural identity, family cohesion and agency.
Viewing the Workers
AASW Practice Standard (2023) 6.4 promotes the social worker to critically consider how organisational contexts influence professional identity, values, and practice (Gross, 2025). This reflection is critical in asylum seeker detention, as the organisational culture subjects the workers to the circumstances in which ethical requirements are opposed to the institutional requirements. Briskman, Zion and Loff (2012) demonstrate that detention environments bring about dilemmas of dual loyalty, which entail workers having to meet the demands of clients and, at the same time, meet the demands of employers. This tension has a very strong effect on how employees perceive themselves and how they play out their professional roles.
The accounts give two opposite self-conceptions of workers. Most nurses considered themselves caregivers who wanted to save humanity, especially in a highly dehumanising system (Testoni et al., 2021). One of them, e.g., Susan, also mentioned how she was sometimes subversive in quietly going against the rules in giving hope or more effective care to the detainees. She believed she had a responsibility to both provide medical assistance and to be with the detainees to hear their stories and give them at least some dignity in an otherwise hostile environment.
Administrators and guards, on the contrary, identified themselves by authority, security and control. Their behaviour was an identity of order-keeping and not care-giving. Briskman et al. (2012) describe the practices which were common among guards who determined who was allowed to receive medical services; they were often called triage nurses. Others even boasted of beating up detainees, and this shows a sense of self as protectors and not as well-being providers. The managers tended to embrace the role of an administrator, to which a cost-effective and compliance orientation is ascribed, reproaching medical staff members who would use resources like ultrasounds or external referrals excessively (Roupa et al., 2024). By doing so, these workers regarded themselves not as people with ethical obligations, but as agents who fulfilled organisational orders.
Standard 6.4 emphasises the need to be aware of how such organisational pressures inform identity and practice, and it calls on workers to avoid being critical contributors to institutional power. In terms of social workers, it implies thinking about how the process of detention can corrupt professional values and taking a proactive decision to be consistent with professional ethics of care, dignity, and human rights (Jiménez-Herrera et al., 2020). One of the attributions we can have about ourselves that would fit within the standard would be to view workers as not employees who are implementers of regulations, but as ethically responsible professional practitioners who are subject to larger professional and human rights systems.
Such reflectivity is courageous and has the capacity to recognise moral injury. It also requires concerted efforts, such as advocacy, whistleblowing or professional solidarity to oppose the normalisation of cruelty. Social workers can maintain professional integrity even in hostile conditions by considering themselves as workers whose foremost obligation is to work in the realisation of human dignity, and not to maintain organisational order (Gross, 2025).
Viewing the Work in Organisations
Social workers should also promote ethical organisational practices and facilitate accountability in human service delivery as AASW Practice Standard (2023) 3.2 states (Gross, 2025). This criterion is relevant especially in the area of detention of asylum seekers since the organisational environment in itself reinforces a systemic harm. As an example, Briskman, Zion and Loff (2012) describe how detention centres were controlled as centres of care and more as securitised areas in which bureaucratic interests intruded on human rights. The objectives of deterrence, cost efficiency, and control put the aspects of health and well-being second in priority, which provided the conditions under which ethical practice was not only challenging but also frequently discouraged.
There are a number of important organisational culture and leadership concerns to be identified in the context of detention. To begin with, there was a dehumanisation culture. Asylum seekers were systematically identified by numbers instead of names, and this deprived them of their identity and further solidified their status as others (Azevedo et al., 2021). This cultural act was the representation of the loss of dignity, and it legitimised cruelty in the organisation. Second, the leadership focused on cost control and security and not on care. Guards were often considered a form of triage nurse and could decide whether they could receive medical treatment or not, and the administrators would scold the doctors who ordered tests to be performed that they could have found too expensive. It underlines the fact that the decisions of the leaders were influenced by efficiency and adherence to state agendas instead of professional standards of care. Third, silencing and complicity were a culture (Donohue, 2024). Ethical whistleblowers were either ostracised or sent away, and institutional malpractices like neglect and violence were swept under the rug of the bureaucracy of duty of care and good order.
These are the concerns that Briskman et al. (2012) refer to as the normalisation of cruelty in detention environments. The organisational cultures learned how to make the harmful practices appear as normalcy, so that workers found it hard to oppose, without any personal or professional repercussions (Donohue, 2024). These practices were further embedded in leadership structures which matched with state power as well as private contractors, posing great ethical dilemmas to workers in human services.
To mitigate these organisational issues regardless of the individual or group capacity, social workers must respond to these concerns with the aim of meeting the needs of Practise Standard 3.2 (Australian Association of Social Workers, 2023). On the personal level, they should be critical of how organisational culture influences practise without supporting practises that dehumanise detainees, such as treating them as numbers. They can also engage in ethical resistance, whether small acts of defiance, writing on ill practises or protest in their careers. The social workers in combination are able to rely on professional associations and groups of activists to restrain the gaol organisations (Azevedo et al., 2021). The reaction of the People to Detention campaigns including the People Inquiry into Detention demonstrates that by organised solidarity systemswide abuses can be placed on record and agitation to change pursued.
Besides this, this standard requires social workers to transcend aligning with hostile organisational cultures. They must be front runners in terms of good ethics and require leadership responsibility and call into question organisational discourses that authorise atrocities (Malik et al., 2022). Through this, social workers are able not only to uphold professional standards but also indicate their belief in justice and human rights even in situations where the organisations are directly operating contrary to the principles
References
- Australian Association of Social Workers. (2023). Practice standards. AASW; Australian Association of Social Workers. https://www.aasw.asn.au/about-aasw/ethics-standards/practice-standards/
- Azevedo, R. T., De Beukelaer, S., Jones, I. L., Safra, L., & Tsakiris, M. (2021). When the lens is too wide: The political consequences of the visual dehumanization of refugees. Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, 8(1). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-021-00786-x
- Briskman, L., Zion, D., & Loff, B. (2012). Care or Collusion in Asylum Seeker Detention. Ethics and Social Welfare, 6(1), 37–55. https://doi.org/10.1080/17496535.2011.575383
- Dirkzwager, A. J. E., Verheij, R., Nieuwbeerta, P., & Groenewegen, P. (2021). Mental and physical health problems before and after detention: A matched cohort study. The Lancet Regional Health - Europe, 8, 100154. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lanepe.2021.100154
- Donohue, J. L. A. (2024). Silence as complicity and action as silence. Philosophical Studies. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-024-02246-z
- Drake, B. (2025). Does Centering a Postmodern/Critical Theory Perspective Threaten Longstanding Pillars of Social Work Pedagogy? Journal of Teaching in Social Work, 45(2), 317–335. https://doi.org/10.1080/08841233.2025.2469527
- Gross, E. B. (2025). Social Work Values and the NASW Code of Ethics: Problems of Function and Possibilities for Change. Journal of Progressive Human Services, 35(3), 1–23. https://doi.org/10.1080/10428232.2025.2455883
- Jiménez-Herrera, M. F., Llauradó-Serra, M., Acebedo-Urdiales, S., Bazo-Hernández, L., Font-Jiménez, I., & Axelsson, C. (2020). Emotions and Feelings in Critical and Emergency Caring situations: a Qualitative Study. BMC Nursing, 19(1), 1–10. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12912-020-00438-6
- Malik, M., Mahmood, F., Sarwar, N., Obaid, A., Memon, M. A., & Khaskheli, A. (2022). Ethical leadership: Exploring bottom-line mentality and trust perceptions of employees on middle-level managers. Current Psychology, 42(20). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-022-02925-2
- Roupa, A., Patelarou, A., Fradelos, E. C., Fousiani, K., Miliaraki, M., Giakoumidakis, K., & Patelarou, E. (2024). Validation of Two Instruments for the Measurement of Dehumanization and Self-Dehumanization in Healthcare Settings. Nursing Reports, 14(3), 2246–2265. https://doi.org/10.3390/nursrep14030167
- Samways, B. (2021). Professionals’ attitudes towards people with intellectual disabilities who self-harm: A literature review. Journal of Intellectual Disabilities, 26(4), 174462952110259. https://doi.org/10.1177/17446295211025959
- Spicer, A., & Alvesson, M. (2024). Critical Management Studies: A Critical Review. Journal of Management Studies, 62(1). https://doi.org/10.1111/joms.13047
- Testoni, I., Sicari, G., Ronconi, L., Biancalani, G., Franco, C., Cottone, P., & Crupi, R. (2021). Dehumanization and burden of care among caregivers of terminally ill patients. Health Psychology Research, 9(1). https://doi.org/10.52965/001c.29052
- Tunks, K. J., Barker, M., Hales, C., Holmberg, B., Holmberg, M., Jakimowicz, S., Rook, H., Sherwood, G., Streit, L., & Levett‐Jones, T. (2025). Perceptions of Empathic and Compassionate Healthcare Encounters: An International Exploratory Qualitative Descriptive Study. Scandinavian Journal of Caring Sciences, 39(2). https://doi.org/10.1111/scs.70006
- Vusio, F., Odentz, K., & Plunkett, C. (2025). Experience of compassionate care in mental health and community-based services for children and young people: facilitators of, and barriers to compassionate care– a systematic review. European Child & Adolescent Psychiatry. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00787-025-02711-y
