Resumen

ALVAREZ SAN MARTIN, Roberto; CONTRERAS-DELGADO, Constanza Valentina; HENRIQUEZ PARRA, Arancy  y  MARIMAN CANIUPAN, Camila Andrea. Social representations of the other in social work students. Rev. Int. Investig. Cienc. Soc. [online]. 2026, vol.22, n.1, pp.1-16. ISSN 2226-4000.  https://doi.org/10.18004/riics.2026.junio.1.

Currently, social workers must act as mediators between the demands and needs of culturally diverse populations and social policies. Therefore, social work must embrace the variety of social subjects who demand state support, which leads to the question: Who is the Other in social work? A qualitative, descriptive methodology with a phenomenological design was used; the data collection techniques were focus groups and semi-structured interviews with social work students. The existence of a social representation of the Other was confirmed, which symbolically places them as a vulnerable subject; figuratively, social, cultural, and personal conflicts are revealed; and emotionally, negative emotions emerge. The complementarity of these dimensions leads social work students to represent the Other as a vulnerable subject, which could generate biased professional intervention. It is concluded that, to intervene professionally in contexts of cultural diversity, social workers must mediate between individual and institutional social representations, relying on professional training that includes the ethics of otherness and critical interculturality.

Palabras clave : Social Representation; otherness; alterity; interculturality; social work.

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