The degree programme offers scientific and vocational/professional training with a special focus on intercultural competence. This is especially important in connection with Austria´s demographics, which are strongly influenced by migration. Social workers encounter clients with migration background in all their fields of activity. Intercultural competence is, therefore, a cross-sectional type of competence and not solely an additional qualification relevant for employees in migration-specific service institutions.
Graduates of the Master's degree program can perform executive and managerial functions in all areas of social work, especially functions that require a high degree of intercultural competence, both in working with clients and in managing projects and teams. Graduates are able to see and assess social problems in situations of cultural overlap from an intercultural perspective and in international contexts and to deal with them professionally and appropriately. Graduates have the ability to act as mediators in intercultural dialog. They understand diversity and conflicts as an opportunity to gain insights into themselves and the other participants and to use them as a possible starting point for development and understanding. They are strengthened in their own identity and are able to encounter strangers in the context of social work. They can reflect on their own value system and deal with the value and cultural systems of different cultures.
