Due to the increase of international migration and its implications for social intervention, social work has recently become interested in studying this phenomenon from a resilient perspective. The objectives are to identify the role played by the formal social care networks in the immigrants' integration process and detect the main resilient factors that allowed them to cope with migratory adversities. A qualitative approach was used. Participants included Latin Americans living in Tarragona and social workers from the Tarragona social services. The techniques used were seventeen life stories, 110 questionnaires and two focus groups of Latin Americans and thirteen interviews with social workers. The main results show that the role played by the social welfare services in the integration process of the Latin Americans has been low. Intervention is mainly based on a risk perspective, over-institutionalised and without promoting the immigrants' strengths sufficiently. Nevertheless, Latin American immigrants have cope relatively well with adversities involved in immigration, due to the interaction of protective factors such as social networks, previous contact with migration realities and a strong sense of meaning of life based on their migratory project, among others. This shows the need to incorporate a resilient perspective into interventions with immigrants in order to recover a pioneering style of social work. © The Author 2014.

Social support Resilience Professional practice Latin Americans Immigration

[No Keywords available]