The textbook demonstrates that the concept of empowerment involves much more than a programmatic departure from the deficit perspective of expert-dominated assistance for the recipients of social work. Instead, it highlights an inseparable connection between the American civil rights movement and a changed professional identity of social work today: a fundamental attitude that respects diversity and enables self-efficacy. In addition to an introduction to the reception history, theory, and practice of empowerment, the book also focuses on current focal points, such as a discrimination-sensitive and power-theoretically grounded empowerment in migration societies.