Social work with displaced people has an extended background in the history of the profession. Yet, it has taken different forms and remits over time, parallel to the evolving legal and political definition of refugee themselves. Inside Europe, in particular, social work with forced migrants has gained new visibility and increasing complexity after the so-called refugee crisis. Aspects like people's limited visibility and eligibility towards formal welfare services, their uncertain legal status, their temporal “liminality” and their non-linear patterns of mobility have all major consequences for social work practice, research and education. In discussing them, we highlight the need to invest in students' (and practitioners') reflexivity, given both the complexity of building up trust-based relationships with forcibly displaced people, and the risk of cultivating essentialized, stigmatizing or nativist representations about them. In all of these respects, our introduction provides a conceptual basis for this Special Issue of EJSW, and for the broader debate in social work across Europe.