This paper is an investigation of the concept of community as it applies to social work theory. It uses the example of an 18-year-old Dominican Republic immigrant, whose recent move from the nurturing, close-knit community of her homeland to the confined and often hostile environment of a lower-class Brooklyn neighborhood provides an intriguing contrast between two types of communities. This paper uses a biopsychosocial perspective and looks at the issue using a systems theory approach to consider the topic. Because the subject is an adolescent, the environmental pressures are especially dramatic, showing some of the ways in which community has an impact on the individual, the family system, and the larger social, psychological, and political environment in which the individual lives.

Asenhat Gomez was born in a farming community in the…