This study investigates the ways social workers in the Netherlands deal with a diversity of clients, particularly focussing on allochtonous clients. The study is motivated by the current hegemonic tendency to problematise allochtonous Dutch, often explained along the lines of culture. It was assumed that within such a social atmosphere concerning the multicultural society cultural diversity could be expected to have an impact on both the professional discourse of social workers and their everyday practices with clients. Making use of an ethnographic-oriented and a discourse-analytical approach, the empirical data in this study derive from a fieldwork study in a Dutch social work department and a literature study on the historical context in which social work developed as a discipline. The fieldwork study, including among others 15 interviews with social workers and 26 observations of meetings with (allochtonous and autochthonous) clients, demonstrates that in spite of the professional repertoire of client-centredness, which indicates the importance of linking up with where the client stands, and despite the fact that the policy of the studied social work organisation towards clients is based on an integral approach that does not differentiate between clients and takes each client as an individual, social workers often make use of categories to make sense of their clients. This is true even while the two conditions mentioned above would be assumed to allow room for an individualised approach. In the case of dealing with allochtonous clients, this use of categories appears to be even more explicit. The study found that social workers often are inclined to: first, categorise these clients as being different from autochtonous clients; and second as being difficult, because they are perceived to deviate from the desirable client identity; and third, to explain the deviance in terms of culture. That is, allochtonous clients in this study are often homogeneously characterised as 'others' that appear to deviate from ...