The article reports on an ethnographic investigation of homelessness in Manila, the capital of the Philippines. Specifically, the study involved the researcher’s interaction with street dwellers in different parts of the city and a group of volunteers conducting a regular feeding campaign. Guided by a framework that fuses resistance (as an integration of ‘annunciation’ and ‘denunciation’) with Foucauldian concepts (that is, ‘technologies of the self’ and ‘concern for the self’), the narratives from unhoused people were analysed according to the following themes: reasons for homelessness and the tendency for ‘identity obscuration’; challenges and concerns; and survival mechanisms and self-care. Based on the findings, helping street dwellers necessitates more effective, people-friendly strategies on the part of the government and more active involvement on the part of the private sector. It is likewise imperative to address the root causes of homelessness and introduce policies geared towards social justice and equality.

The influence of neoliberalism is taken for granted in social work and has increasingly shaped social work practice, research and education. This article examines hope in social work and the importance of radically theorising hope to challenge the neoliberalisation of social work. Social work has a dual function that both resists and accommodates neoliberal agendas. Hope is a multidimensional concept. Hope is predominantly individualised in social work, but there are also radical and critical notions of hope that align with the broader political struggles of social work. Consistent with ethics of social justice, this article advocates for broadening the use of hope in social work to incorporate radical and critical hope in social work practice, research and education.

This article highlights the relevance of ‘genuine’ agrarian reform, ‘emancipatory agroecologies’ and food sovereignty to climate justice and radical eco-social work. It explores the connections between capitalism, the climate crisis and the global food system, as well as their interconnections with today’s global crises in care and democracy. It analyses the role and exploitation of women and the expropriation of land and resources from racialised ‘others’. The case for UK agrarian reform is discussed in relation to the monarchy and systems of kinship, inheritance and tax. Ongoing struggles for justice, equality and democracy in Peru are highlighted, as well as the relevance of ‘genuine’ agrarian reform. The article argues that the La Via Campesina movement – an agrarian, trans-environmental movement that promotes global ‘peasant-to-peasant’ knowledge exchange, food sovereignty, ‘emancipatory agroecologies’ and ‘genuine’ agrarian reform – can unite land/social workers and women, globally, to demand climate justice and system change from below. This has implications for radical eco-social work.

Many marginalised communities have long-standing food-growing traditions, yet the climate crisis imperils global food security and disproportionately impacts marginalised communities. Increasingly, researchers posit that networks of decentralised peri-urban agriculture can strengthen food security. In this qualitative study, I ask: what can we learn from marginalised agrarian traditions that might be useful to those marginalised communities in collectively surviving climate change? To answer that question, I conducted in-depth, semi-structured interviews with 23 marginalised food growers and community leaders in the deindustrialised city of Ypsilanti, Michigan, USA. I find that growing food helps to build resilience to food insecurity and climate change but is difficult because of land injustice. Policy and practice implications include the need for the following: (1) housing justice; (2) proactive planning in areas that are expected to serve as climate refuges; and (3) reparations and land rematriation to address the disparate impacts of climate disaster in marginalised communities.

This article discusses the relationship between poverty and disasters, highlighting the climate injustice that affects Brazilians and refugees in the country. The article collects and analyzes secondary data from documents and literature on the role of social workers in emergencies caused by climate impacts in contemporary Brazil. It also examines documents and data from national and international indicator monitoring platforms. It analyzes the intersection between economic and social policy, considering disasters as social and anthropogenic phenomena, and proposes strengthening social work in the face of risks based on a socioeconomic and environmental diagnosis. The results indicate the need for objective and preventive responses because social work is still mostly emergency related and lacks the technical apparatus to mitigate risks. This gap aggravates such challenges as internal migration driven by the impacts of climate change in Brazil.

This article interrogates the myth of neutrality in social work—a passive complicity that upholds white supremacy as an epistemological norm. Drawing on critical race theory and liberatory praxis, we examine how dominant discourses weaponize claims of objectivity to stymie anti-racist and social justice efforts. Through conceptual analysis and literature synthesis, we argue that social work must evolve through three phases: from documenting inequity to analyzing mechanisms; from identifying harm to transformative action; and from micro-responses to collective mobilization. We reconceptualize historical inequities as complex trauma, demanding structural trauma-informed praxis across research, education, and practice. Findings from the literature reveal neutrality as an ideological enforcement protecting power. We conclude that conflict and discomfort are necessary portals for transformation. The profession must center care, responsibility, and conflict resilience to achieve justice-oriented moral transformation.

Social work literature, education and practice are replete with ‘evidence-based’ treatments. However, upon analysing (1) what counts as evidence, (2) who created the treatment models and (3) who they are intended to treat, it becomes clear that there is a significant gap in social work that needs to be addressed. The clinical and disciplinary fields of social work have not attended to Indigenous cultural healing. This article introduces social workers and therapists to several core Indigenous healing methods and concepts, including (1) all my relations, (2) land, (3) story and (4) medicine. The healing practices of sweat lodge and ayahuasca ceremonies are discussed. In this article, I answer two major questions: (1) ‘What are some Indigenous healing methods?’; and (b) ‘Why are they important, including in social work contexts?’.

Climate change and its disproportionate impacts on vulnerable groups have prompted the social work profession to become increasingly involved in environmental justice issues. Academic discourse on environmental social work has surged in the last decade, but limited studies examine its implementation by practitioners or information dissemination by professional organisations. Translational research highlights the crucial role of professional associations in informing practitioners of new scientific discoveries and practice paradigms. This qualitative content analysis compares a small selection of articles and podcast episodes published through the professional associations of social workers in the US (the National Association of Social Workers) and Germany (the Deutscher Berufsverband für Soziale Arbeit e.V.), respectively, focusing on environmental social work and its implications for the social work profession. The findings suggest that publications from both countries use similar arguments for proving the relevance of climate change issues for the profession but diverge considerably in their focus on how environmental social work should be applied.

Editorial introduction to the special issue on 'Climate Justice, Food Insecurity and Social Work' in the international journal of Critical and Radical Social Work.

Food insecurity and climate change are coupled challenges facing modern society. While climate change directly causes weather fluctuations, with consequences for food security and sovereignty, current global food systems threaten the climate and environment. We ask: how can social work learn from and support community-based models that challenge oppressive structures, honour traditional and alternative ways of knowing, and work towards the equitable redistribution of resources and access to sustainably sourced and produced food with minimal harm to humans, non-human animals and the planet? We examine a place-based social economy model from North America, Cuba’s national small-scale organic food system, and global endeavours towards a just transition in animal agriculture. We frame these exemplars as solidarity models with divergent strategies, albeit with convergent goals towards food, climate, environmental and social justice. Social work must embrace its role in solidarity-forward, action-oriented and educational frameworks to promote radical equality, collective liberation and justice.