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

This article presents findings from a study that interrogated the experiences of social service providers who support return migrants in Kosova. Relying on a postcolonial framework and using critical discourse analysis, the study aimed to elucidate whether social workers who serve return migrants uphold their commitment to social justice. This focus responds to current literature suggesting that social workers often become part of a system that silences and marginalises return migrants. Indeed, findings corroborate existing literature, suggesting that social workers in Kosova are aware of the challenges faced by returnees, especially those who are forced to return. However, they also place the burden of repatriation on returnees themselves, ultimately blaming them for the challenges of repatriation. Challenging these discourses, the article argues that social workers need to build transnational solidarities to question current constructions of repatriation as voluntary and offer return migrants choices.

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.

The tension between capitalist and democratic knowledge production affects academic social work. Specifically, production models are applied in the university classroom, having different effects on professionalization. In this article, the concept of creative corporeality is proposed within a pedagogy that emphasizes students’ abilities in cognitive construction in social work. Can the images created by students through physical creativity reach a level of knowledge in academic training? The main objective of this article is to explain how collaborative creativity in the classroom, exercised through students’ narrated experiences, is an effective resource for understanding knowledge. Building on participatory action research in the classroom and artistic practices in social work, the research used a quantitative methodology to analyze students’ narratives. A case study was conducted with a group of social work students from the Universidad Nacional de San Cristóbal de Huamanga (National University of San Cristóbal de Huamanga), Peru. Based on the findings, the authors conclude that corporeality emerges from a creative pedagogy that enables theoretical understanding through artistic activity.

This article considers how Alasdair MacIntyre’s Revolutionary Aristotelianism, given its foundations in Aristotle’s virtue ethics and Marxism, can strengthen critical social work (CSW) education, particularly in contesting the influence of liberalism. It was inspired by witnessing the transformative effect of centring learning activities around students’ values, which promoted both effective learning and a joyful learning community. This article suggests that three key elements of Revolutionary Aristotelianism explain that effect and can strengthen CSW education: the insistence that values are central to human action and thought; the assertion that such values can only become common values through shared labour; and the belief that human beings possess an inalienable agency. The final element may make the greatest contribution to CSW education, as in the face of the ‘new dark age’ introduced by neoliberalism, MacIntyre provides a logic of hope: that the capacity to transform our world exists and can be found in everyday practice.

Safeguarding is wielded as a threat to dissuade parents from supporting their trans child. The 2024 Cass Review prompted revision of gender healthcare in the UK, including banning gender-affirming hormonal treatment for trans children and young people (CYP) via the National Health Service outside of a currently unavailable research project and a UK government ban on overseas and private puberty blocker prescriptions. Parents supporting trans CYP to access this treatment were pushed to the legal fringes. English social workers enact duties under the Children Act 1989 to safeguard CYP from harm; however, safeguarding guidance for social workers regarding trans CYP is limited. This article explores the contemporary legal, medical and social landscape for trans CYP and warns of the risks when social workers are uninformed about their experiences, including participating in trans moral panic, paternalism and cisnormativity, departing from anti-oppressive values, and enabling discrimination.

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 abstract is translated in Arabic below. The growing literature on the father–child relationship indicates that most questions on the effects of cultural, economic, and political contexts on their relationship remain mostly unanswered, particularly in Indigenous cultures. This article walks the reader through the psycho-politics of father–child connectivities embedded in the sociocultural and political contexts of Occupied East Jerusalem. The article examines mundane and occasional father–child taraabot (“bonding” in Arabic), modes, and practices under heavily militarized times and places. Looking at fathers’ experiences and analyzing their voices using feminist methodology and decolonial analysis reveals hidden complexities, new meanings, and the various expressions of father–child connective bonding ( taraabot ), love, faith, and livability while facing settler-colonial insecurity and violence.

The abstract is translated in Arabic below. The discourse of the social work profession purports a human rights (HR) and social justice (SJ) perspective. Hence, the stance of international social work organisations (ISWOs) on various socio-political issues is paramount in terms of showing solidarity with oppressed and vulnerable groups. In this article, I reflect on the ways in which various ISWOs – namely, the International Association of Schools of Social Work, the International Federation of Social Workers, the International Council on Social Welfare and the Social Work Action Network International – have responded to the Palestinian question as the litmus test of commitment to HR and SJ. The article interrogates and analyses how SJ and HR violations are dealt with by ISWOs, as specifically evidenced in their statements, or lack thereof, about the Palestinian question from 2014 to 2024. Principles of critical discourse analysis are utilised from an anti-colonial perspective to consider the statements posted on the websites of ISWOs in relation to their purported HR and SJ stance. Statements are examined in terms of their content, positions, ambiguities and contradictions. The analysis indicated that two ISWOs are either silent or purport a false equivalence and remain sites of Western imperial positionality, where European concerns and viewpoints dominate, thus marginalising alternate voices that do not have the same space, stature and visibility. In contrast, the other two ISWOs have been more responsive, taking a clear stance against the SJ and HR violations against Palestinians. It is critical that ISWOs embody consistent, unambiguous HR and SJ perspectives that align with their aims and objectives, show solidarity with marginalised groups, and hold affiliate members accountable for ensuring ethical SJ practices.