Abstract
‘A Room with a View’, suggests perhaps the notion of a room with a number of windows and, to correspond with this, multiple views of varying scenery … [T]his journal is a kind of room with a view – or indeed, rooms with views. Further, [it] suggests something about the journal’s editorial position on the landscape of qualitative research and of social work. While there has been a tendency to see these as two separate landscapes, we in fact see these as one landscape, if a rather cluttered one. (Ian Shaw and Roy Ruckdeschel, 2002: 5)
I cannot imagine a world without QSW. Yet, this journal, first established in 2002, is still a rather new outlet. Originally, envisioned to fill a publication void for qualitative social work scholarship, it has grown from four issues to six, and for those who care, hosts a respectable impact factor. In addition, as my editorial in this issue reflects, QSW has been recognized as a first tier journal (Hodge et al., 2019), which I think also speaks to the growing appreciation and respect for qualitative social work scholarship (Piedra, 2020). In the midst of these notable accomplishments, I returned to QSW very first editorial as a way to honor the mindsets that brought forth this publication. I was not disappointed. It reminded me that QSW would serve as a “two-way bridge” between social work inquiry and practice. For Shaw and Ruckdeschel, the two are intertwined.
In this issue, we bring you eight articles that provide a window into challenging problems and ways to conceptualize solutions. One such problem is the role that social media plays in contemporary life and how it shapes relationships. Burns and colleagues describe the use of Twitter in the academy and how its use has changed the research enterprise and shaped evolving definitions of scholarly impact. In addition, they highlight how social media might amplify existing inequalities in the academy and affect engagement with people from marginalized groups. In a similar vein, Edda Stang uses data from Facebook groups protesting Child Welfare Services in Norway to describe the ethical issues that arise for those who research digital communities, where it can be difficult to ascertain what communications belong to the public and what should remain private. In her article, she argues for the multi-dimensionality of clients who interact in these online contexts. In these public Facebook groups, people who are usually ascribed the label of “vulnerable” embrace an identity of citizens with socio-political opinions.
Two articles examine violence from varied perspectives. Choi and Chan explore why some Chinese women use force in intimate relationships. Through a retrospective analysis of case records, they found that these women espoused Western values in addition to beliefs related to family relationships within in Chinese culture. The authors posit that understanding what fuel incidences of intimate partner violence among such women facilitates the creation of interventions that are sensitive to gender and cultural nuances. Cleaveland and Kirsch examine the narratives of women who survived life-threatening violence during unauthorized immigration from Mexico to the United States. They situate these traumatic migratory experiences within the broader human smuggling industry endemic in Mexico and Central America. By so doing, they offer an analysis of the systematic violation of human rights that occurs as people traverse these borders.
The importance of reconceptualization is a common theme in qualitative inquiry. This issue contains two such articles. Drawing from a study undertaken in England in which social workers presented their professional identity through art, Leigh and colleagues describe how art and story-telling can elucidate social work practice. In their article, they build on the sociology of art, work, and its interaction through visual narratives can challenge previously held assumptions and beliefs. Smeeton examines underlying constructions of risk. Using Heidegger to describe an ontology of risk and its utility in the UK child protection context, he shows how the risk paradigm obscures the problems people encounter. Smeeton argues that a “phenomenology” approach might be more useful because it emphasizes the lived experiences of people within their environments.
Lastly, this issue brings two in-depth studies of special populations. Fargas-Malet and McSherry examined what influences social workers in their planning for children who enter the North Ireland Child Welfare system. They use their results to inform an ecological model of decision-making in care planning and argue for regional practical guidance and policies. Franco and co-authors explored how family members of Black/White Multiracial people discriminate against them and their response to such practices. The results suggest that these discriminatory experiences accentuated the saliency of and generated much confusion.
Footnotes
Declaration of conflicting interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.