Affilia

This article conceptualizes non-profit labour as a form of social reproduction, a feminist political economy category that refers to the labour involved in the making of life and tending to it. In the contemporary context of neoliberal austerity in Canada, non-profit organizations have increasingly stepped in to fill widening gaps in essential social provisioning. The predominantly female non-profit workforce within these organizations, parallel to feminized household labour, faces systemic undervaluation and invisibilization, reflected in low wages, chronic underfunding, and austerity policies that work to destabilize the sector as a whole. Via the case study of food banks, we seek to make visible these vital, life-sustaining and community reproducing labours, drawing attention to their political agency and social power. While we write from within critiques of food banks as a symptom of neoliberal retrenchment, we resist conflating the labour and relationships within these organizations with the critiques of the political economic conditions in which they operate. Instead, we argue that the labours of social reproduction that occur within food banks hold political potential that is at odds with the (ostensibly) depoliticized approach to charity that is favoured in neoliberal modes of social provisioning. Providing food for communities, like other social reproduction activities, is not merely a response to gaps in formal government or market provisioning, but is agentic life-making labour driven by dictates beyond capital accumulation.

Drawing upon embodied and feminist knowledge, arts-based research (ABR) is a methodological approach aimed at advancing work that is liberatory both in its findings and its processes. To examine this phenomenon, three social work scholars engaged in a reflective research process to study the meaning of arts-based research through a methodology blending arts, collaborative autoethnography (CAE) and phenomenology. The team explored our own experiences of using art in research, and the implications for feminist social work. This article begins with a brief overview of ABR before introducing the strategic use of art creation and discourse within our CAE. We present the findings uncovered through analysis of our qualitative data - including our own artwork - and the experiences they represent. Thematic findings include: power dynamics in research and academia as revealed through ABR, and the liberatory components of ABR. Lastly, we discuss the implications of the findings, strengths, and limitations, and suggest future research. Implications for social work practice and research include: opportunities for integrating humanistic and engaged praxis as tools of liberatory knowledge production; the promotion of feminist-based inquiry as resistance to social pressures; and the use of ABR as an anti-oppressive research approach.

Subscription-based digital platforms such as OnlyFans have expanded online sex work globally. Although research has documented their affordances mostly in Western countries with neo-liberal systems, what risks and challenges women experience and navigate on these platforms have not been adequately understood. The present study adopts a critical feminist perspective to address this gap by exploring women online sex workers’ agency and well-being in Türkiye, a conservative and patriarchal gender order that increasingly criminalizes online sex work. Six women who were working or formerly worked on subscription-based digital platforms participated in individual interviews for this study. Thematic analysis of the interviews showed women's efforts to protect their safety and voice within the bounds of possibility in four themes: a) withstanding fear, stigmatization, and objectification, b) pretending in the service of the male gaze, c) exerting digital boundaries, and d) setting priorities. Our findings contribute to previous research by uncovering diverse expressions of women's agency and emotional labor on digital platforms. The findings also pointed to the shaping impact of the Türkiye context in exacerbating this labor due to an insecure political climate and marginalization. We shared recommendations for feminist, empowerment-based research and practices for sex worker women's well-being.

The concept of “insight” plays a critical role in child protection court decisions yet remains poorly defined and potentially problematic. Through critical discourse analysis of case files from one African American mother's four-year fight to regain custody of her infant son, this study examines how insight functions as a discursive practice to reproduce systems of power and control. Using Gee's (2014) analytical framework, we show how insight operates as a mechanism of state control by demanding specific performances of compliance and contrition. Our analysis reveals how the insight discourse is deployed without clear definition to both justify child removal and determine reunification criteria, while systematically delegitimizing parental perspectives that diverge from those of state authorities. We argue that by requiring mothers – particularly mothers of color – to demonstrate insight through acceptance of state narratives, the system maintains authority while obscuring racial and class-based assumptions underlying judgments of parental fitness. This study raises legal and ethical concerns regarding how parental capacity is evaluated in child protection proceedings.

This article delves into the nuanced struggles of Muslim women within the socio-political landscape of Kashmir, whose loved ones experienced enforced disappearances by military forces. Using the framework of critical feminist theory and Islamic feminism in particular, this article analyses the agency of Muslim women survivors of enforced disappearances while negotiating their socio-economic problems and legal battles for seeking justice. Using narratives and case study analysis, we shed light on the everyday struggles, socio-economic challenges and legal struggles experienced by these survivors of enforced disappearances of loved ones. We show how enforced disappearances have a socio-economic and psychological impact on the lives of women whose loved ones have been forcibly disappeared. Apart from continuing their everyday struggles, these women also engaged with the court of law to pursue the cases of their disappeared loved ones. Moreover, amid violent conflict in Kashmir and disappeared male members of a family, the gender roles change. Broadly, the research contributes to a deeper understanding of the complex relationship between gender and conflict by analyzing the multifaceted challenges experienced by survivors in Kashmir, thus indicating a possibility for strengthening social work advocacy and support in conflict zones.