Session: Restorative Resistance: Using Qualitative Research to Advance Civil Rights and Social Justice for Historically Marginalized Communities (Society for Social Work and Research 30th Annual Conference Anniversary)

This symposium examines how qualitative research serves as a critical tool for advancing civil rights and promoting social justice among historically marginalized populations. Rooted in anti-oppressive and emancipatory traditions, the featured studies employ grounded theory, narrative analysis, and interpretive phenomenology to interrogate the structural forces—such as racism, economic disenfranchisement, gender-based violence, and policy exclusion—that shape disparities in health, labor, and social services. Rather than approaching these conditions through a deficit lens, the presenters use qualitative inquiry to center lived experience, elevate cultural knowledge, and uncover community-based strategies of resilience and resistance.

The symposium explores how qualitative methodologies enable researchers to examine meaning-making processes and power structures in context—whether through oral histories that reveal intergenerational relationships to space and belonging, interviews that expose the role of bias in service delivery, or phenomenological analyses that illuminate labor practices outside formal economies. These approaches highlight the complexity and dignity of participants’ experiences and produce findings that are deeply relevant to social work’s commitment to equity and liberation.

In emphasizing voices often excluded from dominant narratives, this symposium advances qualitative research as both a methodological and political act—one that challenges epistemic injustice and reshapes what is considered valid knowledge in policy, practice, and scholarship. Participants in these studies are not framed as subjects of inquiry but as knowledge holders whose perspectives can transform systems. Themes across the studies include the decolonization of healing, the redefinition of labor, and the reclamation of identity, underscoring how qualitative research can disrupt oppressive paradigms and inform socially just interventions.

By foregrounding critical inquiry and culturally grounded analysis, this symposium offers social work researchers, educators, and practitioners a model for conducting research that is relational, reflexive, and responsive to community needs. The presentations collectively demonstrate that qualitative methods are not only well-suited to uncovering systemic inequities but are also essential for designing policies and practices rooted in justice, cultural humility, and collective liberation.