Call for book chapter proposals!
The Sounds of Silence: Social Work, Power, and Racialised Class Formation in the Nordic Welfare States
Due: 30 September 2026
Send to: adrian.groglopo@socwork.gu.se
Social work in the Nordic countries is often portrayed through ideals of equality, universalism, and social progress. However, this history is also marked by silences—systematic omissions that shape what can be recognised as social problems, whose suffering becomes legible, and which forms of inequality remain unaddressed. These silences are neither accidental nor neutral. They are historically produced and embedded in the development of welfare states, professional norms, and regulatory regimes that organise class inequality, racialisation, and gendered governance, understood as the regulation of labour, care, family life, and social reproduction through differentiated and racialised expectations, as well as broader geopolitical positioning.
This call invites critical contributions that place silence at the centre of analysis, exploring how social work—as a research field, professional practice, educational formation, and institutional system—has been shaped by what remains unspoken. Silence is understood not as absence, ethical restraint, or professional neutrality, but as an active social and political practice that sustains relations of power. Particular attention is directed towards silences related to racialised class domination, labour organisation, the racialised and gendered division of welfare, labour markets, family regulation, and the material foundations of inequality within Nordic welfare societies.
Historically, Nordic welfare states have relied on class arrangements tied to labour markets, social reproduction, and national belonging. While often portrayed as egalitarian, these arrangements have masked persistent class hierarchies and unequal power dynamics. They were neither racially neutral nor gender-blind. The formation of a national working class was intertwined with racialised distinctions between those considered fully part of society and those marginalised, disposable, or conditionally included. Social work has played a crucial role in this process—controlling access to welfare, managing dependency, and overseeing the lives of a racialised and gendered working class, often by remaining silent about exploitation, dispossession, and class domination.
From racial science and eugenic social policies to the long-term governance of Sámi and Romani peoples; from the regulation of religious and ethnic minorities to contemporary migration, asylum regimes, and securitisation politics that condition diverse communities and migrants, social work has been implicated in the racialised ordering of class relations and social vulnerability. At the same time, global conflicts, forced displacement, and geopolitical realignments have reshaped labour markets, welfare policies, and professional practices in the Nordic countries. Silence has served to disconnect welfare from imperialist wars, class inequality from global capitalism, and social work from the international production of displacement and precarity.
In recent decades, increasing inequality and welfare reforms have reconfigured social work within Westernised regimes of governance that combine caring with heightened social control. Under conditions characterised by contingency, activation, securitisation, and moral regulation, social work has increasingly been tasked with managing racialised class inequalities while maintaining the appearance of support and neutrality. These developments have been further amplified by the rise of far-right political influence in Sweden and across the Western world, which has normalised exclusionary ideas of belonging, punitive welfare policies, and racialised hierarchies of deservingness. Consequently, the segmentation of labour, access to welfare, and family life along racialised and gendered lines has intensified, while issues of class power, structural domination, and political accountability are displaced or left unspoken. Silence has played a key role in this process, allowing social work to function as a tool of governance that simultaneously supports populations in crisis and regulates them according to prevailing norms of productivity, citizenship, and social order under increasingly authoritarian conditions.
Relevant themes include, but are not limited to:
Silence as a technology of power in social work research, policy, and practice
Class inequality, class power, and the political economy of Nordic welfare states
Racialised and gendered working-class formations and welfare segmentation
Social work, labour markets, and the governance of poverty, precarity, and surplus populations
Gendered governance of care, family life, and social reproduction in racialised contexts
The positioning of diverse communities within welfare institutions
Migration, asylum, and humanitarian governance in contexts shaped by war and conflict
Far-right political influence and the restructuring of welfare, anti-gender and social regulation
Professional neutrality, ethics, and epistemic injustice
On hegemonic and counter-hegemonic pedagogies in social work education and the social work profession
Resistance, counter-knowledges, and the contestation of institutional silence
Interdisciplinary and intersectional approaches are strongly encouraged. Contributions may draw on political economy, critical social work, abolitionist perspectives, sociology, history, critical race and gender studies, decolonial and postcolonial theory, historical materialism, critical geopolitics, anthropology, law, or related disciplines. A wide range of methodologies are welcome, including archival research, policy analysis, ethnography, discourse analysis, comparative and transnational approaches, participatory or activist research, and critical theoretical interventions.
The edited volume is intended for submission to an international scholarly publishing house. We welcome historically grounded, theoretically rigorous, and empirically informed contributions that critically engage with social work in the Nordic context. We particularly encourage submissions that go beyond celebratory welfare narratives and explore how silence upholds class power, racialised and gendered inequalities, and regimes of regulation across research, practice, professionalism, and geopolitical entanglements.
Abstracts should be 500–700 words and clearly articulate the proposed chapter’s:
central research question and/or core argument,
theoretical framework and key concepts,
empirical material and/or methodological approach (where applicable),
contribution to the volume’s focus on silence as a constitutive relation of power in social work.
Each submission should include:
Title of the proposed chapter
Abstract (500–700 words)
Author name(s) and institutional affiliation(s)
A short biographical note (100–150 words)
The deadline for abstract submission is 30 September 2026. Authors of accepted abstracts will be invited to submit full chapter manuscripts of 5,000–7,000 words (excluding references) by 30 January 2027. Chapters will then be peer reviewed.
Editors: Adrián Groglopo, PhD, Department of Social Work, University of Gothenburg, Sweden, and Kris Clarke, PhD, Department of Social Work, University of Helsinki, Finland.
New article out about LGBTQI+ issues in Finnish social work education
LGBTQI+ inclusion in Finnish social work education: reality or empty talk?
This article explores how homogenising views of equality and the lack of academic research on LGBTQI+ issues in Finnish social work contributes to the invisibility of gender and sexuality topics in social work education. It discusses the Finnish historical context of LGBTQI+ legislation and the struggle for legal equality. The article considers Finnish social work research on LGBTQI+ issues highlighting the shortcomings of social work practice knowledge with these communities. Through a multidimensional survey of master’s-level social work students across five Finnish universities, the study explores students’ attitudes, knowledge, and perceived readiness to work with LGBTQI+ service users. The findings show that students report positive attitudes toward LGBTQI+ people, but they also indicate significant gaps in knowledge, especially regarding structural discrimination and the specific needs of gender and sexual minorities. These gaps were more pronounced among heterosexual students, suggesting that personal identity may play a greater role than formal education in shaping awareness of LGBTQI+ issues. The findings of the limited survey imply the need for more explicit inclusion of LGBTQI+ perspectives in social work curricula, which require further research and pedagogical strategies that promote critical reflection, intersectional analysis, and LGBTQI+ affirmative practice.
Fresno AIDS project presented at the University of Galway, Ireland
Kris Clarke presented the Fresno AIDS project to members of the social science faculty at the University of Galway, Ireland. She focused on the stories of social and healthcare professionals and how their experiences during the epidemic spurred personal and professional transformation.
Why does a 1990s‑era project matter now? Clarke argued that the same spirit of empowerment and community solidarity that helped navigate the AIDS crisis despite the indifference of authorities can be a blueprint for confronting today’s neoliberal care regimes that prioritize profit, efficiency, and market logic over genuine human need.
New article: Social Work, Genocide, and the Coloniality of Silence
Silence, passivity, and the cultivation of neutrality have defined the institutional response of Nordic social work to the ongoing genocide in Gaza. Despite the profession’s ethical mandate to confront systemic injustice and advocate for human rights, discussions within the field have largely avoided political engagement. This article examines the coloniality of silence within social work departments in Finland and Sweden, drawing on the testimonios of three faculty members who reflect critically on their academic environments and institutions’ complicity with Western imperial power. We argue that silence around Gaza is not merely a lack of response, but a form of epistemic violence—a refusal to know and to act—enforced through institutional norms, managerial discourse, and the policing of speech. In such contexts, critical perspectives are pushed to the margins through what we term shadow talk. These shadows reflect the weight of institutional repression and the cost of speaking truth to power. Framing our analysis through the lens of coloniality of silence and shadow talk, we highlight how social work knowledge production becomes complicit in the erasure of Palestinian suffering and the reproduction of imperial ideologies. Ultimately, this article calls for a social work grounded in epistemic justice, abolitionism, ethical responsibility, and anti-imperialist solidarity.
Written by: Kris Clarke, Adrían Groglopo and Ilo Söderström
Available here
Decolonizing Social Work in Finland is out in paperback
Our edited book, Decolonizing Social Work in Finland, is now available in paperback. You can order here.
Forthcoming book: Decolonising Social Work Education Memory, Haunting and Critical Hope in the Nordics
Coming soon! A new book by Kris Clarke, Michael Wallengren-Lynch and Michael Yellow Bird. Available for pre-order 28 October 2025.
In a world gripped by intersecting crises and deepening inequalities, can social work break free from its colonial entanglements to imagine a more just and compassionate future?
Decolonising Social Work Education: Memory, Haunting and Critical Hope in the Nordics confronts the enduring legacies of colonialism that continue to shape the foundations of social work education. Through the lenses of haunting, memory, and critical hope, it challenges the discipline’s historical complicity with systems of domination and calls for a radical reimagining of its pedagogical core. Grounded in pluriversal knowledges and informed by decolonial thought, this book advocates for a transformative, relational curriculum—one that resists neoliberalism, carceral logics, and epistemic injustice.
Drawing on examples from the Nordic context, it offers a bold vision for social work rooted in justice, equity, and ecological interconnectedness. With humility, reflection, and collective imagination, it charts a path toward a liberatory future where social work becomes a force for healing and transformation.
New article by executive producer Prisclla Osei
Check out Priscilla’s new article in the Nordic Journal of Feminist and Gender Research on African motherhood and Black joy in Finland. The article is open access and available here.
Congratulations, Priscilla!
Abstract
Social work, as a profession rooted in social justice, advocates for marginalized groups. However, social work literature and curricula often depict Black communities through controlling images that emphasize social problems over resilience. The concept of Nordic exceptionalism portrays Finland as a welfare society, largely ignoring its colonial history, neoliberal influences, and ongoing racism. Despite this, contemporary austerity measures in Finland align with the processes identified by abolitionist social work as foundational to the development of a carceral welfare state. This article introduces the concept of Black joy as a counter-narrative to these controlling images within Finnish society. It examines Black joy through the experiences of African mothers living in Helsinki, using their own words and images. By analyzing texts and photographs provided by these mothers, the article employs thematic analysis to understand how these mothers view African motherhood in Finland. Key themes identified include the significance of embracing African culture, resilience, unconditional love, and viewing children as the future. The article concludes by discussing the implications for enhancing Finnish social work education by challenging controlling images of African mothers.
Call for Papers, Essays and Artwork: Memory Work, Oral History and Radical Public History in Global Lesbian Communities: Capturing Experiences, Activism and Memories
Guest Editors:
Kris Clarke, PhD, Faculty of Social Sciences (Social Work), University of Helsinki, Finland
Heikki Tikkanen, PhD, Department of Social Work, University of Gothenburg, Sweden
Submission Deadlines:
Abstracts due: 1.3.2025
Full manuscripts due: 31.8.2025
Genealogies often appear as seamless narratives, yet these “single stories” persist largely due to what Saidiya Hartman describes as “the violence of the archive.” Archives, libraries, and museums selectively document, erase, or reshape certain histories. As Carmen Maria Machado notes, each act of remembering or forgetting in an archive is deeply political.
Since the 1990 publication of Hidden from History: Reclaiming the Gay and Lesbian Past (Duberman, Vicinus & Chauncey), there has been an exponential growth of studies of LGBTQ+ communities and histories. There has also been increasing recognition of the value of public history, a practice of memory work that often occurs outside of academia often through oral histories, as a means of recapturing the vibrancy of hidden histories that have remained undocumented in archives. Using Meringolo’s (2021) concept of radical public history as memory work that is future-oriented, committed to social justice, and aimed at redressing the absence of diverse histories through more inclusive archives, this special issue focuses on theorizations, experiences and potentialities of memory work and public history in intersectional global lesbian communities as activist work.
Public history and memory work seeks to capture and recover the voices, experiences and stories of communities that might be overlooked, erased or forgotten. These narratives provide insights into the daily lives, struggles, and values of people. Traditional and official historical records might be incomplete, normative or focused on certain dominating perspectives. Oral histories can provide a more comprehensive and diverse understanding of the past in lesbian communities by connecting memory to real people and their experiences. Oral histories are also important for the future of lesbian communities as a way of maintaining identity and continuity across generations. Oral history is also a way to promote active participation in creating a collaborative process of creating memory and knowledge by empowering ownership over history.
Memory work, oral history and radical public history are interlinked in their goals to amplify underrepresented voices, recover overlooked narratives, and create inclusive histories. In this special issue, we seek to examine memory work, oral history, and radical public history in lesbian communities in a broad sense. We invite contributions that describe experiences of memory work, oral history, and radical public history. We especially encourage work that offers innovative ways of conceptualizing and writing about these topics. We seek contributions focused but not limited to these topics:
● Lesbian theorizations on memory work and public history in diverse global localities
● Decolonial feminists' perspectives on unsettling historical genealogies through public history within intersectional lesbian communities
● Perspectives on preserving experiences and hidden narratives that might otherwise be lost within lesbian communities
● Thinking through lesbian futurities through memory work and activist public history
● Case studies of memory work with lesbian communities, for example, during the AIDS epidemic, eras of political and social repression, struggles for reproductive rights, etc.
Submission Guidelines
We welcome articles and essays from any disciplinary perspective, of up to 7,000 words. We also encourage submissions of shorter pieces, experimental articles, as well as visual art and poetry. We especially encourage scholars and activists new to publishing and welcome submissions from around the world.
Please send your 250-500 word proposal to Kris Clarke (kris.clarke@helsinki.fi) using the subject line: Submission for JLS by 1.3.2025. Full manuscripts are due 31.8.2025.
Local Memory, City Walking, and Exploring Walking Social Work Pedagogies in Fresno, California and Gothenburg, Sweden
New open access article is available by Lena Sawyer & Kris Clarke.
In this article, we introduce city walking as a social work pedagogical methodology that has relevance for engaging with critical feminist inquiry and macro practice. Through two case studies, we examine how city walking offers an alternative social work pedagogy to the often sedentary practices of teaching macro practice or structural social work. City walking opens up local histories and silences that are key to spotlighting genealogies of oppression that are significant to community practitioners. Through engaging with Black feminist theorizations, we reflect upon their potential for advancing locally based collaborative pedagogies and present two case studies (Fresno, California and Gothenburg, Sweden) through the lens of autoethnography. The article first outlines Black feminist theorizations and key concepts, as they provide the basis for the method used in the cases discussed. The article then discusses autoethnography as a method and presents two case studies of city walking as a social work pedagogical method. We find that embodied city walking practices engaged with our shared localities and histories of inequality and resilience. City walking enables an important dialogue that is necessary for more critical feminist social work pedagogies that are aligned with social emancipation.
The Journal of Lesbian Studies special issue on Transformative reproductive justice futures: Decolonial, feminist, lesbian theorizations on reproductive justice futures is now out!
It was a great honor to co-edit a special issue of The Journal of Lesbian Studies with Dr. Kathryn Forbes. Take a look at some of these interesting studies. The forward is available here.
Journal of Lesbian Studies
Volume 28 Number 4 2024
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Special Issue: Transformative reproductive justice futures: Decolonial, feminist, lesbian
theorizations on reproductive justice futures
Guest Editors: Kris Clarke and Kathryn Forbes
Forward: Transformative reproductive justice futures: Decolonial, feminist, and lesbian theorizations on reproductive justice futures — Kris Clarke and Kathryn Forbes
Sexual and Reproductive Justice and Health Equity for LGBTQ+ Women — Melissa M. Ertl, Meredith R. Maroney, Andréa Becker, Margaret M. Paschen-Wolff, Amelia Blankenau, Susie Hoffman and Susan Tross
Ghosts in the machine: Black feminist and queer critiques of reproductive justice in Finland — Mwenza Blell and Tiia Sudenkaarne
“These are our children and we got to set them free”: A public health approach to reading reproductive justice in black literature — Marie-Fatima Hyacinthe
A decolonized mental health framework for black women and birthing people — Sydney Y. Morris and Alinne Z. Barrera
Good deeds or exploitation?: Queer parents working for private assisted reproductive technologies companies in urban China — Han Tao
The misappropriation of knowledge: unravelling the narratives of efficiency and donor fear in the medicalisation of reproduction for lesbian and bisexual women — Blanca García-Peral and Carmen Gregorio Gil
Reflections on being a Thai transman through the lens of the reproductive justice framework — Thannapat Jarernpanit
LBTQ parents’ needs for support postpartum following a complicated birth: A matter of reproductive justice — Sofia Klittmark, Jaqueline K. P. Niit, Emilia Nerström, Hanna Grundström, Katri Nieminen, Michael B. Wells and Anna Malmquist
Transformative reproductive futures in Northern Ireland - Jamie J. Hagen, Emma Campbell and Danielle Roberts
Book launch recording available
If you missed our live discussion of the new book, Decolonising Social Work in Finland: Racialisation and Practices of Care, you can listen here .
Book launch online
Be sure to tune in for a roundtable discussion of the new book Decolonising Social Work in Finland: Racialisation and Practices of Care - just released by Policy Press.
The discussion will be moderated by Dr. Leece Lee-Oliver, Associate Professor of Women’s Studies and Director of American Indian Studies at California State University, Fresno, USA.
When: 10 April 2024 (1900 Helsinki; 1700 London; 1200 noon NYC; 900 am in San Francisco)
Register in advance to receive the zoom link by email.
Policing the Park: Sex Panic and Policymaking in Fresno - new article out!
This study explores how an undercover sting that targeted men soliciting sex with other men around public park toilets in Fresno, California, led to an increase in resources for local law enforcement, including a surveillance system that stretched beyond the park and into poor Black and Brown neighborhoods. We use the literature on policy entrepreneurship to make sense of the power of police both to quell opposition to unpopular public safety initiatives and to make the case for administrative expansion. This case study demonstrates that creating panic about public same-sex erotic activity can be utilized without appearing homophobic or drawing the wrath of LGBTQ+ rights groups, especially when focusing on the dangers to children. We argue that the men arrested for lewd conduct were simply collateral damage and not seen worthy of defense.
Read more here https://www.lambdanordica.org/index.php/lambdanordica/article/view/917/708
New book chapter is out
A new book chapter has just been published. It was a great pleasure to work in collaboration with Dr. Manté Vertelyté, a scholar based in Denmark. The chapter can be found here and the book here.
Abstract
As diverse forms of overt and covert racial discrimination grow in Nordic region, the role of education becomes ever more critical in identifying and responding to these processes. Educational institutions (such as schools and universities) are spaces through which societal relations of inclusion/exclusion are reproduced, but they can also potentially confront various forms of inequalities. To discuss educational challenges for Nordic exceptionalism, we draw on two examples: how whiteness is infused within Finnish social work education curricula through colour-blindness and how mechanisms perpetuate the denial of racism in a Danish secondary school classroom situation. Through these explorations, we draw parallels from different contexts about how Nordic exceptionalism is inculcated in educational settings and discuss how epistemic injustice unfolds in the absence of antiracist education.
Fresno HIV Project presented at Finnish gender studies conference
The Fresno HIV Project was presented at the Feminist Matterings conference at the University of Oulu in northern Finland. The aim of the presentation was to discuss how learning about community activism can inform social work pedagogy.
Lecture on the Fresno HIV project
Join us by zoom to hear a lecture on the Fresno HIV project:
UCD School of Geography Seminar Series
Associate Professor Kris Clarke, University of Helsinki
Queer Love and Solidarity in the Valley: A People’s History of HIV/AIDS in
Fresno, California
Date: 27th October 2022
Time: 15:00 – 16:00 (Irish time zone)
Format: Hybrid
Where: E003 Newman Building
Zoom: https://ucd-ie.zoom.us/j/67337697877?pwd=UXhyc2t3ZzRrMlVMd0s2NFpYMXh2QT09 Abstract:
This presentation explores how HIV emerged in the 1980s in an American urban-rural setting. It sets the scene of Fresno, a racially segregated city colloquially viewed as the buckle on the Bible Belt of Central California, during the first cases of HIV. Drawing on a social cartography of socio-political and racial disparities and identities focusing on places of segregated deprivation and emerging diverse sexual identities, it centres how the Tower District, near downtown Fresno, became a gay and lesbian-friendly space despite the prevailing homophobia of the larger community. Using the theoretical lens of queer love, it ends by examining how the Central Valley AIDS Team (CVAT) was started by lesbian women and gay men who extended LGBTQ+ activism in the Fresno community.
About the presenter:
Kris Clarke is an associate professor of social work in the Faculty of Social Sciences at thE University of Helsinki. Their research has evolved from multicultural social work and care in the field of HIV towards themes related to decolonization, structural social work, and the significance of place and social memory. They recently completed a book in collaboration with Michael Yellow Bird, Decolonizing Pathways towards Integrative Healing in Social Work (Routledge, 2020).
Season 2 wraps!
We have just published our 40th episode of The Social Work Routes Podcast and wrapped up the second season! It has been a great honor to talk to so many people around the world making such a difference in the lives of people, communities and structures in society. The second season had a special focus on social work academics and leaders. We talked to researchers working on issues surrounding racialization, abolition, post humanism, Black feminism, and decolonizing social work. We also featured people doing innovative work around LGBTQ+ issues, literacy and work with Hmong-American youth. Stay tuned for a description of the upcoming third season soon!
Call for Papers - submit now!
DECOLONIZING SOCIAL WORK: A Nordic Summer University Study Circle
We welcome abstract submissions and presentations on any topic on decolonizing social work done by Nordic-Baltic researchers or in the Nordic-Baltic context, while we encourage contributions related to the special theme: Decolonizing the welfare society. Explorations of this theme can include structural, societal, experiential, practice-oriented, and posthuman ponderings of the topic from diverse perspectives. We also encourage explorations of hidden histories that continue to influence the welfare society. Submit abstracts (max 500 words) via email to Dr. Kris Clarke kris.clarke@helsinki.fi by 1 June 2022
This study circle on decolonizing social work is an opportunity to participate in a caring, critical discussion of social justice issues and professional practice. Decolonization has become a buzzword in social science in recent years but as Tuck & Yang (2012) note, decolonization is not a metaphor: it is an act. As an applied profession grounded in science, public policy and community activism, social workers and community members are uniquely placed to examine how coloniality shapes the perspectives, practices, and policies of the field, especially in times of conflict, pandemic and neoliberal crisis. We are especially looking to discuss what decolonizing social work means in Nordic-Baltic welfare societies.
Join us at the Nordic Summer University in Oslo this 28 July-4 August! Some funding is available. Since 1950 the Nordic Summer University (NSU) has been an independent, academic institution, which organises symposia that draws international participants across disciplines in the Nordic and Baltic regions. We will have a symposium on decolonizing social work in conjunction with other circles. For information on costs and accommodation see: https://www.nsuweb.org
The symposium will be facilitated by Dr Helena Oikarinen-Jabai (PhD in Art Studies).
Nordic circle on decolonizing social work
On 9-10 May 2022, 20 participants gathered at the University of Helsinki for the first Nordic circle on decolonizing social work. The event was opened by Kaurna Elder, Uncle Mickey O’Brien at Inparilla on Kaurna Yarta who gave a welcome to country. Luke Cantley explained why we do a welcome to country. The SWIRLS team (Social Work Innovation Research Living Space), which included Dr Michelle Jones, at Flinders University talked about Australia’s historical context and colonial legacies and the continuing impacts on health and wellbeing. The gathering continued with dialogues, performance art by Janet Park, discussions on Bedouin social work by Dr Nuzha Allassad Alhuzail, meditations led by Dr Einav Segev. Groups were also facilitated by Dr Henglien Lisa Chen, Dr Ann Anka, and Dr Michael Wallengren Lynch. The aim of the event was to consider the impact of colonization from personal and embodied perspectives.
The Social Work Routes podcast discussed at the European Conference on Social Work Research in Amsterdam
I have been working with producers Priscilla Osei and Smarika KC on writing about the content of the Social Work Routes podcast. At the 11th annual European Conference on Social Work Research, I presented some of the preliminary findings of our study. The presentation outlined the role of podcasts as public scholarship, arguing that one method of decolonizing social work epistemology at the intersection of activist ancestors and professional lineage could be to look to public history as a pedagogical tool in the curriculum. We further pointed out that the use of podcasts has the potential to decolonize the process of collecting, analyzing, and disseminating local knowledge of activist ancestors thus challenging the top-down approach to expert-driven epistemologies. While we are still in the midst of analyzing our data, based on student feedback we have found that the podcast introduced themes of diversity and intersectionality in Finnish classes that often have a relatively high level of cultural and ethnic homogeneity, challenging perceptions that diversity resides solely in clients. The podcasts also opened up opportunities to transmit knowledge to neurodiverse students, who found them user-friendly. We are continuing to work on this research.