Whither Critical Migration Studies In Social Work?: Reflexive Dialogue on the Common Good, Human Rights and Social Justice

In critical migration studies (CMS), research is not a value-free, neutral endeavor. Historicizing and revisiting established knowledge, problematizing assumptions and excavating and interrogating how power works are key undertakings. In this roundtable, we ask: How does ‘critical’ show up in social work research on migration, immigrants and refugees, and how is it historically constituted?

We approach these questions by way of three ideas/ideals - the common good, human rights and social justice - as historically situated, evolving and undergirding CMS in social work, inspired by the 2027 conference theme. How have these three ideals functioned in SW research, and responded to specific sociohistorical moments? For what research questions, methods, and contexts of inquiry are each of the ideals suited? How do these ideals variably inform and motivate individual researchers and the knowledge they produce? This roundtable engages the conference theme by examining how critical migration studies in SW research mobilizes—and grapples with the challenges of—those ideas, to advance equity and democratic life.

(First presenter) To orient the discussion, we provide a sociohistorical account: the common good as ideal for the very establishing of US liberal democracy; social work’s Hull House practice with immigrants in Chicago in the early 1900s; human rights in the post World War II era; and social justice as emergent in our current moment. In these various temporal and contextual milieus, these three ideals emerged; but, today, they variably undergird and motivate social work research. Our next presenters will unpack how.

(Second presenter) The common good —with its notions of equality, community, shared responsibility— is foundational to U.S. liberal democracy. Yet, historically, SW research, as well as broader policies, on migration, the ‘common’ has always been defined by the center, marking the newcomer and the marginalized as bodies in need of Americanization, and assimilation, that is, “adjustment” to the dictates of that center, at best, and for some, exclusion from even that.

(Third presenter) A human rights framework foregrounds migrants as rights-bearing subjects, offers a powerful normative language to contest exclusion/violence and render migrant suffering legible, universalizes protections and pinpoints accountability upon the state and other actors. However, it risks reproducing the very state-centered logics it seeks to constrain, and depends on its historical reliance on state recognition and legality for rights-claiming.

(Fourth and fifth presenter) A social justice lens brings decolonial and abolitionist traditions and interrogates not only border and mobility regimes, but situates migration within broader political economies and racial capitalism, rather than individual-level and bio-psycho and culturalist models of integration often used in SW research. However, its challenge is in actionability and implications: precisely because social justice is historical, structural and political, it can diffuse and dislocate accountability from the here and now. Thus, possibility and a future orientation must always accompany any social justice inquiry.

We invite audience members into reflexive, engaged dialogue to reckon with the historical limitations of these ideals, towards reconstituting the commons, realizing rights and making justice actionable.