In this issue…Situating social work in the life worlds of people we work with

As qualitative scholars in social work, we aim to not only bring forward the lived experiences and narratives of the unheard, but also critically re fl ect on the situatedness (Haraway, 1988) of the social work profession. The roles and ethics of social workers in practice, pedagogy, and research are conditioned by the same sociocultural and political structures shared by the vulnerable groups we work with. In this issue, we bring you 10 articles that inspire re fl exive thinking in diverse di-mensions. Two of these articles examine the development of indigenous social work practice frameworks. Staniforth and Connor capture the experiences of formal, practical, and relational modes of learning for social workers when they traveled transnationally to serve Indigenous M (cid:1) aori communities. The study highlights the challenges of the bi-cultural environment and the importance of supporting the transitions of transnational social workers. Ayim and colleagues attend to the ways in which dominant cultural discourses may fundamentally shape the local conceptualizations of social problems. Examining the indigenization of social work practice in Ghana, the authors argue for exchanging cultural expectations of social problems between practitioners and com-munity leaders to better advance the well-being of local vulnerable populations. Three studies in this issue that occurred in European countries present critical re- fl ections on social workers ’ roles and ethics in dif fi cult contexts such as violence intervention and pandemic control. All three studies are from practitioners ’ perspectives. Studying staff in secure units for adolescents in Sweden, Andersson uses a narrative approach to explore how their experiences with and management of internal violent incidents shaped their professional identity. The author identi fi es the impact of the in-stitutional emotional norms and highlights the building of space for re fl exive commu-nication