«The inclusive side of citizenship»: implications for social work research

In this article, we examine the relationship among citizenship, the life experiences of vulnerable groups and social work. Based on experiences in social work research, we explore how social work research can promote an inclusive social work practice. Social work research can serve to support democracy, if it is aimed to increase the possibility of the people’s voices being heard, to gain increased awareness about their situation as well as increased ability to demand changes. Starting from three ongoing PhD research projects, in this article we discuss three diverse ways of engagement through which social work research can play a role in building democratic processes. To tackle this issue, in these three research projects, we focused on vulnerable persons and social workers, and interviewed them about their experiences. Our researches highlight that social work research can provide participants with the opportunity to actively contribute to wider public discourse regarding the citizenship of vulnerable persons. Specifically, here we refer to a practice research framework, which is strongly related to social work practice, in order to improve its quality, and based on a constructivist approach (Pain, 2011). In this kind of social work research, key points are the collaboration between academics, practitioners and service users and a strong attachment to social work values (Pain, 2011).