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Post-secondary institutions are increasingly encouraging partnership engagement with the community; however, community engagement from an academic perspective does not necessarily benefit the community. This is partially due to the power differential in this relationship and the emphasis on students’ learning at the community’s expense. The content of this article is drawn from experiences gleaned from 11 students of the “Perspectives with Diverse Communities” (institute component) course at Memorial University, Canada. Of the group, eight identified as cisgender, heterosexual, white females. The professor—a Black woman—and two students deviated from this in terms of gender identity, sexual orientation, and race. During a week of on-campus education, the students participated in community engagement activities prompted by the 2017 United States ban on immigration and refugees. Through a Critical Race Theory (CRT) lens, the students acknowledged their own identities as mostly white cisgender women, given the institutional racism surrounding them. As graduate students, they are taught self-reflexive practice, but question whether this is enough to effectively work with Black, Indigenous, and racialised groups. During the course institute, they steered towards a course of action that was familiar to them instead of developing deeper levels of understanding in working with Black, Indigenous, and racialised populations. This article details one aspect and the process of community engagement undertaken by the class and provides a critical reflection on how the students could have better engaged the community and challenged power dynamics and epistemology while using CRT.

Social work education and practice have been implicated in colonial violence against Black and Indigenous people in Canada. Notwithstanding, undergraduate students enter social work programmes ready to “help” service recipients. Schools of social work also continue to centre social work education around the notion of “helping” alongside other key activities such as advocacy and counselling. Regarding the intent, social work education and practice have and continue to perpetuate anti-Black racism, racism, and colonialism at the intersections of race, among some of the most vulnerable and systemically disadvantaged in society. This article demonstrates how to combine decolonising social work education and community service learning (CSL) to provide students an opportunity to critically and consciously work with community groups to meet the community’s needs. This reflective paper captures 1) the lessons learned and growth achieved among a group of undergraduate social work learners as they completed a CSL term project through a decolonised lens in partnership with Indigenous community members in Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada; and 2) the coaching and support that the teacher provided to the students to help them understand colonisation and their complicity as mostly white settler learners and future social work practitioners. The paper discusses the importance of CSL and decolonising social work education; then outlines the class’s context, process, and actions; next, through excerpts, CSL reflections are shared, and the paper concludes with a brief discussion.

The purpose of this qualitative study was to explore how migrants in South Africa identifying as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, or with other diverse sexual orientations or gender identities (LGBTQ+) describe and understand their pre-migration family experiences and how family and other social relationships facilitated strength during post-migration. We conducted six focus groups, consisting of both morning and afternoon sessions, which included a total of 30 LGBTQ+ migrants (ages 21–42). The following themes were identified using grounded theory: managing family responses during pre-migration: concealing, avoiding, disclosing; the power of (even) one: support during post-migration; “love is a very big thing”: drawing strength from chosen family; and “pulling myself up”: drawing strength from self-reliance. Findings demonstrate that many participants reported experiencing negative responses from family, but some continued to rely on family support after arriving in South Africa. Further, participants often depended on newfound friendships for support as well as their own internal resources. This self-reliance was facilitated in part by participants’ understanding that they could not depend on their families or other people because of the negative responses faced in their countries of origin. Implications for theory, research, and practice are discussed.

The influence of stigma and discrimination on sex workers’ perceptions of safety is not well documented outside of Canada’s three largest provinces—Ontario, British Columbia, and Quebec. This qualitative preliminary study examines sex workers’ perceptions of front-line police officer’s ability to ensure their safety. This research draws on four semi-structured in-depth interviews with female-identifying sex workers in X. Guided by an anti-oppressive social justice framework, our thematic analysis of the interviews identified three major findings. First, police and public stigma impacted sex workers’ ability to work safely, to interact with law enforcement, and to combat the interpersonal violence committed against them. Second, the need for alternative means of safety outside of police protection was expressed. Specifically, sex workers often depended on personal safety plans and the help and support of other sex workers to reduce their risk and exposure to violence. Third, existing provincial and federal legislation impacted sex workers’ ability to remain safe at work. Findings suggest the need for ongoing research to understand the challenges and barriers to sex workers’ safety, so that they can be addressed through evidence-informed, stigma reduction strategies.

This study explored the settlement and integration experiences of 12 current and former Filipino temporary foreign workers (TFWs) in the low-wage service industry residing in a remote and isolated area of Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada. The study employed a qualitative research approach that involved five in-depth semi-structured interviews and two focus group discussions, with data analyzed using thematic analysis. Informed by labour process theory, four major themes emerged from individual interviews and focus group discussions: (1) the importance of employment, (2) settlement and integration challenges, (3) looking forward-looking back–transnational navigation and (4) settlement and integration support. These themes help to tell the stories of TFWs in the service industry, including the challenges and opportunities of transnational migration. The findings highlight minimal organizational support available to TFWs in the settlement and integration process, with the lion’s share of this responsibility falling on other Filipinos within the community to provide tangible and emotional support. Recommendations for how to support TFWs’ settlement and integration needs in remote and isolated communities are discussed.

Trayvon Martin’s 2013 murder and the acquittal of his killer by a jury reignited long-standing race problems in the USA, particularly concerning the ill treatment of young Black men. Galvanized by Martin’s death, #BlackLivesMatter directed US social work attention to the urgency of this human rights issue. Scholarly publications called for increased knowledge about racial profiling and for professional social work bodies to speak out against anti-Black police racism. A similar movement arose in Canada following the police killings of Jermaine Carby in 2014, Andrew Loku in 2015, and Abdirahman Abdi in 2016. Black Lives Matter–Toronto took on the fight to resist police killings and the devaluation of Black lives. This article provides a critical analysis of the Canadian social work response to police racial profiling, as a human rights issue. Far from the response seen south of the border, little Canadian social work research has been conducted on police racial profiling, and professional social work bodies have remained silent about ending this discriminatory practice. This silence is in stark contrast to attention drawn to other social justice issues and raises questions about the profession’s commitment to racial equality and the pursuit of a just society. The findings can be used to encourage social work research about police racial profiling to improve the profession’s knowledge base, so that it can meaningfully advocate on behalf of racialized groups impacted by police racism in Canada. The challenges and possibilities for the profession going forward are discussed.

Objectives: HIV prevalence among sexual and gender minority (SGM) individuals in South Africa is among the highest in the world; however, SGM migrants, an especially vulnerable subgroup of both the...

The Government of Nigeria passed the Same-Sex Marriage Prohibition Act (SSMPA) in 2014, emboldening the human rights violations of LGBT Nigerians by state and nonstate actors. Nigerian police enforce morality laws that criminalize same-sex relations, but their role as perpetrators of violence has not been well studied. Using six-year (2014 to 2019) administrative data, this article investigates the severity, prevalence, and typology of police violence and abuse of LGBT Nigerians. Since SSMPA, violence against LGBT Nigerians has risen by 214 percent. Survivors frequently report arbitrary arrest and unlawful detention, invasion of privacy, physical assault and battery, and blackmail/extortion. This study is the first to present serial, cross-sectional findings of LGBT Nigerians’ experience with the police. Available administrative reports and data were synthesized to produce a general picture of the situation on the ground. Findings point to actionable social and policy recommendations that can be taken to promote police accountability and improve police-LGBT community relations.

Guided by intersectionality theory, we examined the prevalence and influence of various types of stressors and support on the mental health of Black sexual minorities, paying special attention to t...

© 2022 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Public safety personnel (PSP) experience a disproportionately high number of on-the-job stressors compared to the general population. PSP develop self-initiated actions, or coping strategies, that either confront the situation (approach strategies) or avoid the situation (avoidance strategies) to reduce the impact of stressors on their well-being. Understanding how PSP cope with stress is critical to ensuring their safety and that of the public. In the current study, we examined the coping strategies of PSP (n = 828 in the total sample). Participants managed their experiences of occupational stress or distress using three primary approach coping strategies: education (learning about mental illness and their causes), self-reliance (processes of self-reflection), and treatment (pharmaceutical, psychotherapy) that were considered adaptive. Results demonstrate PSP used multiple coping strategies simultaneously to deal with occupational stress. PSP who reported doing better tended to attribute their success to treatment, specifically psychotherapy, either alone or in combination with other interventions, and almost always emphasizing important supports from co-workers, families, and friends. Changing workplace culture could help to de-pathologize the effects of stress reactions being perceived as individual “failings”. This research was funded by Carleton’s Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) through a New Investigator Award (FRN: 13666). and by Anderson’s CIHR Mental Wellness in Public Safety Team Grant (MWP: 172806). Faculty yes

IntroductionGlobally, rates of HIV are disproportionately high among black men who have sex with men (MSM). In Canada, race, gender and sexuality have been investigated as separate factors that influence quality of care within and progression along the HIV care continuum. Traditional compartmental approaches to synthesising the HIV care continuum literature do not sufficiently account for intersectional experiences and marginalisation of Black MSM (BMSM). Moreover, there is limited research outlining access to and quality of care as specific barriers to progression along the care continuum among BMSM in Canada.ObjectivesThe primary objective of this scoping review is to assess the state of the science regarding the influence of access to and quality of HIV care continuum outcomes for BMSM in Canada.Methods and analysisWe will conduct a systematic search of published literature of quantitative and qualitative studies published on Canadian BMSM’s healthcare and HIV status. The searches will be conducted through MEDLINE, Excerpta Medica Database, Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature, the Cochrane Library, the NHUS Economic Development Database, Global Health, APA PsychInfo, PubMed and Web of Science.Eligibility criteriaEligible studies will include data on black MSM living with or without HIV in Canada and must be published after 1983 in either English or French. Screening and data extraction will be conducted in duplicate. Any discrepancies that arise will be resolved by consulting a third author. The findings will subsequently be reported according to the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analyses extension for Scoping Reviews.Ethics and disseminationEthics approval is not required as secondary published data will be used. Our findings will be disseminated as peer-reviewed manuscripts, at conferences, student rounds and could be of interest to government health agencies and HIV/AIDS service organisations.

The Public Health Agency of Canada, a federal agency of the Government of Canada, does not collect race-based data on COVID-19. Some provincial jurisdictions have begun collecting this information....

Little is known about how effective Canadian settlement organizations are in meeting the needs of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer/questioning (LGBTQ) immigrants. The authors conducte...

Despite lack of strong empirical evidence about its effectiveness, community policing remains the approach of choice for police organizations in managing the complexity of crime and neighborhood di...

Recently, a number of Canadian police forces have been banned from Pride parades. A ban on uniformed police in these parades has proven to be contentious; the general public and lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and plus (LGBTQ+) communities have been split on the issue. Limited research has examined the perspectives of the general population or, until now, LGBTQ+ people on this matter. Using an online survey designed to gather ideas or opinions of LGBTQ+ community members regarding their hopes, aspirations, and vision for the St. John’s Pride board, 181 LGBTQ+ respondents responded to this question: Should the police be allowed to march in uniform at the St. John’s Pride parade? In total, 92 (51%) said “Yes.” A critical analysis of their qualitative responses revealed four interrelated themes: (a) power of Pride, (b) “they are we and we are they,” (c) “the police are on our side,” and (d) taking back Pride. Implications of the findings for police-LGBTQ+ community relations are discussed.

Identifying and developing inclusive policy and practice responses to health and social inequities in gender and sexually diverse persons require inclusive research ethics and methods in order to develop sound data. This article articulates 12 ethical principles for researchers undertaking gender and sexually diverse social, health, and related research. We have called these the ‘Montréal Ethical Principles for Inclusive Research.’ While writing from an international social work perspective, our aim is to promote ethical research that benefits people being researched by all disciplines. This paper targets four groups of interest: 1. Cisgender and heterosexual researchers; 2. Researchers who research ‘general’ populations; 3. and sexually diverse researchers; 4. Human ethics committees. This article was stimulated by the 2018 Global Social Work Statement of Ethical Principles, which positions human dignity at its core. It is critically important to understand and account for the intersectionality of gender and sexuality with discourses of race, ethnicity, colonialism, dis/ability, age, etc. Taking this intersectionality into consideration, this article draws on scholarship that underpins ethical principles developed for other minoritized communities, to ensure that research addresses the autonomy of these participants at every stage. Research that positions inclusive research ethics at its foundation can provide a solid basis for policy and practice responses to health and social inequities in gender and sexually diverse persons.

Our study investigated racial profiling of Black youth in Toronto and linked this racial profiling to urban disadvantage theory, which highlights neighbourhood-level processes. Our findings provide empirical evidence suggesting that because of racial profiling, Black youth are subject to disproportionately more stops for gun-, traffic-, drug-, and suspicious activity-related reasons. Moreover, they show that drug-related stop-and-searches of Black youth occur most excessively in neighbourhoods where more White people reside and are less disadvantaged, demonstrating that race-and-place profiling of Black youth exists in police stop-and-search practices. This study shows that the theoretical literature in sociology on neighbourhood characteristics can contribute to an understanding of the relationship between race and police stops in the context of neighbourhood. It also discusses the negative impact of racial profiling on Black youth.

Racial discrimination in policing and its effect on police/minority youth relations were explored in a federally funded Canadian race relations initiative, using semistructured dialogue and voice-centered relational data analysis. Participants were frontline police officers and male youth of color. For enhancing communication between the groups, findings emphasized ongoing, face-to-face interaction. Substantial related concerns were the need for trust, respect, self-preservation, information sharing, and improved police/minority youth relations. These were understood and highlighted as embedded within a system of ruling relations in the participants’ sociocultural context. Implications of these issues for police relations with racialized youth and their communities are discussed.

Evidence-based interventions have been developed and used to prevent HIV infections among black men who have sex with men (MSM) in Canada and the United States; however, the degree to which interventions address racism and other interlocking oppressions that influence HIV vulnerability is not well known. We utilize integrative antiracism to guide a review of HIV prevention intervention studies with black MSM and to determine how racism and religious oppression are addressed in the current intervention evidence base. We searched CINAHL, PsychInfo, MEDLINE and the CDC compendium of evidence-based HIV prevention interventions and identified seventeen interventions. Three interventions targeted black MSM, yet only one intervention addressed racism, religious oppression, cultural assets and religious assets. Most interventions' samples included low numbers of black MSM. More research is needed on interventions that address racism and religious oppression on HIV vulnerability among black MSM. Future research should focus on explicating mechanisms by which multiple oppressions impact HIV vulnerability. We recommend the development and integration of social justice tools for nursing practice that aid in addressing the impacts of racism and other oppressions on HIV vulnerability of black MSM.

By centralizing the experiences of seven, urban, self-identified Two-Spirit Indigenous people in Toronto, this paper addresses the settler-colonial complexities that arise within contemporary queer politics: how settler colonialism has seeped into Pride Toronto's contemporary Queer politics to normalize White queer settler subjectivities and disavow Indigenous Two-Spirit subjectivities. Utilizing Morgensen's settler homonationalism, the authors underscore that contemporary Queer politics in Canada rely on the eroticization of Two-Spirit subjectivities, Queer settler violence, and the production of (White) Queer narratives of belonging that simultaneously promote the inclusion and erasure of Indigenous presence. Notwithstanding Queer settler-colonial violence, Two-Spirit peoples continue to engage in settler resistance by taking part in Pride Toronto and problematizing contemporary manifestations of settler homonationalism. Findings highlight the importance of challenging the workings of settler colonialism within contemporary Queer politics in Canada, and addressing the tenuous involvements of Indigenous Two-Spirit peoples within Pride festivals. The article challenges non-Indigenous Queers of color, racialized diasporic, and White, to consider the value of a future that takes seriously the conditions of settler colonialism and White supremacy.

This critical analysis of the literature examines the racial disproportionality of African American children in the U.S. child welfare and foster care systems, and disparate access to Child Protective Services (CPS) referred support services. At each critical decision point within child welfare and foster care services, African American children are disproportionately represented and Black children and families subject to disparate access to employment, housing, mental health assessment and treatment. Competing data regarding non-findings of racial disproportionality in CPS and foster care and disparate treatment among African American families is presented and examined.

This article explores race relations and racism within the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) community of Toronto, Ontario, from the perspective of seven gay/queer social service providers of color. Social constructions of race, race relations, and racism were placed at the centre of analysis. Employing interpretive phenomenological analysis, findings indicated that intergroup and broader systemic racism infiltrates the LGBTQ community, rendering invisible the lived experiences of many LGBTQ people of color. The study contributes to a growing body of research concerning our understanding of factors underpinning social discrimination in a contemporary Canadian LGBTQ context.