A 58-year-old man presents to the emergency department unable to walk. He reports that 3 weeks ago he tested COVID positive but only had minimal cough and gastrointestinal symptoms. One week after his COVID symptoms resolved, he noticed mild low back pain and pins and needles sensation in his feet. His sensory symptoms worsened over 2–3 days, and he began to notice difficulty walking and his legs felt “heavy.” Over the past few days his leg weakness has significantly worsened to the point of not being able to stand, and he has developed the same tingling sensation in his hands with new difficulty holding objects. He denies recent neck or back trauma, any visual symptoms, fever, or similar symptoms in the past.

This chapter explores intersectional organizing in the US immigrant justice movement and how social workers can apply this framework in their community work. In the past two decades, the intersectional identities of many immigrant organizers have driven strategies and campaign goals. Immigrant youth have shed the DREAMer identity, leaving behind the symbolic caps and gowns, while taking up the fight for a bolder vision of equity, inclusion, and liberation. Those who are most impacted are centered in the organizing campaigns. Many organizations and coalitions are rooted in the intersection of the criminal legal and immigration systems, also known as crimmigration. And deportation defense campaigns include those less desirable – the day laborers, the car wash workers, the street vendors, the criminal legal system impacted immigrants – not only the "good" model immigrants. The analysis developed in this chapter builds on the community and policy organizing led by undocumented organizers and allies on the streets.

A 22-year-old, 30-weeks pregnant woman with history of migraine, anxiety, depression, and PTSD presents to the emergency department after a seizure-like activity. Her boyfriend witnessed it and reports she was in her normal state of health when she left for work this morning, but returned from work early – crying and saying she had been fired. She then developed abdominal pain, felt one of her “typical migraines,” and told him she felt like she might pass out. She lowered herself to the floor, closed her eyes, and “started shaking all over.” He describes the shaking as starting in her bilateral hands, then both her legs, followed by her head turning left and right. He called emergency services, and the event ended after 5 minutes. It took about one more minute for her to “come back,” and she was back to normal by the time the ambulance arrived. She recalls the entire event, remembers feeling lightheaded, and says she could hear her boyfriend talking to her during the event – but could not stop shaking.

Chapter 5 explores the CERIC element of Reasoning, providing a structured approach to analyzing reasoning in research articles. It distinguishes reasoning from evidence, highlights logical flow, and identifies gaps in argumentation. This chapter begins by defining reasoning and its significance, then examines various types and strategies used across disciplines. To build a foundational understanding, it first illustrates reasoning with everyday examples – such as exercising for mental health – before connecting these to the Toulmin et al. (1984) model, demonstrating how Claims, Evidence, Reasons, Support, Uncertainties, and Limitations function together. Through real-world scenarios in fields such as healthcare diagnostics and climate science, this chapter clarifies deductive, inductive, and abductive approaches, emphasizing their roles in different research contexts. Additionally, this chapter discusses how evidence, models, accuracy, precision, and flexibility interact with reasoning, underscoring the importance of transparent and well-structured logic in scientific discourse. It concludes with examples of reasoning styles from diverse research articles, reinforcing logical and analytical thinking in advancing scientific knowledge.

Linear programming is an important class of convex problems with constraints, where the objective function is linear, and the problem is almost entirely determined by the linear inequality constraints. Most real-world problems involve constrained resources, such as time, space, money, materials, and labor. There are real tradeoffs in solving such problems, which we express as inequality constraints. Some of the many applications include: resource allocation, workforce scheduling, factory layout, space usage, production scheduling, inventory management, crop planning and irrigation, portfolio optimization, supply chain logistics, fleet routing, and healthcare resource and staff allocation. These examples are all characterized by a relatively simple objective function that is linearly related (e.g., profit or cost), and constrained resources. There is no closed-form solution to a general linear program. However, there are accurate and efficient algorithms that scale to large problems. In this chapter, we define the mathematical ingredients of a linear program, provide examples to illustrate several applications, and discuss solution techniques and extensions.

Research is another area of social work subject to racial biases. Historically, research was used as a weapon against BIPOC, designed to “prove” their inferiority. While less overtly racist nowadays, research continues to promote a racial divide through several different means: overreliance on a positivist paradigm for researching social questions; holding on to theories based on white normative assumptions, failure to proportionally include people of color in sampling, or include them in defining the research question in cultural and locational contexts.

Discrimination is a commonplace experience for ethnically and racially minoritized youth. In this chapter, we examine the links between ethnic and racial discrimination and adolescents’ mental health, physical health, health behaviors, academics, and civic engagement. In line with developmental theories that highlight not only the role of discrimination in young people’s development but also the factors that can attenuate the impacts of discriminatory experiences, we discuss the protective role of both interpersonal and internal resources for youth experiencing ethnic and racial discrimination. The chapter concludes with a discussion of intersectionality in adolescence and recommendations for future research, including the need to develop new measures of ethnic and racial discrimination, attend to the consequences of structural racism and the cumulative experiences of ethnic and racial discrimination, untangle the mediating and moderating mechanisms that link discrimination and adolescent well-being, and further explore the assets of ethnically and racially minoritized youth that promote well-being in the face of discrimination.

CRT is a plausibility structure that explains why and how racism persists, and society’s disregard for health, educational, and welfare discrepancies between white and minoritized peoples. It explains why a profession like social work has not seriously addressed racial injustice, instead content to treat gross disparities applying whitesplanations and colonized theories to those suffering from socially unjust systems. This chapter provides a history of CRT and five theoretical tenets applicable to social work, each of which will be developed further in the text, and argues that CRT is an appropriate transformational framework for social work.

Liberalism and interest convergence influence all aspects of our socio-political world, and, in turn, social work practice, including social welfare policy, practice, and pedagogy. This chapter first defines the critical race tenets critique of liberalism and interest convergence, then examines how the entanglement of settler colonialism, racism, and capitalism are mutually constructed with racism and intersectional oppression. A global system of white supremacy created a racial hierarchy through notions of inferiority in order to maintain the dominant power structure, such that when white interests do not align with the interests of non-whites, it is nearly impossible for systems change to occur. Turning specifically to social work, the author outlines how social welfare policies and belief systems allow racism to flourish despite ideas of equality, freedom, and rights, and uncovers how social work conceptions of social welfare and social justice have aligned with the interests of the dominant group, rather than liberation and communal support, by supporting incrementalist reform rather than transformative change. Finally, the chapter envisions social worker roles that dismantle liberal notions of justice and create practices that support expansive views of merit, communal values over individual success, and equitable outcomes over equal rights.