Amy Krings

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Verified

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• PhD in Social Work and Political Science
• Associate Professor at The Ohio State University

We are experiencing a climate crisis on a global scale. The impacts associated with this crisis bring havoc to all populations, though disproportionately to those already vulnerable due to social inequalities associated with historical and contemporary collective or cultural trauma. Understanding the emotional, social, and physical impacts of clima...

What factors are associated with social workers’ political participation, and how does political confidence mediate those relationships? To answer this question, data were collected in 2020 through an original online survey of members of the U.S.-based National Association of Social Workers (NASW). Informed by self-efficacy theory, researchers cond...

The transition toward a renewable energy future poses significant ethical challenges that demand careful consideration by social workers. We argue that the principles and goals of the just transition and human rights frameworks offer a helpful approach for social workers to focus their attention on the justice and equity dimensions of climate chang...

Environmental justice is essential for improved quality of life and sustainable wellbeing. This study examines how environmental issues and related injustices are surfacing in U.S. social work practice and social work readiness to respond, and what resources social workers are most interested in. Data are from an online survey of U.S. social worker...

Policy Recommendations: ● Strengthen the social safety net to reduce disaster risk. ● Proactively respond to environmentally induced migration and displacement. ● Extend equity-oriented rural and urban resilience policies and center marginalized communities in adaptation planning.

• Summary In response to historic and ongoing devaluation of certain people, and concurrently, the places they live, many communities are grappling with how to respond to place-based harms. This has produced a wide range of responses, such as calls for “Land Back,” reparations programs, arts-based neighborhood regeneration, and local history initia...

Neoliberal capitalism creates a “crisis of care” in which social reproduction—though necessary for society—is undermined by stripping away support for caregivers, who are disproportionately women. “Social reproduction” refers to the reproduction and maintenance of the labor force via childbirth, child rearing, and caregiving for loved ones more gen...

To promote social justice, doctoral programs can implement policies that support underrepresented students’ success. Drawing on critical multicultural theory, we surveyed early-career social work faculty (N = 127) about experiences within their doctoral programs, and analyzed how perceptions differ based on their social identities, part-time studen...

The ecosocial work approach incorporates the environment into social justice frameworks. It calls for holistic practices that centre Indigenous and Global South voices, transdisciplinarity, anti-oppressive strategies in micro–macro practice and sustainability. In this article, we argue that the integration of abolitionist theory and practice within...

Drawing on political opportunity theory, this study examined how the political context created by the COVID-19 pandemic and Black Lives Matter protests influenced social workers’ perceptions about social welfare policy and political participation in the summer of 2020. Authors conducted a thematic analysis of the open-ended survey responses of 120...

Despite serious health and mental health problems associated with weight stigma and dieting, many health providers consider intentional weight loss to be a positive pro-health intervention. Alternatively, the fat activist movement challenges weight prejudice and advocates for the equitable treatment of individuals with diverse body types. Inspired...

Social work has traditionally been concerned with the welfare of humans, a mission that some scholars want to expand to include other beings. How can concern for nonhumans and the natural environment best be integrated with the profession’s commitment to social justice? Although commentators have made several proposals, few have critically examined...

Environmental contamination and limited access to green spaces disproportionately burden communities of color with negative impacts on residents’ health. Yet, cleaning up contamination and creating green spaces has in some cases been associated with displacing long-term residents as the neighborhood becomes desirable to more affluent, often Whiter,...

The practice of professional community organizing aims to create a more equitable, inclusive society. However, power-based community organizing in the Alinsky tradition has historically been criticized for being unwelcoming to women, especially those who are caregivers at home. To better understand the paradox of working for social justice within a...

Environmental racism forces people of color, including Indigenous, Black, and Latinx communities, to bear the brunt of environmental degradation and climate change. BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) communities are disproportionately affected by the climate crisis as they breathe more polluted air, live in hotter temperatures, experien...

Social work responses to environmental degradation have sought to mitigate harm that has already occurred and create strategies to respond or adapt to environmental hazards. Despite a good deal of literature suggesting the promise of prevention-focused models, social workers have less frequently considered preven- tion models to address environment...

This article reveals possibilities to expand the role of youth within ecosocial work practice. The Where I Stand Youth Summit held in Chicago, Illinois, provided a safe space for young people to reflect upon their understanding of, and roles within, social and environ- mental justice movements. Drawing upon critical youth empower- ment theory and p...

Oppressed communities have long used strategies of caring for and protecting each other to ensure their collective survival. We argue for ecosocial workers to critically interrogate how agency, history, and culture structure environmental problems and our responses to them, by developing a resilience-based framework, collective survival strategies...

Enhancing social work’s socioenvironmental impact is central to creating social responses to a changing environment, the Grand Challenge for Social Work detailed in this chapter. Worldwide, communities face unprecedented environmental change and degradation. Although climate change, extreme weather events, disasters, and other environmental challen...

Communities worldwide are facing environmental crises such as air pollution, water shortages, climate change, and other forms of environmental change and degradation. While technical solutions for environmental change are essential, so too are solutions that consider social acceptability, value cultural relevance, and prioritize equity and social j...

Gentrification can be understood as the process through which geographical areas become increasingly exclusive, which disproportionately harms people living in poverty and people of color, as well as the elderly, families, and youth. As such, this article argues that macro social work practitioners should view gentrification as a key concern. Thus,...

This paper presents research on the distribution of economic benefits from brownfield cleanup and land development. There is growing concern that cleaning up blighted areas, including brownfields, can entrench inequality by disproportionately benefiting some demographic groups more than others. We look for evidence of disproportionate benefits by r...

Environmental justice organizations aim to secure an equitable distribution of environmental resources through the participation and self-determination of affected people, particularly communities of color. Yet organizing in a market economy is complicated: As communities become greener, gentrification can follow, thereby inadvertently displacing l...

This special issue offers new insights on social work research and sustainability. It brings different global perspectives together with several contributions that examine collaborative efforts from different regions of the world. The articles cover a wide range of problems and approaches regarding sustainability and the adoption of an ecosocial ap...

This research sheds light on perceptions of environmental gentrification in Chicago. It also identifies policies and practices that hold potential to promote environmentally healthy neighborhoods and equitable development without displacement.

Scholars and practitioners have argued that authentic public participation is crucial in developing strategic plans for so-called shrinking cities, not only for informing the content of the resulting plans but also for fostering public support, civic capacity, and equitable outcomes. The Detroit Works Project, launched in 2010, provided an opportun...

Sustainable development aims to address economic, social, and environmental imperatives; yet, in practice, it often embodies a neoliberal market logic that reinforces inequalities. Thus, as the social work profession grapples with its role in advancing environmental sustainability, practice models must explicitly attend to social and economic justi...

This lesson focuses on the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 7: Affordable and clean energy, which aims to ensure affordable, reliable, and clean energy for all. However, to meet this goal, changes to national policies and equitable distribution of resources are needed. In the United States, for example, affordable and clean energy is not...

The purpose of this brief is to describe the shortcomings of Michigan’s EM system and inform policymakers on potential improvements for its eventual replacement. We first frame the EM system within the logic and practice of urban austerity politics. Next, we demonstrate how emergency manager policies are not race-neutral approaches to solving urban...

This article reveals possibilities to expand the role of youth within ecosocial work practice. The Where I Stand Youth Summit held in Chicago, Illinois, provided a safe space for young people to reflect upon their understanding of, and roles within, social and environmental justice movements. Drawing upon critical youth empowerment theory and parti...

Oppressed communities have long used strategies of caring for and protecting each other to ensure their collective survival. We argue for ecosocial workers to critically interrogate how agency, history, and culture structure environmental problems and our responses to them, by developing a resilience-based framework, collective survival strategies...

Social work responses to environmental degradation have sought to mitigate harm that has already occurred and create strategies to respond or adapt to environmental hazards. Despite a good deal of literature suggesting the promise of prevention-focused models, social workers have less frequently considered prevention models to address environmental...

The attached excel spreadsheet contains the dataset that we used to analyze environmental social work scholarship in the 2018 article "Environmental social work in the disciplinary literature, 1991-2015". You will see that we identified 497 peer reviewed articles in social work journals that focused on environmental topics during that 25 year peri...

Summary: Gentrification is changing the landscape of many cities worldwide, exacerbating economic and racial inequality. Despite its relevance to social work, the field has been conspicuously absent from scholarship related to gentrification. This paper introduces the dominant view of gentrification (a political economic lens), highlighting its con...

As underscored by their professional code of ethics, all social workers are called to engage in social action that advances social justice. Yet, the focus of the profession has drifted toward individual treatment and away from social reform. Drawing upon data from an online survey of graduate social work students (N= 199) in the United States, this...

The call to promote social justice sets the social work profession in a political context. In an effort to enhance social workers’ preparedness to engage in political advocacy, this article calls on educators to integrate a broad theoretical understanding of power into social policy curricula. We suggest the use of a multidimensional conceptualizat...

Despite its emphasis on social justice, social work in the United States has not always attended to issues of diversity in doctoral education. This article examines the state of the discipline’s research on traditionally underrepresented students in U.S. doctoral social work programs. An analysis of relevant peer-reviewed articles from social work...

This research brief considers how community members and policies might improve environmental amenities within contaminated communities without displacing existing residents. To this end, we will first introduce a concept known as environmental gentrification. We will then summarize some of the existing literature that explores the relationships bet...

Despite increasing acknowledgment that the social work profession must address environmental concerns, relatively little is known about the state of scholarship on environmental social work. This study provides a scientometric summary of peer-reviewed articles (N = 497) pertaining to environmental topics in social work journals between 1991 and 201...

What might it take for politically marginalized residents to challenge cuts in public spending that threaten to harm their health and wellbeing? Specifically, how did residents of Flint, Michigan contribute to the decision of an austerity regime, which was not accountable to them, to spend millions to switch to a safe water source? Relying on evide...

This chapter suggests that community benefits agreements are a mechanism by which green social workers can ally with residents and community organisations to protect the health and well-being of people living in proximity to undesirable development. Urban land-use decisions are a necessary, although under-examined, intervention point for green soci...

This study examines the use of emergency management laws as a policy response to fiscal emergencies in urban areas. Focusing on one Midwestern Rust Belt state, we use a mixed methods approach – integrating chronology of legislative history, analysis of Census data, and an ethnographic case study – to examine the dynamics of emergency management law...

Environmental degradation is not experienced by all populations equally; hazardous and toxic waste sites, resource contamination (e.g., exposure to pesticides), air pollution, and numerous other forms of environmental degradation disproportionately affect low income and minority communities. The communities most affected by environmental injustices...

This cross-sectional, repeated measures, quasi-experimental study evaluates changes in college students’ commitment toward, and confidence in, political participation, civic engagement, and multicultural activism. Our sample (n = 653) consisted of college students in a Midwestern university who participated in one of three social justice education...

This dissertation examines the nature of power in land use decisions that contribute to the production of environmental inequality. By analyzing land use conflicts concerning who decides, who profits, and who pays when it comes to the construction of urban infrastructure, I identify mechanisms that culminate in the disproportionate placement of haz...

The redistribution of power is a primary goal of most community organi- zations, as people from disenfranchised groups come together to influence the policies, practices, or attitudes that affect their lives. Through models of social and community development, groups with less power are able to achieve sustainable improvements to the challenges the...

Environmental justice remains a prominent issue for coalescing communities and for social change. In this chapter, we will highlight two case studies that demonstrate efforts by community groups to influence political and economic decisions and, ultimately, to gain access to resources such as economic development and clean air, land, and water. In...