Beyond the Playing Field: Advancing Social Justice and Lifelong Well-Being through Sport Social Work

Sport social work is an evolving sub-field that critically examines sport as a site of both possibility and harm. While sport can foster resilience, community, and holistic well-being, it can also reproduce exclusion, trauma, and injustice through practices that privilege certain identities, reinforce inequities, or normalize harmful behaviors. Informed by principles of social justice, equity, and human dignity, sport social work employs trauma-informed, strengths-based, and culturally responsive approaches to address these tensions, mitigate risks, and amplify the benefits of participation. This requires not only celebrating the protective aspects of sport—such as reducing mental health stigma, promoting positive identity development, and strengthening community ties—but also directly confronting the ways in which sport can perpetuate discrimination, violence, systemic inequity, and exploitation.

Sport social work thus operates at the intersection of individual well-being and structural critique, illuminating the conditions under which sport truly contributes to social cohesion, inclusion, and growth. It also examines how systemic problems within sport—such as racism, sexism, homophobia, economic exclusion, or unsafe training cultures—shape athletes’ lives, opportunities, and choices. Beyond documenting the positives of sport, social work offers concrete interventions: building equitable policies and programs, creating safeguards against abuse, supporting athlete transitions across the lifespan, and advancing community-driven initiatives that reimagine sport as a vehicle for justice.

This Research Topic seeks to advance scholarship that both acknowledges the dual potential of sport and develops strategies to maximize its benefits while redressing its harms. Contributions are invited across the lifespan, from childhood to older adulthood, and should interrogate how sport can be restructured as a tool for resilience, holistic development, and social justice.

We welcome articles addressing, but not limited to, the following themes:
• Sport as both a site of identity formation and identity-based exclusion
• Innovative approaches to fostering inclusivity and diversity in sports
• Addressing trauma, abuse, and mental health challenges within sport environments
• Sport and recreation as facilitators of authentic community engagement and belonging
• Structural and policy-level interventions to overcome systemic barriers to equity and social justice in sports
• The role of social work in protecting athletes’ rights, dignity, and long-term well-being