Resilience in practice: A qualitative study of social workers' preparedness and recovery in military conflict contexts in Latvia and Azerbaijan

Abstract

Despite growing demands on frontline practitioners in conflict-affected contexts, the resilience and preparedness of social workers themselves remain significantly under-researched, particularly in post-Soviet settings shaped by ongoing displacement and political constraint. This thesis aimed to explore how social workers in Latvia and Azerbaijan perceived, practised and were supported in developing resilience during and after military conflicts, with a focus on practice with populations affected by the wars in Ukraine and Karabakh. The study was guided by van Breda's multilevel resilience model, Webb-informed critical social work, and the person-in-environment perspective. A qualitative, phenomenological design was employed. Fourteen semi-structured interviews were conducted with practising social workers, managers and key informants across both countries, and data were analysed using Braun and Clarke's reflexive thematic analysis. Five themes were identified. First, participants described resilience as a dynamic, contested process involving inner strength, collective efficacy and meaning-making, with critical voices framing resilience discourse as a mechanism that normalises precarity among a feminised, low-paid workforce. Second, coping strategies ranged from boundary-setting and supervision to maladaptive self-sacrifice under chronic strain. Third, Latvian social workers were formally integrated into civil protection frameworks and designated as critical personnel, while Azerbaijani practitioners operated largely at the margins of formal crisis governance, relying on informal networks and community care. Fourth, policy frameworks, organisational cultures and cultural-systemic constructions of resilience shaped practice conditions differently across the two contexts. Fifth, practitioners negotiated professional identity, anti-war stances and advocacy under significant institutional and political pressure. The study concluded that social workers' resilience is a multilevel, relational, temporally situated and politically contested process. Van Breda's model was confirmed and extended: temporality emerged as an under-specified dimension, and ethical resistance - sustaining rights-based and anti-war positions despite institutional risk - was theorised as the most politically demanding expression of societal-level resilience. Recommendations were directed at legislators, social service agencies, professional associations and training institutions in both countries.