Yoosun Park, MSW, PhD is a theory-driven scholar whose research and pedagogy are predicated on the belief that social work’s commitment to social justice requires not only a diversity of social identities but of perspective on and approach to knowledge-building. To this end, she has built an interdisciplinary and non-traditional body of scholarship that utilizes critical theories and methodologies to significantly extend the borders of social work knowledge. Framed within the broad substantive area of critical discourse studies, she has pursued two distinct but overlapping lines of inquiry that interrogate and elucidate each other: 1) an interrogation of social work’s history with racialized populations (particularly immigrants and immigration) and the processes of racialization; and 2) the study of the ways in which that history manifests in social work research, education, and practice today. As required readings in a variety of courses across schools of social work in the United States and abroad, Dr. Park’s award-winning scholarship informs the education of the next generation of social work practitioners and researchers.
Yoosun Park, MSW, PhD
Director, PhD in Social Welfare Program
Biography
Selected Publications
Park, Y. & Reisch, M. (2026). Social work, the Americanization movement, and the construction of Americans, 1874 to 1930. Routledge and CRC Press.
Park Y. (2019). Facilitating injustice: the complicity of social workers in the forced removal and incarceration of Japanese Americans, 1941-1946. Oxford University Press.
Park, Y. & Chatterjee, A. (In Press). Unsettling social work Innocence: Reading Jessie Taft at the margins of history. Invited manuscript for Zeitschrift für erziehungswissenschaftliche Migrationsforschung.
Park, Y. (2026). Discourse Analysis. Corcoran, J. (Ed.), Oxford Bibliography of Social Work: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/9780197859186.003.0353
Bhuyan, R., Osazuwa, S., Hanley, J., Schmidt, C., & Park, Y. (2025). “Unless we are Native, we are all immigrants to Canada”: Tensions between multicultural inclusion and settler-colonial consciousness among Canadian social workers. Journal of Ethnic & Cultural Diversity in Social Work, 34(2), 69-80. https://doi.org/10.1080/15313204.2023.2291663
Park, Y. & Gonzalez-Benson, O. (2024). On democracy, liberalism, and social work: Introduction to the inaugural SSR special collection series. Social Service Review, https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/journals/ssr/democracy-liberalism-social-work.
Bhuyan, R., Osazuwa, S., Schmidt, C., Kwon, I., Rundle, A., & Park, Y. (2024). Canadian social workers’ attitudes toward immigrants with different legal statuses in Canada. Journal of Social Work, 24(4), 571-596. https://doi.org/10.1177/14680173241240
Chatterjee, A. & Park, Y. (2024). Trauma as the “belief that the world is a dangerous place”: The obfuscation of systemic violence in social work’s discourses of trauma. British Journal of Social Work.https://doi.org/10.1093/bjsw/bcae016
Park, Y. & Chatterjee, A. (2023). Un-asking the question: Introducing a critical Buddhist analytic. Social Work and Society, 21 (1). http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:hbz:464-sws-2940
Park, Y. & Reisch, M. (2022). “To elevate, humanize, Christianize, ‘Americanize’”: Social work, white supremacy, and the Americanization movement, 1880-1930. Social Service Review, 96 (4), 779-835. https://doi.org/10.1086/722095.
Park, Y., Quinn, J. W., Hurvitz, P. M., Hirsch, J. A., Goldsmith, J., Neckerman, K. M., Lovasi, G. S., & Rundle, A. G. (2022). Addressing patients’ unmet social needs: Disparities in access to social services in the United States from 1990 to 2014, a national times series study. BMC Health Services Research, 22(1), 367. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12913-022-07749-1
Park, Y., Torres, M., Bhuyan, R., Ao, J., Graves, L., & Rundle, A. (2022). Social workers’ perceptions of structural inequality and immigrant threat: Results from a national survey. Journal of Social Work Education, 58(3), 449-471. https://doi.org/10.1080/10437797.2021.1895936
Park, Y., Crath, R., & Jeffery, D. (2020). Disciplining the risky subject: A discourse analysis of the concept of resilience in social work literature. Journal of Social Work, 20(2), 152-172. https://doi.org/10.1177/1468017318792953.
Park, Y. (2019). Our house is on fire: Social work and the crisis of immigration. Affilia: Journal of Women and Social Work, 34(4), 413-420. https://doi.org/10.1177/0886109919880349
Gonzalez-Benson, O., & Park, Y. (2018). Resettled yet Stateless: Elderly monoglot refugees in the United States as a limit case to citizenship. Journal of Human Rights Practice, 10(3), 423-438. https://doi.org: 10.1093/jhuman/huy026
Park, Y. (2015). “A curious inconsistency”: The discourse of social work on the 1922 Married Women’s Independent Nationality Act, and the Intersecting dynamics of race and gender in the laws of immigration and citizenship. Affilia: Journal of Women & Social Work, 30(4), 560-579. https://doi.org/10.1177/0886109915583546
Park, Y. (2013). The role of the YWCA in the World War II internment of Japanese Americans: A cautionary tale for social work. Social Service Review, 87(3), 477-524. https://doi.org/10.1086/671987
Park, Y., Bhuyan, R., Richards, C., & Rundle, A. (2012). Social work practitioners’ attitudes toward immigrants and immigration: Results from an online survey. Journal of Immigrant & Refugee Studies, 9(4), 367-392. https://doi.org/10.1080/15562948.2011.616801
Park, Y., & Bhuyan, R. (2012). Whom should we serve? A discourse analysis of social workers’ commentary on undocumented immigrants. Journal of Progressive Human Services, 23(1), 18-40. https://doi: 10.1080/10428232.2011.605745
Bhuyan, R., Park, Y., & Rundle, A. (2011). Linking practitioners’ attitudes towards and basic knowledge of immigrants with their social work education. Journal of Social Work Education, 31(8), 973-994. https://doi: 10.1080/02615479.2011.621081
Park, Y., Neckerman, K. M., Quinn, J., Weiss, C., & Rundle, A. (2011). Neighbourhood immigrant acculturation and diet among Hispanic female residents of New York City. Journal of Public Health Nutrition, 14(9), 1593-1600. https://doi: 10.1017/S136898001100019X
Park, Y., Florez, K. R., Jacobson, J., Neckerman, K. M., & Rundle, A. (2011). Hispanic immigrant women’s perspective on healthy foods and the New York City retail food environment: A mixed-method study. Social Science & Medicine, 73(1), 13-21. https://doi: 0.1016/j.socscimed.2011.04.012.
Park, Y., Miller, J. L., & Van, B. C. (2010). “Everything has changed”: Narratives of the Vietnamese-American community in Biloxi, Mississippi in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. The Journal of Sociology and Social Welfare, 37(3), 79-105. https://doi: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2008.09.036.
Park, Y. (2008). Making refugees: A historical discourse analysis of the construction of the “refugee” in U.S. social work, 1900–1957. British Journal of Social Work, 38(4), 771–787. https://doi: 10.1093/bjsw/bcn015
Park, Y. (2008). Facilitating injustice: Tracing the role of social workers in the World War II internment of Japanese Americans. Social Service Review, 82(3), 447-483. https://doi.org/10.1086/592361
Park, Y., & Miller, J. L. (2007). Inequitable distributions: A critical analysis of the Red Cross and its response to Hurricane Katrina. Journal of Intergroup Relations, 33(1), 45-59.
Park, Y., & Miller, J. L. (2006). The social ecology of Hurricane Katrina: Rewriting the discourse of “natural” disasters. Smith College Studies in Social Work, 76(3), 9-24. https://doi.org/ 10.1300/J497v76n03_02
Park, Y., & Kemp, S. P. (2006). “Little Alien Colonies”: Representations of immigrants and their neighborhoods in social work discourse, 1875-1924. Social Service Review, 80(4), 705–734. https://doi.org/10.1086/507934
Park, Y. (2006). Constructing Immigrants: A historical discourse analysis of the representations of immigrants in U.S. social work, 1882-1952. Journal of Social Work, 6(2), 169-203. https://doi.org/10.1177/1468017306066673
Park, Y. (2005). Culture as deficit: A critical discourse analysis of the concept of culture in contemporary social work discourse. Journal of Sociology and Social Welfare, 32(3), 13-34. https://doi.org/10.15453/0191-5096.3090
