Global perspectives on poverty research for social justice

The special issue of QSE includes five articles from an interdisciplinary and international group of qualitative researchers who describe their experiences conducting qualitative research with impoverished women and families. The articles focus on how qualitative approaches such as focus group interviews, participatory action research, team interviewing, video-making, and feminist methodology can increase understandings about poverty, contribute to policymaking, education, or activism and inspire ethical responsibilities. In this introduction, I review several global agreements aimed at fostering economic human rights to end poverty and several reports that assess how well international communities are doing to achieve economic human rights. This introduction is intended to be read as a backdrop – or perhaps a yardstick – against which to measure the conditions of poverty described in the special issue articles.