Through a pan-Canadian action research project on structural violence against youth, this article presents a theoretical reflection on the concept of structural violence. First, it describes how theorists have operationalized the concept of structural violence, its criticisms and its transformations since Galtung’s development of the concept in 1969. It also discusses how the authors have incorporated these issues empirically. This article concludes with a discussion about the main analytical and empirical issues related to the study of structural violence in social work.