This piece is the first in our ‘thinking about resilience’ series which aims to open a critical conversation on the application of the politically relevant notion of resilience for social policy use. Agathe Osinski, former rEUsilience researcher at the University of Oxford, gets the ball rolling by exploring the key critiques of resilience, especially in the context of those experiencing poverty. How can we disentangle resilience from resistance? Can and should resilience be reclaimed?