This article uses meta-ethnography to identify the challenges of working in solidarity with the experiences and interests of marginalised and exploited social groups. It focuses on what the main challenges seem to be, and on how to overcome them in struggles to change education in just directions by means of educational research. It is therefore a paper of interest from a methodological and a research political perspective relating to how critical researchers challenge the status quo and undermine the dominant hegemony in education and education policy in their research. A clear message from the analysis concerns the importance of understanding of the ontological class position of research for change and what to do in research in the interests of justice based on this understanding. Another message relates to the subjective and objective sides of transformative action, and a third a two directional threat towards it.