How Latino Families with Young Children Experience Formal Social Supports: a Critical

THE CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY OF AMERICA

How Latino Families with Young Children Experience Formal Social Supports: A Critical

Realist Grounded Theory Study

A DISSERTATION

Submitted to the Faculty of the

National Catholic School of Social Service

Of The Catholic University of America

In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements

For the Degree

Doctor of Philosophy

Erin Segal

Washington, D.C.

2015

How Latino Families with Social Supports Experience Formal Social Supports: A Critical

Realist Grounded Theory Study

Erin Segal

Director: Susanne Bennett, Ph.D.

In the US, millions of low-income parents receive at least one social service, benefit, or program. Research shows that clients experience formal social supports as both helpful and stressful, but social workers lack knowledge to elucidate the contradictions. Furthermore, it is unclear whether or how formal supports help families live lives that they consider worthwhile.

Honoring local context and group identity, this study explored how Latino families in the

Washington, DC metro area experienced formal social supports. In-depth, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 17 low-income Latino parents with at least one child under the age of five. Participants had received anywhere between four and seven formal supports (e.g.

WIC, Head Start, Medicaid, home visiting, counseling, etc.). Interview transcripts, field notes, and journals were coded and analyzed using techniques from constructivist and critical realist grounded theory. The central concept that emerged from the data was that participants saw themselves as struggling for peace, resource security, and esteem. They valued those ends, as well as the act of striving and the virtues it entailed. In using formal supports, participants faced the task of negotiating dependency, a state they associated with powerlessness. Some meanings and experiences (e.g. emphasizing need, seizing opportunity, and experiencing mastery) squared with their values. Other meanings and experiences (e.g. feeling adrift, feeling insecure about resources, and experiencing disrespect) did not. On balance, participants were successful at integrating service use into the narrative of their struggle. Although formal supports sometimes helped participants meet basic needs and solve problems, they still felt insecure with respect to future resources. Parents often deferred esteem in order to assure their children’s future esteem and security. Above all, the findings highlight the challenges faced by an individually striving but socially needy self. With respect to theory development, the findings resonate with strengths-based, empowerment-oriented, critical, and neo-Aristotelian social work approaches.

The knowledge generated by this study could serve as a departure point for efforts to engage service users in reflection and action.

This dissertation by Erin Segal fulfills the dissertation requirement for the Doctor of Philosophy degree in Social Work, approved by Susanne Bennett, Ph.D. as Director, and by Lynn Milgram Mayer, Ph.D., and Linda Plitt Donaldson, Ph.D., as readers.

______Susanne Bennett, Ph.D., Director

______Lynn Milgram Mayer, Ph.D., Reader

______Linda Plitt Donaldson, Ph.D., Reader

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

First, I would like to acknowledge the entire faculty and staff of the National Catholic

School of Social Service, who have put so much care into my doctoral education. I would also like to extend thanks to Maria Gomez and her staff at Mary’s Center for being so generous with their time. Furthermore, I am grateful to the 17 clients of Mary’s Center who shared their stories with me.

Many thanks to my amazing husband, Michael Sachse, and our children, Nora and Teddy, for their love and encouragement. I also thank my parents, Carl and Cassie Segal, for their nurturing support. Little do they realize how they propel my work; I inherited a love of theorizing from my father, a sense of justice and compassion from my mother.

I would also like to extend my gratitude to the members of my committee. I very much appreciated having Linda Donaldson, Ph.D., and Lynn Mayer, Ph.D. as readers, and I thank them for their time, energy, and guidance. Over the past few years, Dr. Donaldson’s commitment to what I think of as radical social work has inspired me. Finally, heartfelt thanks go to my committee Chair, Susanne Bennett, Ph.D., whose thoughtfulness, brilliance, incisive editing, and decisiveness has been exactly what I have needed. If not for Dr. Bennett, who also introduced me to qualitative research and psychodynamic theory, the world around me would appear tidier—but infinitely less rich.

iii TABLE OF CONTENTS

ABSTRACT......

SIGNATURE PAGE......

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS......

TABLE OF CONTENTS......

Chapter

I. INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY ...... 1

Problem Formulation...... 1

Background to the Study...... 4

Personal Interest in the Problem...... 13

Brief Overview of the Study...... 15

Significance to Social Work...... 17

Summary...... 18

II. REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE...... 19

Empirical Literature about Latinos and Formal Supports...... 20

Theoretical Framework...... 30

Theoretically Congruent Literature About Various Service Users...... 42

Conclusion...... 50

III. METHODOLOGY...... 52

Research Design...... 52

Sampling...... 57

Interview Guide...... 59

iv Data Collection...... 60

Data Analysis ...... 60

Rigor and Trustworthiness...... 65

Ethical Considerations...... 66

Summary...... 68

IV. FINDINGS

Presentation of the Descriptive Findings...... 69

Presentation of the Central Concept: Striving for Security, Peace, and Esteem...... 70

How the Struggle Related to User Experience...... 88

Results of Situational Mapping...... 106

Critically Evaluating Formal Supports...... 109

How does Experiencing Formal Supports Relate to Living Life More Humanly?. . . . .114

Reflexivity...... 118

Summary...... 120

V. SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION

Emerging Ideas: Interpretations and Comparisons...... 123

Assessment of the Study’s Methodology...... 133

Implications of the Findings...... 134

Conclusion...... 147

APPENDICES...... 149

TABLES...... 165

REFERENCES...... 177

v CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY

In the United States, millions of low-income parents with children, ages 0 to 5, receive at least one formal social support. Benefits, programs, and services (e.g. food assistance, medical assistance, home visiting, pre-kindergarten, parenting education, child protective services, housing voucher, earned income tax credit, etc.) vary in focus and scope, but there is general consensus that, taken together, they form a social safety net intended to offset the negative effects of poverty on children’s health, emotional well-being, safety, academic achievement, and/or overall life trajectories (APA Task Force on Childhood Poverty, 2013; Shonkoff &

Phillips, 2000). Since the 1990s, advocates and policy-makers have argued that supports ought to be better-integrated and more responsive to cultural and linguistic diversity (Golden, 2013;

Zero to Three, 2009). Yet beyond satisfaction survey data, there exists little known empirical information about how ethnically and culturally diverse clients experience formal social supports—and whether and how that experience relates to individual and family well-being. In approaching that research gap in a manner that honors the importance of group identity and local context, this study focuses on the interface between 20 low-income Latino families in the

Washington, DC metro area and the various social services they receive.

Problem Formulation

In social work and related fields, it is typical to identify social problems, explain their causes, design interventions consistent with those explanations, designate outcomes associated with problem amelioration, and explore whether the interventions caused the desired outcomes.

Influenced by the Enlightment era’s linear version of causality, this line of reasoning underpins most biomedical interventions (e.g. treating an infection with antibiotics). For that reason, many

1 2 social work scholars call it the medical model. It is easy to mistake the medical model for the way the world works. Yet like many social workers influenced by the strengths perspective

(Saleeby, 2009), which rejects deficit-based thinking and over-reliance on knowledge generated by experts, I view the medical model as a theory-laden lens for understanding the social world

(Weick, 1983). I also believe that, far from identifying problems that are simply out there, researchers inevitably engage in an act of construal: they do not quite construct reality (which exists whether or not they theorize about it) but they do construe social problems based on the schema with which they view and interpret the social world (Longhofer, Floersch, & Hoy, 2012).

In social work practice and research, this act of construal typically occurs in relation to the medical model, because it is such a pervasive lens.

In construing problems, most social work dissertations deal with either the medical model’s front end (describing a problem and its correlates) or its back end (evaluating the efficacy of interventions and their variations). Influenced by the strengths perspective, I deliberately skirt the front end; in other words, although this chapter will offer information about the population, I avoid beginning with the litany of stressors faced by D.C. area Latino parents with young children. I do not assume this is a population in need of social services. However, unlike many qualitative researchers who approach the medical model critically, I do not stop at describing the lived experience of a local population. I want to contribute to theory-building around the relationship between social programs and well-being. Thus, I do focus on one back end outcome: human flourishing. But in contrast to the medical model’s reliance on discrete, measurable outcomes, I assume that human flourishing is an action, not a variable reducible to outcomes. Instead of beginning with a preconceived category, I rely on open-ended, respondent- 3 driven definitions of human flourishing. I define human flourishing as the capacity to live a life that, upon reflection, one considers worthwhile (Honneth, 1995; Sen, 1999).

Still, despite its focus on understanding the relationship between user experience and human flourishing, this dissertation really inhabits the medical model’s under-theorized middle space—the so-called black box between program participation and client well-being. I view this space in terms of intersubjective encounters, relationships, roles, activities, and meaning-making

(Bronfenbrenner, 1979; Honneth, 1995). Rejecting linear versions of causality, I assume that human flourishing arises from this space (and others) in ways that are unpredictable, context- specific, and open to interpretation. Nevertheless, I assume that it is possible to achieve theoretical understanding of some of the conditions and processes that engender flourishing among Latino service users. Similar assumptions have spawned a large body of psychotherapy research demonstrating that, with some exceptions, client well-being arises not from a particular intervention modality (e.g. cognitive behavioral therapy), but from common factors such as feeling hopeful or experiencing empathy (Duncan, Miller, Wampold, & Hubble, 2010).

However, those versions of human change tend to fly under the radar of individuals who plan, administer, and evaluate social programs. Thus, with the exception of the findings discussed in

Chapter II, we really know very little about how any client—let alone D.C.-metro area Latino parents—experiences social services. Nor do we understand whether and how those experiences engender or hinder human flourishing. This knowledge gap is where the problem lies.

For a profession ethically obligated to do no harm (Gambrill, 1999), this knowledge gap is an area of concern. It is particularly relevant because of the prevailing sense that clients are unduly constrained by the so-called iron cage of bureaucracy (Weber, 2005/1930). Attuned to the vicissitudes of power and surveillance, social workers view institutions as oppressive on 4 multiple levels (Hearn & Parkin, 1993). We wonder whether the benefits of participating in various social programs outweigh the costs of the endless forms, the commute times, the stigma, the indignities suffered, and so on. Yet we believe in the power of planned intervention. And we see our clients overcoming psychosocial obstacles, apparently bolstered by formal social supports. For those reasons, we advocate for the expansion or preservation of social service and education programs such as Head Start, and in-kind benefits such as SNAP (Supplemental

Nutrition Assistance Program). Our impressions influence our actions, yet there has been no rigorous exploration of whether and how they square with the experiences of service users.

Those impressions bear further investigation—especially with respect to vulnerable and oppressed populations such as Latinos, many of whom are undocumented and/or English language learners (Organista, 2009).

Background to the Study

What are Formal Social Supports?

For the purpose of this study, I define the term formal social supports broadly, including all benefits, programs, and services funded by tax-payer dollars and/or philanthropic support

(See Table 1 for a complete list of social supports discussed by this study’s respondents).

Sometimes government workers administer and deliver social supports; increasingly, social programs are the purview of private agencies relying on blended funds (Allard, 2008). Within the category of formal social supports, I also include services, recreational opportunities, and benefits delivered by churches, local politicians, ethnic organizations, and municipal entities such as public libraries and community centers. Healthcare and classroom education are not social services per se; however, I recognize that many social services (e.g. counseling, mental 5 health services, parent support, case management, and smoking prevention) are embedded in schools and health clinics (Ambrosino, Heffernan, Shuttlesworth, & Ambrosino, 2012).

It is important to understand that social supports have evolved piecemeal over many years, constantly shifting in relation to the social, political, and economic landscape. During some periods (e.g. the Depression), social programs have waxed; during other periods (e.g. the

Reagan years), they have waned (Trattner, 2007). Their material characteristics (e.g. service content, benefit amounts, interactions with workers, physical plant, etc.) vary not only by type, but across states, localities, and individual agencies—and over time. Program goals are vulnerable to change and open to interpretation. For example, the official purpose of SNAP, formerly known as food stamps, is to ensure that all Americans can access adequate nutrition

(U.S. Department of Agriculture, 2014a). However, many advocates and policymakers also view food voucher benefits as a form of economic stimulus and/or income redistribution

(Haskins, 2012).

Social workers often think of formal supports in terms of a system or a safety net—and it is certainly true that there are many interconnections between and among relevant institutions and individuals. However, there is no known literature that explores whether clients think of social programs in systems terms—and how perceptions might vary between clients and across client groups. For me, it was particularly interesting to elicit the perspectives of Latino clients socialized in countries that do not have safety nets. Regardless of client perspectives on systems of social supports, policy-makers and researchers often frame social services in terms of a multi- pronged, systemic approach to breaking the so-called cycle of poverty by targeting young children and their families (Halpern, 1999; Schorr, 1997; Shonkoff & Phillips, 2000). 6

Systems of Social Supports for Families with Young Children

A good illustration of systems of social supports for families with young children exists in the form of a chart on the website of the Department of Health and Human Services (U.S.

Department of Health and Human Services, n.d.). The purpose of the chart is to demonstrate the concept of comprehensive systems employed by the Department’s Early Childhood

Comprehensive Systems grant program. The chart pictures a daisy with the words “children healthy and ready to learn in its center” (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services). Each surrounding petal represents a different component of the system: early care and education, medical homes/health care, parenting education, family support services, and social-emotional development/mental health. In between the petals are organizational aspects of the systems: for example, governance, financing, standards, and practitioner support. Around the circle are the words “collaboration” and “partnership” (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services).

Although DHHS’ Early Childhood Comprehensive Systems grant program itself is small, the concept of early childhood comprehensive systems is well-known to social workers and other professionals involved in early childhood service provision (Dunst, Trivette, & Deal, 1988).

The idea of early childhood systems has also served as a guiding principle for place- based neighborhood support programs such as the Harlem Children’s Zone (www.hcz.org). This model program provides comprehensive, birth-to-college services to families living in a strictly delineated catchment area in Manhattan. Some of the programs relevant to families with young children include: various pre-K, home visiting, and parenting education programs; preventive services; benefits counseling to help families obtain and maintain benefits; tax preparation to ensure that working families receive full tax refunds; and community-building and organizing programs. Although President Obama’s PROMISE initiative challenges community-based 7 organizations across the country to replicate the Harlem Children’s Zone (U.S. Department of

Education, 2013), such an orchestrated approach remains the exception, not the rule. The so- called early childhood systems that most clients experience do not exist by design, and are unlikely to be coordinated by a single organization located in the neighborhood where they live.

And even if a single agency coordinates them, the fact remains that most social services entailed by the five “petals” (early care/education, health care, parenting education, family support services, and social-emotional development/mental health) have developed over different time periods across different contexts and funding streams.

Many social programs date back to the 1960s-era Great Society, a time when child poverty—along with economic development, civil rights, and community control—moved to the forefront of the domestic policy agenda (Reisch, 2009). The best-known early childhood program, Head Start, was designed to offset the effects of poverty on school readiness, primarily among poor African American children (Zigler & Valentine, 1979). Other programs that emerged in the 1960s were health insurance (Medicaid), food stamps, housing vouchers (Section

8), and comprehensive community services delivered at the local level (Model Cities). Income support (Aid to Dependent Families with Children), first enacted during the Great Depression, expanded during that period, thanks to the efforts of the National Welfare Rights Organization

(Piven & Cloward, 1978). Most of those programs still exist in one form or another, but they have been subjected to various cuts and narrowing of eligibility guidelines, particularly during economic downturns (Jansson, 2012).

Other relevant social programs have evolved to target specific problems. For example, the purpose of Child Protective Services (which goes by different names in different states) is to protect children from abuse and neglect. In addition to investigating allegations and 8 administering foster care placements, most child protective agencies also provide preventive services, geared towards strengthening families (Ambrosino, Ambrosino, Hefferman, &

Shuttlesworth, 2012). Another relevant social program is Part C early intervention, which originated in legislation enacted in the 1970s (Turnbull, Turnbull, Erwin, Soodak, & Shogren,

2011). Early intervention programs offer various home-based and center-based services to families with children, birth to three, with developmental disabilities. Like other social programs, both preventive services and early intervention have been vulnerable to fiscal constraints at both the state and federal level.

Despite fiscal constraints, home visiting and early literacy programs have proliferated over the past three decades, fueled by recognition that the very early years of a child’s life serve as the foundation for later development. Emphasis on pre-natal and early childhood programming has gained momentum since the 1997 White House Conference on Early

Childhood Development and Learning, entitled What New Research on the Brain Tells us About our Youngest Children. The findings discussed at the conference also appeared in the landmark publication, From Neurons to Neighborhoods: The Science of Early Childhood Development

(Shonkoff & Phillips, 2000). In disseminating neuroscience research about the developing brain, policymakers and researchers highlighted how early attachments and experiences create the foundation for intelligence, mental health, and moral development. The researchers recommended that public resources be reallocated in systemic, comprehensive ways that support early childhood development. Their recommendations related to policy around early intervention and education—as well as tax, wage, and income support measures to ensure that working families do not live in deep and persistent poverty. However, because Americans tend to believe that government programs undermine personal responsibility, many income support 9 measures have stagnated (Jansson, 2012; Katz, 2013). However, support of early childhood initiatives has increased, although economic factors (including recession and sequestration) have hindered major increases in federal and state expenditures (New America Foundation, 2014).

Many states have also moved towards offering universal pre-kindergarten programs (Pew

Charitable Trust, 2012). While remaining in favor of early childhood education and social programs, researchers have continued to warn against magical thinking that early childhood intervention is a panacea for poverty (Brooks-Gunn & Markman, 2005).

Social Supports in the DC Metro Area

As with many major cities, the Washington metropolitan area (also known as the

National Capital Area) spans three states. Many U.S. agencies, including the Census Bureau, employ a delineation that includes the District of Columbia and parts of Maryland, Virginia, and

West Virginia (U.S. Office of Management and Budget, 2013). Capital Kids: Shared

Responsibility, Shared Future (Murphey et al., 2012), a Child Trends report about the well-being of children in the region, relies on data from the following counties: Alexandria, VA, Arlington

County, VA, Fairfax County, VA, Falls Church, VA, Loudon County, VA, Montgomery County,

MD, Prince Georges County, MD, Prince William County, VA, and Washington, DC. Because of variations among those municipalities, it is difficult to achieve a single understanding of the region’s social services landscape.

First of all, the percentage of families eligible for services varies between counties. How do social service agencies establish eligibility? Because the federal poverty threshold is so low

(currently $23,850 for a family of four) (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2014), many means-tested social programs use different criteria to establish low-income status. For example, in order to qualify for WIC (Women, Infants, and Children), families need to be at or 10 below 185% of the U.S. Poverty Income Guidelines (U.S. Department of Agriculture, 2014b).

When relying on the 2010 federal poverty threshold, the child poverty rates range from 30.4% in the District of Columbia to 4.3% in Loudon County (Murphey et al., 2012). All those families categorized as poor would qualify for SNAP, Head Start, and free or reduced lunch, among other programs. When using 200% of the 2010 poverty level as a measure of low-income status, the percentage of children in low-income families ranges from 50.8% in the District of Columbia to

9.7% in Loudon County (Murphey et al). All families in that category have incomes low enough to qualify for state-funded insurance, and most would qualify for WIC. Thus, all low-income families in the DC metro area with U.S.-born children qualify for at least one social support.

However, it is still extremely difficult to achieve an understanding of how many DC metro-area families receive supports, and in what combinations (Personal Communication,

Dorinda Williams, May 7, 2014). Some families who are eligible for services choose to forego them. Others do not qualify because of immigration status. Some benefits or programs do not use income as a guideline for eligibility. For example, affluent families with children with disabilities can qualify for Part C early intervention, and eligibility for child protective services depends on allegations of abuse and neglect, not income. Furthermore, variations related to data collection and program features make it difficult to draw generalizations about the provision of social services. Some agencies release data about service provision; others do not.

Latino Families in the DC Metro Area

Terminology can also make it difficult to understand data related to Latino families. In an effort to honor group identity and remain participant-centered, this study defines Latinos as those who self-identify as Latino or Hispanic. That is the same definition used by the US Census

Bureau, but some people emphasize that the two terms are different (Hispanic refers to language 11 while Latino refers to region) and should not be used interchangeably. When discussing demographics, I use the term (Hispanic or Latino) chosen by the source I cite. The rest of the time, I use the word Latino, a term that social workers tend to favor (Furman, Loya, Jones, &

Hugo, 2013).

According to the Pew Hispanic Center’s (2013) analysis of the 2011 American

Community Survey, Hispanics comprise 14.3% of the DC metro area’s total population. In

Arlington, Fairfax, Loudon, and Prince William Counties, Hispanics are the second-largest ethnic population (Murphey et al., 2012). Many advocates point out that Hispanics are vulnerable to being undercounted because of factors such as transience, co-habitation, and distrust related to deportation (Personal communication, Fred Ahearn, November 20, 2013). Still, the U.S. Census Bureau (2012) maintains that, nationally, the 2010 census undercounted only

1.5% of the Hispanic population in 2010.

The Hispanic population in the DC area is disproportionately young. In 2011, 22% of children under age 5 in the DC area were Hispanic (Pew Hispanic Center, 2013). Between 2000 and 2010, there was a 60% increase in the proportion of Hispanics among children under age 5

(Murphey et al., 2012). This is a reflection of a national trend in which the number of U.S.-born

Hispanics has grown, while immigration has decreased sharply as a result of border control enforcement, fewer economic opportunities for low-wage workers, and risks involved in crossing the border, among other factors (Krogstad & Lopez, 2014). An exception has been the unaccompanied minors detained at the border in 2014, approximately 1000 of who were released to families in the DC metro area (Trull, 2014).

The National Capital Area’s Hispanic population consists of both foreign- and U.S.-born

Hispanics. Of the 807,000 Hispanics living in the area, slightly more than half are foreign-born 12

(Pew Hispanic Center, 2013). Based on Pew Hispanic Center (2013) reports, more than half of that population arrived before 2000, and the majority of DC-area Hispanics is of Mexican or

Salvadoran origin. A smaller proportion is Guatemalan, Puerto Rican, and Peruvian. In general, according to Pew, the DC-area’s Hispanic population has low rates of unemployment. The median household income for native-born families is $73,000; for foreign-born families, it is

$60,000. Approximately 19% of Hispanic DC-residents under the age of 18 live in poverty.

DC Metro Area Latinos and Social Supports

It is difficult to make assumptions about service use among Latinos based on data about eligibility. First, many Latinos do not qualify for social services because of arrival dates or immigration status. Second, there is some evidence that, nationally, Hispanics access many health services in lower numbers than other groups (Currie, 2004). Thus, it is unlikely that all eligible residents use services.

Few agencies that administer social programs release data about recipient race or ethnicity (Personal communication, Lina Guzman, May 7, 2014). Thus, it is necessary to rely on self-report data from the American Community Survey (ACS), which in recent years has collected data about only two variables related to social programs: health insurance and food stamps. According to the Pew Hispanic Center’s (2013) analysis of 2011 ACS data, 68% of DC-

VA-MD metro area Hispanics have health insurance, and 12.7% of children under the age of 18 are uninsured. Nationally, according to the 2012 ACS, 23% of Hispanics receive food stamps

(SNAP), compared to 9% of Whites and 29% of Blacks (Pew Research Center, 2014). Food stamps data for the DC metro area was not available.

Personal Interest in the Problem

When I was an undergraduate volunteering at a domestic violence program, I realized that if I wanted to work in direct human services, it would be useful to learn Spanish. It took years to become proficient in Spanish, and I have yet to consider myself truly fluent. Still, by the time I completed my MSW, I knew enough Spanish to be designated a bilingual social worker.

All my work as a professional social worker—early intervention, preventive services, parenting groups, parent-child groups, home-based family literacy work, supervision, and program administration—has been directed towards Latino families with young children. Most of those families have been recent immigrants and many have been undocumented.

When I entered the field in 2003, I had acquired a strong commitment to comprehensive, family-centered, community-based services that meet family’s interacting needs in flexible, supportive ways. I was interested in programs that, like the settlement houses of the 19th and early 20th centuries, offered a wide range of educational and recreational services, as well as counseling and concrete support. Such services, I hoped, could break the so-called cycle of poverty, addressing psychosocial and material needs in ways that minimize stigma. I was also influenced by the prevailing idea that it was sensible to intervene early, before poverty took its toll.

As I found myself working at various private family services agencies, I spent hours helping Latino families with young children navigate different social supports, particularly medical insurance, food stamps, and child protective services. As I saw it, nonprofit-run social services (e.g. home visiting, counseling, neighborhood-based advocacy) offered respect and support, while government-administered concrete supports such as food stamps and Medicaid met basic needs, but created undue stress and stigma. Government-administered human services 14 such as child protective services had the potential to be helpful, but often entailed frustration and stigma. I believed it was the obligation of community-based workers like myself to advocate for families, helping them navigate all bureaucracies. I also felt an obligation to ensure that families received every single service for which they were eligible, despite reluctance on their part.

Indeed, I had construed under-utilization of social services as a problem. I was operating from the stance that if low-income Latino families could just receive more formal supports (such as what my agency offered), they would experience a reduction in social isolation, an increase in stimulation for developing brains, and more secure parent-child attachments. This, I had learned, would ensure optimal child development. This was how we might close the ever-troubling achievement gap.

My doctoral work reinvigorated my commitment to strengths-based practice, which invites critique of dominant paradigms such as the medical model. As I wrote papers that asked how social services might help low-income Latino families achieve the American dream, I began to see how theory infused everything I took for granted. I recoiled at the paternalism in my assumptions that Latino families needed more services. I questioned what it means to achieve the American dream—and who defines it. As I conducted literature reviews, I began to worry that operationalizing progress by statistically-significant differences in test scores deflected attention from the experiences that make human beings human. As I thought critically about the obsession with neuroplasticity in the first three years of life (Wastell & White, 2012), I wondered what unintended consequences might occur when policymakers reduced social issues to young brains in need of intervention. And then I had doubts about my doubts; my inner pragmatist said,

“Of course it’s problematic to frame formal early childhood supports as a panacea to structural problems—but doing something is better than navel-gazing!” Wanting to avoid armchair 15 radicalism, I believed it would be unproductive to dedicate an entire dissertation to critiquing the political discourse that fuels social service provision. Yet I firmly resisted contributing to a discourse I found so problematic.

Influenced by those concerns and a nascent interest in inductive qualitative research, I realized that it was possible to contribute to knowledge-building in a way that started where the client was. I decided to study how Latino families with young children experience social programs, and how that experience relates to their well-being.

Brief Overview of the Study

Study’s Purpose

The purpose of this study was twofold. First, I set out to elicit a client perspective on the experience of receiving multiple social services. I chose to focus on a population I know: Latino parents with young children. This is an understudied population that may be particularly vulnerable to service utilization and engagement barriers related to English-learner status, low parental education, acculturation, racial and ethnic discrimination, and immigration status

(García Coll et al., 1995; Garcia & Scribner, 2009; Perreira, Chapman, & Stein, 2006; Plunkett,

Behnke, Sands, & Choi, 2009). Second, employing grounded theory methodology (Charmaz,

2006), I sought to contribute to theory-building focused on how user experience relates to human flourishing. With this purpose in mind, the study addressed two research questions. 16

Research Questions

First, how do low-income Latino families with young children experience formal social supports? Second, how and in what ways does human flourishing arise from families’ interactions with formal social supports?

Qualitative Research Design

Because the research questions were about lived experience and its relation to a respondent-defined outcome, they were best-suited to an inductive, qualitative approach, which allowed me to approach the research questions in an open-ended manner. Still, three theories framed the formulation of the research questions, their terms, and the interview guide. The capabilities approach (Nussbaum, 2000; Sen, 1999) defines human flourishing in terms of the doing and being required to live the kind of life valued by individuals. Recognition theory

(Honneth, 1995) assumes that human flourishing arises intersubjectively, through the experience of recognition by others. The third theory, ecological systems theory (Bronfenbrenner, 1979), posits that human development is a function of activity, role, and interpersonal relationship. The three theories are compatible with the study’s research methodology, critical realist grounded theory (Oliver, 2012). Critical realism (Bhaskar, 1975/2008) is a paradigm of inquiry whose defining feature is the belief that reality is stratified. Grounded theory is an inductive research method, which means that the theory emerges from the data. In grounded theory, the researcher collects data, codes the themes that emerge from the data, constantly compares those themes back to the data in an ongoing emergent process, and eventually notes the theory or theories that have emerged from the data (Charmaz, 2006).

In employing critical realist grounded theory (Oliver, 2012) to address the research questions, I relied on data from semi-structured interviews. Using an interview guide (see 17

Appendices A, B, and C), I conducted interviews with 17 Latino mothers enrolled in at least one means-tested social program. I recruited the purposive sample at Mary’s Center, a local multi- service health organization. I conducted 16 interviews in Spanish and one interview in English

(depending on the respondent’s preference). A bilingual transcriptionist transcribed the audio recordings. Chapter III contains a more detailed explanation of the methods used.

Significance to Social Work

On a daily basis, social workers and other human service providers spend a large proportion of their time delivering services. Most human services research focuses either on service impact or on the delivery of social services (Axford, 2010). For example, research about program implementation examines variables such as dosage, participation rates, and quality

(Durlak & Dupre, 2008). Yet how clients experience social services remains an under-studied, under-theorized area. In order to start where our clients are, we need to achieve a more complex understanding of their experiences with the gestalt of social services they receive.

Thus, conceptually and methodologically, this study contributes to knowledge-building in an area of practice that is under-studied but integral to the profession’s mission and purpose.

Instead of viewing user experience in terms of discrete variables categorized as inputs and outputs, in this study I make different assumptions about human nature. In contributing to theory-building based on an alternative paradigm, this study creates new dialogue about how social workers might assess whole systems in terms that are human-centered, context-specific, critical, and therefore more emancipatory.

The lack of data is particularly noticeable with respect to minority populations. In developing theory grounded in a specific context and population, the study’s results inform efforts to implement, coordinate, and evaluate early childhood/anti-poverty systems delivery to 18

Latinos in the Washington, DC area. The study generates new knowledge that may be transferable (Lincoln, Lynham, & Guba, 2011) to other settings that serve Latinos, an under- studied population. Furthermore, early childhood service delivery is a burgeoning interdisciplinary field of practice that in recent years has attracted increasing numbers of social workers (Azzi-Lessing, 2010). In generating a critique concerning how and whether service systems promote flourishing among Latino families with young children, this study maintains social work’s commitment to service, diversity, human dignity, and person-in-environment with special attention to vulnerable and oppressed populations (NASW, 2008).

Summary

Anecdotal evidence suggests that clients often experience social services as helpful on the one hand, and dehumanizing on the other. Many social workers are hopeful that effective, humanizing service delivery lies in better application of technology and knowledge related to organizational dynamics and cultural competence. Others are more pessimistic, viewing all top- down, service-oriented approaches as inherently problematic (McKnight, 1997). Across the board, there is an assumption that formal social services should be a last resort—and that social workers should help clients activate their natural helping networks (Whittaker, Garbarino &

Associates, 1983). Yet social workers continue to advocate for the expansion of social services.

Clearly, social workers approach social service delivery with both concern and enthusiasm, but lack data or theory to elucidate the contradictions. In exploring how Latino clients experience social programs—and how that experience relates to family well-being—this dissertation contributes to an under-studied aspect of social work’s knowledge base. The next chapter is a review of existing literature, empirical and theoretical, related to the research question.

CHAPTER II

REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE

How do low-income Latino families with young children experience multiple social formal supports—and how does human flourishing arise from those interactions? This question remains largely unaddressed in the literature from social work and other applied social sciences.

Still, it is possible to glean fragments of relevant empirical information from empirical studies of

Latino sub-populations (e.g. foreign-born mothers living in the rural Midwest) experiencing specific problems (e.g. food insecurity) and/or receiving specific single programs (e.g. Head

Start). Some of those studies explore the lived experience of service users; others describe or seek connections between various aspects of program participation. Because this literature is scattered among many different fields, it does not lend itself to an exhaustive literature review.

Thus, I offer an overview of some of the literature related to Latino families and program access, participation, experience, and outcomes. Because I synthesize literature from so many fields, I include a table (see Table 2) that offers more detailed descriptive information about the studies that pertain to Latino populations. After reviewing relevant empirical literature, I explain the theories/perspective that ground my research question: the capabilities approach (Nussbaum,

2000; Sen, 1999), recognition theory (Honneth, 1995), and ecological systems theory

(Bronfenbrenner, 1979). Finally, I discuss selected qualitative studies that explore service use in ways that are compatible with the philosophical orientations of those theoretical frameworks.

19 20

Empirical Literature about Latinos and Formal Supports

It is difficult to ascertain what sort of role social programs play in the lives of Latino families who use them. Latinos’ day-to-day interactions with social programs remain largely invisible in most known qualitative studies that take an open-ended approach to lived experience

(Dornig et al., 2009; Mendez-Shannon, 2010; Ramirez, 2010; Reese, 2002). For example, in

Ramirez’s (2010) participatory digital storytelling study with Latinos enrolled in a literacy program, the participants’ stories included themes such as pregnancy, family, immigration, education, overcoming difficulties, faith, and the death of a loved one—but nothing about social programs. It seems likely that in the scheme of the Latino experience, social programs are not nearly as important as other aspects. Yet in Roy, Tubbs, and Burton’s (2004) ethnographic study of how low-income Chicago mother (including 36 Latinas) organize their time and manage resources, the women reported that they spent many hours each week at various institutions.

According to the researchers’ interpretations, efforts to coordinate formal supports with the demands of family and work took a physical and emotional toll on the mothers. Few other researchers have viewed social programs in the context of Latinos’ lived experiences in time and space. Instead, most researchers focus on program access, program participation, lived experience, or outcomes. In this literature review, I highlight research related to Latino parents’ access to social services, their experiences of those services, and the outcomes of the services provided.

Access to Services

A precursor to user experience is program access, defined as the extent to which service users gain entry to social programs. Whether and how Latinos enroll in programs may offer a lens into their attitudes about seeking formal support. For several decades, researchers have

21 known that even when eligible, Latinos and/or Latino immigrants have tended to access health and mental health care, food stamps, childcare vouchers, prekindergarten, and other social and educational programs in proportionally lower numbers than other groups (Currie, 2000;

Hernandez & Napierala, 2014; Keyes et al., 2012; Shlay, Weinraub, & Harmon, 2010). It appears that some programs enroll Latinos more successfully than other programs; for example, there is evidence that, among Latinos who qualify for both WIC and food stamps, many receive only WIC (Raffaeli & Wiley, 2013). There is some evidence that Latino immigrants are more likely to use Head Start than other immigrant groups (Santhiveeran, 2010).

There is evidence that for some Latinos, the benefits of some social programs do not outweigh the inconveniences they incur. In Roy et al.’s (2004) study, women often questioned whether benefits were worth the frustration and loss of control over their daily schedules. They were likely to reduce their interactions with agencies because it was difficult to balance them with other commitments that also took place during business hours. In another study included in

Table 2, community workers noted that undocumented parents were likely to forego food stamps altogether, because only U.S.-born children figure into the calculation, making benefit amounts very low (Rivera-Ottenberger, 2007).

There exists no definitive model explaining why low-income individuals forgo or drop out of social programs, but most researchers subscribe to ecologically-oriented models that account for variables at different levels (Gelberg, Andersen, & Leake, 2000; McCurdy, Gannon,

& Daro, 2001; Spielberger & Lyons, 2009). With respect to Latino clients, documented barriers to various social programs include: language, transportation, perceived need, stigma, discrimination, lack of information, transaction costs, and a perceived shortage of culturally and linguistically appropriate services (Aguilar-Gaxiola et al., 2012; Bauer, Chen, & Alegria, 2010; 22

Sano, Garasky, Greder, Cook, & Browder, 2011). This data is useful for program administrators, policy makers, and practitioners interested in enrolling and retaining Latino clients. However, in its categorical assumption that program enrollment is the most desirable outcome for individuals, studies that emphasize access cut off open-ended exploration of how parents experience social programs. The next section explores research related to how Latino clients experience social services.

User Experience of Social Supports

In recent years, in an effort to open the so-called black box of service provision and deepen understanding of why programs are differentially effective in different contexts, researchers have begun to explore program utilization and engagement variables such as participation, responsiveness, involvement, and provider-client relationship (Littel, Alexander, &

Reynolds, 2001). The conceptualization and measurement of these variables varies across studies, few of which focus exclusively on Latinos. Thus, it is difficult to extrapolate information about participation patterns among Latino clients of various social programs. There is some evidence from the Early Head Start literature that ethnicity is not a strong predictor of program engagement, although non-English-speaking Hispanic mothers were moderately more engaged in home visits (Raikes et al., 2006).

Because variables related to program participation say little about the meanings clients attribute to social programs in the context of everyday interactions, I focus on studies that shed light on user experience, an information technology term rarely employed by social workers.

Most of these studies relate to the following topic areas: service users’ perceptions of their experiences, descriptions of cultural misunderstandings, and research about self-advocacy and third-party service brokering. 23

Perceptions of experiences. There is evidence that, not without caveats, Latino parents are satisfied with the services they receive from parent mentors (Paris, 2008), health promoters

(promotoras) (Aguilar-Gaxiola et al., 2012), early intervention service coordinators (Bailey et al., 1999) and school-based special education services (Jimenez, 2011). In a study of migrant workers in New Jersey, the workers were satisfied with the concrete assistance provided by volunteer advocates because it allowed them the time to continue working, which was extremely important to them and their families (Cleaveland, 2010). Survey research conducted with multicultural consumers of family resource centers showed that clients were satisfied with service delivery variables such as how the staff treated them or whether they experienced language difficulties (O’Donnell & Giovannoni, 2006). Mothers enrolled in Head Start and home visiting programs have expressed gratitude and appreciation for social programs, contrasting the United States with their countries of origin, in which help is unavailable (Ornelas,

Perreira, Beeber, & Maxwell, 2009). For example, one Mexican immigrant mother enrolled in

Head Start said, "Here it is easier, because if you feel depressed, there are...groups which can help you...I have more help than what I expected" (Ornelas et al., p.15). Parents have been surprised and pleased that education is free in the United States (Ixa Plata-Potter & de Guzman,

2012).

Latino service users have also described stressful experiences with social programs.

Latino sub-groups in various settings (see Table 2) have described feelings of frustration, shame, and ineptitude related to language and communication barriers, lack of information, long wait times, transportation issues, and discrimination (Cristancho, Garces, Peters, & Mueller, 2008; Ixa

Plata-Potter & de Guzman, 2012; Jimenez, 2007; Sanchez-Birkhead, Kennedy, Callister, &

Miyamoto, 2011; Thomas, Medina, & Cohen, 2010). Latino service users have felt ashamed 24 about relying on mental health services, which they may consider more stigmatizing than educational services (Aguilar-Gaxiola et al., 2012). They have contrasted dependency on government programs with work, in which both men and women have found dignity and meaning (Parra-Cardona, Bulock, Imig, Villarruel, & Gold, 2006). Community-based providers have hypothesized that the idea of food as an entitlement is unfamiliar to many immigrants, who tend to feel uncomfortable accepting handouts (Rivera-Ottenberger & Werby, 2007).

It is not clear, however, whether experiences with social programs are more stressful for

Latino clients than for clients of other ethnicities. In a systematic review of how women experience prenatal care, Hispanic women were less likely to perceive discrimination than women of other ethnicities (Novick, 2009). However, in her qualitative dissertation about how

Latino parents navigated a school, Bickmore (2013) found that some Latino parents believed they were not as valued or influential as non-Latino parents. Language and/or acculturation may play a role in satisfaction; Latino parents receiving early intervention services who completed a survey in Spanish were less satisfied with early intervention services than Hispanic and non-

Hispanic parents who completed the survey in English (Olmsted et al., 2010).

Related to but not interchangeable with issues around language and acculturation, Latino clients are particularly vulnerable to fear and distrust. Many providers agree that Latinos often approach government-affiliated benefits with trepidation (Rivera-Ottenberger & Werby, 2007).

Concerns around deportation or the removal of children are themes that also emerge in qualitative studies with various service users (Ayón, Aisenberg & Erera, 2010; Uebelacker et al.,

2011). Sometimes this fear is generalized; other times it relates to specific events. For example, in the wake of immigration raids in Utah, many Latina participants in Baumann, Domenech, 25

Rodriguez, and Parra Cardona’s (2011) research study stopped attending parenting groups and stopped answering phone calls.

Of course, negative and positive experiences co-exist and interact. This is a topic that has not been explored extensively in the literature. One theme that has come up in qualitative studies is superación, roughly translated as overcoming adversity (Ramirez, 2010). Few respondents in qualitative studies have described this theme with respect to navigating bureaucracy. However, in Smith’s (2009) dissertation research with three Latino families with visually impaired children, one theme that emerged was the idea that the parents’ persistence fighting for services served their child. This knowledge produced pride and satisfaction among parents.

Cultural misunderstandings. Cultural misunderstanding is a theme that cuts across various qualitative studies of how Latinos experience special education programs. Harry’s

(1992) classic ethnographic study of Puerto Rican families in special education systems found that families exhibited strong deference to authority figures, and if they were dissatisfied with services, they were unlikely to speak up. She also concluded that families’ personalistic, context-reliant communication styles were very much at odds with special education systems, in which providers expect parents to express preferences and advocate for themselves. When misunderstandings ensued between parents and providers, the Puerto Rican parents tended to withdraw. Similarly, in a small study about how Mexican parents used their voices in child welfare cases, the researchers found that parents often spoke up, but then became silent when their voices were ridiculed, ignored, or used against them (Ayón et al., 2010). In that study, the factors that affected speaking up were perceptions of worker, immigration status, fears about losing child, and lack of knowledge. 26

Those studies support the idea that Latino clients are influenced by personalísmo and simpatía, cultural scripts that, along with familísmo, figure prominently in conceptual literature about culturally competent practice with Latinos (e.g. Behnke, Gonzalez, & Cox, 2010; Cohen,

2013; Falicov, 2000.) Simpatía requires individuals to promote harmony by respecting others and avoiding conflict (Triandis, Marin, Lisansky, & Betancourt, 1984). Personalísmo refers to the desirability of highly personable and relationships between individuals, including providers and clients (Behnke et al., 2010). Familísmo encompasses prioritizing family relationships, helping family members in need, and treating elders with respect (respeto) (Cohen, 2013).

There is some evidence that simpatía and personalísmo inform Latino parents’ interactions with social programs. For example, a study that explored the relevance of adapting a parenting intervention for Latino parents found that parents believed that parenting classes should include two values: respect and the value of family (Parra Cardona et al., 2009). In small studies of Latino service users receiving preventive services (Phillips & Paumgarten, 2008) or early childhood home visits (Paris, 2008), mothers described the relationship with their workers in terms of family relationships. More than service users of other ethnicities, Latino consumers of community-based family support services valued interpersonal ambience over tangible supports (O’Donnell & Giovannoni, 1999; 2006). Medicaid users valued social partnerships with their doctors, and preferred face-to-face contact over telephone management of depression medication (Uebelacker et al., 2011). Between Latino clients and daycare providers in an urban area, interactions tended to be particularly informal and warm (Small, 2006).

Reliance on service-brokers. There seems to be consensus that, because of linguistic and educational barriers, Latino service users often rely on third party support, either formal or informal, to help them access and navigate various social systems. For example, early childhood 27 home visiting programs such as Early Head Start might serve as a gateway to early intervention programs (Wall et al., 2005). In one study included in Table 2, Puerto Rican adults attending maternal support groups had fewer unmet service needs than those who did not attend groups

(Magaña, Seltzer, & Krauss, 2002). From the literature about families receiving child protective services, there is some evidence that when it comes to navigating social services, parents’ social support networks are of limited use, and formal service providers such as domestic violence advocates are more helpful (Ayón, 2011). However, in one survey of Midwestern immigrant mothers, they were more likely to describe informal supports as helpful (Raffaeli & Wiley,

2013)—even though they used community supports. Small’s (2006) study of 16 daycare centers in poor New York neighborhoods found that centers brokered services in a variety of ways that may replace the resource brokering that occurs informally in higher-income neighborhoods.

The form of third-party assistance whose dynamics have been studied most closely is language brokering, wherein Latino youth provide their parents with translation. It has been documented that this practice occurs frequently (Bacallao & Smokowski, 2007; Orellana,

Dorner, & Pulido, 2003). In one small study included in Table 1, parents reported that they appreciated the assistance from their children because it helped them meet their daily needs. In that same study, adolescents described language brokering as a step towards maturity, and the researchers interpreted it as a means of achieving a valued role in the family by helping families deal with the cost of getting ahead (Bacallao & Smokowski). A qualitative study of Latino immigrant parents and children living in Virginia had similar results, but also found that parents and children often experience feelings of embarrassment or discomfort. Parents were proud of their children’s bilingualism, but they felt embarrassed that they needed to rely on them (Corona et al., 2012). Thus, it appears that language brokering entails both positive and negative 28 experiences. The interplay between positive and negative experiences is an aspect of client well- being that bears further exploration. None of the studies reviewed in this section and summarized in Table 2 deal directly with human flourishing, a construct that, as will be discussed in a subsequent section, is not prevalent in mainstream social science research. The most direct form of engagement with the relationship between social programs and human flourishing can be found in research concerning outcomes for Latino families.

Outcomes of Social Programs for Latino Families

In most literature about social services, researchers often operationalize client well-being in terms of program outcomes, defined as predetermined measures of a program’s success. The evidence suggests that, overall, home-based and center-based early childhood programs (which almost always include referral, advocacy, and coordination with other formal social supports such as food stamps or health insurance) have, at best, modest positive impacts on families with young children (Brooks-Gunn & Markman, 2005; Gomby, 2007). Findings vary greatly across programs, probably as a function of differences in program implementation and research design

(Sweet & Appelbaum, 2004). There is some evidence that, in comparison with families from other groups, Latino immigrant families respond better to early literacy interventions (Astuto &

Allen, 2009; Raikes et al., 2006), but overall, there is not enough data to draw conclusions about the effectiveness of early literacy programs for ethnic minorities and English language learners

(Manz, Hughes, Barnabas, Bracaliello & Ginsburg-Block, 2010). Along similar lines, there is evidence that family preservation services promote positive child and parent outcomes (e.g. conduct, discipline, academic adjustment, physical care etc.) among Latino families; however, studies in different states have had conflicting findings when comparing outcomes between ethnic groups (Ayón & Lee, 2005; Bitonti, 2002; Courtney, Barth, Berrick, & Brooks, 1996) and 29 family preservation programs have not been shown to prevent out-of-home placement among children of any ethnicity (Al et al., 2012). Culturally-adapted mental health services conducted in Spanish have been shown to be moderately effective among Latinos (Griner & Smith, 2006).

Although it is difficult to establish causality, there is evidence that income-generating programs such as food stamps and WIC succeed in raising family incomes, and therefore help families avoid deeper levels of poverty associated with negative child outcomes (Vericker & Mills, 2012).

During the Great Recession, this was particularly evident: the official poverty rate rose by 2.7 percentage points, while the Supplemental Poverty Rate, which includes tax refunds and non- cash benefits, only rose by 1.5 percentage points (Cuddy, Sawhill, & Reeves, 2014).

Because most of the evaluation studies of early childhood and other programs focus on quantifiable measures, such as maternal depression scores, it is unclear how social programs promote and/or hinder aspects of human flourishing that are less quantifiable. One qualitative study of single Mexican mothers attending a parenting group found that parents gained self- knowledge and self-awareness as a result of their participation (Bermudez, Zak-Hunter, & Silva,

2011). Presumably, self-knowledge relates to well-being, but again, the connection is implicit and unexplained.

Thus, as this literature review has demonstrated, there exists very little knowledge directly related to the relationship between Latinos’ experiences of social services and their well- being. There is evidence that although Latinos often under-utilize social programs, presumably because of various barriers, they are often satisfied with services, particularly with respect to relationships with individual providers. They have expressed experiences of shame, frustration, mistrust, confusion, and stress. There is also evidence that Hispanic cultural scripts such as personalísmo and simpatía can influence their interactions with social programs, sometimes 30 creating misunderstandings. Latinos often rely on third parties (e.g. caseworkers and family members) to help them navigate social programs. With respect to discrete outcome measures, social services tend to have modest effects. All this information is useful, but it does not indicate whether or not—and how—human flourishing arises from Latinos’ interactions with entire social service systems. In comparison to most research studies, this study relies on broader, more open- ended version of human flourishing and formal social supports, thus filling a gap in the literature.

As the following section will demonstrate, the concepts included in the study’s research question

(interaction, experience and human flourishing) derive from theory.

Theoretical Framework

The theories and perspective that inform the research question include the following: recognition theory (Honneth, 1995), the capabilities approach (Nussbaum, 2000; Sen, 1999), and ecological systems theory (Bronfenbrenner, 1979). The first theory and perspective take a normative tack, which means that philosophically-grounded assertions about how things ought to be are central to their structures. The third theory is an explanatory theory designed to describe and predict human development in terms of conditions, processes, and variables. Because it is a developmental theory, ecological systems theory makes normative claims about whether developmental outcomes are optimal or problematic; however, ethics and justice are not at its core, as they are with the capabilities approach and recognition theory. Even though recognition theory is primarily normative, it also offers an explanatory account of social arrangements. This is not the case with the capabilities approach, which does not explain poverty or injustice

(Robeyns, 2005). Taken together, the two theories and one perspective frame the research questions: 1) How do low-income Latino families with young children experience social service 31 systems? 2) How and in what ways does human flourishing arise from families’ interactions with social service systems?

Honneth’s Recognition Theory

In the last few decades, Hegel’s (1807/1977) philosophical concept of recognition as affirmation and acknowledgement has experienced a revival among philosophers and social theorists (Honneth, 1995; Fraser, 1997; Taylor, 1994; Ricoeur, 2005). These thinkers have focused on Hegel’s idea, found primarily in his early writings from Jena, that human flourishing depends on the social relations established through a hard-fought struggle for intersubjective recognition between subjects. The term intersubjectivity refers to the reciprocal nature of subjects. Among the works that revive recognition, Honneth’s (1995) The Struggle for

Recognition: The Moral Grammar of Social Conflicts may be the one invoked most by social work scholars (Cortis, 2007; Houston, 2009; Houston, 2010; Houston & Dolan, 2008; Rossiter,

2014; Turney, 2012).

Honneth’s (1995) theory of recognition emerged from the critical tradition of the

Frankfurt School, an interdisciplinary school of philosophers and social theorists who, beginning in the 1930s, sought to integrate ideas from Marxism and psychoanalysis as they engaged in scholarship geared towards promoting emancipation via social critique (Jay, 1996). In the 1980s,

Honneth served as research assistant to Jürgen Habermas, considered a second-generation

Frankfurt School theorist. At the time of writing, Honneth was a professor of philosophy at

Columbia University and the University of Frankfurt. The Struggle for Recognition laid the framework for his recognition theory, sometimes referred to as theory of recognition, theory of social recognition, or theory of intersubjective recognition. Honneth (2008; 2012) further refined his ideas in subsequent books and lectures—as well as in an exchange with his colleague, Nancy 32

Fraser, who maintained that Honneth’s definition of recognition does not adequately capture the need for the economic redistribution of resources (Fraser & Honneth, 2003). Following Fraser’s reasoning, some social workers have argued that Honneth’s theory is narrowly psychological in scope, and therefore only consistent with social work’s focus when used in concert with an approach that also emphasizes resource redistribution (Garrett, 2010; Webb, 2010).

For Honneth (1995; 2008), however, psychologism is inevitable because any discussion about the politics of recognition necessarily begins with the assumption that human identity emerges intersubjectively. In order to advance Hegel’s (1807/1977) ideas beyond the realm of the metaphysical, Honneth drew on Mead’s (1934) empirically-based concept of self as product of social interactions. Honneth also found empirical support for his ideas in Winnicott’s (1965) object relations theory, which described the child’s development as a reciprocal process in which mother and child negotiate what Honneth (1995) described as the “tense balance between fusion and ego-demarcation” (p. 176). This negotiation between mother and child formed the template for how the adult child would interact with others. Using this reciprocal process as his starting point, Honneth argued that recognition is not simply about a human’s ability to take the perspective of another. He viewed recognition as an unconscious, pre-cognitive stance “that reaches into the affective sphere, a stance in which we can recognize in another person the other of our own self, our fellow human” (Honneth, 2008, p.151).

Again drawing on the work of Hegel and Mead, Honneth (1995) identified three modes of intersubjective recognition: love, rights, and solidarity. The capacities associated with these three modes comprise the conditions necessary for the individual to identify his or her goals and desires. The first sphere, love, includes both the parent-child relationship and other relationships of friendship and love. Ideally, through the process described by object relations theorists, the 33 developing person achieves a certain degree of self-confidence, which Honneth viewed as the ability to express one’s needs and desires without fearing abandonment (Anderson, 1995). The second form of recognition, rights, is about legal status. When individuals experience themselves as subjects entitled to the same dignity and political participation as other subjects, they have self-respect. The final form of recognition, solidarity, involves shared interests, concerns, or values. When individuals feel that they have something unique to contribute to a community, they experience self-esteem.

Consistent with the idea of recognition as an intersubjective stance, Honneth conceived of self-confidence, self-respect, and self-esteem as dynamic processes that depend on mutual recognition between subjects. According to Honneth, self-confidence, self-respect, and self- esteem comprise the conditions for individuals to be able to identify and pursue their interests.

Thus, freedom and autonomy take on a relational cast.

The theory’s intersubjective stance also informs its normative content. As Honneth

(2008) clarified in later writings, the recognitional stance is not limited to respect or benevolence.

For example, one can recognize another with expressions of aggression, coldness, or contempt.

Yet when people understand that others are fellow humans, they feel compelled to treat them humanly. It is from this condition that recognitional norms arise, taking different forms in different societies. What influenced the development of these norms—and what should ground recognitional norms philosophically in efforts to improve society—is the recognitional stance itself, which Honneth viewed as a universal and elementary structure.

To Honneth (1995), then, all social struggles can be interpreted as struggles for recognition. His critique of Marxist interpretations of social movements is that they fail to connect objective inequalities in the distribution of material goods with “the everyday web of 34 moral feelings” (p. 161). Armed with object relations (Winnicott, 1965) and symbolic interaction (Mead, 1934), Honneth framed the experience of inequality as a form of moral disrespect. He then demonstrated that moral disrespect exists in the context of a larger social process in which the potential for normative recognition unfolds. Although Honneth’s theory is a grand theory intended to critique societies, it also operates on the micro- and mezzo- levels.

For this reason, it frames the everyday struggles for recognition that occur as individuals interact with social services programs. For example, the indignation that service users feel when they receive rude treatment from an agency receptionist is not idiosyncratic; it is part of larger power relations. The client’s experience of disrespect has a moral dimension because the act violates the conditions for identity formation.

The Capabilities Approach

Like Honneth’s recognition theory, the capabilities approach (Nussbaum, 2000; Sen,

1999) offers a normative, process-oriented framework for understanding human well-being.

Unlike recognition theory, which theorizes human flourishing in abstract terms (recognition, self-confidence, self-respect, and self-esteem), the capabilities approach offers concepts that are arguably concrete enough to inform the development and evaluation of policy. The framework centers around capabilities, understood as the conditions (both internal and external to the individual) that offer people the freedom to realize their fullest human potential. Capabilities differ from functionings, which refer to what people actually achieve or become. According to the capabilities approach, a just society promotes and creates capabilities; whether or not people actualize those capabilities is a matter of personal choice. For example, it has become increasingly common for nutrition programs to work with farmer’s markets to ensure that recipients can purchase fresh vegetables with their vouchers. This promotes the capability to 35 ingest fresh, unprocessed food—a capability that many consider essential to optimal health.

Whether a client chooses to use the voucher at the farmer’s market is a function, and program evaluations should account for individuals who had the capability to access the vegetables—but chose to forego that opportunity. In other words, whether or not an individual exercises a capability should be a matter of free choice.

First articulated in the 1980s by economist Amartya Sen and then refined further by philosopher Martha Nussbaum (2000; 2011), the capabilities approach most commonly informs work in the developing world. However, Nussbaum (2011) has made it clear that the capabilities approach is also relevant to social issues in more affluent societies. Social workers have begun to use the capabilities approach as a means of operationalizing the profession’s social justice value (Morris, 2002), but only a few known theoretical or empirical works have used it as a framework to discuss how and to what extent U.S. social policy promotes the capabilities of vulnerable populations (Banerjee & Damman, 2013; Murphy, 2010; Pyles & Banerjee, 2010).

In focusing on capabilities, Sen (1980) departed from the prevailing assumption that human well-being is best-defined exclusively in terms of economic prosperity or the fulfillment of desires. Instead of evaluating policy by measuring the achievement of goods, policy makers ought to focus on what people can do and be. Thus, what matters is the extent to which people have the freedom to live the kind of life that, upon reflection, they choose to lead (Robeyns,

2005). For example, following the capabilities approach’s line of reasoning, case management services should not be evaluated solely on their ability to help individuals secure and maintain employment and/or means-tested benefits that lift them out of poverty. Instead, case management services should also be evaluated based on whether they help people lead lives that are, in the words of Nussbaum (2000), more human. 36

But what does it means to live life more humanly? Sen (2004) has avoided prescriptive lists, suggesting that capabilities be determined through context-specific democratic process.

Nussbaum (2011) has argued that not all capabilities are equally valuable (e.g. the freedom to harm others is a capability that societies should not promote), and therefore it is important to identify a set of basic capabilities. Nussbaum (2000) has identified ten capabilities associated with human flourishing: life; health; bodily integrity, senses, imagination and thought; emotions; practical reason; affiliation; other species; play; and control over one’s environment. Applying

Nussbaum’s capabilities to the previous example, if case managers help clients maintain health benefits, they successfully nurture the capabilities associated with life and health. However, proponents of the capabilities approach would also argue that case management services should be evaluated on the extent to which they support other capabilities, too. If case managers fail to attend to client self-determination, then services compromise the client’s ability to reflect on her circumstances (practical reason). They also constrain the client’s ability to play an active role in making the choices that govern her life (control over one’s environment).

Ecological Theory of Human Development

The final theory that informs the research question is Bronfenbrenner’s (1979; 1992) ecological theory of human development, an explanatory theory from developmental psychology.

Like social work approaches that frame human development in ecological terms (Germain &

Gitterman, 1980; Meyer, 1983), Bronfenbrenner’s ecological theory of human development is an offshoot of general systems theory (von Bertalaffny, 1969). Defining human development as the lasting changes in how individuals perceive and navigate their environments, ecological theory views the developing person’s environment in terms of five nested structures: microsystem, mesosystem, exosystem, macrosystem, and chronosystem. It is important to note that 37

Bronfenbrenner’s categories are different from the biopsychosocialspiritual categories taught in social work curricula (e.g. Hepworth, Rooney, Dewberry, Rooney, Strom-Gottfried, & Larsen,

2013). For Bronfenbrenner, the microsystem is the setting that contains the developing person

(e.g. home, school, social services agency). The mesosystem is the interrelation between two or more settings in which the developing person participates (e.g when a pediatrician consults with a child’s teacher, a mesosystem forms). The exosystem is a setting that does not involve the developing person as an active participant—but both affects and is affected by the developing person (e.g. a child’s parent’s workplace). The macrosystem comprises consistencies across systems that exist at the level of culture, belief, ideology, or policy (e.g. organized religion or

Latino identity). The chronosystem adds the dimension of time.

Ecologically-informed researchers have tended to focus on Bronfenbrenner’s nested structures in terms of discrete contextual variables that affect the developing person (Tudge,

Mokrona, Hatfield, & Karnik, 2009). Inquiry along these lines represents a misinterpretation of

Bronfenbrenner’s work, which is as concerned with person, process, and time as it is with context. Bronfenbrenner (1998) clarified this point in his later work, but even in early iterations of his theory (1979), he emphasized that the objective world matters less than how people perceive it. In theorizing about the microsystem, he emphasized activity, interpersonal relationship, and role. Activities are the tasks in which individuals engage. Interpersonal relations are the connections between individuals in a setting. Drawing on Mead (1934),

Bronfenbrenner defined role as a set of behaviors and expectations associated with a position in society. He theorized that other systems affect what occurs in the microsystem—but that activity, role, and relationships bear directly upon human development. 38

Of the three theories described in this section, Bronfenbrenner’s has had the most influence on social work. It is closely related to the ecological perspective (Germain &

Gitterman, 1980; Meyer, 1983), a social work approach that located problems of functioning in the transactions between person and environment. Bronfenbrenner was instrumental in the development of the Head Start program. His work has informed numerous studies about how child and family well-being relate to a host of variables—including participation in social programs.

How These Theories Inform the Study

As discussed in the first chapter, policy makers tend to view various means-tested social programs (e.g. Medicaid, Head Start) and community services (e.g. legal aid, employment programs) in terms that originated in classical systems theory (von Bertalaffny, 1969): inputs, outputs, throughputs, etc. However, thanks in part to the popularity of logic models (Kellogg

Foundation, 2004), systems thinking is so pervasive that few are aware of the theory-laden nature of the concepts they discuss. In systems theory terms, program inputs include needy clients, taxpayer dollars, and donations. The throughputs are services and goods (or vouchers) delivered and administered by government and private-sector employees equipped with computers, information technology, social work knowledge, etc. The various programs that serve families with young children (among other eligible individuals) are loosely coordinated, but sometimes offer duplicative services. The outputs are people whose various needs have been met. There is general consensus that, with respect to families with young children, the purpose of social programs is to meet basic needs, protect children, level the economic playing field, and help families become more self-sufficient (Halpern, 1999). 39

To illustrate current thinking about social programs, consider the typical case scenario of

“Rosario.” Rosario is a single Latina mother who works as a hotel housekeeper. She receives

WIC and food stamps for her child, Estefany, in order to meet Estefany’s nutritional needs.

Estefany receives healthcare at a multi-service agency paid for by Medicaid; Rosario does not have insurance, but the same agency provides her medical care free of charge. Estefany is also enrolled in a Head Start program with a wrap-around childcare component. The Head Start program is run out of a settlement house that relies on blended funding. The purpose of the early childhood day programs is to offer daycare and provide early stimulation that will offset the presumably negative effects of poverty. If the system functions efficiently and seamlessly,

Rosario’s and Estefany’s medical, nutritional, childcare, developmental, and educational needs will be met. Estefany will graduate high school, put off childbirth until she is married, and find a good job. One day, the family members will be able to meet their needs without relying on means-tested social services and/or charity organizations. They will contribute to society instead of depleting resources through criminality or poor mental health. To many, that is the rationale for investing in social services. From this study’s point of view, that line of thinking is problematic.

For that reason, I have chosen theories and approaches that challenge the case illustration’s version of how social services benefit clients. In different ways, all three theoretical frameworks differ from the prevailing problem-focused, mechanistic version of social service delivery—a version that parallels the medical model. Using the terms of the medical model terms as articulated by Duncan, Miller, Wampold, and Hubble (2010), the previous scenario rests on the following assumptions: 1) mother and child have identifiable deficits predictive of future problems; 2) various programs step in to meet their needs; 3) through 40 efficiency and coordination, the programs fulfill their purpose; and 4) the family is therefore able to resolve its deficits and conform to normative standards. This linear version of events has strong resonance in U.S. political culture—but where is the person? How do Rosario and

Estefany’s actual lived experiences of social programs fit into the proposed scheme? Do mother and daughter actually receive what systems purport to deliver? What are the unintended consequences of their interactions with social programs? Do any self-fulfilling prophecies arise?

What are Rosario and Estefany’s perceived needs? What are their preferred outcomes? And to move from thick description of particular cases to a theory of user experience: to what extent does human flourishing arise from Latino parents’ experiences of social programs?

The capabilities approach offers a specific, person-centered means both to justify the relevance of those questions and to conceptualize human flourishing. Although Sen (1999) and

Nussbaum (2000) focused primarily on the inadequacy of gross domestic product (GDP) as a metric of a society’s success, their work also problematizes the idea that social services evaluation should turn on outcomes measured in depersonalized terms. If SNAP coupons lift

Rosario and Estefany above the poverty level, but the associated stigma prevents Rosario from leading the kind of life she values, then social workers should take heed. But what if, as is the implicit assumption of some welfare-to-work programs, the stigma pushes Rosario to secure a higher-paying job—and she ultimately appreciates that nudge towards independence? Or perhaps there simply will never be enough high-paying jobs to go around—and social scientists have a responsibility to critique the construct of economic independence. These angles remain unexplored and under-theorized. As the capabilities approach intimates, instead of focusing solely on economic outcomes, researchers should ask how and whether social programs help individual human beings live the kind of life they value. And in this study, the idea of living the 41 kind of life one values served as the definition of human flourishing. Because doing and being circumscribe the study’s definition of human flourishing, they also informed some of the interview guide questions (e.g. “What kind of life do you want to live? What do you want yourself and your children to be able to do? What do you want your children to be like when they grow up?”) (See Appendix A.)

The interview guide also reflected Bronfenbrenner’s process-oriented, relationship-based, interactionist concept of the microsystem. For example, Bronfenbrenner’s three aspects of microsystemic interactions—activity, role, and relationship—inform the interview guide (e.g.

“Let’s talk about how you and your family experience all these different programs and services.

Probes: Where do you receive this [program/service]? What do you do there? What is it like?

Who do you interact with? How do you see yourself when you interact with ______?”).

Bronfenbrenner’s ecological approach also highlights the existence of the mesosystem, the system that comes into existence when two microsystems interact. Bronfenbrenner theorized that rich and varied mesosystems support human development. As will be discussed in more detail in Chapter III, I did not set out to verify or falsify Bronfenbrenner’s hypothesis in this qualitative, inductive study. Instead, I simply used the mesosytem concept as a focal point for exploring how people experience programs.

Finally, the research question also reflected recognition theory, which casts user experience and human flourishing in terms of intersubjectivity, the philosophical stance that draws attention to the reciprocal nature of human action. Intersubjectivity is compatible with the capabilities approach and ecological systems theory, but it is not central to their structures. Even though Bronfenbrenner emphasized the importance of relationship and interaction in the microsystem, he did not theorize extensively about their nature. Sen (1999) has demonstrated 42 relational leanings, which are often overlooked because his unit of attention is the individual

(Smith & Seward, 2009). As Pereira (2013) has argued, the capabilities approach’s dissonance between intersubjectivity and individualism can be bridged by incorporating Honneth’s (1995) presumption of recognitional autonomy, which posits that an individual’s self-concept emerges from encounters with others’ attitudes towards that individual. A just society acknowledges an individual’s worth. Thus, as an explicitly recognitional version of human freedom and human flourishing infuse this study’s theoretical lens, whether or not social programs promote human dignity and engender self-respect becomes a central concern. It also becomes necessary to think critically about the extent to which social circumstances and other contextual elements constrain people’s assessments of the kind of life they value. In this sense, recognition theory challenges scholars to avoid taking data at face value, and to remain attuned to the ways power and oppression shape experience. Attunement to these concerns imbues the studies I review in the next section, which turns to selected qualitative literature informed by the three theories that shaped this study’s research question.

Theoretically Congruent Empirical Literature About Service Users

A small number of known empirical studies have examined the connections between user experience and human flourishing, although none of these studies focused on Latino service users. In most of the selected qualitative studies, the researchers approached service users’ lived experiences through either an intersubjective (Hegel, 1807/1977) or interactionist (Mead, 1934) lens. Although there is much overlap between intersubjectivity and interactionism, intersubjectivity tends to focus on interpersonal encounters between human subjects, while interactionism highlights how symbols and discourses shape the development of self and society.

Recall that both intersubjective and interactionist assumptions informed Honneth’s (1995) work 43 on recognition. Bronfenbrenner (1979), too, drew on interactionism in his discussion of the microsystem, and although he did not make explicit use of intersubjectivity, he did emphasize the role of relationships in microsystems. Some studies from industrialized countries have also explored the extent to which social programs promote the doing and being that allows people to live the kinds of lives they value (Nussbaum, 2000; Sen, 1999). Finally, a handful of the following studies have examined how clients experience mesosystems, which Bronfenbrenner described as the interactions between microsystems.

User Experience Through the Lenses of Intersubjectivity and Recognition

Similar to Honneth’s work on recognition and human flourishing, Neander and Skott’s

(2006) study of Swedish families facing adversity found that family resilience and well-being emerged from ordinary encounters characterized by mutual understanding between individuals.

Neander and Skott used phenomenological narrative analysis to interpret 11 joint interviews conducted with two parties: a parent who identified relationship problems with children, and an important person (social worker, principal, pre-school teacher, youth leader, etc.) identified by the parent as beneficial in the development of either the family or the child. The collective narrative that crystallized from the 11 interviews was about emerging trust between parents and important people. This process required them to overcome obstacles associated with past experiences of other helpers who did not value them and/or their children. Misunderstandings ensued, but trust emerged nonetheless—in some cases because parents understood that the important people had good intentions. It became apparent that the important people acted in accord with specific orientations, which often took the form of supporting clients and recognizing their strengths. These orientations tended to supersede bureaucratic requirements.

Instead of trying to change the children, the important people sought out new contexts that 44 nourished child and parent development (e.g. finding positive experiences outside of the pre- school). What mattered most to parents were the small, everyday events—for example, telephoning their social workers or watching their home visitor greet the children. The result of the work between parents and important people was a new narrative about the child; for example, one child went from being the black sheep to the star athlete. Overall, Neander and Skott’s work suggested that improved family functioning emerged in the context of supportive interactions

(important meetings) with trusted service providers (important people). The authors did not reference Honneth (1995), but in their analysis they highlighted that pivotal relationships existed against the backdrop of interactions characterized by misrecognition.

Several other works that assume intersubjectivity elucidated the actions of workers and clients in the context of service provision. Using grounded theory and thematic analysis,

Longhoefer, Kubek, and Floersch (2010) conducted ethnographic work with Midwestern case management clients diagnosed with chronic mental illness. They found that case managers and clients engaged in four types of activities: doing for, doing with, standing by to admire, and doing for oneself. They concluded that, given both the dependent nature of the human being and the chronicity of mental illness, it was necessary for clients and case managers to cycle between those four modes. Still, the researchers found that “case managers often get stuck” (p. 17) in the doing for mode. The researchers hypothesized that the over-use of doing for contributes to burn- out and turnover. Another relevant study (Hidalgo, 2010) also found that practitioners providing services to the homeless were quick to intervene to address perceived deficiencies. The researcher proposed that those interventions may have compromised clients’ abilities to act on the world in ways congruent with their own meaning-making systems. 45

The purpose of Hidalgo’s (2010) dissertation was to explore opportunities for humanization in the relationships between homeless clients and their service providers.

Hidalgo’s concept of humanization shares the assumption of intersubjectivity that underpins

Honneth’s (1995) normative ideas about recognition. Drawing on Buber’s (1923/1970) theology,

Freire’s (2011/1968) critical pedagogy, and Roger’s (1951) client-centered, humanistic theory of psychotherapy, Hidalgo defined humanization as standing in relation to another person in ways that affirm humanity and human potential. Honneth would agree that there is a moral imperative to recognize others’ humanity; however, recognition theory is more complex than humanization because it posits that recognition is necessarily the result of an intersubjective struggle. Indeed, evidence of this struggle surfaced in Hidalgo’s study. From his analysis of interviews with 15 service providers, Hidalgo concluded that existing definitions of humanization are inadequate for guiding practitioner-client interactions in the context of service-delivery to homeless individuals.

He found that characteristics of the service settings (e.g. organizational accountability or conflicts between client preferences and agency/provider procedures), as well as providers’ needs to erect boundaries for psychological protection, challenged the usability of humanization as originally theorized.

Like Hidalgo’s (2010) work, Cortis’ (2007) study of 66 users of parent support groups in

Australia assumed that human dignity—and not resource efficiency alone—should be a relevant criterion for evaluating community programs. Instead of relying on the construct of humanization, Cortis made explicit use of Honneth’s (1995) and Fraser’s (2003) versions of recognition theory. In describing and interpreting parents’ assessments of the family support services they received, Cortis found that Honneth’s intersubjective approach to recognition was more relevant than Fraser’s (which focused on resource redistribution). However, Cortis also 46 found that respondents appreciated the way that social programs served to ameliorate some of the material conditions of poverty. Overall, she concluded that service users’ program evaluation criteria had nothing to do with resource efficiency and everything to do with service performance.

They assessed service quality in relation to their aspirations for self-realization and respect, describing outcomes in terms of enhancing love relationships with other family members, feeling more confident, retaining custody of children, gaining awareness of their rights, and generating social connections among other service users. The findings from this study fit into Honneth’s three categories of recognition: love, legal status, and solidarity.

Interactionist Lens

There also exists qualitative empirical work in social work and sociology that does not necessarily rely on intersubjective interpretations of human nature, but does draw attention to how symbols, values, norms, and roles (Mead, 1934) conscribe human behavior in service provision contexts. In his self-ethnography of front-lines social work in Canada, de Montigny

(1995) attributed a laid-off millworker’s shame and despondence about receiving public assistance to stigma perpetuated by media, government officials, and employers, as well as prevailing ideas about manliness. Stanhope’s (2012) interactionist ethnographic work with case managers and formerly homeless clients found that structural aspects of an evidence-based program determined the sites of engagement (clients’ homes, community, office) and the relatively collaborative nature of client and worker activities. As clients and workers interacted in those contexts, intimacy resulted, and clients’ ties to workers and program strengthened. The researcher attributed the program’s high rates of success to the human connections that resulted from those interactions. Conversely, numerous qualitative studies of public assistance users before and after welfare reform have concluded that recipients of public benefits are likely to 47 experience stigma and shame perpetuated by interactions with welfare workers (Cleaveland,

2008; Seccombe, 1999; Stuber & Schlesinger, 2006) and private landlords who prefer not to accept housing vouchers (Teater, 2011).

Responding to the privatization of welfare services, Kissane (2012) extended this research to users of the networks of services provided by non-profits. In her grounded theory study of 20 white and Hispanic Philadelphia women receiving aid from nonprofit and public agencies, she found that women were hesitant to use nonprofit services such as food banks or settlement houses. When asked, the women said they thought that the services should be reserved for others who were more in need. The respondents did not approach government aid with the same restraint because they did not perceive a scarcity of government resources.

Kissane viewed the economic differences between respondents and the hypothetical needy others as “microscopic” (p. 199), and attributed respondents’ insistence that others were “worse off”

(p.199) as a way to demonstrate their own “self-reliance, self-discipline, and resiliency” (p. 199).

She also found that when women experienced disrespect in the form of questioning perceived as

“nosy” (p. 204), they often rebelled by withdrawing and forgoing aid. According to Kissane’s interpretation, their passive protest bore “them little fruit beyond perhaps bolstering their self- image as self-reliant, self-sacrificing mothers” (p. 205). In other words, their decisions to forego aid did not produce human flourishing, and may have prevented them from meeting their families’ basic needs. In interpreting the women’s actions through the lens of moral economy, which refers to the concept that economic transactions are informed by shared values, beliefs, and norms, Kissane identified neo-liberal notions of individualism and personal responsibility as the discourses that influenced how the women managed their images. 48

Kissane’s work, along with the other studies that approach service user experience using interactionist and intersubjective lenses, is particularly relevant to the current study’s theoretically-grounded research question because it explores the processes that service users experience as they engage with social programs. Most of this research is descriptive in nature, although it certainly has social justice undercurrents. What has been explored less is the extent to which these interactions make people more human.

Capabilities and Human Flourishing

Only in recent years have scholars begun to apply the capabilities approach (Nussbaum,

2000; Sen, 1999) to social change efforts in affluent countries. However, as shown by Volkert and Schneider’s (2011) survey, few of those applications pertain to service use. Most studies with individuals from more affluent countries use or develop quantitative measures to assess various dimensions of capabilities and/or find relationships between variables. Studies tend to focus on single or multiple countries, or on specific groups in countries. Database searches revealed few studies concerned with how and whether human flourishing arises from clients’ interactions with formal social supports.

The only known empirical study that sheds light on the relationship between human flourishing and social programs in an affluent society is Schischka, Dalziel, and Saunders’

(2008) comparative case study of a poverty alleviation program in New Zealand and a community development program in Samoa. Focus group participants in the New Zealand program, which created community gardens, mentioned numerous gains unrelated to income, such as being part of a community, living a healthy life, and increasing self-confidence and status. The participants spoke at length about how the gardens gave purpose to their lives.

Harvesting produced pride. People also believed that being outside and performing gardening 49 was beneficial to their health. Unexpectedly, participants spoke not only about learning new skills, but also about discovering capabilities they already possessed. It is not surprising that activity and place—working in a community garden—figured so prominently in discussions about how participants benefited from the program. This begs the question, how do service users’ interactions in waiting rooms, in offices, in transit between appointments, contribute or detract from their well-being?

Mesosystems and Interprofessional Practice

As discussed earlier, most of the research about service integration has focused on its organizational aspects, and therefore only a few known studies address how clients experience the connections between social programs. In their phenomenological study of how Swedish service users experience participation in multi-professional settings, Kvarnström, Willumsen,

Andersson-Gäre, and Hedburg (2012) interviewed 22 individuals receiving services in obesity, chronic pain, and short-term placement needs. They found that service users held very different conceptions of service participation. The five categories included: transmitting information to providers, service user makes choice, comfortable relationships, opportunities for increased understanding, and conditions for participation among service users. The comfortable relationships category confirmed Shaw’s (2008) findings that Canadian health service users favored interprofessional practitioners who were affable, available, and able. Their findings in the category conditions for participation challenges the idea that all service users are capable of being active participants in their care, as prevailing conceptions promote. An ethnographic study by Todahl, Linville, Smith, Barnes, and Miller (2006) of a collaborative family health care center in the southeastern United States also examined, among other things, how clients and practitioners experience collaborative practices that purport to be comprehensive. The 50 investigators concluded that when therapeutic services were offered in the same building as medical services, that inspired confidence and hope among patients. Noting that patients tended to hold doctors in high esteem, they hypothesized that physical proximity between doctors and therapists may have led to a transfer of confidence. These two studies demonstrate that different people experience mesosytemic interactions differentially—and the experience of mesosystems can produce hope and confidence.

Conclusion

As demonstrated by this literature review, this study is not the first to approach user experience of social programs in light of interactionism and intersubjectivity. Less common is empirical research that places human flourishing at its center. In addition, what has been absent from the known literature is exploration of how Latino families’ experiences of social services contribute to and/or detract from their ability to live life more humanly.

The formulation of such a research question emerged from a narrative analysis of an interview I conducted with a recently immigrated Central American mother participating in early childhood home visitation services offered by a community-based health clinic (Segal, 2013).

Structural, thematic, and dialogic analysis found that the mother’s satisfaction with the program rested on its relational and experiential aspects —and not its outcomes. More specifically, her satisfaction was contingent on sharing experiences with her home visitors and receiving their acts of emotional support, service linking, and advocacy. Those findings shed light on program satisfaction. They also lent support to recognition theory because the themes that emerged from the analysis resonated strongly with the three forms of recognition described by Honneth (1995).

However, the study offered little insight into how the home visiting program contributed to family flourishing. I wanted to go beyond perception and satisfaction in order to achieve a more 51 theoretical understanding of the processes and conditions that help and/or hinder family flourishing. Furthermore, as the mother described her interactions with various professionals and agencies, it became clear that the home visiting program was part of a larger gestalt of formal

(and informal) supports—and therefore could not be viewed in isolation. Influenced by those concerns, I used the theories discussed in this chapter to clarify the terms of the research question.

What drove its construction, however, was critical realism (Bhaskar, 1975/2008), the paradigm of inquiry I describe in the next chapter. In addition to describing the paradigm of inquiry that informed the study, the next chapter is about the study’s research methodology, critical realist grounded theory (Oliver, 2012). The discussion will include all aspects of the study’s research design.

CHAPTER III

METHODOLOGY

In line with the theories discussed in the previous chapter, this study’s methodology rests on interactionist, intersubjective assumptions about human nature. In this chapter’s discussion of critical realism (Bhaskar, 1975/2008), I describe some of the philosophical assumptions that inform the study’s research questions. I justify the use of critical realist grounded theory (Oliver,

2012) as a qualitative research method. The chapter also includes all other aspects of the study’s design, including sampling, interview guide, data collection, data analysis, rigor and trustworthiness, and ethical considerations.

The study’s research questions, presented in detail in Chapter I, are as follows:

How do low-income Latino families with young children experience formal social supports? How and in what ways does human flourishing arise from families’ interactions with formal social supports?

Research Design

Critical Realism

Critical realism (Bhaskar, 1975/2008) is a paradigm of inquiry whose proponents posit that reality exists on multiple, interacting levels as events unfold in open systems. Critical realism, which has gained currency in North America as a useful paradigm for social work research (Anastas, 2011; Longhofer, Floersch, & Hoy, 2012), is partially compatible with the so- called new or post-foundational research paradigms (e.g. constructivist, participatory, and critical approaches) summarized by Lincoln, Lynham, and Guba (2011). Although there is great variation among new paradigm researchers, all stand against the positivist, empiricist assumption that social reality is objective, essential, and external. Unlike post-positivists, who blame the

52 53 fallibility of knowledge primarily on measurement error, most new paradigm researchers maintain that reality itself is fluid and open to interpretation (Lincoln et al.). Critical realists subscribe in part to this subjectivist ontology, meaning that they view some levels of reality as mutable. However, they argue that some aspects of reality are indeed essential.

Put differently, critical realists differentiate between the world and the human experience of the world—and engage extensively with multiple, interacting levels of reality. Unlike strong constructivists, critical realists believe that some objects have essential properties. This is particularly true for minerals and non-human species; still, most critical realists agree that, despite cultural variations, human beings have certain attributes and features that define them.

Institutions, bureaucracies, and other human artifacts also possess certain essential features, but because reality unfolds in open systems, new objects with new properties constantly emerge and interact. For example, as model social programs go to scale in diverse contexts, their very natures transform—and it is erroneous to assume that scaled up programs would produce the same results as model programs. However, that does not preclude the existence of relatively consistent underlying change mechanisms that may or may not be activated, depending upon the circumstances.

Critical realists posit that reality has three levels: the empirical, the actual, and the real

(Bhaskar, 1975/2008). Following Kempster and Parry (2011), I use the terms empirical, events, and deep in order to avoid confusion. The empirical domain comprises our experience of the world, in which preconceptions (e.g. theories) inevitably mediate information. Events exist in space and time, whether or not human beings experience them. The deep domain is the dimension of reality that humans can never observe, but can only infer through its effects.

Because events unfold in open systems, deep causal properties may not always be activated. For 54 that reason, statistical regularity does not suggest causality (Sayer, 2011). The defining project of critical realism, then, is to uncover the mechanisms and processes that under certain conditions produce events in the world (Danermark, Ekstrom, Jakobsen, & Karlsson, 2002).

Critical realists assume that even though generative mechanisms are not always measurable or observable, they still exist. The focus is not on the effects produced in the world; instead, it is on the potential to produce effects. Thus, there is a strong focus not only on what is, but on what is possible.

To offer a relevant example that concretizes these concepts, consider again the hypothetical case of Rosario and Estefany, the undocumented Latino family described in the previous chapter. From a critical realist perspective, any knowledge about how and whether social services help Rosario and Estefany would exist primarily in the empirical domain, mediated by the questions I ask, the lenses through which Rosario understands my questions and fashions her responses, and the lenses through which I filter Rosario’s responses. A constructivist researcher would stop there, viewing my research findings as the local, co- constructed product of my encounter with Rosario (and other respondents). A critical realist, on the other hand, would assume that certain aspects of family flourishing—for example, whether

Estefany receives the nutrition necessary for healthy brain development—exist outside the realm of human meaning-making. However, a critical realist would also recognize that Rosario,

Estefany, their service providers, I, and other researchers may or may not accurately capture those events that actually unfolded; it is possible to achieve a precise and accurate understanding of the brain, but human knowledge is fallible. What researchers will never measure—but may infer—is whether there exists some latent deep mechanism or condition (e.g. intersubjective recognition as described by Honneth, 1995, or any of the functionings articulated by Nussbaum, 55

2000) that, under specific circumstances, engenders human flourishing. In this research project,

I am interested in both the events and the deep aspects of user experience that emerge from the interview and the analysis. I am also aware that I am constrained by the empirical context of the question formulation, the research encounter, and the act of interpretation.

In addition to its ontologically deep version of the social world, another important aspect of critical realism is its explicitly emancipatory aims (Bhaskar, 1975/2008). Like all versions of social science that employ the label critical, critical realism purports that the role of social science is to critique society, therefore uncovering the potential for social change. Critical social science, as described by Bhaskar (1975/2008) and others, has four stages: identifying problems, identifying the source of those problems, judging the sources of oppression negatively, and advocating for actions that remove the sources. However, Sayer (2000), a prominent critical realist, has argued that “we are often deeply uncertain as to what would constitute improvement or emancipation, and unclear as to what determinations we should want and need” (p. 160).

Thus, Sayer has advocated for more rigorous engagement with the subjective judgments inherent in the formulation of research questions. Recently, both Sayer (2011) and Smith (2011) have argued that social science should take as its departure point the incontrovertible fact that humans are evaluative beings capable of flourishing and suffering. Things matter to people, and therefore social science should explain and evaluate the social world from the standpoint of whether people suffer or whether people flourish (Sayer, 2011). Recognition theory (Honneth,

1995) and the capabilities approach (Nussbaum, 2000; Sen, 1999) inform the study’s definition of human flourishing, but the use of human flourishing as a departure point originates in critical realism. Furthermore, critical realism’s emphasis on latent causal mechanisms led me to ask 56 what—if anything—are some of the underlying processes, mechanisms, and conditions that engender human flourishing in a particular context with a particular population.

It is important to understand, however, that even though critical realism prescribes a specific version of causality, it makes no methodological claims. Critical realism has been used in qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods studies with a variety of research methods

(Danermark et al., 2002). This study’s research question is suited to grounded theory (Glaser &

Straus, 1967), a method increasingly employed in concert with critical realism.

Critical Realist Grounded Theory

Grounded theory (Glaser & Straus, 1967) is a qualitative research methodology characterized by three features: theoretical sampling, constant comparison of data, and the development of a theory. In its earliest iterations, grounded theory prescribed exclusive reliance on induction, wherein theory emerges from the data. In recent years, with the development of constructivist grounded theory (Charmaz, 2006), grounded theory has become more flexible.

Recently, scholars in social work and related fields have begun to discuss how to underpin grounded theory with critical realism (Oliver, 2012).

Oliver (2012) has shown that, in its use of abduction, critical realism employs theory in ways that are compatible with grounded theory methodology—particularly constructivist grounded theory (Charmaz, 2006). Central to critical realism, abduction is a form of inference in which researchers recontextualize phenomena through comparison to theory (Danermark et al.,

2002). With the emergence of constructivist grounded theory (Charmaz, 2006), grounded theorists have begun to accept abduction as a legitimate form of analysis, as long as researchers are transparent about their use of pre-existing analytical concepts (Oliver, 2012). Critical realists employ abduction in order to theorize about how generative mechanisms cause events in open 57 systems under certain conditions. As Oliver has argued, a researcher could conceivably use the idea of generative mechanisms as an analytical concept.

This makes critical realist grounded theory (Oliver, 2012) a good fit for this study, whose research question asks what (if any) aspects of user experience of social services engender human flourishing. However, it is important to understand that the purpose of the study is not to verify critical realism’s meta-theory of causality. The primary research question is open-ended and inductive: “How do low-income Latino families with young children experience social service systems?” The second question, “How and in what ways does human flourishing arise from families’ interactions with social service systems?” invites the possibility that generative mechanisms promote or hinder flourishing, but does so tentatively. This is in keeping with the idea that in grounded theory, the theory emerges from the data. And typically, the data comes from interviews with a theoretical sample, a concept I discuss in the next section.

Sampling

Because the purpose of this study is what Drisko (2003) described as discovery, or illuminating an under-studied point of view, it is not necessary to have a large sample, and it is desirable to carefully select the cases that will be used. In this study, I intended to employ convenience, theoretical, and snowball sampling to recruit a non-random purposive sample of low-income Latino parents of young children (age 0-5) living in the Washington, DC metro area.

I had Institutional Review Board (IRB) permission to interview 20 participants, but after 17 interviews, I decided that I had reached a sufficient level of saturation of common themes

(Charmaz, 2006). In order to qualify for the study, participants had to self-identify as Latino and be enrolled in at least one means-tested social program. Means-tested social programs require that individuals meet certain income eligibility guidelines; for example, in order to qualify for 58

WIC (Women, Infants, and Children), families need to be at or below 185% of the U.S. Poverty

Income Guidelines. By virtue of being enrolled in at least one means-tested social program, participants lived in poverty or near-poverty.

Following approval from The Catholic University of America’s Institutional Review

Board (IRB), I recruited participants from Mary’s Center, a health clinic in Northwest

Washington, DC that provides a wide range of social services. Staff members from various programs (charter school, home visiting, WIC) placed English- and Spanish-language flyers (see

Appendices C and D) in the agency’s waiting rooms. They also approached clients, briefly describing the study (see Appendices E and F for the script). When recruitment was slow, I petitioned the IRB to present the project to large groups of Mary’s Center clients. I presented at several English classes at Briya, a Mary’s Center-affiliated charter school that focuses on parent engagement and adult literacy.

Initially, I hoped that the emerging theory would influence the sampling; in other words, I planned to ask the staff members at Mary’s Center to recruit parents who fit certain criteria. In grounded theory, this is known as theoretical sampling (Glaser & Strauss, 1967). Unfortunately, theoretical sampling was logistically impossible. Still, earlier interviews certainly informed later interviews, and therefore my interviews did not depart entirely from grounded theory’s iterative process. For example, when Aurora said she wanted her daughter to study in order to be

“somebody more important,” I asked her what it meant to be somebody important. She replied that she wanted her daughter to study in order to superar. In Spanish, superarse means to overcome; in this context, I think Aurora was referring to moving up in the world. I then said,

“That she has a profession?” and she agreed vehemently. I mentioned profession because, in coding other interviews, I had noticed the co-occurrence of the codes “being somebody” and 59

“having a career/profession.” With another interviewee, I might have employed further open- ended probing, but Aurora was quite reticent. In any case, past interview content did not affect my selection of Aurora as an interviewee—but it did influence the meanings she and I co- constructed.

Interview Guide

The interview guide (see Appendices A and B) included open-ended questions about how families experience social services. As previously discussed, both the capabilities approach

(Nussbaum, 2000; Sen, 1999) and ecological systems theory (Bronfenbrenner, 1979) informed the development of those questions. In addition to eliciting responses to open-ended questions, I also asked participants to draw an eco-map (Hartman, 1995). An eco-map is a graphic tool originally designed to help social work students and practitioners think systems (Hartman, 1995).

Using a paper and pencil, worker and client map out the systems in a person’s life, using specific symbols to connote the flow of energy and the strength of relationships. Although eco-maps have traditionally been used in the context of social work practice and education, qualitative researchers have also used eco-maps to collect and organize data (Mercier & Harold, 2004).

After constructing the eco-map with participants, I asked them to complete a checklist of formal social services received by the entire family. I followed this process with open-ended questions about services that participants checked but did not mention previously. I then invited participants to make additions to the eco-map. At the very end of the interview, I collected demographic information, described in Chapter IV. The first interview served as a pilot, and resulted only in minor revisions to the interview guide (see Appendices A and B).

Data Collection

I conducted most interviews in person at a private location convenient and comfortable for the participant. In most cases, this was the participant’s home, although five interviews took place at Mary’s Center, and one interview took place at a coffee shop chosen by the participant.

The participants’ preferences determined whether I would conduct interviews in English or

Spanish. I conducted 16 interviews in Spanish and one interview in English. All interviews were audiotaped. Most interviews lasted approximately an hour. Each participant received a

$25 Target gift card as a token of appreciation. In order to clarify findings and engage in member-checking, I contacted participants by phone. I was able to connect with only one participant, who verified that the main findings made sense to her.

Data Analysis

Coding the Data

A professional bilingual (English-Spanish) transcriptionist transcribed the audio- recordings from the interviews. I used Atlas.ti for Mac, Version 1.0.16 to code both English- language and Spanish-language transcripts and eco-maps, as well as field notes and memos. The data analysis occurred in three steps. First, I engaged in open coding (Charmaz, 2006). Codes are short phrases that summarize data; open coding refers to generating codes without relying on pre-determined codes. Next, I sorted the open codes into three mutually exclusive areas, which

I refer to as topical categories. The three topical categories, which were quite broad, included: life experiences, experiences with services, and participants’ values. Finally, I worked with all the open codes contained in each topical category. I combined those codes to create new groups, which I refer to as code families. For the purpose of this research, code families were groups of related codes. 61

Open coding. After receiving each transcribed interview from the transcriptionist, I imported it into ATLAS.ti, and subjected it to open coding (Charmaz, 2006). Although I worked with Spanish language text, I generated English language codes. In order to highlight process and stay close to the data, I created very specific codes that, whenever possible, used gerunds

(Charmaz). For example, as participants spoke about their experiences with formal social supports, almost every participant mentioned various forms of paperwork: applications, proof of residence, social security cards, paystubs, etc. Creating a topical code such as “documents” would offer little insight into participants’ actions or meaning-making. Therefore, I generated codes such as “needing to furnish documents,” “furnishing documents,” “returning home to get missing documents,” “not being able to furnish documents,” and “having the documents you need.” These codes highlighted the ways in which participants were both active and passive.

Participants could not change the requirement to furnish documents, yet they engaged in multiple actions to meet that requirement. When I followed the quotations linked to the codes, I could see how “having the documents you need” often produced a sense of mastery, while “not being able to furnish documents” often led to feelings of powerlessness. In the final analysis, I concluded that navigating the tension between mastery and powerlessness was an important task faced by service users. This analysis emerged through my use of gerunds.

Beginning early in the coding process, I coded comparatively, trying to draw on codes I had used earlier in the interview transcript or in previously coded transcripts. I did this by typing relevant words into ATLASti, and seeing which terms matched. However, I often chose to generate new codes because I wanted to differentiate between what programs the participants used and to whom participants referred (self, child, worker). Furthermore, I wanted to stay close to the data as a way to ensure trustworthiness. 62

The coding became more focused as I moved through the interviews. In constructivist grounded theory, focused coding is a form of coding used to synthesize larger portions of data based on emerging categories of data (Charmaz, 2006). By the seventeenth interview I coded, I worked with larger chunks of data than I did when coding line-by-line earlier in the process. The emergent categories that seemed particularly salient also received extra attention in linked memos and journal entries. However, I never abandoned open coding entirely, and thus I ultimately had over 1900 initial open codes, an unusually large number for grounded theory.

Sorting open codes into three topical categories. Upon completing the initial coding of all 17 documents, I divided the codes into three mutually exclusive topical categories: ‘life experiences’; ‘experiences with formal social supports’; and ‘what participants valued’. There was some overlap between the three areas; for example, the notion of respect was a theme that cut across all three. Still, the data fell naturally into those three areas, probably as a result of the interview guide, which contained questions that related to each area. Because the data did not match the concept of human flourishing (Nussbaum, 2000; Sen, 1999) that informed the research questions, I began to think in terms of ‘what participants valued’ instead of ‘how participants defined flourishing.’ I grounded this decision in Sayer’s (2011) assertion that things matter to people.

Creating code families. Working with one topical category at a time, I combined the codes into newly named code families. I often placed codes in more than one family. As I worked, I continued to think comparatively about the data I was grouping together. To some extent, this process functioned as a form of focused coding—except that I worked with the codes, not the transcripts. By the time I finished, I had 84 code families under the topical category 63

‘experiences with formal social supports’; 63 code families under ‘life experiences’; and 39 code families under ‘what participants valued’. The number of open codes in each family varied.

Coding memos, field notes, and journals. Next, using the families that emerged from the process described above, I continued to perform constant comparative analysis. I engaged in focused coding of the field notes, memos, and journals I had been writing throughout. I continued to write memos. I read through the list of family names (organized by topical category), also sharing them with other people and asking for their impressions. The purpose of this exercise was a) to ensure that I did not lose sight of context and b) to minimize the projection of my own concerns on the data. Using index cards instead of ATLASti, I collapsed the 186 families into a more concise list that told a similar story to the larger version (see Table

3). For example, ‘being overwhelmed,’ ‘social control,’ and ‘feeling frustrated’ became properties of the category ‘being adrift,’ which contrasted with a different category, ‘being on course’.

Based on these ongoing activities, it became clear that some categories in particular possessed what Charmaz (2006) described as “theoretical reach, incisiveness, generic power, and relation to other categories” (p. 139). Those categories became the concepts that drove the theoretical interpretation of the data.

Theorizing

Next, I used memo-writing and journaling to explore the concepts I considered most salient. Returning once again to the data, I compared incidents, reading relevant segments closely and analyzing as I wrote. There was enough variation so that I could achieve insights through comparison, but with the exception of categories within ‘what people valued,’ I did not achieve the sense that each category was fully saturated, defined as seeing no new properties of 64 phenomena (Charmaz, 2006). Because of logistical constraints, I did not sample more participants.

I made some attempts to identify underlying causal conditions that produced various outcomes. However, those efforts bore little fruit. Instead of arriving at a theory of user experience, my work resulted in some related abstractions that shed light on the research questions.

Situational Mapping

While writing memos about the central categories, I also employed situational mapping

(Clarke, 2008). Situational mapping is a constructivist grounded theory technique designed to highlight the contextual elements of a situation. Examples of contextual elements include: discourse, objects, human players, temporal dimensions, economic aspects, and socio-cultural aspects. Because I remembered each participant quite clearly, I was particularly vulnerable to person-focused interpretations that failed to consider the larger social forces that shaped participants’ experiences. Following Clarke’s (2008) methods, I drew various maps of all the contextual elements involved in the situation, looking for connections between them. Situational mapping helped me think of participants as social actors.

Using Critical Realism

Although critical realism influenced the formulation of the research question and continued to be the guiding philosophy of this study, it was difficult to incorporate critical realist grounded theory (Oliver, 2012) into the data analysis. That was partly because the method is in its infancy, and there were no known social work templates to follow. In addition, the study relied entirely on participant report, and therefore data analysis became an event that was entirely interpretive. In relying on critical realism, I had hoped to find common ground between 65 positivism’s focus on identifying predictive relationships between concepts and constructivism’s focus on interpretation and co-construction of meaning (Oliver, 2012). My data spoke volumes about the participants’ lived experiences, but very little about underlying causal forces.

In the end, I relied on techniques from constructivist grounded theory (Charmaz, 2006) to address the first research question (how do low-income Latino families with young children experience social service systems?). I addressed the second question (how and in what ways does human flourishing arise from families’ interactions with social service systems?) in a way that was less systematic or methodologically-driven. Drawing on findings from both the situational analysis and the grounded theory analysis, I employed abduction (Danermark, et al,,

2002) as I weighed the extent to which formal social supports helped participants live the kinds of life they valued. This piece of the analysis is grounded in critical realism, but lacks the methodological rigor of the inductive piece that addresses how Latino parents experience social programs. Put differently, both pieces are the product of my subjective engagement with the data, but the second is more subjective than the first.

Rigor and Trustworthiness

Even though the study reflects my subjective engagement with the data, I relied on several commonly used techniques to ensure the most befitting, useful, coherent interpretation of the data, all things considered. First, I addressed rigor and trustworthiness through my use of peer debriefing (Padgett, 2008). I shared codes with friends and colleagues to see whether the data told them the same story it told me. I went over several key passages with a bilingual, bicultural colleague who has experience working with the population. In the write-up, the translations of the participants’ words are my own. I was unable to engage in back-translation or other forms of verification of congruence between English and Spanish. 66

I also engaged in self-reflective journaling and memo-writing (Padgett, 2008) in an effort to remain reflexive about how my experiences and social position affected data collection and data interpretation. I discussed emerging thoughts with my advisor and my peers.

Finally, I intended to engage in member-checking (Padgett, 2008), but only ended up being able to contact one participant. Critical realists focus on whether data “resonate” with reality; checking my evaluations with participants was a way to lend support to my analysis.

Unfortunately, only one participant returned my voicemail, and I did not follow up more rigorously with the other participants because I did not want to cause extra stress.

Ethical Considerations

Human Subjects Concerns

In recruiting human subjects, I was concerned about preventing coercion. I instructed

Mary’s Center staff members to emphasize that the study was completely separate from Mary’s

Center, and that refusing to participate would in no way affect the services they received. When I was having trouble getting enough recruits through referrals by workers, I petitioned the

Institutional Review Board (IRB) to recruit at Mary’s Center. The IRB determined that I was not allowed to approach potential participants in the waiting room, but that I could present the project in front of groups such as English classes.

Because of issues related to language and education level, I was also concerned with informed consent. Before turning on recording devices and commencing the interview, I provided each participant with written and oral explanation of informed consent issues (see

Appendices G and H). Participants chose whether they preferred to use an English- or Spanish- language version of the consent form. I emphasized that participation is completely voluntary, and that participants could withdraw from the study at any time. I also emphasized that this 67 project is separate from Mary’s Center, and that withdrawing would not affect participants’ abilities to receive services from Mary’s Center.

Confidentiality was another area of concern. In order to address confidentiality, I asked each participant to choose a pseudonym. After turning on the recording devices, I only referred to the client by pseudonym. Thus, pseudonyms appear in transcriptions, analysis, and write-up.

However, in the write-up, I avoided linking pseudonyms to information (e.g. country of origin).

The purpose was to decrease the likelihood that a reader might be able to identify participants. I kept the consent forms—the only document that contained identifying information—in a locked safe in the basement of my house. I stored all other documents on a password-protected external computer drive. Digital recordings and consent forms will be destroyed three years after the study is complete.

Reflexivity

Ethical qualitative researchers also honor reflexivity, a term that refers to the ways that researcher’s biases, assumptions, and social location shape data collection and interpretation

(Padgett, 2008). Reflexivity also refers to the ways that the research encounter transforms researcher and participant. Researchers working from a new paradigm perspective have an ethical responsibility to account for reflexivity. This responsibility has little to do with objectivity; critical realists (Bhaskar, 1978) assume that, although some aspects of reality are essential, all knowledge is co-produced within its social context (Kempster & Parry, 2011).

Instead, reflexivity helps the investigator address the research questions in ways that honor participants’ lived experiences as well as the mutual reciprocity that shape the research encounter.

In order to prevent myself from losing sight of reflexivity, I wrote journal entries and field notes. I incorporated personal experiences and thoughts into my memos. In Chapter V, 68 after presenting the findings, I discuss how reflexivity shaped the analysis, and how the analysis shaped my evolving identity as a social worker.

At the end of the study, one ethical issue related to reflexivity continued to disturb me. It pertains to the $25 Target gift card that I gave the clients as a token of appreciation for the study.

For this population, $25 is not a nominal sum; I worried that, coercion aside, the sum left more of a mark on participant’s lives than a researcher should leave. At the same time, I felt glad that I could offer something that might help participants meet needs or pay for extras. When participants expressed gratitude, I made it clear that I was grateful for their help, and that this card was simply a token of that appreciation. I hope my actions made power dynamics less problematic.

Summary

This chapter described and justified the methodology employed by this dissertation.

Critical realism, a paradigm of inquiry characterized by a complex understanding of reality, underpinned the study’s grounded theory methodology (Charmaz, 2006; Oliver, 2012). Based on 17 open-ended interviews with Latino parents with young children, the analysis yielded a theoretical description of how Latino families experience social services. It also yielded some tentative suppositions related to possibilities for human flourishing that emerged from those experiences.

CHAPTER IV

FINDINGS

As discussed in the previous chapter, I used critical realist grounded theory (Oliver,

2012) and constructivist grounded theory (Charmaz, 2006) to analyze the data in light of the two research questions: How do low-income Latino families with young children experience formal social supports? How and in what ways does human flourishing arise from families’ interactions with formal social supports? After conducting semi-structured interviews with 17

Latino parents of young children, I subjected each interview to open coding. As I collapsed open codes into code families, a rough story emerged from the data (see Table 3 for salient concepts that emerged from the families). The central concept in that story was that participants saw themselves in an upward struggle for security, peace, and esteem. They valued those three ends.

They also valued the act of striving and the virtues it entailed. In collapsing codes and writing memos about the relationships between categories, I found that participants’ experiences of formal social supports either squared with their values or produced dissonance. Dissonant experiences often led to unwelcome sensations such as feeling ashamed or being overwhelmed.

In this chapter, I first present descriptive data about the sample, as well as a brief sequential presentation of typical patterns of service utilization. In order to elucidate the relationship between user experience and the struggle for security, peace, and esteem, I describe various meanings that justified service dependency, a state that participants tended to associate with powerlessness. I then describe three meanings that threatened participants’ perceptions that they were advancing towards security, peace, and esteem. I also describe the results of situational mapping, wherein I thought critically about the discourses that shaped service use. In the final section, I draw on both forms of analysis as I critique whether and how formal social

69 70 supports help people live in accordance with their values. Finally, I engage in abduction (a form of reasoning that involves moving between theory and data) (Danermark, Ekstrom, Jakobsen, &

Karlsson, 2002) in order to address whether and how social programs engender human flourishing.

Presentation of the Descriptive Findings

In this section, I present descriptive data about the participants (demographics, life experiences, and what participants valued). I also list the formal supports received either in the past or in the present. I then describe how participants discovered, accessed, maintained, used, experienced, and/or chose to forego social supports. In presenting those actions, I rely on a sequential description of service utilization that emerged from the data. Although that sequence never functioned as a central concept in the analysis, it certainly provides an important backdrop for understanding participants’ experiences. In this section, I present that sequential description—along with information about the participants—in a straightforward manner. Even though this study is underpinned by the assumption that all empirical knowledge is theory-laden and subject to multiple interpretations (Bhaskar, 1978), I take pains to present this portion of the data with minimal interpretation.

Descriptive Data

Demographics. The sample consisted of 17 participants, all of whom learned about the study from Mary’s Center, a health clinic and multi-service nonprofit with offices in DC and

Maryland. Almost half the participants attended Briya, a Mary’s Center-affiliated charter school that focuses on parent engagement and adult literacy. One participant was male; the remaining

16 were women. With the exception of a participant born in the United States to Central

American parents, all participants had emigrated from Latin America. The majority of the 71 participants (13) had emigrated from either El Salvador or Mexico within the last 13 years. With two exceptions, all participants were between the ages of 24 and 31. Most had less than a high school education, although three participants had graduated high school. Out of the three high school graduates, one had completed several years of college in her country of origin.

All participants were parents. Sixteen participants had children under the age of five; one participant had an 8-year-old and two adult children. That participant spoke about receiving services in the past. The male participant lived alone, but saw his child frequently. All 16 female participants lived with all their young children, with two exceptions: one participant had a child residing in her country of origin, and another had a child in foster care. Eleven participants also had partners (usually the father of one or more child) living in the home; four participants were single mothers. The distribution between having one, two, three, or four children was almost even. Although I did not ask about documentation and therefore did not collect data on the nativity of the children, I knew from the interviews that at least three families contained a child born in Latin America. Table 4 provides a picture of the demographic data for the participants. In order to assure the anonymity of subjects, I did not pair the descriptive data with the pseudonyms chosen by the participants.

Life experiences. With one exception, all participants had immigrated to the United

States from their countries of origin. Some participants had happy memories from childhood, such as having loving parents or playing outdoors. Most also described various hardships: leaving school at a young age to work, poverty, domestic violence, sexual abuse, community violence, problem drinking among adult men, and separations from parents. Reasons for immigration included: seeking economic opportunity, escaping domestic violence or abuse, joining family members, and/or accompanying family members. 72

After arriving in the United States, all participants worked in low wage jobs (cleaning, restaurants, factories, etc.) at some point. Some participants migrated within the United States, following jobs or family members. Some worked two or three jobs in order to earn enough money to pay the coyote (the man who guided them across the border for a large fee).

Participants sent money home when they were able, but this became more difficult if they had children. Most women stopped working in order to care for young children; only two participants, the male and a single working mother, had all children enrolled in full-time childcare.

Some participants had made efforts to further their education by entering high school (for the young immigrants) or adult literacy and English as a Second Language (ESL) programs.

Many participants had devoted time to learning English, with only moderate success. Several participants reported that they simply did not have the mental space to focus on their own educational advancement. As one mother explained, “I feel that I just don’t have the head to focus on English classes.”

It appeared that participants spent a great deal of time caring for their children and managing their households. Many participants shared apartments with other families, sometimes friends or relatives. In at least two cases, all family members slept in the same room; I suspect this was true for others, but it did not come up in the interviews. At least four participants experienced domestic violence in the United States, and eventually left their partners. Otherwise, the interviews resulted in little data about relationships between partners. A few participants mentioned churchgoing and family outings, but I achieved little insight into how they spent their leisure time. This was probably a function of the interview guide, which focused largely on formal social supports. 73

When questioned about what they valued, participants spoke about education and its’ perceived correlates: economic stability, social esteem, and having knowledge. They wanted their children to have better lives than they had, and they saw education as the means to this end.

They also valued independence, advancement, peaceful living, hard work, and home ownership.

Less frequently, they mentioned health and happiness.

In the next section, I present the sequentially-organized description of service utilization that emerged as I coded the interviews. As mentioned previously, this sequence is straightforward. It is also in line with how one might expect service use to unfold.

Data Related to Service Utilization

Services used. The interview guide contained general questions about formal social supports. It also contained prompts about specific services. Because my primary concern was eliciting participants’ meanings, I did not cover every prompt as completely as I might have if conducting survey research. The data is also very vulnerable to bias associated with self-report.

Thus, the descriptive data presented in Table 1 lack a high level of precision.

As noted in Table 1, participants received anywhere between four and seven services, benefits, or programs. At some point in time, almost all participants had been enrolled in Women,

Infants, and Children (WIC). All participants also received some sort of government-sponsored insurance for their children, although two participants also had insurance through their husbands’ employers. Most participants who lived in Washington, DC did not qualify for Medicaid because of their immigration status, and they were enrolled in the District’s temporary insurance program. At the time of the interviews, there was no equivalent program in Maryland, so participants residing in Maryland used health clinics or emergency rooms for health care.

Approximately one third of participants were enrolled in Head Start or other preschool programs. 74

Almost half the participants were enrolled in Mary’s Center’s adult English as a Second

Language (ESL) program, which also had early childhood programing. Eleven out of 17 families had received food stamps at some point in time. Only three participants had ever received cash assistance. Five participants had received counseling, either through the school or through a health clinic. Two had participated in parent groups. Three had received Early

Intervention services. Eight received school lunch or breakfast, while two made use of food banks. Eight participants also received home visiting services. The data presented above does not include those participants on waitlists or with applications in process. According to several participants, this was the case with Early Intervention, Head Start, counseling, and/or ESL.

How participants learned about social services. Although I did not directly ask participants how they first learned about services, this became a significant category in the data.

Many participants first learned about services from family members, friends, neighbors, flyers, or recruiters in the community. As one might expect, once participants began to interact with service providers, they often received information about other services and programs. In a few cases, workers not only shared information about formal supports, but facilitated the referrals.

This was particularly evident in the case of the participant who had an active case with Child

Protective Services, and was therefore court-mandated to receive various services. In most cases, however, participants did not rely on workers for help with program applications.

Barriers to access. Participants described many factors and circumstances that made it difficult to access or maintain services. Although barrier to access is a theory-laden concept that assumes a certain version of causality, it was clear from the interviews that participants considered some factors problematic or inconvenient. In some cases, those factors either prevented service use or functioned as reasons to forego services altogether. Factors framed as 75 barriers to access included: time conflicts; lack of information; difficulties gathering paperwork; distrust; transportation challenges; believing one will not qualify for services; bureaucratic malfunctions; not wanting to disclose sensitive information; not considering services worth the wait; and language barriers. In the section on user experience, I offer some examples of those barriers as I interpret participants’ experiences in light of their upward struggles for security, peace, and esteem.

A few participants described instances in which they did not receive a social support. In some cases, this occurred because of bureaucratic malfunctions. For example, because of various errors and misunderstanding, one family did not access the school lunch program until the end of the school year. In other cases, participants made a conscious decision to forego a support. They based this decision on a calculation of whether the benefit of the service was worth its costs. This was most common with SNAP (Supplemental Nutritional Program), which seemed particularly vulnerable to various rumors. For example, several participants mentioned their fear that receipt of SNAP might either jeopardize future applications for residence or result in military conscription when children turned 18. In other cases, participants did not use SNAP because they believed the time involved in applying was not worth the benefit. One participant did not use food banks because she was not interested in receiving canned food, and therefore did not value the benefit.

Applying for and maintaining formal supports. After participants learned about a support and made the decision to initiate service use, they underwent the application process.

They usually applied in person, although some programs accepted mail-in applications.

Participants often brought their children to various offices, sometimes because they did not have childcare, and other times because it was necessary for the children to be examined. Some 76 participants described examination or evaluation of children as a condition for accessing services; for example, several participants explained that they could not recertify for WIC until their children underwent blood testing for lead. Participants were also required to furnish many documents—proof of residence, social security numbers, proof of identity, etc. If they did not have the proper paperwork, they needed to obtain it, and return to the agency. They often spent hours waiting to be seen. Sometimes confusion or bureaucratic issues prevented them from getting services quickly; other times the process went smoothly. In the section on user experience of formal supports, I describe some of the meanings participants made of waiting, furnishing documents, being checked up on, and encountering challenges. The process of recertifying for services was similar to the application process, although usually less complicated.

Using formal supports. In the interview transcripts, participants did not offer very detailed information about what they did as they received formal supports. What they described was very much in line with program purposes. In home visits, they did activities with children and workers. They also talked with workers about themselves or their children. Counseling, too, involved talking with workers, receiving advice, and being listened to. At preschool and family literacy programs, participants went to policy council meetings, went on field trips, and attended workshops. They received medical care, sometimes to address specific problems, and other times to ensure that children were developing well. With food programs, they bought food, which they then prepared and served. Some programs offered more flexibility than others; checks from WIC (Women, Infants and Children ) only covered certain foods such as milk and cheese, while EBT (electronic benefit transfer) cards could be used to purchase a greater variety of foods. 77

Participants experienced a range of feelings (e.g. frustration, shame, satisfaction, gratitude) when interacting with service providers and supports. The meanings they made of services varied widely—often within the same individual. In the section on user experience, I explore those experiences and meanings, and show how they relate to the central concepts that emerged from the data. In the section below, I describe the central concept that emerged as participants discussed their values, their life experiences, and their experiences with social services.

Presentation of the Central Concept: Striving for Security, Peace, and Esteem

After I collapsed the codes into families, it became clear that striving/struggling was at the heart of participants’ life experiences and values. More subtly, it also related to how they experienced social services. Participants saw themselves as protagonists in their life stories, struggling daily for resource security, interpersonal peace, and social esteem. Although many participants had experienced hardship and deprivation as children, they did not focus on survival itself. They were not concerned with imminent hunger. Instead, participants were concerned with meeting monthly expenses and having the capacity to deal with potential crises. Security was about providing for their families completely, with money left over for unforeseen emergencies and extras. They were also striving towards interpersonal peace—defined as freedom from violence, freedom from conflict, and resolution of the problems that weighed them down. Beyond security and interpersonal peace, participants viewed themselves as protagonists in an upward struggle towards being somebody who commands the respect of others, either as a result of their own achievements, or the achievements of their children. As I will demonstrate in subsequent sections, the experience of striving for security, peace, and esteem both paralleled 78 and framed participants’ experiences of formal social supports. In the four sections that follow, I describe the nature of the struggle and its three objectives: security, peace, and esteem.

Striving: The Nature of the Struggle

Respondents preferred to view their lives in terms of progression and growth. In both describing their life experiences and responding to questions about what they wanted to do with their lives (and what they wanted their children to do), respondents espoused the expectation and desire that their lives progress upwards. Although they often described advancement as a means to various ends, it was clear that they considered progress an inevitable process with intrinsic value. Aurora1, the mother of a 3-week old infant, expressed that view when asked about her dreams for her life. “What to do?” she asked, “Move ahead in the world, bring my daughter forward, watch her grow.” Here Aurora revealed both the inevitability of growth—and her role in bringing about her daughter’s growth.

Despite acceptance of life circumstances perceived as inevitable, most participants framed growth and advancement in individualistic, person-centered terms. Of course, this framing may be a function of the interview guide, which asked them to describe their aspirations and experiences. However, when asked about the connections between systems, participants made it very clear that they saw themselves as the focal point of all the formal supports they received. Although participants sometimes referred to lucky circumstances or God’s will, there was a sense that they were the masters of their fate—within the constraints of the world as they knew it. For example, most respondents framed the act of border crossing as one that required a conscious decision. Marjory, who experienced abuse by her stepfather, told the following story:

1 As discussed in Chapter III, all name are pseudonyms chosen by the participants. 79

When I was 19 and about to turn 20, the opportunity arose for my mom to travel here, but I

said, you are of an old age, very dangerous, better for me to go. So that’s how it was, she

was going to go, but my brother and I didn’t want her to, and then I said, this is my

opportunity to get out of here. Not to come back. This is my opportunity, I need to go;

that’s how I came here.

Here, it is clear that Marjory’s border crossing is not something that simply happened to her.

She took initiative, seizing an opportunity to shift the trajectory of her life.

Like Marjory, many participants defined the futures to which they strove in contrast to their lived pasts. They wanted peaceful interpersonal relationships free from alcoholism, abuse, domestic violence, and family separations. They wanted their children to be educated. They wanted their children to experience abundance, which they contrasted with the sense of deprivation that was central to many of their own childhoods. For example, Lucia grew up living in rural poverty, forced to leave school at a young age for economic reasons. After describing her childhood, she explained, “That’s why I thought, if I have my kids, I want something better for them, that they go to school, I work, and they have food, something different.” Lucia, like others, was not striving towards something one could isolate from her experiences. Instead, she was striving away from an unhappy past.

Because the circumstances of peoples’ lives were so difficult, striving allowed them to demonstrate determination and independence. This concept emerged from participants’ discussions of what they wanted their children to do and be. Several participants (Edgardo,

Marisol, Luisa, and Camilla) referenced the value of achieving mastery over skills such as doing schoolwork, playing an instrument, or overcoming shyness in order to speak to adults. Although they were concerned with the ends that mastery produced, they also saw the importance of 80 working hard in order to advance. They emphasized the values of practice, hard work, and determination. For example, when explaining that she wanted her children to learn skills such as swimming and handicrafts, Marisol said she always told her daughter, “You can’t say I can’t.

When they ask if you can do something, you say I’ll try. You should say, I’ve never done it, but I am going to try to see if it works out for me.” For Marisol, advancement required grit, an attribute she wanted her children to possess.

Thus, the struggle that emerged from the data was one that required determination, initiative, and independence. Demonstrating those qualities connoted virtue. There was also the sense that striving, in and of itself, was a natural, and therefore desirable state of being. The struggle was a source of great pain, justified only by viewing advancement as an end in and of itself. As participants organized their preferences for the future in contrast to past experiences, it became clear that the goals towards which they strove fell into three categories: security, peace, and esteem.

Striving for Resource Security

All participants strove towards the economic security that would assure their ability to feed their families. Only one participant, who was living in a domestic violence shelter with her four children, spoke of imminent unmet needs. The others had low incomes by any objective standard, but they found it easier to make ends meet, presumably because they had fewer children and/or more economic support from working husbands. Even when money was tight, participants often experienced a sense of abundance that contrasted with their childhood experiences. Stephanie, a U.S.-born daughter of Central American immigrants, highlighted this feeling when she described how her children reacted upon returning to the US after a long visit with their father, who had been deported back to Central America. As Stephanie described the 81 food situation in Central America: “You're going to see, maybe, three pieces of bread and that's it, and water. Mainly water.” Thus, when the children arrived at the airport in the US, “they just saw so much junk food, so they started grabbing it.” She went on to explain how difficult it is to earn money to buy food in Central America and how expensive food items are. Like Stephanie’s children, even when participants felt pinched, they still had more choices and more access to food than they had in their countries. Although some participants echoed Stephanie’s assertion that children were excited by “junk food,” most participants spoke at length about wanting to provide their children with nutritious foods. And as a result of various food programs, which all participants had received at some point, they all had access to milk, fruits, vegetables, and other foods they considered essential to the healthy growth and development of their children.

Although participants needed to budget carefully, the variety of available foods created the impression that they were progressing in their struggle—but tenuously, and often pressed by the expenses of daily life.

Despite the perception of having enough food, participants worried about being able to meet their other monthly expenses. According to participants, these expenses included: rent, utilities, cable, internet, telephone, clothing, diapers, and transportation. Marjory and Bris acknowledged that even though salaries are dramatically higher in the United States than in their countries of origin, so are most living expenses. Rent was of particular concern, especially for those participants who lived in the District of Columbia. It is those expenses that create what

Victoria described as “lots of pressure.” Those expenses led Estela to draw the conclusion that

“every day in this country, every day things are getting more difficult for people…because things are more expensive, money doesn’t cover expenses, and you have to pay rent.” Influenced by their past and present difficulties, participants wanted to move towards a future where their adult 82 children felt secure enough to stop worrying about expenses. They strove towards a future where, in the words of Aurora, Carolina, and Luisa, their children “lacked for nothing.”

Participants also worried about being able to pay for medical care and medicine. Almost every single participant stated that she appreciated having health insurance to use in case of sickness or emergency. In this sense, participants valued not only medical care itself, but the sense of security afforded by health insurance. Unlike food, health care represented an expense that participants did not believe they could afford without insurance. Both Camilla and Luisa mentioned the possibility of finding a job that paid for insurance, but no participant expected to pay out of pocket for health care. When asked if she could imagine being pregnant without receiving services, Aurora said it would be much more difficult because “here, everything is expensive. A visit to the doctor and everything, and if you don’t work, how you are going to pay? You can’t!” Having insurance produced the sense that participants and their children could weather pregnancy, accidents or illness—no matter their economic situations. This represented success in the upward struggle, because in most countries of origin, as Bris and Carolina explained, free clinics existed, but waits were long and the quality of care was extremely low.

Despite differences between the US and countries of origin, the struggle towards health security did not always arc upward. Marisol, the only respondent who mentioned having health insurance through her employer before immigrating, experienced great frustration because, at the time of the interview, her undocumented daughter was not eligible for insurance. Marisol had been striving for security—and with respect to medical care, she backslid. Describing this situation, Marisol emphasized feeling good about immigrating with her young child. She then said, “You feel bad, because at the same time, you know it’s to improve. With God’s help, you 83 keep going forward, but it’s not easy.” In particular, it was not easy because she did not feel that she was progressing in her struggle.

Although not a major theme in the data, it was clear that some participants worried about their inability to contribute to the basic well-being of family members back home. Jessica, who immigrated as a teenager in order to join her mother, described the litany of problems back home: “that somebody’s bones hurt or they can’t walk, they have fever, vomiting, weakness, and that’s why every day they call me and want money; my mother sends it.” Bris, Marisol, and

Edgarda, too, emphasized the desire to send money back home to support family members.

Although nobody spoke as dramatically as Jessica, it was clear that remittances from the US could contribute to the financial security and basic well-being of their family members back home. For Bris, the ability to send money home signified that she was succeeding in her struggle; Bris explained, “it did me good to come here and help my mother; that’s why I didn’t go back.” Here, her mother’s security became a focus of her struggle.

Thus, participants saw themselves as striving to achieve a sense of security for themselves and their family members with respect to food, basic needs, bills, and clothing. As one might expect, this was a value they took for granted. Freddie emphasized the universality of

“living a stable life, working, and being well, being able to support our family,” expressing his belief that “above all, that is the dream of every person.”

Striving for Peace

All participants made it clear that they were striving not only for economic well-being and growth, but for what some (Angela, Victoria) described as “mental” or “emotional” well- being. Others (Edgarda, Camilla, Lucia) spoke about wanting to be free of sad feelings, stress, and/or family conflict. Influenced by Angela and Victoria’s use of the word tranquila (peaceful 84 or tranquil), I collapsed various aspects of personal and interpersonal well-being into one category: peace. As they did in their struggle for security, participants constructed their preferred peaceful futures in contrast to their lived pasts and presents.

In many cases, respondents’ perception of being on an upward struggle for peace originated in the experience of immigrating to the US. As mentioned in the section on descriptive data related to life experiences, some respondents came to the US not only for economic reasons, but in order to escape domestic violence, sexual abuse, and/or or family conflict or sadness. For example, Victoria came to the US “to be more peaceful,” explaining that

“here he wouldn’t have to bother me, or maybe offend me or insult me, and I came here for that.”

While pregnant with her eldest child, Jessica immigrated to the US after being threatened with a gun by her child’s father. Marjory immigrated to escape an abusive stepfather. Camilla found life without her mother “emotionally difficult,” so she also immigrated to the US, where her mother was living. For these women, the act of immigrating served as an important step in a struggle towards personal and interpersonal peace.

However, peace often remained elusive. Leaving problems behind was helpful, but not always helpful enough. Often what Marjory described as the “many things that are still on my mind” weighed heavily, producing stress and sadness. Sometimes problems followed respondents across the border. For example, Luisa’s parents hoped that a change in environment would rid their marriage of alcoholism and domestic violence. This did not occur. Yet for Bris’ family, a change in environment resulted in the desired effect. Bris helped her father immigrate to the US in order to cure his alcoholism and spare her mother from domestic violence. Bris explained, “…and I said if you come with me, I’ll go, because I was his right arm and his support, 85 and that’s how we came here, and he hasn’t had a drink since.” In Bris’ formulation of her experience, the struggle arced upward.

In many cases, childrearing led to bumps on the road to interpersonal peace. Just as feeding extra mouths created new challenges to security, caring for children led to concerns about the well-being of offspring. Predictably, child well-being often related to parent well- being; as Stephanie said of her daughter, “if she's okay, I'm okay…if I see her happy, I’m happy.”

Sources of stress varied across participants. Nicole was concerned and exhausted by her child’s hyperactivity. Camilla was worried that her child was being bullied in school. What Edgarda really wanted was “for the kids to change and stop fighting.” Rita felt ill-equipped to handle her older child’s request that she buy him things. Stephanie’s son had seizures, which led to worries about his development. Jessica’s son had difficulties with sleep, which disrupted the family and caused concern about his emotional well-being. The participants felt a great sense of responsibility for the emotional and developmental well-being of the children in their households.

In some cases, they also felt responsible for family members in their countries of origin. These responsibilities sometimes weighed them down, increasing their desire for peace, which often remained elusive.

Striving for Social Esteem

A third theme that emerged as an objective towards which participants strove was social esteem, described by Aurora, Stephanie, and Marjory as “being somebody.” Although participants framed education as a means to economic security, it became clear that they also valued education as a stepping stone towards the esteem, recognition, and respect afforded by achieving professional success and contributing to society. Lucia and Nicole hoped to become teacher’s aides or caregivers, presumably so they could earn more money, garner more respect, 86 and/or do something more in line with their interests and talents. Still, most respondents were realistic about the structural limitations afforded by their upbringings. Instead of seeking social recognition for themselves, they poured their hopes into their children, striving to raise children who could advance towards what they could not achieve. This struggle—and the virtues it entailed—became their source of esteem; Marjory stated, “If I have to break my back day and night I’ll do it for them; I need to work for them.”

Once again defining the object of their struggle in contrast to past and current experiences, participants wanted their children to be professionals, not low-wage workers. This was certainly because low wages failed to promote security and difficult working conditions threatened peace.

But in addition to security and peace, esteem mattered. Low wage jobs connoted stagnancy, powerlessness, shame, and disrespect—and it was important to participants that their children avoid these experiences, which were at odds with their upward struggles. For example, Bris believed that if her daughter studied, she would “be able to do something and is not going to be working like my husband who is a cook and has to obey the orders of another person.” To Bris, doing another’s bidding is an undesirable position that constrains one from moving up in the world, towards a position of greater respect.

It was also important for children to achieve professional success in order to avoid inviting the scorn of others. When asked why she wanted her children to be professionals,

Marjory replied:

First for them, for them to be somebody in life, so nobody can throw it in their face: look,

you didn’t study. You didn’t get a profession. And I also want them to be professionals

because in the economy they can fend for themselves and they can work and study, I

don’t want them to go to Burger King or McDonalds. I want them to be professionals, to 87

have an office, to work for the government, whatever. I don’t want them to be a cleaning

supervisor even though that’s a good and honorable job but I don’t want that for them

because it isn’t easy what I do and I don’t want them to go through that, being American

citizens and being at McDonalds…it’s better that they study.

In this passage, Marjory espoused the view that failing to exercise opportunity is a source of shame. If her children squander opportunity, they open themselves up to scorn. This anxiety drove her.

Stephanie, a U.S.-born child of immigrants, experienced firsthand the shame that sparked

Marjory’s anxiety. When asked what she meant by “going up” (a phrase she used to explain what she wanted for her children), Stephanie replied, “Be somewhere. Be somebody in life, instead of being here, like me, not did anything. I didn't finish school.” Unlike the immigrant parents I interviewed, Stephanie had options, but failed to exercise them. For Stephanie, though, exercising options was not a means to avoid ridicule or powerlessness, as it was for Marjory and

Bris. It was an obligation. This is clear in Stephanie’s assertion that because her children receive so much, they have an obligation to give back by making something of their lives. “I tell them they've got to give back their school,” she said. “They've got to go to school. They've got to be somewhere, get somewhere in life.” Even though Stephanie did not see herself as succeeding in the struggle for esteem initiated by her parents when they immigrated to the US, she held onto the hope that, through her children, the arc would bend upwards.

Thus, the struggle for social esteem was fueled not only by casting off past experiences, but by anxiety about ridicule, desire for autonomy, and a sense of obligation. It often skipped a generation; in other words, participants found esteem in supporting their children’s struggles. As 88 the next section will demonstrate, the struggle for security, peace, and esteem shaped participants’ experiences of services, programs, and benefits.

How the Struggle Related to User Experience

Although I never reached the level of saturation necessary to construct a compact and elegant theory, it did become clear from the data that there was a relationship between the struggle described in the previous section and the experience of service use. The best way to describe this relationship is to say that in making meaning of formal social supports, participants engaged in the task of assimilating service use into the act of striving for security, peace, and esteem. Sometimes this process resulted in reconciliation; other times it produced dissonance.

Various meaning attributions helped participants assimilate dependency on service use into their struggle. They also experienced various forms of dissonance. Strategies and experiences of dissonance varied; what remained constant was the process of grappling with dependency—a condition at odds with the struggle. Thus, in this section, I first explain why dependency is incongruent with the struggle. Next, I interpret user experience through the lens of squaring dependency on formal supports with the upward struggle for security, peace, and esteem.

The Problem with Dependency

As discussed previously, the struggle described by participants was person-centered and goal-oriented. Independence, initiative, and hard work were desirable; dependency, helplessness, and inaction were not. Jessica, Victoria, Marjory, Luisa, and Camilla all equated government aid with dependency, expressing a strong preference for supporting oneself through paid labor. Both

Victoria and Jessica equated independence with advancing. Victoria said, “I would like to grow and know that I’m not going to depend anymore on government aid.” When asked to clarify why it was not “good” to depend on government aid for one’s entire life, Jessica invoked her 89 dream of buying a house in her country, saying, “I don’t know. I say the truth is if I’m like this my whole life, like this I’m not going to do anything. To get my little house.” When asked what to clarify what it meant to be a “good citizen,” Camilla replied, “…that you work, that you don’t depend too much on aid, that you be outstanding, that you be better educated.” Jessica, Victoria, and Camilla saw dependency as an obstacle to advancing towards esteem.

Nicole’s situation served as a negative case that brought into relief dependency’s relationship with the upward struggle for security, peace, and esteem. Nicole was the only participant who I perceived to be entirely comfortable with government aid; she expressed this comfort level humorously when I asked whether additional government services or programs might be helpful. Laughing, she replied that she would like for the government to give her “free money.” It is interesting to note that Nicole’s immigration story was very different from that of the other participants. As a child, she emigrated unwillingly from her country, where she remembers all her needs being met by her grandmother. Instead of experiencing an upward struggle, Nicole felt as if she had fallen from paradise. In the comparative analysis of data,

Nicole’s different experiences and approach to dependency lent support to the concept that, in this group of participants, discomfort with dependency is generally situated in the experience of the upward struggle.

Discomfort with government aid may also be situated in the experience of being poor in

Latin America. In describing their childhood experiences, most participants explained that there was little support for poor people in Latin America. Thus, seeking out formal supports was not originally in most participants’ repertoires. For example, referring to her Child Protective

Services (CPS) caseworker, Edgarda said: 90

She told me that I shouldn’t be ashamed to ask her something that I wanted help with, for

example, anything, that she would help me. I tell her I’m missing this thing and that

thing and she gives it to me. And I don’t like it, I feel like an outcast, ashamed, different.

I’m not used to all that. I don’t have that custom.

For Edgarda, help seeking was not a behavior in which she had been socialized to engage—and asking for help made her feel like an outcast. Stephanie pointed to this tendency when she spoke about her immigrant parents’ choice to forego most forms of support. Stephanie, socialized in a different culture, viewed help-seeking behavior as a virtue. For Nicole, who had emigrated at a young age from a Spanish-speaking Caribbean country, it was simply what one does.

Of course, macro-level discourse also reinforced unease around dependency. Both Luisa and Bris mentioned unfavorable public opinion about Latinos. Bris said, “It’s too much, what they say about people, about immigrants that sometimes only come to receive insurance, or that people have lots of kids to get aid, and for that we all pay.” In Bris’ description of the rhetoric she heard on television, government dependency was problematic because it was a form of freeloading. Bris referred to the belief that it was immoral to take without offering any contribution in return—a commonly held attitude that becomes more vitriolic when applied to non-white and immigrant populations (Jansson, 2012).

There were also glimmers of evidence that bureaucratic structures, too, strengthened the idea that dependency was an undesirable state. Marjory’s husband was looking for a better job so the family could “get ahead without anybody’s help, just WIC.” When asked why WIC was acceptable, she explained that WIC ended when the child turned five. In other words, WIC was more acceptable because it was temporary. It also had significantly higher eligibility guidelines than Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). Furthermore, almost all participants 91 expressed satisfactions with the treatment they received at WIC offices; this was not the case with other programs. Perhaps those bureaucratic realities sent the message that formal supports were more acceptable during the early years of a child’s life. In its association with infancy, dependency once again achieved a pejorative cast, building on the views that many participants brought with them to the US.

Interestingly, participants expressed very different concerns around depending on intangible social services such as home visiting and counseling. With respect to those services, they were more concerned with dependency’s emotional cost to themselves than with burdening society. Being seen as helpless or vulnerable concerned Lucia, Bris, and Edgarda. For example,

Lucia did not disclose domestic abuse to a therapist because she did not want to “be seen,” meaning that she did not want to risk the vulnerability involved in sharing experiences with another person. This was easier to reconcile than concerns about freeloading; several participants

(Edgarda, Marjory, Rita) spoke about overcoming initial distrust and feeling satisfied with various sorts of counseling. For example, Rita said, “…we as Latinos, it’s how we see things, like seeing a counselor is because we’re crazy, and it isn’t like that, you don’t need to be crazy to need help…there are so many things that we can’t resolve by ourselves.” Rita, like others, overcame the stigma of therapy, and came to terms with the human need for interpersonal support. But beyond referring to the high price of medical care, participants did not focus on the fact that therapy, home visiting, and other social services cost society enormous amounts of money.

Although participants expressed little concern related to being dependent on intangible supports, it was very clear that most viewed dependency on government aid as an unfavorable condition. Frustrations, indignities, helplessness, and social control experienced as a result of 92 bureaucratic structures reinforced dependency’s undesirability. The experience of powerless in the face of long waits, hassles, ill treatment, and confusion became a form of dependency. As I will demonstrate in the next section, certain meaning-making attributions offset some of the problematic aspects of dependency.

Assimilating Dependency into the Struggle

Emphasizing need. The most common justification for social services was need, a code that appeared multiple times in almost every interview. Every participant emphasized a need for help in one or more of the areas discussed in the section on security: food, medicine, medical care, and money to cover expenses. In my interview with Camilla, I saw quite clearly how the articulation of need served as a justification for being dependent on services. Towards the end of the interview, I asked Camilla how she felt when she looked at the eco-map we had constructed.

She said, “Oh, well now that I see it all together…so much help…sometimes I feel bad.” She went on to say that if she had a better job, she would not need so many supports. She concluded by saying, “If I didn’t have them I wouldn’t be, I don’t know what I’d do. I think they’re indispensable for me.” Here, need superseded discomfort. When also discussing eco-maps with

Victoria, Camilla, Angela, and Estela, it became clear that, because they needed services in order to achieve security, it was acceptable to receive multiple supports. As Freddie put it, “If you need it, it’s good to seek [aid].”

What emerged from the data, then, was the virtue of taking only what one needed, not more. Taking in excess of needs led to sloth. Victoria expressed this belief by saying, “You need to be conscious if support is a necessity. And government help stops being helpful when you don’t need it.” To Victoria, accepting unnecessary aid was detrimental to one’s development. A 93 better choice, according to Marisol and Luisa, was to leave aid for those who needed it most, either because they had lower-paying jobs or larger families.

If one needed services, and if services met one’s needs, then dependency was less problematic because it was worth the cost. All participants offered multiple examples of the ways that benefits met their basic needs—from food to medicine to offsetting expenses. Most participants also spoke about how services helped them live more peaceful lives; for example,

Rita spoke at length about a group that helped her better understand her adolescent son. Marjory,

Angela, Marisol, Stephanie, Edgardo and Nicole spoke about feeling bolstered by interactions with caring therapists, social workers, or home visitors. When formal supports met peoples’ needs, they produced the sense that depending on services was worthwhile.

Seizing opportunity. The idea that it was wrong to seek out unnecessary supports coexisted with some participants’ view that it was virtuous to go after necessary supports actively and assertively. Marisol, Estela, and Stephanie all referred to a compulsion to “take advantage of” services, benefits, and programs. Marisol emphasized how important it was to make the effort to “knock on doors,” even when it was difficult. “Often,” Marisol explained, “he who insists gets [aid].” Here, the active stance involved in seeking out services served as an antidote to the passivity associated with dependency. Lucia reflected this stance in the phrase she used to express her regret about not seeking help sooner, “But when in reality I needed it, I didn’t do it. I slept.” Freddie, Estela, Stephanie, Marisol, Camilla, and Bris all reframed service dependency as seizing opportunity.

Stephanie and Bris spoke with particular vigor as they expressed their opinions that all

Latino immigrants ought to take advantage of aid. When asked what advice she might give others, Bris said, 94

For example, when they tell me, I’ve left WIC, I say, “Why? Is it that you have enough

money?” “No it’s because I don’t have time,” “No, it’s help for you!” For example, if I

get rid of a WIC check for $25, who is going to give you that money that you spent on

milk or bread? So you shouldn’t do that. If you have the need, you must pick up your

checks and recertify so you don’t lose that aid, and then they say to me, “Yes, you’re

right.”

Bris succeeded in convincing her imagined interlocutor to recertify for WIC by emphasizing not only need, but also the importance of seizing opportunity. She also touched on taking the initiative to do what it takes to get services. Here, the requirement to overcome bureaucratic requirements became a way to act on one’s environment, demonstrating mastery.

Experiencing mastery. Experiencing oneself as competent, empowered, and on track in one’s struggle also countered concerns about dependency. In different ways, Bris, Camilla,

Stephanie, Rita, and Jessica all experienced a sense of mastery over systems of social supports.

Stephanie had devised the perfect system for budgeting food expenses based on the timing of benefits. Because Camilla lived in a shared apartment, it was difficult for her to furnish proof of residence to various social programs. However, she could use pay stubs to prove her address.

Having pay stubs represented independence, and being organized enough to furnish them connoted skill. Jessica figured out a way to make it easier to wait in line for DC insurance; her husband would line up in the middle of the night, and she and the children would relieve him when it was time for him to go to work. Bris organized her paperwork months before she needed to recertify. These and other experiences of being a powerful agent helped some participants reconcile dependency with the upward struggle. 95

There was some evidence that the longer participants received services, the more likely they were to achieve mastery over systems. The participants with younger children (e.g. Aurora,

Victoria, and Carolina) expressed less confidence and more gaps in knowledge about accessing resources. For example, when asked how she felt when applying for Head Start, Carolina said,

“Um, a bit nervous and like, I mean because there were so many things I needed to do, to get vaccines and all that, but since I didn’t know that I felt a bit stressed in that moment, I didn’t know how all that was.” Lucia and Bris, the participants who expressed the most confidence about their ability to navigate systems, had older children. It is not surprising that experience begets knowledge. It also opens up opportunities to access services. When asked how she got a pre-school slot for her third child, Rita replied, “Because in the school where she goes, I had my other two kids, so when you already have siblings there, it is easier.” In that case, Rita probably relied not only on knowledge, but on connections and/or policies that gave preferential treatment to known families. Receiving preferential treatment legitimized service use.

Focusing on gratitude. Reconciliation also occurred through the expression of gratitude.

Although no participants explicitly stated a connection between gratitude and reconciling dependency, many took pains to express appreciation. Lucia, Bris, Carolina, Marjory, Marisol, and Luisa all expressed gratitude for formal social supports. Most of them uttered statements that were similar to Lucia’s: “Thanks to God, and thanks I give, because I had help, they helped me with food stamps, with Medicaid…” Absent from this and similar statements was the idea of the enterprising individual leaving no stone unturned as she used formal supports to advance in her struggle. On the contrary, grateful feelings contained an element of grace, the idea of receiving gifts from a higher power regardless of one’s actions. Marjory framed her experience as serendipity, emphasizing that if not for the English class, she would not have found her 96 therapist. Bris referred to the experience of receiving services as “the glory.” Focusing on gratitude created an exalted position that was more comfortable for participants than abject dependency.

Like seizing opportunity, gratitude also had the power to counteract helplessness. Instead of focusing on frustration in the face of bureaucratic hurdles, participants could approach those hurdles with equanimity. For example, when asked if she thought wait times should be shorter at offices, Aurora replied, “No, I don’t think so. Sometimes you wait a lot, but also since it’s help that they give to you, it’s worth it to be waiting there.” Here she implied that if you need help, you should accept it gracefully, without criticism or complaint. As Bris put it, “they’re helping you, and you need to have patience.” Thus, some participants tempered potential frustration and helplessness with a focus on grateful feelings.

Expressing entitlement. Counter to the idea of grace, there was also some evidence that paying taxes and/or being an American citizen conferred a right to services or benefits. Here, dependency on services became a means of exercising rights. The idea that a child’s U.S. citizenship conferred a right to benefits arose in interviews with Freddie, Luisa, Stephanie, Bris, and Rita. Both Freddie and Luisa spoke of their children’s U.S. citizenship with fierce pride, emphasizing that their children qualified for services, contrary to what others might assume.

Few participants could make the same claim about themselves.

The claim they could make, however, was that they were entitled to formal supports because they paid taxes. This theme arose in interviews with Bris, Marjory, Stephanie, and

Estela. Stephanie justified service dependency by framing it in terms of a social contract:

So as long as you pay taxes and you do what you've got to do, then you're fine. Receive

what you've got to receive. I feel like we all pay, what we've all got to do, and we obey 97

the laws how we're supposed to, that we should all be eligible to receive what we are

eligible to receive.

However, when it came to the economics of the social contract, participants often expressed confusion, confessing that they were not, in Marjory’s words, “really informed about that.”

Estela said, “My husband works 40 hours and they almost take out half his paycheck with those deductions, I think that’s for oneself, but truly, I don’t know…[I think] everything they take out is for the supports they give everybody.” None of the participants went further than this; in other words, nobody unpacked the mechanics of taxation and resource distribution. Instead of bringing up dollar amounts, they justified dependency simply by emphasizing their own contributions.

Highlighting formal relations. The formal structure of worker-client relations also had some power to counteract discomfort with dependency. Lucia, Freddie, Marisol, Rita, and

Angela referenced the idea that workers are supposed to help people. For example, in talking about therapists, Rita said that they have “studied for that, how to be able to help people.”

Several participants (Freddie, Lucia, and Rita) described effective workers as “professional.” To

Lucia, the fact that it was a service provider’s role to administer social services removed service provision from the realm of dependent relations, and transformed it into a matter-of-fact transaction. Referring to ill treatment by workers, Lucia emphasized that “they’re not supposed to treat people like that” for two reasons: first, the person needs help, and second, the worker’s job is to help meet those needs. Lucia expanded the point, saying that when one asks for help, one does not say to a worker, “Give me. I need. . .you to gift me food, to pay my bills.” Instead, the person seeking help asks a trained professional to administer public benefits. When workers violated the transactional nature of the encounter by treating clients badly, they were the ones at 98 fault. And when workers were kind, courteous, caring, competent, and respectful, participants felt more comfortable with service use; Bris, Carolina, Victoria, Nicole, and Angela all linked good treatment to satisfaction with services.

Along the lines of emphasizing formal relations, other participants pointed to the idiosyncratic nature of transactions with workers. Marisol, Rita, Marjory, Camilla, Angela, and

Freddie all mentioned variations in service provision that occurred as a function of individual workers. As Angela put it, “Sometimes I get a good one, other times [they] change [workers].”

Estela emphasized that treatment depended on what kind of day a worker was having:

“Sometimes you encounter people who, I don’t know, it must be that they’ve had a bad day.”

Camilla used work stress to explain bad treatment: “It’s like everything. If you have lots of things to do, you’re in a bad mood.” In those cases, in framing ill treatment as a violation of formal relations perpetuated by individual workers, participants removed the blame from themselves.

Experiencing support from workers. In addition to focusing on the formalities involved in worker-client relations, participants also emphasized the relationship-oriented elements of those interactions. Being understood and being respected emerged from the data; however, feeling supported was one of the most populated codes in the data. Experiencing caring support may have offset the frustration and helplessness associated with dependency on bureaucracies. The only participant who explicitly made this connection was Stephanie, who was unimpressed with bureaucracy. Differentiating between the system and its workers, she said,

“I don't feel like it's the system that's talking to me. I feel like it's the people that are talking to me, that are helping me a lot.” 99

Although other participants did not make the same connection that Stephanie made, they did emphasize the support they received not only from programs, but from individual workers.

Marjory, Freddie, Angela, Edgard, and Lucia all appreciated the support offered by therapists and/or home visitors. Rita appreciated that the new director of her child’s pre-school made an effort to speak Spanish to the parents, even though she knew very few words. She also appreciated that the director “was always on top of things, she sees us and she greets us.”

Stephanie, too, felt both respected and supported by her social worker, “who just makes time.”

Stephanie went on to say, “She makes time for me to come in, even though she has this full schedule.” In all these instances, participants appreciated the positive regard they received from professionals. Perhaps the regard also contributed to a sense of being on track in their struggle for esteem.

Although feeling supported (along with highlighting formal relations, expressing entitlement, emphasizing need, seizing opportunity, experiencing mastery, and focusing on gratitude) helped participants assimilate dependency into their struggles, challenges often arose.

From the data emerged three coexisting experiences that were not in line with the struggle for security, peace, and recognition. Those dissonant experiences included: feeling adrift; feeling insecure about resources; and experiencing disrespect.

Experiencing Services as Incommensurate with the Struggle

Feeling adrift. As I collapsed codes, I saw that many experiences of diminished mastery—for example, feeling frustrated, jumping through hoops, feeling overwhelmed, and experiencing powerlessness—made it difficult to reconcile dependency with the struggle. It was difficult to experience mastery or seize opportunity when feeling overwhelmed by bureaucracy; thus, feeling adrift contradicted the struggle’s version of an independent, powerful self. 100

However, it was clear that bureaucratic obstacles in and of themselves were not problematic.

After all, striving was about overcoming difficulties by seizing opportunity and working hard.

As discussed previously, surmounting challenges in obtaining services sometimes functioned as an indicator that participants deserved services all the more. Thus, the problematic aspect of bureaucracy was the sense that one was not on course in the struggle.

Estela, Rita, Marisol, Edgarda, Camilla, and Lucia all used the word frustration to express a sense of powerlessness in the face of systems. For example, even though Marisol experienced herself as quite adept at overcoming hurdles, she felt frustrated that she had not succeeded in getting insurance for her undocumented daughter. This was particularly difficult not because her daughter had any imminent medical needs, but because the school required physical examinations and vaccinations. Although Edgarda used need and gratitude to justify service dependency, she also expressed frustration that she had to travel great distances to keep so many appointments with various court-mandated services. She was particularly frustrated that she had to undergo urinalysis, even though she had never used drugs or alcohol. Stephanie, Jessica, and

Marjory expressed frustration about not being allowed to eat (or feed their children) in social services offices—“not even an apple or a banana,” Marjory complained. In all those instances, frustration stemmed from a sense of being at the mercy of social systems. This sense of powerlessness was difficult to reconcile with the upward struggle.

Another source of frustration was what Estela described as “a lack of information.”

Missing information about resources affected participants’ capacities to seize opportunity, a desired action that aligned with the upward struggle. In order to describe the opaque nature of social services, Stephanie contrasted her scant knowledge of legal services offices with how easy it was to access fast food restaurants: “Tell me McDonald's,” she said, “I'll go there. . .I'll find it, 101 but legal places here, it's hard.” In addition to location, almost every single participant mentioned that—either in the past or the present—she lacked knowledge about how to apply, how to recertify, who qualifies, and/or who to ask about services.

In addition to lacking knowledge, it was also particularly frustrating when participants got knocked off course despite their best efforts. For example, Luisa went to lengths to empower herself by bringing a friend to a Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) appointment to serve as an interpreter. However, the worker told her it was illegal to have a third person present during the interview. When Luisa tried to argue, the worker threatened to call security. This experience was particularly upsetting for Luisa because she had made the effort to take matters into her own hands—and the worker had controlled the interaction in a way that felt unfair. In telling her story, Luisa emphasized the effort she made to avoid dependency: “They don’t have Spanish-speaking staff, okay, I get it, but I never asked if there was somebody to help me in Spanish. I never asked anybody because I already know there’s nobody, and that they didn’t let this person [translate], yes, I feel bad.”

Experiencing resource insecurity. Although almost every participant expressed that formal supports offset expenses and helped them meet survival needs, only Lucia and Bris conveyed a sense of currently having everything they needed. Most participants felt hard- pressed to make ends meet. Actual life circumstances certainly produced more difficulties for some participants. For example, Stephanie, Victoria, and Edgarda were single mothers, while the rest had working spouses. Eight out of 17 participants had three or four children to feed, while the rest had only one or two. Parents of young children in Maryland were less likely to have their expenses offset by government programs. DC parents, on the other hand, received transportation benefits and extras provided by pre-school programs (books, access to donated 102

Christmas gifs, breakfast, etc.). Still, beyond actual circumstances, Bris and Lucia’s perceived resource security may have correlated with their perception that, over time, they had mastered systems of formal supports.

Although none of the participants said so directly, I believe that feeling helpless undermined the sense of security afforded by the social safety net. In other words, bureaucratic hurdles represented the possibility that people might not receive needed resources. This produced a sense of insecurity that was very different from Lucia’s assertion that, “. . . if I don’t have work, one or two calls and I have my food stamps and I know I’m going to buy milk and eggs and I feel more supported.” In contrast to what Lucia described as “one or two calls,” almost all participants mentioned one or more barriers to service described earlier in this chapter.

Even Lucia, speaking about her early experiences seeking services for her now adult children, brought up the concern that a bureaucratic challenge (in this case, a long wait) might prevent her from getting help; she said, “I saw so many people when I went to that office and I said, there are so many people, they’re not even going to help me.”

Indeed, in several cases, participants (Edgarda, Estela, and Marisol) did not access needed benefits because of bureaucratic hurdles. For example, Estela’s Supplemental Nutrition

Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits stopped appearing in her account, but she did not want to wait in line and miss her English class, so she decided to wait another six months, when she had to return to the office to recertify for Medicaid. Presumably, she should receive back-benefits when SNAP is restored; whether this will actually occur is an open question. Similarly, Marisol did not receive free lunch for her daughter until the very end of the school year because of an issue processing her application. The lost lunches were never restored. Marisol was not upset 103 about the loss of the lunch itself—the family did not lack for food—but she recognized that they could have used the money saved on lunch to cover other expenses.

In contrast to Lucia’s confidence that she could consistently access aid by making “one or two calls,” many participants experienced formal supports as somewhat arbitrary. As Marisol and Carolina pointed out, there were fewer services available in Maryland (Both Bris and Lucia lived in the District). Angela and Carolina had both applied for Head Start and been put on waiting lists; they did not understand why others had received slots. Marisol’s sister-in-law had been put on a waiting list, while Marisol had not even received a notice in the mail. Furthermore, the ease with which one recertified was a function of workers’ actions. Stephanie, Rita, Luisa,

Marjory, and Estela all perceived that Latino service seekers often experienced worse treatment than black or white applicants. Conversely, Nicole noted that she was the recipient of preferential treatment because her sister-in-law worked at the WIC office. These and other experiences of service provision’s arbitrary nature often represented threats to the idea of the social safety net as an entitlement.

Experiencing disrespect. Another experience that was at odds with the upward struggle was feeling disrespected. Disrespect threatened esteem, which was both object and motivator of the struggle. Disrespect fell into two categories: interpersonal and group-based. Although interpersonal disrespect often produced distress, it was easier to shrug off than disrespect related to ethnicity or immigration status.

As discussed previously, the act of highlighting formal relationships between workers and clients often functioned as a way to reconcile mistreatment with the upward struggle: many participants viewed brusque treatment as a violation of the professional role. Therefore, the problem lay in individual workers—and not in participants’ aid-seeking behavior. 104

Still, the strategy of emphasizing formal relationships was not always successful; disrespectful treatment often contributed to the sense of bureaucratic requirements as overwhelming and controlling. Even though many codes described program requirements, participants (Lucia, Bris,

Carolina, and Angela) seemed less likely to experience those requirements as controlling or overwhelming when they were administered in respectful ways. As Angela said when referring to being asked to furnish documents, “It’s not that they say it. It’s how they say it.” Presumably, if she had been asked more respectfully, she would have felt better about returning to the office with documents.

When participants experienced disrespectful treatment, it was difficult to avoid feeling discomfort, embarrassment, intimidation, or other unwelcome feelings. For example, Lucia spoke about being treated badly by workers. “How does one feel?” she asked, “Depressed.

Many times I felt that I was leaving crying, and I saw how my son looked at me.” In Lucia’s case, it was not enough to explain away ill treatment as a breach in formal worker-client relations.

Nor was it enough to justify dependency with need, another strategy that Lucia drew on as she told her story. Lucia’s early interactions with formal supports resulted in both depression and shame.

Perceived group-level disrespect was even more difficult to manage. Although some participants (Freddie, Bris, Estela, and Victoria) referred fleetingly or tentatively to discrimination against Latinos, only a few participants expressed anger or shame related to legal status and/or ethnicity. This may have been because of my social location as a Caucasian US citizen; perhaps they would have spoken more openly to a Latina whom they perceived to be less judgmental about living in the US without papers. Perhaps Stephanie, also a U.S. citizen, felt 105 more at liberty to speak. When asked what she would do to improve social services, Stephanie replied,

I think that we should all treat each other the same. You're legal, not legal. It doesn't

matter. I think it should just all be the same. I don't think they should ask you if you're

legal or not legal. I think that part of somebody being an illegal alien—I feel it's

disrespect. If they ask you if you're legal or not legal, I feel like it's a question that it's

mainly disrespect. I feel like we should all be treated the same, get the same benefits, be

treated the same way in schools, social services, all that.

In Stephanie’s discussion, social services functioned as an arena in which people either receive or do not receive respect. As somebody who interacted daily with undocumented family members, Stephanie felt that disrespect acutely, and considered it a personal affront. She uttered her words with anger and passion.

Luisa, too, spoke about racism in a passionate, angry voice. Unlike Freddie, Bris, Estela, and Victoria, who referred to racism tentatively, Luisa was unequivocal in her presentation. In describing differential treatment given to Latino vs. non-Latino applicants, she said, “I say it’s ugly because that, for me, that’s racism. I can’t see it any other way.” Like Stephanie, Luisa pointed to the injustice of reduced opportunities for undocumented immigrants; unlike Stephanie, she focused on work permits, not social services. When I asked both participants if they engaged in organizing or advocacy efforts, Luisa said she had attended a few marches, but had never been formally involved with an advocacy group. Stephanie had been part of a Maryland-based advocacy group, but she became too busy with her children, “and didn’t have time for all that.”

Beyond Stephanie’s efforts to help undocumented service users with applications, neither 106 participant experienced herself as particularly engaged in the issues that provoked so much ire.

In that sense, experiencing disrespect overlapped with being adrift.

Thus, three unwelcome experiences of formal supports—being adrift, resource insecurity, and disprespect—threatened participants’ abilities to succeed in reconciling dependency with the struggle for security, peace, and esteem. Those experiences, along with the categories of how participants reconciled dependency with the struggle, offer theoretical insight into some dynamics involved in participants’ experiences of formal supports. As discussed in Chapter III, one of the limitations of the study is the lack of observational data. Although it is impossible to correct for the lack of richness in the data, I did employ situational mapping (Clarke, 2008) as a way to attend to context. In the next section, I describe the results of that analysis.

Results of Situational Mapping

The Struggle as Discourse

Drawing maps of social structures and discursive elements involved in participants’ service use helped me avoid viewing the struggle in terms of a localized story derived solely from the participants’ lived experiences. Instead, as I mapped out all the related elements, I saw how one might view participants’ descriptions of the struggle as a form of discourse derived from larger sociocultural and political contexts. Based on commonly held perceptions of US political culture (Jansson, 2012), I tentatively identified several structures that might underpin the struggle: 1) the idea that growth and expansion are positive; 2) the notion of rugged individualism; and 3) consumerism. As I demonstrated in the previous section, all three structures—which relate to the myth of the American dream—arose multiple times in the data.

For example, Jessica’s focus on home ownership (an aspiration echoed by Nicole, Camilla, Luisa, and Estela) touched on all themes: owning a home represents both advancement and 107 independence. It also involves making purchases. Here, I engaged in recontextualization as I compared data to pre-existing ideas—in this case, the idea that macro-level discourses constrain human action (Clarke, 2008).

It is important to understand that, even though I saw examples of these discourses in the data, participants rarely made the connections I made. One exception occurred in my interview with Stephanie, the only U.S.-born participant. In the following passage, Stephanie rejected rugged individualism:

Here everybody says that. You should work. That you should work your butt off to get

what you want. But for you to get what you want in this country, you've got to get help

from somebody. You're not going to do it alone. You're never going to do something

alone in the United States. Whoever says that is a liar. So I feel like if somebody doesn't

give you a hand, you are never going to get anywhere. I'd tell them, "Hey, go to social

services." If they help you, that's one hand that somebody is giving you. If they give you

food stamps, you know that you're not going to be wasting that money on food. They

give it to you, so you've got pay. You can get a car. You can save up for a bigger place.

You can work, and you can apply for daycare vouchers.

It is interesting to note that, although Stephanie rejected rugged individualism, she espoused the values of advancing and making purchases. Stephanie viewed individualism as a myth propagated through language; she did not approach advancing and consumerism with the same critical consciousness. That does not preclude the possibility that—operating on what critical realists describe as the deep level of reality (Kempster & Parry, 2011)—those discourses have influenced her actions and self-concept. 108

Silences in the Data. Along similar lines, it also became clear that two realms that seemed relevant to service use were virtually missing from participants’ utterances. Qualitative researchers refer to these elephants in the room as silences in the data (Clarke, 2008). To me, the silences in the data fell into two categories: gender and political/economic oppression.

Although many participants referenced racism, none mentioned gender. Extrapolating from the findings, it was apparent to me that gender organized participants’ life experiences and their experiences with social services. First, most burdens that threatened participants’ sense of peace related to child-rearing. Furthermore, a large proportion of participants’ daily interactions

(applying for benefits, using benefits to manage the household, taking children to various appointments, caring for children) related to the domestic sphere. It is also notable that, once participants became pregnant, a world of social services opened up. Although participants did not express concerns about this state of affairs, one might argue that they themselves were worthy of social services only in the role of carriers and caretakers of US born children. Many participants also experienced domestic violence, which social workers often view as a phenomenon rooted in gendered power relations (Hyde-Nolan & Juliao, 2012). As mentioned previously, at least four participants experienced domestic violence in the United States, while over half the participants either experienced or witnessed domestic violence in their countries of origin. Thus, although the participants did not bring up gender, I believe that gendered power relations shaped many of their experiences.

It was also clear to me that unjust conditions played an important role in participants’ experiences. There were many codes related to social control, but very few utterances that connected social control to larger power relations. The history of colonial oppression in Latin

America played no role in participants’ stories. Nor did participants mention the record-high 109 economic inequality in the US that has become an area of concern in recent years (Alvaredo,

Atkinson, Pikkety, & Saez, 2013). Luisa was concerned that undocumented Latinos lacked work permits; others noted that wages were too low to make ends meet. However, nobody mentioned the economic and political structures that reinforced these realities. When participants brought up racism, it was a personal issue, not a structural one. In other words, participants believed that some workers were racist, while others were not. Thus, as discussed previously, the struggle for security, peace, and esteem remained largely on the individual and interpersonal level.

Participants aspired to social esteem, and held onto the belief that, in the current economic climate, they (or their children) could achieve esteem through education and hard work.

In the next section, combining the results of the situational mapping with the grounded theory analysis of the data, I address the second research question about whether and how formal social supports helped participants. I draw on findings related to the emergent categories discussed thus far (the struggle, how participants reconciled dependency, experiences of dissonance, and silences in the data). I also bring in data related to satisfaction with services, which emerged frequently across interviews. Finally, I introduce several data points that neither recurred nor fit neatly into the story I have told thus far. This is consistent with critical realism

(Bhaskar, 1978), which posits that frequent occurrence of phenomena is not necessary to serve as grounds for hypothesizing causal relationships (Sayer, 2011).

Critically Evaluating Formal Supports

Being Helped: To What Extent and How?

In this section, I address the second research question: How and in what ways does human flourishing arise from participants’ interactions with formal social supports? Because the story that emerged from the data did not fit with Nussbaum’s (2000) list of capabilities or the 110 concept of doing and being (Nussbaum; Sen, 1999), I clarified human flourishing by rephrasing it as what participants valued. This choice aligns with the critical realist idea that people are evaluative beings capable of suffering and flourishing (Sayer, 2011). From that proposition, I extrapolated the idea that a criterion for evaluating social programs should be whether peoples’ experiences resonate with what they value. As discussed, I concluded that the participants valued being on track in their upward arcing struggle for security, peace, and esteem. Thus, the second research question became: To what extent and how do participants’ experiences with social services support their upward struggle for security, peace, and esteem? In this section, I address that question by evaluating social services in light of those three struggles, as well as the value of striving. However, I do not abandon human flourishing altogether; in the final section, I explore whether social services helped participants engage in some of the activities in which humans are meant to engage. Because I bring in new data and rely on abduction (Danermark,

Ekstrom, Jakobsen, & Karlsson, 2002), a critical realist technique wherein one compares data to theory, I categorize the last two sections as findings. Thus, I include them in this chapter, not the next, wherein I interpret the data and compare the findings to existing literature. In that chapter,

I go deeper.

Being on an upward struggle. As discussed earlier in the chapter, sometimes participants successfully assimilated dependency into their narrative of achievement and advancement; other times, dissonance arose. Time (i.e. receiving services over a period of many years) was the only concept that appeared to predict the ease with which participants squared dependency with the value of advancement through struggle. This was probably a function of the increased mastery that came with time. However, even when participants achieved a sense of mastery, they still continued to grapple with the tension between neediness and advancement. 111

From the data at hand, it is impossible to quantify the extent to which formal social supports either hindered or supported alignment between participants’ life experiences and their values.

In terms of sheer numbers, the data contained more instances of satisfaction than dissatisfaction.

Although critical realism warns against both ignoring silences and assuming that regularity equals causality, I do not discount the significance of this finding, especially because it supports conclusions drawn in journal entries and memos. On balance, despite bureaucratic issues and ill treatment, participants believed that services, benefits, and programs made their economic positions more secure and their lives more peaceful. No matter how flawed or insufficient, the formal social supports they received were better than nothing. In that sense, progression from nothing to something represented a form of progress.

Struggling towards security. When participants perceived that their basic needs were being met—and would continue to be met into the foreseeable future—they experienced themselves as being on track in their struggle for security. When they contrasted past experiences with present experiences (particularly with respect to food), they also felt as if they were progressing towards economic security. As discussed previously, most participants had few unmet imminent needs, but still perceived themselves as resource insecure. They were not hungry, but they worried about meeting their monthly expenses. I hypothesized that as participants became more adept at managing systems, they were less likely to perceive resource insecurity. Thus, if benefits had been easier to access and maintain, participants might have felt more on track in their struggle towards security.

Struggling towards peace. When participants felt more secure about resources, they also felt more peaceful. However, achieving peace was not simply about obtaining food, expenses, and healthcare. It also involved solving interpersonal issues that plagued participants: 112 domestic violence, depression, illness, and a range of problems related to children’s health, education, and psychosocial development. Unlike income support services, the services designed to address those issues (home visiting, therapy, and other psychosocial services) did not figure as largely in the story that emerged from the data. This is probably because the story that emerged from the data was about squaring dependency with the struggle—and as discussed previously, participants were often quite successful at squaring the use of psychosocial services or health care with their values.

As discussed earlier, there was ample evidence that participants were satisfied with the support they received from therapists, nutritionists, home visitors, and other workers who provided psychosocial services. But beyond emotional and economic support, there were only a few instances in which participants clearly delineated how and whether formal supports contributed to their sense of peace and well-being. Some participants appreciated the nutritional information they received from the workers at WIC (Women, Infants, and Children). Freddie believed that psychopharmacological medication and therapy reduced his depression. Jessica believed that counseling brought resolution to her son’s sleep issue, which was a stressor on the family. Hinting at the mechanisms beyond social support that made counseling useful, Angela described talking with her home visitor as “de-stressing,” while Lucia thought it was helpful to

“get out the past” by talking to a therapist. Stephanie appreciated that her social worker (“she’s like a mother”) helped her become more organized and pushed her to get her GED. These and other data suggested that social supports sometimes helped participants address the problems that threatened peace.

When psychosocial supports were ineffective or difficult to access, participants dealt with problems without formal support—sometimes successfully, sometimes unsuccessfully. Bris 113 found that talking to a therapist about past abuse made her feel worse, so she discontinued services and turned to God and her church for help. Nicole was still waiting for an evaluation for her child, whose negative behaviors were difficult to manage. Nicole was opposed to medication, but hopeful that she might find some assistance. In the meantime, she took her daughter to the park every afternoon, because she thought it was helpful to get exercise. Carolina, who had not been able to access Head Start, felt overwhelmed in the house all day with her son and his infant sister. Edgarda, the only participant who received services mandated by Child Protective

Services (CPS), felt supported by her therapist, but she also believed that four sessions per week was “too much therapy,” especially because she spent so much time and money transporting her four children on the bus. Even when the service was effective, the time and effort involved in accessing the service often threatened peace—particularly when, as in Edgarda’s case, service use was a requirement rather than a choice.

Along similar lines, many aspects of accessing income support also produced stress, which threatened peace. As discussed, the more successfully participants navigated bureaucracy, the more peaceful they felt. However, on balance, the peace of mind afforded by increased security as well as the act of using formal supports to addressing psychosocial problems usually over-rode the threat to peace that arose from feeling adrift and experiencing disrespect.

Struggling towards esteem. As with peace, the experience of accessing and maintaining formal supports sometimes threatened esteem; ill treatment and bureaucratic issues had the potential to produce shame and overwhelmed feeling. In other instances, participants experienced respect, kindness, and support. They experienced themselves as effective and masterful. Good experiences seemed to outweigh the bad; however, racism, ill treatment, and bureaucratic indignities (e.g. not being able to eat in social services offices) mattered to 114 participants. Disrespect and misrecognition compromised human dignity. However, those experiences were separate from the long-term esteem for which they struggled, usually defined as seeing their children become professionals.

For the most part, despite compromised esteem in the short term, participants believed they were on track to watch their children develop into esteemed members of society. Bris, Rita,

Camilla, Nicole, Freddie, and Luisa all expressed satisfaction with the education their children received. Carolina was very upset that her son was not enrolled in pre-school. Camilla expressed appreciation for the socialization that she, as a parent, had received at Head Start. She said:

“Latino culture isn’t the same as American culture, you need to try to inject a little bit of

American culture.” To her, this meant expecting her children to do things (e.g. brushing their teeth) at a younger age. Camilla believed this would help her children succeed. Other parents, however, were less specific about how social and educational programs were helping their children. Instead, just the sheer fact that children received supports produced satisfaction and optimism. For the participants who spoke little English or had never accessed the US educational system, service use served as evidence that the struggle arced upward.

How does Experiencing Formal Supports Relate to Living Life More Humanly?

In this section, I go beyond evaluating whether formal social programs help participants live their lives in accord with their values. I see worth in assessing the fit between values and experiences, particularly because such an approach aligns with the social work profession’s emphasis on client-centeredness. As discussed previously, it is also consistent with critical realism. Still, I am concerned that focusing on present values obscures future possibilities.

Limiting analysis to participants’ lived experiences is particularly concerning if participants are indeed constrained by discourses such as the myth of the American dream. I 115 believe that social structures often prevent oppressed people from seeing their way out of oppressive power relations (Freire, 1977/1968). This is particularly true when the act of questioning the American dream flies in the face of the sacrifice and hard work involved in the struggle. Thus, influenced by notions of human flourishing (Nussbaum, 2000; Sen, 1999), in the section that follows, I offer some musings about some of the ways formal supports both support and hinder participants’ capability to engage in the doings and beings that make them more human.

Crowding out living humanly. As discussed in previous sections, participants spent an enormous amount of time managing formal supports. As Nicole put it, services “demand time waiting, waiting.” Both Nicole and Stephanie—who did not share the same immigrant narrative as the other participants—felt a certain sense of outrage at the energy involved in navigating services, benefits, and programs. I perceived similar feelings in Edgarda and Luisa, but they were quick to temper their utterances of dissatisfaction with expressions of gratitude. Except for

Marjory, who upon probing said she would have been getting some much-needed sleep had she not been waiting in line at 4:00 am to enroll in health insurance, participants did not talk about what they might be able to do if they were not spending so much time and energy managing formal supports. I imagine they might be engaging in leisure, rest, quality family time, or educational activities.

Although suffering is an inevitable aspect of the human experience, I also imagine that participants might be able to live in a more dignified manner if they experienced a service system with less friction, less ill treatment, and less judgment. As discussed, many participants successfully negotiated the tension between dependency and self-reliance. Still, I cannot help 116 but think that the amount of shame and frustration involved might have been reduced. In the next chapter, I will explore this idea more fully.

Opportunities for living humanly. Even though I believe that formal social supports robbed time that could have been spent engaging in more human doings, I also saw how they opened up opportunities for doing leisure activities, honoring relationships, forging connections with others, and helping others. Rita, Nicole, Camilla, Stephanie, and Marisol all spoke about having more money in their pockets as a result of social services. For example, as Marisol said, referring to the school lunch money that took so long to access:

Imagine this: with [my daughter] and the lunch, they gave her like, I would say $3 each

day, which was, per week $20 or more, and that $20 you can use to buy other stuff for her,

necessities like clothes or shoes, but also treats. Or you could use it to bring them on an

outing.

Marisol and others valued the capability to buy extras. It was a function that did not come without problems (Rita spoke at length about how difficult it was to deal with her son’s requests to buy things), but it also opened up opportunities for pleasurable experiences, for example, going on family outings. Sending money to relatives in one’s country, as described by Bris in a previous section, may have also been a source both of pleasure and the satisfaction that comes with helping loved ones.

Formal supports also provided at least two participants with opportunities to engage in advocacy and leadership. Marjory was a member of the pre-school policy council, a position that she described with pride. Her actions resulted not only in the sensation of being on course in her struggle, but in real changes in the social environment; her group succeeded in getting translators at parent meetings. Nicole, too, spoke about a successful organizing effort undertaken 117 by fellow English classmates to change teachers. These examples, though infrequent, show that agencies have the potential to become arenas of action. Based on Luisa’s and Stephanie’s experiences, this did not seem to be the case with public benefits offices, which incited anger, but little action.

Still, for Stephanie, the benefits office became a place to show generosity and altruism.

Because Stephanie was bilingual, she took it upon herself to help Spanish-speakers fill out applications so that they could access benefits, too. In addition to helping others, she also shared a Thanksgiving turkey she received from an agency. Stephanie told this story:

I saw a family for Thanksgiving that weren't going to do anything, doesn't receive any

kind of benefits, and I felt that since I got given a turkey, I should share that with

somebody. So just like somebody gave it to me, I feel like I should, so I invited them to

my house for dinner. So I felt like that turkey was even more better, sharing it with

somebody.

Because Stephanie felt compelled to share what she received, she performed an act that resulted in community. Although this was not something that arose frequently in the data, I took it as evidence that, under certain circumstances, generosity begets generosity.

Very infrequently, supports also had the potential to become arenas for adults to reflect on their lives and relationships. Rita spoke glowingly about a group she attended at her older son’s school. As she described it, the purpose of this group was to enhance understanding between parents and children. Above all, she came out of the group steadfast in the knowledge that the most important thing in life is “giving love to children and teaching them to give love to others.” Beyond survival needs or ends related to developmental milestones, this group gave

Rita an opportunity understand other people in her life—and to clarify her stance towards human 118 relationships. This enhanced her capacity to relate to others and reflect on her life. Taking all the interviews into account, Rita’s endorsement of the group she described was the most positive, energetic endorsement of any formal social support.

Thus, possibilities for doing human things beyond meeting needs and solving problems emerged from interactions with formal social supports. However, they were rare. More commonly—despite difficulties reconciling dependency—formal supports helped participants meet basic needs, solve problems, and experience perceived advancement towards esteem.

Before offering a more detailed summary of the chapter, I briefly summarize the reflexive accounting that occurred as I wrote field notes and journal entries. I write about how I affected the findings and how the findings affected me.

Reflexivity

I recognize that, because I am a Caucasian professional, the Latino service users I interviewed probably viewed me as representative of mainstream U.S. culture, a construct that dies hard, despite demographic shifts. Still, throughout the data collection process, I harbored the secret fantasy that I might function as some sort of extra-terrestrial whose very presence— whose broken Spanish and bizarre questions—undid the shrouds of false consciousness. My hopes were dashed when it came time to ask participants to react to the eco-map we constructed.

More often than not, they expressed either shame or gratitude as they realized how many benefits, services, and programs they received. I wanted to say, “Don’t feel compelled to feel bad! I’m dependent, too! On white privilege. On tax policies. On income from capital I inherited. And nobody expects me to feel bad!” Of course, I kept this position to myself. The interview continued, and I remained a professional collecting data about how to improve user experience.

As far as I could see, nothing transformative or emancipatory occurred for any of us. 119

I do not regret keeping my political cards close to my chest. I wanted to maximize my chances of constructing a theoretical interpretation that resonated with participants’ life experiences and values, not simply the hour or so we spent together. Of course it is impossible to capture a cross-section of the stream of life. Of course overt identify markers (my race, my citizenship, my professional status) influenced the encounter—in particular, they contributed to silences in the data. Of course my theoretical leanings and personal issues subtly influenced my questions and probes; I am aware that I often steered the conversation towards recognition

(Honneth, 1995) or frustration with bureaucracy, an experience that resonates for me. Still, although I will never know how the interviews affected the participants, I believe that, despite a few learning experiences early in the process, I did offer participants the opportunity to co- construct stories that existed beyond the context of the research encounter. In critical realist terms, participants and I did not construct, but construe reality (Longhofer, Floersch, & Hoy,

2012). That is, we took what was already there, and filtered it through our (not always shared) values, concerns, and preconceptions. As we clarified pre-existing values, concerns, and preconceptions, we tweaked them, albeit subtly.

This reciprocal process played a particularly powerful role in the act of interpreting the data. My time in the field was brief, but my engagement with the transcripts was extensive. It was also iterative; constructing journals, codes, and memos all influenced the future construction of journals, interviews, codes, and memos. As the central concept emerged, I began to focus on the very same themes in my own life: striving, esteem, security, and peace. Despite my fantasies of being an extra-terrestrial, I saw myself in the participants—or at least in my perception of the participants. This led to personal insights. As I reflected on the interviews, I began to think about changes I might make in my own life. I saw how my desire for esteem (as defined by my 120 social milieu) prevented me from living life more humanly. I wanted to make different choices, but it is difficult to act alone, out of insights derived from interactions with transcripts and lists of codes. I wondered what kinds of changes—for me, for others, for our communities—might emerge from a participatory project, founded in Freire’s (2011/1968) idea of praxis, which refers to the dialectic between reflection and action. As a social worker, I vowed to undertake such a project eventually.

Summary

At the beginning of the chapter, I presented descriptive information about the sample. I then explained the sequential aspects of service utilization, wherein participants learned about formal supports, and either accessed or did not access services, programs, and benefits. Next, I addressed the first research question, How do low-income Latino families with young children experience formal social supports, by describing the results of the data analysis I conducted using techniques from constructivist grounded theory (Charmaz, 2006). Constructivist grounded theory is consistent with the study’s underpinning philosophy, critical realism (Bhaskar, 1990).

The central concept that emerged from the data was that participants valued being on an upward struggle for security, peace, and esteem. After explaining the potential dissonance between depending on formal supports and perceiving oneself as on track in that struggle, I described meanings that helped participants reconcile their experiences with their values. Other meanings of user experience made it particularly difficult to assimilate service use into the struggle for security, peace, and esteem. I also discussed gender and political/economic oppression, important discourses that emerged as I engaged in situational mapping (Clarke, 2008), a constructivist grounded theory technique designed to highlight the contextual elements of a situation. 121

After describing the findings from the grounded theory analysis (Charmaz, 2008; Clarke,

2008), I turned my attention to the second research question, How and in what ways does human flourishing arise from families’ interactions with formal social supports? Because the theory- bound neo-Aristotelian concepts of human flourishing (Nussbaum, 2000; Sen, 1999) did not match what emerged from the data, I reconfigured the second research question as follows: To what extent and how do participants’ experiences with formal social supports enhance their upward struggle for security, peace, and esteem? Drawing on the findings described in the first section and bringing in new data related to participants’ evaluative statements, I addressed these questions. I concluded that, despite dissonance and hurdles that threaten esteem and peace, formal supports help with all three aspects of participants’ struggle. Finally, I offered some tentative thoughts—also based on the aforementioned findings and new data—about how social formal social supports closed or opened opportunities for participants to live life more humanly

(Nussbaum; Sen). In the next chapter, I interpret these findings in light of relevant literature and theory. I also bring up considerations for practice, social work education, advocacy, and future research.

CHAPTER V

SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION

In this research study, I explored how Latino parents with young children experienced the social safety net. Taking an explicitly normative tack, I also appraised whether and how formal social supports benefited participants. I conducted 17 semi-structured interviews with Spanish- speaking parents, 16 of whom were born in Latin America. I analyzed the interview transcripts using techniques from constructivist grounded theory (Charmaz, 2006), a methodology that is compatible with critical realism (Bhaskar, 1975/2008), the study’s undergirding philosophy. I deepened the analysis by conducting situational mapping (Clarke, 2008). I then offered some evaluative thoughts about the extent to which social programs helped participants live in accord with their values. Finally, drawing on theoretical ideas about human flourishing (Nussbaum,

2000; Sen, 1999), I engaged in an empirically-informed critique about how and whether formal supports engendered human flourishing.

The central concept that emerged from the data was the notion that participants valued being on track in an upward struggle for security, peace, and esteem. This struggle informed both their experience and their evaluation of formal social supports. Formal social supports were most helpful when participants successfully reconciled service use with dependency, a state of being that was incompatible with the struggle. Certain actions or experiences (e.g. focusing on gratitude, emphasizing need, and experiencing mastery) helped participants reconcile service dependency with their upward struggles. Other experiences (e.g. being adrift or experiencing disrespect) obstructed reconciliation, producing unwelcome feelings such as shame and frustration. On balance, despite challenges, services helped participants in their struggle towards security, peace, and esteem. In rare cases, human flourishing sometimes arose from service use;

122 123 for example, programs opened up space for reflection, and extra income sometimes enhanced opportunities for leisure. However, missed opportunities abounded.

In the section that follows, I present five tentative interpretations drawn from the data analysis. I weave in comparisons with literature, both empirical and theoretical. After presenting the five interpretive themes, I discuss the strengths and limitations of the study. I then discuss the implications of the findings, offering recommendations related to the following areas: theory development, social work practice, ethics, policy and advocacy, social work education, and future research.

Emerging Ideas: Interpretations and Comparisons

Self as Focal Point in the Upward Struggle

The version of self that emerged from the data was that of an autonomous being striving for mastery and achievement. There were certainly hints of interdependence and altruism. For example, it was clear that parents’ well-being and esteem depended on the well-being and achievements of their children. Furthermore, some participants valued helping others and contributing to society. Still, particularly with respect to formal social supports, participants depicted themselves as the focal point of their own lives. Beyond identifying as Latino or making reference to God’s will, there was little sense of being embedded in an ecosystem characterized by mutually reciprocal interactions between parts (Bronfenbrenner, 1979).

Participants had little awareness of the connections between various social programs; they saw programs as separate entities that radiated out from themselves, but did not form a system. Nor were there many hints that participants saw their development in relation to other selves or symbols, as Honneth (1995) assumed, drawing on symbolic interactionism (Mead, 1934) and object relations (Winnicott, 1965). They aspired to social esteem, but did not view themselves in 124 relational terms. Instead, participants viewed themselves as agents who made decisions and calculations—for example, to emigrate, to stop working to care for children, or to apply for benefits. Even when they referenced some of the social or economic conditions that informed their action or inaction, they framed their own actions in terms of free will. These findings are not surprising; the fact that a highly individualized self-concept emerged so readily from the interview data suggests that, much more than obscure theories, it holds purchase on participants, just as it functions as an important theme in U.S. culture (Pozzuto & Arnd-Caddigan, 2008).

Thinking reflexively, I suspect this orientation may be in part a function of the interview guide, the stated purpose of the research, and participants’ perceptions of my role as a social worker. One critique of social service provision systems is that they construct and reinforce a notion of people as disempowered consumers of expert-driven interventions—not members of communities (McKnight, 1997). Had I asked about social capital (Putnam, 2000) or natural helping networks (Whittaker & Garbarino, 1983), a less individualistic version of self might have emerged. The results also might have been different if I had conducted focus groups, a medium where the participants might have been less constrained by the personalized task of testifying to their experience.

This finding complicates the idea, discussed in the literature review, that Latinos’ interactions with providers of social services are characterized by personalísmo and simpatía,

Hispanic cultural scripts in which relationships and social harmony trump individual aims (e.g.

Behnke, Gonzalez, & Cox, 2010; Cohen, 2013; Falicov, 2000.) Conversely, participants framed interactions with social services in terms of their struggle to provide for their families and solve problems that arose across the life span. They described powerlessness and ill-treatment, but beyond expression of feeling supported or descriptions of the aspects of formal worker-client 125 relationships, there was little to suggest that participants valued preserving relationships with service providers. Of course, they may not have acted in accord with their values; I did not observe interactions between workers and participants and know only how participants portrayed themselves to me.

Participants also described a self whose very purpose was to experience progression and growth. They prized the ability to overcome obstacles. That finding aligns with superación, roughly translated as overcoming adversity, a theme that has emerged in previous qualitative studies with Latino service users (Ramirez, 2010). Both overcoming adversity and being on track in one’s struggle are consistent with the idea of self-efficacy, a concept that refers to an individual’s perception that he or she will be able to achieve a desired goal. Self-efficacy figures prominently in social work’s knowledge base (e.g. Farkas, 2011; Thyer, 2011), but in no way informed the formulation of the research question or the interview guide. In highlighting the relevancy of self-efficacy, I do not mean to suggest that the findings verify social learning theory, which hypothesized that self-efficacy predicts goal attainment (Bandura, 1977). I suggest only that self-efficacy mattered to participants; in other words, being on track emerged as an important value in and of itself.

Thinking of self-efficacy as a valued experience is in line with the capabilities approach’s emphasis on doing and being. Being on track in an upward struggle is akin to control over one’s environment, one of Nussbaum’s (2000) capabilities. However, Nussbaum did not include human striving in her list of central capabilities, which includes actions such as play, reproduction, affiliation, imagining, and experiencing pleasure. She included work, but framed it in terms of engaging in practical reason and relationships, not upward mobility. Thus, the central 126 value that emerged from this study is not one of the central capabilities included in Nussbaum’s list.

Conversely, valuing growth and progression is strikingly consistent with recognition theory, which posits that intersubjective recognition arises from an inevitable and perpetual struggle (Honneth, 1995). As individuals’ self-concepts emerge in relation to others, they strive for recognition at all levels. For Honneth, whose theory functions as both normative and explanatory, the struggle for recognition characterizes the human condition. I certainly saw that condition reflected in both the experiences and values of the 17 participants I interviewed. They did not see their struggle in terms of adapting to the various interacting aspects of their environment (Bronfenbrenner, 1979); instead, they saw themselves as protagonists in a struggle for a better future.

Even though I did not use narrative techniques as I analyzed the data, the interpretation had a decidedly narrative thrust; in other words, it had a plot that unfolded over time (Reissman,

2008). Over time, most participants experienced increased mastery, which helped them use services to aid in their struggle. Even though the content was entirely different, the emergence of a temporal story aligned with Neander and Skott’s (2006) finding that Swedish families, over time, through important meetings with important people, saw their children in new ways. The finding that time figures largely in human experience is consistent with Bronfenbrenner’s (1992) later work, which emphasized the role that the chronosystem plays in human development.

Dependency Negotiation as an Aspect of Service Use

The second significant finding was that, in order to square service use with their upward struggle, participants faced a difficult task: negotiating dependency. They wanted to view themselves as purposeful, autonomous, virtuous, and enterprising. In Chapter IV, I outlined 127 various strategies, meaning attributions, and experiences that helped participants succeed in that task. For example, they justified service use by expressing need. In particular, they emphasized that their families worked hard, but still could not make ends meet. They sought services not because they were lazy, but because they had unmet needs. Others portrayed themselves as go- getters, wherein accessing and maintaining services became an arena for demonstrating mastery—the opposite of the helplessness associated with dependency. In addition, a few participants emphasized that their children were entitled to services because they were U.S.-born.

Instead of leeching off the system, they were merely experiencing the benefits of citizenship.

Other experiences existed, too—but largely absent from all this discussion were meanings pertaining to inequality or resource redistribution. This aligned with Cortis’ (2007) finding that parent service users in Australia appreciated the material aspects of programs, but did not assess their experience in terms of how resources get distributed. Like the 17 participants I interviewed,

Cortis’ subjects were concerned with resource security and recognition, but rarely thought in terms of what happens with resources.

Given dominant sociopolitical norms, it is not surprising that so many experiences of formal supports related to moral concerns around dependency, yet resource redistribution remained a silence in the data. Although dependency has taken on various meanings during various times in history, in US political culture there is a strong sense that reliance on wage labor is virtuous, while reliance on government support connotes moral failure (Fraser & Gordon,

1995). The passage of welfare reform in 1996 made it increasingly clear that U.S. political culture was not amenable to redistributing resources by providing citizens with basic needs, except temporarily. In the current political climate, it is more acceptable (in neo-liberal terms) to create opportunity and invest in future generations by offering data-driven programs (Schram & 128

Silverman, 2012). The situational analysis found that discourse related to rugged individualism may have shaped participants’ experiences with services, benefits, and programs. Although difficult to ascertain from the data, I suspect that discourse related to welfare dependency fed into participants’ ambivalence about in-kind benefits. As discussed, participants—most of who were not eligible for cash assistance—were more comfortable with medical insurance and social and educational programs than they were with income transfer or vouchers for food. Most hoped for a day when they would not rely on benefits at all. Feeling helpless and disrespected in the face of bureaucracy reinforced their desire to be free of services, but did not motivate participants to strive for social esteem. They were already motivated to do that—but as far as I could tell, structural conditions stood in their way.

Unlike the white and Hispanic welfare recipients described in Kissane’s (2012) grounded theory study in Philadelphia, participants in this sample did not forego needed community services in order to preserve their self-concepts. Nor did they express more comfort with government programs than with community supports. In part, I think this is because the Latino participants I interviewed were more removed from discourse surrounding welfare reform; most had arrived less than 13 years ago, and only a few qualified for cash benefits. Furthermore, they had all worked low wage jobs and/or had partners currently working low wage jobs. With two exceptions, they had left behind unfavorable conditions in their countries of origin. Because this study’s 17 participants were more likely to experience themselves in a march towards independence, it was easier to justify service use.

The finding that service users felt compelled to justify service use at all is consistent with

Honneth’s (1995) third recognitional sphere, where individuals strive to experience themselves as valuable members of society. In Honneth’s theory, contribution to society has historically 129 occurred through the institution of labor (Deranty & Renaut, 2007). Following that logic, those who depend on government support should be unworthy of social esteem. However, Honneth would refute that claim, arguing that humans are essentially vulnerable and needy. Any theory of justice, Honneth believed, must reject the liberal state’s assumption of self-sufficiency and negative liberty as an endpoint (Rossiter, 2014). This study’s findings support Honneth’s supposition that the third sphere of recognition is a powerful and motivating aspect of human experience. Like Honneth, participants focused on human neediness as they used need to justify dependence on services. However, the deeply held value of self-sufficiency stood in the way of feeling entirely comfortable with receiving social supports. Participants espoused a desire for intersubjective recognition—but were unlikely to frame misrecognition as a social justice issue.

Formal Supports as Helpful, on Balance

This study’s findings confirm the findings in the literature on Latinos and service use.

The literature reviewed in Chapter II showed that, on the one hand, Latinos found benefits, programs, and services helpful (Aguilar-Gaxiola et al., 2012; Ixa Plata-Potter & de Guzman,

2012; Jimenez, 2011; O’Donnell & Giovannoni, 2006; Paris, 2008). On the other hand, service use often produced distrust, shame, and frustration (Ayón, Aisenberg & Erera, 2010; Cristancho,

Garces, Peters, & Mueller, 2008; Ixa Plata-Potter & de Guzman, 2012; Jimenez, 2011; Sanchez-

Birkhead, Kennedy, Callister, & Miyamoto 2011; Thomas, Medina, & Cohen, 2010; Uebelacker et al., 2011). My findings certainly verify the idea that positive and negative experiences coexisted—often within the same individual and/or encounter.

However, perhaps because I compared participants’ experiences to my personal frustrations with bureaucracies, I was surprised by the extent to which participants approached bureaucratic indignities and hurdles with resilience and equanimity. Although a different picture 130 might have emerged if I had conducted ethnographic research, I simply did not see the same degree of stress described in Roy, Tubbs, and Burton’s (2004) study of how low-income Chicago residents managed time and resources. I think this was partly because most participants I interviewed did not have to travel such far distances to attend appointments. With the exception of the participant receiving protective services, most of the participants had fewer appointments than the Chicago participants. I also believe that the resilience I saw spoke to the cost of getting ahead, a construct that emerged from Bacallao and Smokowski’s (2007) grounded theory study of the effect of immigration on family dynamics in Mexican families. Participants viewed problematic treatment as part of their struggle—and as long as they perceived that the struggle arced upward, there were no grounds for vociferous complaint. Nor did the experience result in undue stress.

When participants successfully integrated their frustrations with social programs into their upward struggle, they perceived that they benefitted from formal social supports. Because participants’ espoused meaning-making systems aligned well with US political culture’s focus on work, it was not difficult to square formal supports with their struggle by viewing supports as supplemental to hard work. My findings show that, despite dissonance, benefits and programs often enhanced participants’ abilities to struggle towards security, peace, and esteem. However, there are caveats, which I discuss in the next section.

User Experiences as Threats to Peace, Esteem, and Long-Term Security

From participants’ perspectives, the purpose of formal supports was to provide resources and help address life cycle problems. Benefits and programs helped participants secure resources, which contributed to peace in the short-term; however, participants worried about making ends meet in the future, and this produced stress. Receiving support around life cycle 131 issues also produced a sense of peace; still, problems often persisted. Educational supports contributed to the sense of moving towards esteem, but were difficult to access and maintain, particularly for families living in Maryland, where there are fewer slots for pre-K programs. In- kind benefits and psychosocial and educational programs entailed bureaucratic indignities and frustrations—although, as discussed previously, participants often successfully assimilated those frustrations into their struggle. Race-based indignities were more difficult to endure.

Participants deferred esteem in order to ensure that their U.S.-born children received esteem in the future. All told, even though participants felt they were better off than they would have been had they stayed in their countries, nobody felt entirely on track in their struggle for peace, esteem, and long-term security.

I do not, however, mean to suggest that it is possible or even desirable to, at every turn, avoid values-dissonant experiences, including suffering. Reviewing Sayers’ critical realist text,

Why Things Matter to People: Social Science, Values, and the Ethical Life, Smith (2013) criticized Sayers’ assumption that suffering is entirely bad. Smith asked, “Would the world be an obviously richer, more humane place if no people experienced any suffering whatsoever? I am not convinced” (p. 256). He went on to pose the question, “Are there not some dimensions of suffering that are in some odd sense actually humanizing? I suspect there are, although I do not feel qualified to properly describe what, how and why” (p. 256). Smith’s questions resonate with my finding that, for the participants I interviewed, their difficult experiences with social services became arenas wherein they expressed commitment to their values, acting virtuously.

Still, their interactions with social services posed threats to peace, long-term resource security, and esteem. To many, it seems ludicrous that, given the wealth in today’s world, any family should worry about meeting its basic needs. For the most part, however, participants did 132 not express political outrage; that aligns with Rivera-Ottenberger and Werby’s (2007) finding that Latin American service users did not view food as an entitlement. What also concerns me is the finding that using formal social supports often compromised esteem. Ill-treatment produced a sting—but for most participants, it did not create a claim or a call to action. Most remained resigned to life in the shadows, struggling for their U.S.-born children’s future esteem. Perhaps if participants had experienced others as standing in relation to them in ways that affirmed their potential and humanity (Hidalgo, 2010), then more opportunities for empowerment might have arisen.

Formal Supports as (Rare) Openings for Other Aspects Human Flourishing

The final theme that arose in the critical realist analysis related to human flourishing.

Starting with a theory-laden concept, I defined human flourishing as living the kind of life that, upon reflection, one considers worthwhile (Honneth, 1995; Sen, 1999). As discussed, I found that, with caveats, formal supports helped participants live lives that squared with what they valued most: the upward struggle for resource security, peace, and esteem. However, I also started with the capahbilities perspective’s normative assumption that a good society supports the capability to engage in all the doings and beings that make humans more human.

From waiting on line without snacks to perceiving racism, I saw many examples of how formal supports crowded out human living; I saw only a few examples of how social supports promoted human living beyond the provision of basic resources. Some of the examples were similar to Schischka, Dalziel, and Saunders’ (2008) case study where community garden users mentioned numerous gains related to flourishing (e.g. being part of a community). Other examples related to what participants were able to do because they had more money in their pockets as a result of in-kind benefits. Still, capabilities did not comprise a significant storyline 133 in the data. Services, benefits, and programs were mostly about meeting needs, solving problems, and ensuring future esteem for children.

Whether or not promoting capabilities (beyond those related to survival and peace) should be a significant focus of social programs is a topic I address in a subsequent section.

Before discussing the implications of the five themes outlined in this section, I turn my attention to assessing the strengths and limitations of the study.

Assessment of the Study’s Methodology

Logistics related to sampling made it impossible to select participants who met certain criteria (for example, national origin or whether services were mandated or voluntary).

Consequently, what began as a grounded theory study became a study using constant comparative methods from grounded theory, but not theoretical sampling. Stricter adherence to a methodology would have enhanced the study’s rigor. Furthermore, it would have been useful to interview more men, more U.S.-born Latinos, and more participants who emigrated unwillingly. Such theoretical sampling would have capitalized on points of comparison between subjects, also ensuring that representatives of the experiences of individuals in the aforementioned categories were not entirely idiosyncratic.

Supplementing interview transcripts and field notes about the interviews with observations or other ethnographic data would have been helpful, too. Because this study’s interpretations are grounded in individuals’ perceptions, not observations of their interactions, they lack a certain degree of roundness. To some extent, exploring silences in the data, conducting situational analysis, and writing and coding field notes offset the data’s uni- dimensionality. Still, because I interviewed participants only once, the data is vulnerable to recency bias; for example, when I engaged in member-checking, one of the participants had just 134 experienced difficulty recertifying for insurance, and expressed more negativity than she had in the first interviews. Conducting multiple interviews with the same participants might have been helpful, too.

Language issues posed additional challenges to the study. Although I checked a few difficult passages with a bilingual colleague, I worked with Spanish texts, and did the translation for the write-up myself. I did not engage in double translation, the gold standard of research with Spanish-speaking populations (Medrano, DeVoe, Padilla, Arevalo, Grant, & Aldape, 2010).

Thus, participants’ words are vulnerable to misinterpretation on my part. Of course, this is a risk even in monolingual research.

The major strengths of this study related to the careful attention I paid to reflexivity, methodology, and philosophical orientation. This assured a more trustworthy product. It also helped me embody an ethical stance towards the participants. Although the lack of existing critical realist grounded theory studies prevented me from building on past work, I did my best to remain consistent with assumptions and methods. This assured a product that can be evaluated within a certain framework. However, because that framework is so different from the dominant paradigm, it has limited practical applications. Thus, the findings are most useful with respect to theory development, with which I begin the next section.

Implications of the Findings

Theory Development and Application to Social Work

Ecological systems theory. The primary purpose of using ecological systems theory

(Bronfenbrenner, 1979) was to emphasize the mesosystem, defined as the new system that forms as connections emerge between various systems. The findings show that participants did not think in terms of mesosystems; they saw formal supports as connected to themselves, but not as a 135 system. They neither valued nor were particularly aware of the connections between various systems. I had expected participants to feel supported by the existence or possibility of interlocking supports—but that theme did not emerge from the data.

This does not mean that Bronfenbrenner’s concept of the mesosystem is not useful for theoreticians or policy-makers. It simply suggests that ecological theories—currently employed to view social policy in variables-based public health terms (Jensen & Fraser, 2006)—are less applicable to understanding individual experience and human flourishing, the focus of this study.

As social workers continue to draw on ecological approaches, they should be aware that they may be less applicable to human experience, the currency of micro practice.

Capabilities approach. The second theoretical lens, the capabilities approach

(Nussbaum, 2000; Sen, 1999), had slightly more resonance with participants’ worldviews.

Although my questions about doings and beings did not make much sense to participants, their responses became richer when I asked what they wanted out of life for themselves and their children. That question was compatible with the capabilities approach, but did not quite honor its focus on the doings and beings that make human beings human. Still, participants did bring up some of the capabilities outlined by Nussbaum. The importance participants placed on resource security speaks to the capability of bodily health. Esteem and interpersonal peace are examples of the capabilities of affiliation and experiencing emotions. But as the findings showed, the upward struggle was the central theme that emerged from the data—and it eclipsed other capabilities, such as play or practical reason.

Questions emerge about the meaning of this finding. For example, does striving in and of itself make humans more human? On the one hand, critical realist analysis should resonate with participants’ lived experiences. Interpretations should not be limited by a definition of 136 flourishing grounded in Nussbaum (2000) and Sen’s (1999) work, or in my social milieu, where many believe that seeking out experiences is the key to living the good life. On the other hand, I wonder whether participants’ emphasis on the struggle was an indication of false consciousness, wherein the allure of the American Dream hides the oppressive nature of capitalist conditions. I also wonder whether anxiety about resource security eclipsed a desire to engage in the sorts of activities that, in the capabilities approach’s terms, make humans live more humanly.

From those tensions comes an important question: Should the central value that emerged from the data (struggling upwards) be considered a capability? I hesitate to place striving in the same category as the capabilities outlined by Nussbaum (2000) because, in this case, it so clearly arose from unjust conditions. Instead, it makes more sense to view the struggle in the neo-

Aristotelian, teleological terms that underpin the capabilities approach. In the context of contemporary thinking based on Aristotle’s work, teleology refers to the idea that human beings have a specific nature or purpose towards which they must progress. In teleological terms, life is about pursuit, growth, and movement towards an end (Smith, 2015). The struggle maps onto the capabilities approach when viewed not as a doing or a being—but as life itself. And perhaps because it can be very difficult for participants to experience themselves as advancing upwards, the struggle and its ends (particularly resource security) eclipsed other aspects of human living highlighted by the capabilities approach. This does not call into question the relevance of those capabilities. It simply suggests that, for the participants interviewed, certain basic capabilities must be addressed—and people must feel as if their struggle arcs upward—in order for other capabilities to come to the fore. This is consistent with Sen’s (1999) idea that a certain threshold of basic, elementary capabilities must be met. However, the idea that basic needs or human 137 striving might trump other capabilities is not one I have seen in work on the capabilities approach.

Recognition theory. The central struggle that emerged from the data is strikingly consonant with recognition theory (Honneth, 1995), the third theory that informed the study.

Indeed, Honneth’s theory is about an upward struggle. The findings show that social esteem was important to participants. As discussed, this resonates with the third sphere of Honneth’s theory, where individuals struggle to achieve esteem in the eyes of society. When their struggle was met with misrecognition, they experienced a sharp blow to successful identity formation. This lends support to Honneth’s assumption that identity formation is an ongoing process that occurs in relation to others. This study’s finding that perceived racism was more difficult to endure than bureaucratic glitches also speaks to Honneth’s idea. The current study showed that many participants, whom I presumed to be undocumented, perceived discrimination; however, the experience did not fuel a claim for rights. They were, however, more comfortable making demands on behalf of their U.S.-born children. Along similar lines, they deferred their own struggle for esteem, focusing instead on their children. Given assumptions related to intersubjectivity, the idea of seeking recognition through one’s child makes perfect sense, but to my knowledge, it is not an aspect of recognition that has been discussed. More typically, recognition theory has been used to explain political claims that are explicit, not deferred.

Nor did Honneth (1995) theorize extensively about the political dimensions of misrecognition; according to his colleague Nancy Fraser, his theory under-emphasized the role resource redistribution plays in recognition (Fraser & Honneth, 2003). As discussed in the situational analysis, resource redistribution was conspicuously absent from the data. This silence appears to support Honneth’s reluctance to place redistribution or politics at the center of a 138 theory that views recognition as its fundamental moral category (Fraser & Honneth). To

Honneth, redistribution is important, but derivative. Fraser would argue—as she did in another context—that individual’s perceptions are not necessarily relevant to theories of social justice, which are grounded in moral philosophy (Fraser, 2015). However, following critical realism, I am inclined to emphasize resonance. There is no doubt that recognition resonated with what participants appreciated about formal social supports. It also resonated with their values and goals. Although I can only speak of these 17 participants, I hypothesize that the construct of recognition, albeit historically derived and socially constructed, speaks to something basic in humans. For that reason, it may have the potential to serve as a departure point towards more emancipatory systems of resource distribution.

Empowerment tradition, strengths perspective, and critical social work. Many social workers would argue that the best hope for emancipatory casework lies in approaches that are empowerment-oriented (Solomon, 1976), strengths-based (Saleeby, 2009), and critical (Fook,

2012). The empowerment tradition draws attention to the relationship between the personal and the political, assuming that structural change will occur through consciousness-raising and action with both individuals and groups. The strengths perspective rejects deficit-based thinking and over-reliance on expert-generated knowledge, valuing collaboration that begins with an appreciation of individual and community assets. Critical social work (Fook, 2012; Rossiter,

1997), better known in Canada and Australia than in the US, is consonant with both perspectives, and centers around social justice and reflexivity. Critical social workers often emphasize that both the strengths and empowerment perspectives have been vulnerable to co-optation by neo- liberal thinking that relies on individualistic solutions to social problems (Cree, 2013). 139

This study’s findings highlight the relevance of critical social work and classic strengths- based, empowerment-oriented lenses. The central concept that emerged from the data was participants’ upward struggle. As they sought with varying degrees of success to integrate their experiences with services into this struggle, participants fought to keep on course. In my interpretation of the data, problem-solving and resource acquisition were part of the struggle, but not the main event. This finding is consonant with strengths, empowerment, and critical perspectives, all of which rely on the notion that the self is capable of using narrative to construct a transformed reality. In order to better illustrate this point, Dybicz (2012) developed the hero(ine) on a journey, a conceptual tool designed to help students move away from the medical model’s focus on adaptation, and towards solution-focused thinking that casts clients as protagonists of their life stories. Interestingly, this study’s empirical findings closely match

Dybicz’s theoretically derived conceptual model. This suggests that, through narrative, individuals may orient towards the reflection and construction of preferred realities that the empowerment, strengths, and critical perspectives invite.

Critical realism. Finally, the findings also have some utility to social work scholars planning to underpin their research with critical realism (Bhaskar, 1975/2008), the meta-theory that assumes a stratified reality and a complex version of causality. I was unsuccessful at identifying underlying causal mechanisms that produce human flourishing. The problem may lie in starting with such a vague question. Ultimately, critical realism is probably more useful for explaining more concrete, measurable gaps between theory and practice (Longhofer, Floersch, &

Hoy, 2012).

Still, I appreciated critical realism because its stratified ontology offered a means to satisfy my philosophical pickiness. It allowed me to draw on methods from constructivist 140 grounded theory without undermining my conviction that non-social aspects of reality truly exist.

This did not affect the analysis, but it felt right to me.

Critical realism also allowed me to justify my musings as scientific by framing them as a form of abduction, wherein one moves back and forth systematically between theory and data. I appreciated being able to incorporate normative ideas (e.g. ideas about human flourishing) into my analysis instead of tacking them on at the end. I appreciated that the philosophy gave me license to critique formal social supports—and still call it social science. I felt comforted by the legitimacy granted by the methodology, but it also struck me as a bit absurd. If critical realism gains popularity among social workers, it will be interesting to see whether other researchers have similar impressions. Particularly because critical realism’s many moving parts are so difficult to understand and convey, the extent of its usefulness remains an open question.

Thus, in different ways, this study contributed to the development and application of various theoretical perspectives. In the next section, I discuss some of the more practical applications of the study.

Practical Applications

Although there are limits to the applicability of a non-generalizable exploratory study grounded in a non-dominant paradigm, the findings are still relevant to social work education, policy, programming, practice, and research. In this section, I discuss the implications of the findings in light of those areas. In a few cases, I also offer tentative recommendations.

Social work education. As discussed in the previous section on theory development, the findings suggest that non-medical model thinking can indeed enhance our understanding of user experience; in particular, the strengths perspective (Saleeby, 2009), the empowerment perspective (Solomon, 1976), critical social work (Fook, 2012), and recognition theory (Honneth, 141

1995) were extremely relevant to participants’ experiences. Social work educators dedicated to conveying ideas related to critical theory should take heart. If one purpose of teaching theory is to enhance understanding so that it resonates with clients’ experiences, then this study’s findings add empirical support to those theories, albeit in non-traditional ways that evoke as many questions as answers.

If discourse related to dependency is as powerful as this study suggests, then educators should consider making efforts to help students explore their biases and preconceptions related to the concept. Just as the distinction between the deserving and undeserving poor has become an important trope in social work education, dependency is a theme that deserves deconstruction.

Students will likely be better able to carry out the profession’s mission if they have engaged in self-reflection and historical inquiry related to service dependency.

Policy and programming. With respect to the 17 participants I interviewed, this study unsurprisingly verified what social workers have long known: people sometimes feel dehumanized, stressed, and frustrated as they interact with systems. The participants also showed resilience as they strove to assimilate difficult experiences into their value systems.

However, this finding does not mean that people should have to show resilience in the face of bureaucratic indignities. If we are to live in a society that offers a safety net, then that safety net should function as efficiently and humanely as possible. In designing and administering supports, policy-makers and programmers should consider both efficiency and respect for human beings.

For example, decision-makers should explore whether the potential benefits of forbidding clients to bring food into social services offices outweigh the indignities experienced by clients. This is only one example that emerged from the data; concrete suggestions are beyond the scope of this 142 paper. The findings simply lend support to the idea that top-down efforts to make service provision more humane should be under-taken.

Still, I am not optimistic that real change lies in top-down application of data analysis, technology, or sophisticated management techniques. The finding that user experience was very much about negotiating dependency confirms the idea that anxiety related to government dependency has deep roots in U.S. culture (Fraser & Gordon, 1994). The findings from the situational analysis suggested that dominant discourse about dependency, race, and immigration shaped participants’ interactions with formal supports. Policy and administration have some power to transform discourse—but in what direction? I believe that the most emancipatory change happens through dialogue at the grassroots level, founded in people’s deeply felt and carefully considered interests. Head Start and other early childhood programs have mandates to get parents involved in advocacy (Economic Opportunity Act of 1964). This study’s findings related to human flourishing suggest that those efforts are valuable, and well-trained workers are needed to facilitate them.

This study’s findings also confirm the commonly held assumption that social systems are byzantine and clunky. In many cases, benefits helped participants by offsetting expenses; recall the example of Marisol, who appreciated the school lunch subsidy because she used the money she would have spent on lunch to pay for extras like shoes. Recall also that it took Marisol months of frustration to access the program—and that she also spent time accessing other programs. Would it not be simpler if Marisol had simply received a lump sum? In part, that is the rationale behind policy proposals related to a universal basic income (Aronowitz, Esposito,

DiFazio & Yard, 1998). Although details vary—and it is unclear whether this study’s foreign- born participants would even qualify for such a program—proponents of a universal basic 143 income propose that government should dispense with the provision of most in-kind benefits, and instead should provide regular cash benefits to all individuals. The purpose is to streamline the administration of benefits, de-stigmatize social support, redistribute wealth, increase workers’ bargaining power, and allow individuals greater freedom and agency in their lives. This study’s findings do not call such a policy into question; however, they do show that such proposals might not necessarily be consonant with participants’ meaning-making systems. This is by no means a deal-breaker for what may be good policy; however, the findings bring up the idea that efforts to shore up grassroots support for such programs must grapple with the issue of dependency. The findings also lend support to the idea that such programs ought to be universal; one way that participants assimilated dependency on social supports into their upward struggle was by viewing them as entitlements of their U.S.-born children. If change-makers could garner support for initiatives like the basic universal income, then clients might experience less friction as they seek economic supports. Of course, a universal basic income would not overturn oppressive structures such as racism.

Even though the findings show that systems of support are fragmented and difficult to navigate, the study offers little evidence that efforts to integrate systems would make much difference in the experiences of most low-income Latino service users. Here I refer not to clients who find themselves unavoidably embroiled in systems because they are undergoing a child welfare investigation or because their child has complex special needs. Instead, I am describing low-income Latino families who seek services to meet basic needs and address issues that arise across the life cycle. As described in Chapter I, there has been a trend to advocate for comprehensive, two-generation approaches that support families and children through a multi- pronged approach. The participants I interviewed simply did not view formal supports in this 144 light. Nor did they express concern about redundancy or overlap. What they wanted was not an encompassing web of support, but a buffet of services and programs from which to choose.

Participants felt no need to be cosseted in a network of support—and indeed, sought to avoid the dependency connoted by those terms. Because I am concerned about the marketization of social services (Schram & Silverman, 2011), I am unclear about the implications of this finding.

Above all, I believe that the idea of comprehensive systems of care deserves further conversation—and I would hope service users would be at the center of those conversations.

Along similar lines, the findings also suggest that policy makers, workers, service users, and the general public must have more conversations about the purpose of formal social supports.

As discussed in the first chapter, supports have evolved piecemeal over many years in response to various societal trends. I think most of the Latino service users I interviewed would describe the purpose of formal social supports as ensuring resource security, solving problems, and helping children learn and advance. I have always had higher aspirations; in the tradition of the settlement house movement, I have hoped that formal supports might offer opportunities for reflection, action, affiliation, and even creative expression. The findings show that, with some caveats, formal supports partially fulfill participants’ requisites. Formal supports fulfill my requisites only under rare circumstances. To what formal supports should aspire remains open for dialogue. What does not remain an open question is whether people should experience resource insecurity. They should not—yet my findings show that they still do. This problem must be addressed.

The final issue that warrants discussion relates to immigration. The finding that parents deferred esteem, focusing on their children’s advancement, is troubling not only with respect to the normative theories that grounded the study, but also in terms of social work’s Code of Ethics 145

(NASW, 2008), which prescribes that social workers respect the dignity and worth of all persons.

Although immigration is ultimately an issue of political will, the findings confirm the idea that, to the greatest extent possible, policies and programs should avoid erasing undocumented

Latinos by focusing only on their children.

Practice. Human service providers, too, should seek to encounter undocumented clients in ways that affirm their humanity. Understanding the dynamics of dependency is certainly relevant to human service providers’ interactions with Latino clients—and perhaps other immigration populations, too. Workers need to be aware that some clients may struggle to assimilate service use into their meaning-making systems. They should give clients the space to engage in this task. For workers who use narrative techniques (Walsh, 2015) in their work, it might be helpful to hold lightly the finding that some service users experience themselves as protagonists in an upward-struggle. This might serve as a useful, empirically-derived conceptual model that helps organize workers’ questioning in ways that support clients in reconciling service use with their values. Indeed, as discussed previously, Dybicz (2012) has already introduced a similar conceptual model. Relational case management (Longhofer, Kubek, &

Floersch, 2010) offers a framework for workers to engage clients in reflection instead of defaulting to problem-solving and service-brokering. Empowerment, strengths-based, and critical practices also offer a range of strategies for raising consciousness in ways that avoid imposing a preconceived agenda on clients.

It is vitally important, however, that efforts to nurture reflection and action never give clients the message that service use is undesirable. In her text on critical social work, Fook

(2012) offered a cautionary tale told by pioneer settlement worker Jane Addams. When a man came to Hull House seeking aid, Addams urged him to seek employment on the canal before 146 asking for help. The man said he could not endure working outside in the winter, but eventually relented. A week later, he had died of pneumonia, leaving behind two young children. This story illustrates the idea that judgment-free service is the best way to honor clients in their struggle. Services should also be efficient, as shown by the finding that highly formal, professional relationships between workers and clients helped participants reconcile service dependency with their struggle.

This does not mean that alliances between workers and clients are unimportant. As discussed in the findings, most of the Latino parents I interviewed appreciated warm, supportive relationships with therapists, pre-school directors, case managers, and other providers of psychosocial services. Respect and support helped them feel on track in their struggle.

Historically, relationship has been a foundational aspect of social work practice; this study’s findings suggest that it should remain so.

Future research. In order to render richer and more generalizable the implications discussed thus far, I would like to see future research exploring the dynamics of service use. Do other populations in other settings also struggle to negotiate dependency? Are their meaning- making systems similar to those of the 17 participants I interviewed? To what extent are the dynamics that emerged from my study a function of the immigration experience? Do other possibilities for flourishing exist that did not emerge in this study? Those and other questions interest me deeply. However, as shown by the paucity of literature related to this topic, such questions are not a priority for most researchers, who tend to be more concerned with predicting outcomes than describing process and meaning. Although I reject the positivist rationale that underpins the medical model, I am sympathetic to the desire to produce actionable research. 147

Furthermore, I am aware that this study did not uncover any concealed conditions that engender human flourishing, and I am doubtful that other descriptive efforts would accomplish that task.

Thus, I think it would be more fruitful if future critical realist research into service use were both participatory and action-oriented—that is, if service users were integrally involved in the research process, and action was its focus (McIntyre, 2008). Useful explanatory and descriptive information might emerge from such studies—but even if it did not, other possibilities for change would likely occur. In and of itself, I see value in the act of inviting service-users to participate in dialogic efforts to make systems more emancipatory.

Conclusion

Because I am interested in the dynamics of service use, I set out to understand whether and how formal supports benefit Latino service-users in Washington, DC. Influenced by critical realism’s (Bhaskar 1975/2008) complex version of causality as well as its assumption that critique can engender change, I had two goals. First, I hoped to uncover an elegant theory that predicted human flourishing in the context of formal supports. Second, I hoped to contribute to dialogue that might enhance reflexivity about the provision of social services, benefits, and programs.

The first goal eluded me; it should come as no surprise that I never found the holy grail of human flourishing. However, I did arrive at some theoretical insights that shed light on the relationship between well-being and service use. From the findings related to the study’s central concept emerged the neo-Aristotelian idea that people see themselves as protagonists on an upward struggle to reach their fullest potential. For that reason, formal social supports are most helpful when service users feel supported in moving forward and upward. From that hypothesis, from the findings about dependency, and from the findings’ consonance with recognition theory, 148 emerges the idea that human beings are individually striving yet socially needy. Negotiating this dilemma may be an important part of the human condition. Thus, interactions with formal supports are very much about the dialectic between dependence and independence, vulnerability and mastery, powerlessness and empowerment.

Highlighting that dialectic is this study’s main contribution to my second goal: creating reflexive dialogue about social service provision. Before undertaking this study, I assumed that the key to a more emancipatory reality lay in widespread acceptance of the idea that humans are vulnerable, interconnected, and subject to structural forces, particularly language. Yet the participants I interviewed simply did not see themselves in those terms. Nor do I, entirely, despite my theoretical leanings. As the result of that disconnect, I have come to believe that we who engage in critical social work must not dismiss individual striving as the result of false consciousness or the hegemony of U.S. culture. Striving matters to people, even if it matters precisely because we are vulnerable and interconnected. Using the dialectic between dependence and independence as a departure point, social workers—along with service users, policy makers, politicians, and the general public—ought to engage in more dialogue about what sorts of supports and avenues for change a humane society should provide, what their purpose should be, and how they should be provided. For those of us who know in our bones that no amount of evidence-based interventions will end oppression or heal our social fabric, dialogue founded in recognitional norms may be a fruitful way to support our upward struggle for a more emancipatory society.

Appendix A Interview Guide, English version Initial Interview My name is Erin Segal, and I’m a doctoral candidate at the Catholic University of America. I used to do a lot of work helping moms [or dads] like you get services to help with their children. Now I am trying to understand your experience with social services. By social services, I mean any type of social programs—food, medical, educational, child protection, childcare, etc.—that help families. They can be public programs, or community services run by organizations.

1. Systems of social services and human flourishing: Establishing meanings I’m trying to understand how you experience social service programs, and I am wondering whether social services help you live the kind of life you want to live. What kind of life do you want to live? Probes: What do you want yourself and your children to be able to do? What do you want your children to be like when they grow up? What are your goals? What are your dreams? How would you describe your experience with social service programs for families here in DC? Probes: How have they affected you and your family? What’s different in your country [if family is from another country]? What’s similar? What’s better? What’s worse? How would you describe the relationship between social programs and living the kind of life you want to live?

2. Eco-mapping I’m hoping we can work together to come up with a picture of all the social service programs that are important to you. I’m going to draw a circle and put your family in the middle of that circle. And then let’s add in all the social service programs—people, places, organizations; whatever you want—whatever systems you’ve experienced since you [or your wife] were pregnant with the first child you had in this country. We’ll draw them in separate boxes outside this circle. My research is about formal social service programs, but if you want to add friends, family and neighbors, that’s okay, too Probes for exploring roles, relationships, and activities: Where do you receive this [program/service]? What do you do there? What is it like? Who do you interact with? How do you see yourself when you interact with ______? How does/did______make your life better? Worse? Do you think this service is necessary? (REPEAT FOR EVERY ELEMENT) Probes for adding service to the eco-map: What else? What other programs? What other services?

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3. Additional social services Here’s a list of social services. Can we go through the list and see which ones you’ve used since your [your wife’s] first pregnancy in this country? (USE SAME PROBES AS ABOVE TO EXPLORE EACH ELEMENT ADDED. USE A DIFFERENT COLORED MARKER ON ECO-MAP.) Health insurance (what kind? ______) Child-care voucher Income support Social services Counseling Parent group Parent workshop Health clinic Developmental playgroup Library group Home visits (what kind? ______) Early intervention School special services Food program (which one?) WIC SNAP (formerly known as food stamps) Church services (what kind? ______) Free or reduced lunch Clothing bank Diaper bank Head Start English classes

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Legal assistance Child protective services

4. Meso-systems I’m also interested in the connections between all these programs and services. How do the programs/services/connect? (if necessary, offer an example: pediatrician talking to teacher about child’s behavior). Probes: How do you experience that? How is it helpful? How is it unhelpful? How else? Some people say there are too many social services doing the same thing. Others wish there were more specialized social services. What do you think?

5. Summing up and looking forward When you look at this picture and you think about your experience of all these different [people, places, programs etc.] what do you think? Probes: What kind of feeling does this bring up? How can administrators improve social service systems? Probes: Do you see better alternatives? Are social service programs really necessary? Which ones are the most important? Is there anything else you want to tell me about social service systems? Do I have your permission to contact you in the future to check on something you’ve said?

6. Demographic information (only gather this data if it didn’t come up in conversation) Country/ies of Origin:

Arrival date (for first generation): Number of children (and their ages) in US: Number of children (and their ages) remaining in country of origin: Arrival date of parents or grandparents (for second/third generation): Respondent’s years of education: Living in what neighborhood currently?:

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Follow-up interview 1. Clarifying and going deeper When we last spoke you said ______. Did you mean ______? Can you say more about ______?

2. Member-checking After interviewing other Latino parents, I am beginning to think ______. What do you think about this idea?

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Appendix B Interview Guide, Spanish Version Entrevista inicial Me llamo Erin Segal y estoy sacando mi doctorado en la Universidad Católica de América. Trabajé mucho ayudando a mamás [o papás] como usted a obtener servicios de ayuda para los hijos. Ahora estoy tratando de entender su experiencia con los servicios sociales. Por servicios sociales me refiero a cualquier tipo de programa: de alimentos, médico, educativo, protección de niños, guardería, etc., que ayuda a las familias. Pueden ser programas públicos o servicios comunitarios dirigidos por organizaciones.

1. Sistemas de servicio social y florecimiento humano: Establecimiento de significados Estoy tratando de entender su experiencia con los programas de servicio social y me pregunto si los servicios sociales le ayudan a vivir la vida que usted quiere vivir. ¿Qué clase de vida desea llevar? Sondeos: ¿qué desea que usted y sus hijos puedan hacer? ¿Cómo quiere que sean sus hijos cuando crezcan? ¿Cuales son sus metas? Cuales son sus sueños? ¿Cómo describiría su experiencia con los programas de servicio social para las familias acá en DC? Sondeos: ¿Cómo los han afectado a usted y a su familia?¿Hay alguna diferencia con su país [si la familia es de otro país]? ¿Qué es parecido? ¿Qué es mejor? ¿Qué es peor? Come describiría la relación entre programas sociales y llevando la vida que desea llevar?

2. Eco-mapeo Espero que podamos trabajar juntos para crear un dibujo de todos los programas de servicio social que son importantes para usted. Voy a pintar un círculo y colocar a su familia en el centro de ese círculo. Luego agreguemos todos los programa de servicio social – personas, lugares, organizaciones; lo que quiera- cualquier sistema que haya experimentado desde que usted [o su esposa] quedó embarazada con el primer hijo que tuvo en este país. Los pintaremos en cuadros separados fuera del círculo. Mi investigación es sobre los programas de servicio social formales, pero si desea agregar amigos, familiares y vecinos, está bien también. Sondeos para explorar funciones, relaciones y actividades: ¿Dónde recibe este [programa/servicio]? ¿Qué hace allá? ¿Cómo es? ¿Cómo se ve usted cuando interactúa con______? ¿Cómo ______mejora/mejoró su vida? ¿La empeora? ¿Cree que este servicio es necesario? (REPETIR PARA CADA ELEMENTO)

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Sondeos para agregar servicios al ecomapa: Que mas? Que otros programa? Que otros servicios?

3. Servicios sociales adicionales (usando lapicero de otro color) He aquí una lista de servicios. ¿Podemos repasar la lista y ver cuáles ha usado usted desde su [o su esposa] primer embarazo en este país. (UTILICE SONDEOS ENCIMA PARA EXPLORAR CADA ELEMENTO AGREGADO) Seguro de salud (de qué tipo?______) Cupón para guardería Apoyo económico/ingreso Servicios sociales Consejería Grupo de padres Charlas para padres Clínica de salud

Grupo de juego para el desarrollo Grupo en la biblioteca Visitas al hogar (¿de qué tipo?______) Intervención temprana Servicios especiales en la escuela Programa de alimentos (¿cuál?) WIC SNAP (coupones) Servicios de la iglesia (¿de qué tipo?______) Almuerzos gratis o reducidos Banco de ropa Banco de pañales Head Start

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Clases de ingles Asistencia legal Servicios para proteger a los niños 4. Meso-sistemas También estoy interesada en las conexiones entre todos estos programas y servicios. ¿Cómo se conectan los programas/servicios? (si es necesario, ponga un ejemplo: el pediatra habla con el maestro sobre el comportamiento del niño). Sondeo: ¿Cómo fue su experiencia con eso? ¿Cómo es útil? ¿Cómo no es útil? ¿Cómo más? Algunas personas dicen que hay muchos servicios sociales haciendo lo mismo. Otras quisieran que hubieran más servicios sociales especializados. ¿Usted que piensa?

5. Resumir y esperar Cuando mira este dibujo y piensa acerca de su experiencia con todas estos diferentes [lugares, programas, personas etc.], ¿qué opina? Sondeo: ¿Qué tipo de sentimiento le trae? ¿Cómo pueden los administradores mejorar los sistemas de servicio social? Sondeo: ¿Ve mejores alternativas? ¿Son realmente necesarios los programas de servicio social? ¿Cuáles son los más importantes? ¿Hay algo más que quisiera decirme acerca de los sistemas de servicio social? ¿Me autoriza comunicarme con usted en el futuro para verificar algo que usted ha dicho?

6. Información demográfica (recopilar esta información solamente si no surgió durante la conversación) ¿País/países de origen? Fecha de llegada (para la primera generación): Número de hijos (y edades) en los Estados Unidos: Número de hijos (y edades) que siguen en el país de origen: Fecha de llegada de los padres/abuelos (para las segundas y terceras generaciones): Años de educación de respondente: ¿En que vecindario viven actualmente?:

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Entrevista de seguimiento 1. Clarificar y profundizar Cuando hablamos la última vez usted dijo ______. ¿Quiso decir______? Podría decir más acerca de ______?

2. Comprobación-miembro Después de entrevistar a otros padres latinos, estoy empezando a pensar que ______. ¿Qué piensa de esta idea?

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Appendix C

Flyer, English Version

• Are you a parent with at least one child under the age of 5? • Are you Latino? • Does your child receive any social service programs (example: WIC, Head Start, Medicaid)? • Are you willing to talk about your experience with social service programs?

• My name is Erin Segal. • I am working on my dissertation for my PhD in social work. • I want to learn about how Latino parents experience social service programs. • I would like to interview you for about an hour. I will keep your information confidential. • You will receive a $25 Target gift card at the end of the interview.

To participate, please contact me, Erin Segal, at (646) 872-1863 or [email protected]

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Appendix D

Flyer, Spanish version

• ¿Es usted un padre de por lo menos un niño menor de 5 años? Es usted latino/latina? • ¿Recibe su hijo alguno de los programa de servicio • social (como por ejemplo WIC, Medicaid)¿ • ¿Estaría dispuesto a hablar sobre su experiencia con los programas de servicio social?

• Me llamo Erin Segal. • Estoy trabajando en mi tesis doctoral para mi PhD en trabajo social. • Quisiera saber cómo es la experiencia de los padres latinos con los programas de servicio social. • Me gustaría entrevistarlo por aproximadamente una hora. Mantendré su información confidencial. • Usted recibirá una tarjeta de regalo de Target por $25 al finalizar la entrevista.

Para participar, comuníquese con Erin Segal llamando al (646) 872-1863 o mandando un correo electrónico a [email protected]

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Appendix E

Recruiting Script, English Version

“Have you seen the flyer in the waiting room about the study being conducted by a Catholic University PhD student? She is a social work student who is trying to understand how Latino parents experience social service programs. She is interviewing parents. The interview will last about an hour and will be recorded and transcribed. It will take place in a private place of your choosing (home, Catholic University, etc.). The information will be kept confidential. The researcher can’t pay participants, but she can give them a $25 gift certificate to Target as a token of appreciation. If you are interested in being interviewed, here is a flyer with the researcher’s telephone number. Her name is Erin Segal, and she speaks Spanish. Mary’s Center is helping her find parents to interview, but the study is separate from Mary’s Center. Your decision to participate—or not participate—has absolutely nothing to do with the services you receive from Mary’s Center. The researcher will not ask about your immigration status.”

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Appendix F Recruiting Script, Spanish Version

“Ha visto el volante en la sala de espera sobre el estudio que está haciendo una estudiante de PhD de la Universidad Católica? Ella es una estudiante de trabajo social que está tratando de entender cómo es la experiencia de los padres latinos con los programas de servicio social. Ella está entrevistando a los padres. La entrevista durará aproximadamente una hora y será grabada y transcrita. Se llevará a cabo en un lugar privado de su elección (hogar, Universidad Católica, etc.). La información se mantendrá confidencial. La investigadora no puede pagarle a los participantes, pero les dará una tarjeta de regalo de Target por $25 como muestra de su agradecimiento. Si está interesado en que lo entrevisten, aquí está el volante con el número telefónico de la investigadora. Se llama Erin Segal, y habla español. El Mary’s Center le está ayudando a encontrar padres para las entrevistas, pero el estudio no tiene nada que ver con el Centro. Su decisión de participar, o no participar, tampoco tiene nada que ver con los servicios que usted recibe del Mary’s Center. La investigadora no le preguntará acerca de su estado migratorio. Yo le puede ayudar a llamarla si quiere.”

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Appendix G Informed Consent Form, English Version

CUA

THE CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY OF AMERICA

National Catholic School of Social Service Washington, DC 20064 202-319-5458 Fax 202-319-5093

CONSENT FOR PARTICIPATION IN RESEARCH

Name of the Study: How Latino families with young children experience social services systems:

Researcher: Erin Segal, M.S.W.

Research Supervisors: Susanne Bennett, Ph.D.; Linda Plitt Donaldson, Ph.D.; Lynn Milgram Mayer, Ph.D.

Purpose: The researcher wants to understand how DC-area Latino families with young children experience social services. This study is part of the requirements for a Ph.D. in social work at The Catholic University of America.

Procedure: The researcher has asked me to participate in this study because I am a Latino parent with a child age 0-5, and my family receives social services in the Washington DC metro area. The researcher will ask me questions for about an hour. The researcher will ask me questions about my experience with social programs. The researcher will make a sound-recording of the interview. Someone who has signed a confidentiality agreement will type my words. I may choose to answer the questions or not answer the questions.

Inconveniences, discomforts, and risks: The interviews will be scheduled for a place and time that is good for me. I can end the interview if I feel uncomfortable. If I become upset about my mental health or basic needs, the researcher will help me find a social worker to talk to. The researcher will not ask about my immigration status. The researcher does not have to report my immigration status. If I decide not to participate in this study, it will not affect the services I receive from Mary’s Center. If I stop the interview early, it will not affect the services I receive from Mary’s Center.

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Benefits: My participation in this research may not benefit me directly. It may help people learn more about the best ways to organize social services.

Compensation: I am aware that I will receive a $25 gift card as a thank you for my participation.

Confidentiality: The researcher will keep this consent form in a locked safe. The researcher will keep the audio-recording on a password-protected computer. After the study, the researcher will destroy this form, the recording, and the written version of my words. I can end the interview at any time. The law requires the researcher to report to authorities any suspicions of harm to me, to children, or to others. The researcher will not use my name in any presentations or papers. I will choose a false name that the researcher will use in her notes, presentations, and papers. Research records may be subpoenaed by court order or may be inspected by federal authorities.

Contacts: If I have any questions about this study, I can contact the researcher, Erin Segal, at (646)872-1863 or [email protected]. If I have any complaints or comments, I can call Ralph Albano at The Catholic University of America (202) 319-5218.

I have read or had read to me all of the above. The researcher has answered all my questions. I understand my rights as research participant. I consent to participate in this study. I have been given a copy of this consent form.

______Pseudonym of Participant

______Name of Participant

______Signature of Participant Date

______Researcher’s Name Date

162

Appendix H

Informed Consent Form, Spanish Version

CUA

UNIVERSIDAD CATÓLICA DE AMÉRICA

Facultad Católica Nacional de Servicio Social Washington, DC 20064 202-319-5458 Fax 202-319-5093

CONSENTIMIENTO PARA PARTICIPAR EN UN ESTUDIO DE INVESTIGACIÓN

Nombre del estudio: Cuál es la experiencia de las familias latinas con niños pequeños con los sistemas de servicios sociales

Investigadora: Erin Segal, M.S.W.

Supervisores de la investigación: Susanne Bennett, Ph.D.; Linda Plitt Donaldson, Ph.D.; Lynn Milgram Mayer, Ph.D.

Objetivo: La investigadora desea entender cómo es la experiencia de las familias latinas con niños pequeños en el área de DC con los servicios sociales. Este estudio forma parte de los requisitos para obtener el doctorado en trabajo social de la Universidad Católica de América.

Procedimiento: La investigadora me ha pedido que participe en este estudio porque soy un padre latino con un hijo entre 0 y 5 años de edad, y mi familia recibe servicios sociales en el área metropolitana de Washington, DC. La investigadora me hará preguntas por aproximadamente una hora. La investigadora me preguntará acerca de mi experiencia con los programas sociales. La investigadora grabará la entrevista. Una persona que ha firmado un acuerdo de confidencialidad transcribirá mis palabras. Yo decido si quiero contestar las preguntas o no.

Inconveniencias, incomodidad y riesgos: Las entrevistas se programarán en un lugar y a una hora que sea conveniente para mi. Puedo terminar la entrevista si me siento incómodo. Si me siento mal acerca de mi salud mental o mis necesidades básicas, la investigadora me ayudará a encontrar una trabajadora social con la que pueda hablar. La investigadora no preguntará acerca de mi estado migratorio. La investigadora no tiene que reportar mi estado migratorio. Si decido no participar en este estudio, esto no afectará los servicios que recibo del Centro Mary. Si suspendo la entrevista antes de tiempo, esto no afectará los servicios que recibo del Centro Mary.

163

Beneficios: Mi participación en este estudio tal vez no me beneficie a mi directamente. Podría ayudar a las personas a aprender más acerca de las mejoras formas de organizar los servicios sociales.

Compensación: Soy consciente de que recibiré una tarjeta de regalo por $25 como agradecimiento por mi participación.

Confidencialidad: La investigadora mantendrá este formulario de consentimiento en un lugar seguro bajo llave. La investigadora mantendrá la grabación en una computadora protegida con contraseña. Después del estudio, la investigadora destruirá este formulario, la grabación y la versión escrita de mis palabras. Yo puedo suspender la entrevista en cualquier momento. La ley exige que la investigadora informe a las autoridades cualquier sospecha de peligro para mi, mis hijos u otras personas. La investigadora no usará mi nombre en ninguna presentación o ensayos. Escogeré un nombre falso que la investigadora usará en sus notas, presentaciones y ensayos. Los registros de la investigación podrían ser citados por orden del tribunal o podrían ser inspeccionados por las autoridades del gobierno federal.

Contactos: Si tengo alguna pregunta relacionada con este estudio, puedo comunicarme con la investigadora, Erin Segal, llamando al (646) 872-1863 o escribiendo a [email protected]. Si tengo alguna queja o comentario, puedo llamar a Ralph Albano a la Universidad Católica de América al (202) 319-5218.

He leído o me han leído todo lo anterior. La investigadora ha respondido todas mis preguntas. Entiendo mis derechos como participante de la investigación. Doy mi consentimiento para participar en este estudio. Me han dado una copia de este formulario de consentimiento.

______Seudónimo del participante

______Nombre del participante

______Firma del participante Fecha

______Nombre de investigadora Fecha

164

Table 1

Formal Supports Participants Reported Receiving, Past and Present.

Formal Support Participants (n=17)

WIC 16 Medicaid (or equivalent) 16 Nonprofit health clinic 16 SNAP 11 ESL program 8 Pre-school program 8 DC temporary insurance 8 School lunch/breakfast 8 Home visiting 8 Counseling, school or clinic 6 Daycare voucher 4 Early intervention 3 Cash assistance 3 Parent group 2 Transportation voucher 2 Food bank 2 Child Protective Services 1 Domestic violence shelter 1

165

Table 2. Empirical Studies Reporting Findings on Access, Outcomes, and Experiences of U.S. Latinos

Year Author(s) Loc. Purpose Methods N Relevant demographic information 2012 Aguilar-Gaxiola CA To develop Focus N=553 72% female; et al. and implement groups; 63.7% born in a process to community- the US; 26.6% reduce based born in Mexico disparities in participatory healthcare research and access for grounded Latinos theory 2005 Ayón & Lee CA Identify Quantitative 88 African differences analysis of American N=6; between survey data Caucasian African N=26; Latino American, N=48 Latino, and Caucasian parents receiving social welfare 2010 Ayón, CA Understand Content 16 families Mexican Aisenberg & how Mexican analysis of parents with Erera parents S.S.I.s1 open CPS cases; perceive their 16 mothers and voices in child 3 fathers welfare cases 2011 Ayón CA Explore role of content 19 52% born in social analysis of (3 fathers, Mexico, 48% networks for S.S.I.s 16 second- parents mothers) generation involved with Mexican CPS 2007 Bacallao & NC Understand grounded 10 families Undocumented Smokowski how theory families whose immigration analysis of adolescents who influences S.S.I.s had come to the family US late in life dynamics of Mexicans 1999 Bailey et al. U.S. To determine quantitative 100 Both parents the needs and analysis of couples born in Puerto supports of survey data Rico (N=50);

1 S.S.I.s = semi-structured interviews

166

Latino families Both parents raising a child born in Mexico with special (N=50) needs 2010 Bauer, Chen, & U.S. To determine Quantitative N=2554 Latino adults Alegría the effect of analysis of English survey data language proficiency on mental health care access and quality among Latinos and Asian Americans 2011 Baumann, UT Description of Description N/A Researchers: 2 Rodriguez, & lessons learned of researcher psychologists, 4 Parra Cardona by researchers experiences doctoral doing students; community- participants: 3 based research parent groups consisting of Latino clients 2011 Bermudez, South- To assess lived Heuristic 20 mothers 100% Mexican Zak-Hunter, & west experience of inquiry mothers Silva U.S. attending a parenting alone parenting group 2013 Bickmore UT To explore Ethnography 12 Latino 7 families; how Latino parents 7 school staff parents members navigate schools 2009 Cheng U.S. Investigate Secondary 676 people 15.7% data set whether data analysis who left Hispanic; ethnicity/race TANF in 54.7% White; affects 1998 or 24.7% African receiving 1999 American; other services 6%. No available statistics about country of origin or immigration 2010 Cleaveland NJ To examine Critical For inter- Mexican male strategies that ethnography, views with day laborers

167

activists used content laborers: N to help analysis of = 32 unauthorized newspaper Mexican day and S.S.I laborers 2012 Corona, VA Why is S.S.I.s; N=25 14 immigrants Stevens, language content adolescents from various Halfond, brokering analysis and their countries; 11 Shaffer, Reid- linked to parents (18 US-born Quiñones, positive and mothers; Gonzalez negative 11 fathers) outcomes? 2008 Cristancho, IL To explore 19 focus N=181 Rural Hispanics Garces, Peters, barriers to groups Mueller health care access amon rural Hispanics. 2009 Dornig Not To explore the Letters N=90 young ethnic specified lived written to minority experiences of their babies; parents; young, ethnic focus 80% Latino minority groups; parents grounded theory 1992 Harry Urban To understand Ethnography N=12 Puerto Rican North parent- families with East professional children with interactions in special needs cross-cultural context 2014 Hernandez & U.S. To present Secondary N=3,975 Children born Napierala findings about data analysis between 1979 various of and 1989 indicators of longitudinal the well-being data of Hispanic youth 2012 Ixa Plata-Potter Not To examine S.S.I.s; N=6 Mexican born & de Guzman specified Mexican thematic mothers; 1 parents of immigrant phenom- couple Latino middle parents’ enologi- schoolers experiences cal analysis enrolled in a navigating mentoring school systems program 2011 Jimenez Not To explore the S.S.I.s; N=9 Mexican

168

specified experiences of Consensual parents (7 Latino parents Qualitative mothers, 1 during the IEP Research couple, 1 father) (Individualized Education Plan) process (dissertation) 2012 Keyes, Martins, US To examine Quantitative N=6359 Nationally Hatzenbuehler, predictors of analysis of Latinos representative Blanco, Bates, mental health face-to-face sample & Hasin service interviews utilization for Latinos 2002 Magaña, Seltzer, MA To compare Quantitative N=179 Adults with & Krauss service needs analysis of non-Latino intellectual and unmet questionnaire white disabilities need of Puerto data and adults; Rican vs. non- measures N=66 Latino whites Puerto Rican adults 2003 McCurdy, US To investigate Quantitative N=670 33.4% African- Gannon & Daro the analysis of mothers; America, relationship questionnaire 176 32.7% Latino; between data providers 33.9% program (from 17 European retention and Healthy American ethnicity Families among parents America enrolled in programs) home-based family support programs 2010 Mendez- NY To describe Qualitative 16 Undocumented Shannon city the experience descriptive immigrants: of design Mexican (N undocumented =14), Latinos, in Ecuadorean (N particular how = 1), Domician they survive (N=1) hardships 2009 Novick various To identify Systematic 36 studies varied and synthesize review research on women’s experiences of

169

prenatal care 1999 O’Donnell & CA To understand Quantitative N=488 40% Latino; Giovannoni the analysis of 28% European relationship telephone American; 19% between survey data Asian ethnicity and American; 11% service African utilization, American service preferences, and service delivery concerns among users of Family Resource Centers (FRCs) 2006 O’Donnell & CA To explore Quantitative N=488 40% Latino; Giovannoni consumers’ analysis of 28% European experiences of telephone American; 19% service survey data Asian delivery American; 11% factors African American 2010 Olmsted et al. IL To compare Quantitative N=3140 Families and outcomes of analysis eligible for EI; TX families who 291 completed completed survey in Spanish- Spanish; 486 language were Latino but surveys with completed the Latino and survey in non-Latino English families who completed English- language survey 2003 Orellana, Chicago To explore Mixed N = 236; Spanish- Dorner, & how children methods: for case speaking fifth- Pulido contribute to survey and studies, and sixth- immigrant observation N=12 graders, mostly households. Mexican (first, second, & third generation)

170

2009 Ornelas, NC To understand S.S.I.s N=20 Low-income, Perreira, Beeber, the factors that Mexican-born & Maxwell lead to mothers depression; enrolled in thematic Early Head analysis Start 2008 Paris Urban To describe S.S.I.s; N=14 Monolingual in U.S. women’s grounded Spanish; experiences of theory emigrated from migration, techniques El Salvador resettlement, (N=11), and program Honduras (N=2) services Guatemala (N=1) enrolled in a home visiting program staffed by bicultural paraprofessional parents 2006 Parra-Cardona, MI To understand S.S.I.s; N=13 Mexican origin Bulock, Imig, the experience grounded migrant women Villareal & of migrant theory Gold families by documenting resilience factors related to culture and challenges associated with migration 2009 Parra Cardona et MI Explore Focus 83 parents 64 female; 19 al. relevance of groups; males; 100% adapting a grounded foreign born parenting theory intervention 2008 Phillips & NY To examine S.S.I.s; N=38 Hispanic Paumgarten Hispanic grounded caregivers caregivers’ theory referred by CPS perception of to preventive preventive service services. agencies; mostly foreign born (50% Puerto Rican) 2006 Raikes, Green, national To explore the Quantitative N=372- 22.8% Hispanic

171

Atwater, Kisker, relationship analysis of 579 & Constantine between measures (depending demographics, and survey on involvement, data measure) and outcomes 2013 Raffaeli & Rural IL To assess the Structured N=112 93% Mexican Wiley challenges and interviews women strengths of (including Latin measures); American quantitative immigrant analysis mothers living in rural Midwest 2010 Ramirez Santa To achieve an Digital N=12 11 Mexican; 1 Barbara, emic storytelling; Guatemala; CA perspective of ethnography; participants in a Latino pre-test post family literacy immigrant test measures program families of computer (dissertation) literacy 2002 Reese Los To understand Comparative N=27 Mexican Angeles what strategies case studies families in immigrant and do Mexican using S.S.I.s Los parents and Mexico parents use to and Angeles; their siblings promote ethnographic N=12 who stayed in positive methods families in Mexico outcomes, and (e.g. Mexico how participant immigration observation) affects those strategies.g 2007 Rivera- Boston, To understand S.S.I.s; no N=26 Service Ottenberger MA Latino under- specified providers who utilization of method of work with public benefits data analysis Latinos 2004 Roy, Tubbs, & Chicago To understand Ethnography N=75 low- 36 mothers Burton how low- income were Hispanic income mothers of mothers young manage time children and coordinate resources 2011 Sanchez- Not To understand S.S.I.s; N=20 Foreign-born Birkhead, speci- Hispanic narrative Hispanic Kennedy, Fied womens’ analysis women of

172

Callister, health beliefs, childrearing age Miyamoto experiences with healthcare, health promotion practices, and transition to a new culture 2011 Sano, Garasky, Oregon To explore S.S.I.s and N=10 Latino Greder, Cook & and how low- instruments; immigrant Browder Iowa income rural grounded mothers Latino families theory manage their techniques food needs 2010 Santhiveeran CA To understand Secondary N=845 44.9% foreign- how ethnicity data analysis children born Latino predicts mothers childcare arrangements among immigrant families. 2005 Segal & Mayadas 2010 Shlay, PA To explore Quantitative N=615 215 Hispanic Weinraub, & demographic analysis of respondents Harmon factors telephone associated survey data with childcare voucher use 2006 Small NYC To understand Case studies N=16 5 centers had a how childcare plurality of neighborhood centers Latino children childcare centers broker resources 2009 Smith Urban To describe S.S.I.s; N=3 Spanish- area the participant families; speaking experiences of observation immigrants Latino families from Mexico raising (2) and visually Dominican impaired Republic (1) children. 2010 Thomas, Urban To what extent Focus groups N=20 CPS Bilingual CPS

173

Medina, & areas in do child workers workers Cohen SW U.S. welfare systems adequately serve Latino families 2005 Wall et al. VA How do Early S.S.I.s N=32 Black N=12; Head Start White N=7; families access Hispanic=; early multiracial intervention couple N=1 programs?

174

Table 3

Topical Areas and Associated Concepts that Emerged From the Data

Topical categories Associated concepts Life experiences Struggle; advancing; resource insecurity; experiencing violence; immigrating; life cycle events

What participants valued Advancing towards being somebody; avoiding dependence; resource security; living peacefully; meeting relational responsibilities

Experiencing formal supports Respect vs. disrespect; Resource security vs. resource insecurity; Being on course vs. being adrift

175

Table 4

Descriptive Data About the Sample

Characteristic Participants (n=17) Country of origin El Salvador 8 Mexico 6 Peru 1 Dominican Republic 1 US 1 Currently residing Prince George’s County, MD 6 Northwest Washington DC 6 Northeast Washington DC 4 Undisclosed location (shelter) 1 Age at time of interview 24-25 3 26-31 7 40 1 Unknown 6 Highest grade completed 3rd grade 1 5th – 6th grade 5 9th grade 3 11th grade 1 High school 2 Some college 1 Unknown 4 Household Living with partner and child(ren) 11 Living with child(ren), no partner 4 Living alone, but child(ren) visit 1 Total children in household 1 4 2 5 3 4 4 4 Years in the US 1-4 2 6-9 4 10-13 8 Over 13 1 N/A (born in the US) 1 Unknown 1

176

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