Theorizing User Experience: How Latino Parents Experience the Social Safety Net

Background and Purpose:

In the US, millions of low-income parents receive at least one social service, benefit, or program.  Anecdotal evidence suggests that clients often experience formal supports as helpful on the one hand, and dehumanizing on the other.  Social workers lack theoretical or empirical information that elucidates those contradictions.  Nor does there exist much knowledge related to whether or how formal supports help families live lives that, upon reflection, they consider worthwhile (Honneth, 1995; Sen, 1999).  Honoring the importance of group identity and local context, this exploratory, inductive study focused on how 17 low-income Latino parents in the Washington, DC metro area experienced formal social supports.

Methods:

In-depth, semi-structured interviews were conducted with low-income Latino parents with at least one child under the age of five. Participants were recruited at a multi-service clinic that served a large number of low-income Latinos.  One participant was born in the US to Latin American parents.  Thirteen participants (76%) had emigrated from Mexico or El Salvador in the last 13 years.  One participant was male; 16 were female.  Participants had received anywhere between four and seven formal supports (e.g. WIC, Head Start, Medicaid, home visiting, counseling, etc.). The interview guide included questions about their interactions with those supports.  They were also asked about their values and aspirations.  Interviews were conducted in Spanish and transcribed by a professional Spanish-speaking transcriptionist.  Transcripts, field notes, and journals were then coded and analyzed using techniques from constructivist grounded theory.

Findings:

The central concept that emerged from the data was that participants valued being on an upward-arcing struggle for peace, resource security, and esteem.  Benefitting from social supports hinged on successfully reconciling that struggle with dependency, a state perceived as undesirable.  Meanings and experiences that squared with the struggle included: emphasizing need, seizing opportunity, experiencing mastery, focusing on gratitude, and feeling supported.  Other meanings and experiences made it difficult to reconcile service use with the upward-arcing struggle.  Those included: feeling adrift, feeling insecure about resources, and experiencing disrespect.  Over time, participants became more adept at negotiating dependency.

Conclusion and Implications:

Although not generalizable, the findings offer several theoretical insights into possible dynamics of service use. Dominant discourse about dependency shaped participants’ experiences with social services.  Some experiences were more congruent with participants’ struggle than others.  On balance, participants were successful at integrating service dependency into their struggle; however, dissonance often produced shame and frustration.  Formal supports sometimes helped participants meet basic needs and solve problems, but often crowded out opportunities for parents to experience esteem that did not relate to their children. All this knowledge could inform future inquiry into the dynamics of service use.  Additionally, it could help administrators and workers provide more humane, values-congruent services.  For organizers, areas of dissonance could serve as windows of opportunity for change efforts.

References:

Honneth, A. (1995). The struggle for recognition: The moral grammar of social conflicts (J. Anderson, Trans). Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.

 Sen, A. (1999). Development as freedom. New York, NY: Anchor Books.