What Would Foucault (and Maslow) Say?: Applying a Theoretical Lens to a Qualitative Interpretative Meta-Synthesis on Runaway Girls

Background and Purpose: Runaway youth are at heightened risk for violence, substance use, suicide, and other high risk concerns.  Girls who run away often face gender specific dangers including sex trafficking.  Qualitative studies have examined runaway youth and their choices to leave home, their involvement living on the streets, and lived experiences as stigmatized youth.  Findings from these various qualitative studies have never been synthesized and analyzed together.  This research sought to answer the following question:  How do the experiences of runaway girls inform social work practice in assisting this at-risk population?

Methods: A Qualitative Interpretative Meta-Synthesis (QIMS) was conducted to analyze the qualitative research conducted with runaway girls.  QIMS is an emerging methodology in social work research that utilizes a synergistic process to synthesize data from multiple qualitative studies in order to create a broader understanding of a topic (Aguirre & Bolton, 2013).  A systematic search was completed to locate research that focused on girls who were or had been runaways.  Ten articles met the inclusion criteria. In total, 122 participants were included. The QIMS extracted the themes from identified articles to create new overarching themes that encompassed each of the articles. These new themes were then analyzed using the data from the original studies.

Results:  Findings from a QIMS are used to inform theory and practice in social work (Aguirre & Bolton, 2013).  Results showed six new overarching themes: power/control, stigma, physical needs, safety, belonging, and acceptance.   The themes of power/control and stigma are analyzed with a Foucaultian lens with an eye toward informing social workers of their roles in the power/control structures that create stigma for runaway youth.  Systems of power were used to control the girls in their homes or to force them into compliance with societal expectations.  Along with this, stigma was a constant, treating the girls as “less than” others because of their runaway status.  Physical needs, safety, belonging, and acceptance are discussed using Maslow’s hierarchy of needs paradigm.  The application of theory is woven throughout the discussion to assist social workers in decision-making.  Often while living on the streets, girls discussed the dangerous means to which they resorted to meet their basic needs of shelter and food.  Once they felt they had a stable place to live, they described these places in terms of their feelings of belonging and acceptance.  Overall, their need for acceptance stemmed from a longing for family and the need to accept themselves. 

Conclusions and Implications: Together, the six themes are constructed to discuss how social workers can be better prepared to the myriad needs of runaway girls.  Social workers should avoid stigmatizing language and be prepared to meet the girls in their environments.  Practices that exert power/control or stigma inhibit the seeking of treatment for girls who runaway.  Macro level changes are discussed as ways that social workers may intervene to make change that will positively affect runway youth.  Social workers are called to seek social justice for the marginalized, and this research provides guidance for doing that.