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TRANSCRIPT
Early findings from a qualitative exploration of lone mothers in times of
austerity: grasping their lived experience of citizenship using an intersectional
approach
SPA PG Workshop 2015��� Silvia Soriano
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Outline
• Introduction and rationale • Lone mothers in the context of austerity • Theoretical framework • Methods • Findings and discussion
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Introduc-on and Ra-onale
• Context of austerity: economic recession, public spending cuts and policy reforms (tax and benefit system).
• Potential effects: one of the groups most adversely affected will be lone mothers (e.g. Horton and Reed, 2010; Ginn, 2013; WBG, 2013).
• Research design: mixed method approach (latent class analysis + biographical qualitative interviews).
• Main aim: explore early effects of the ongoing context of austerity on lone mothers with dependent children.
• This presentation: early qualitative thematic findings in regards to the lived experience of citizenship.
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Lone mothers in the context of austerity���• 60.2 % lone parents in paid employment (ONS, 2013) but
most jobs: low-paid, insecure conditions. • Public services’ use and employment disproportionally by
women (Walby, 2013). • Continuity, intensification and extension of conditionality and
sanctions of welfare-to-work policies (e.g. LPO, work programme).
• Reduction of childcare tax credit (from 80% to 70%). • Freezing child benefit and working tax credit for three years. • Introduction of Benefit cap. • Reduction on housing and council tax benefits. • Reduction of the value of benefit payments (CPI).
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Theoretical framework: Gendered citizenship • Acknowledge complex structural and contingent status of lone mothers
regarding state and society. • Analytical tool to assess social exclusion and multiple disadvantages
that groups/individuals could experience within society and welfare state.
• Unequal access of citizenship – private duties traditionally assigned to women: informal care, unpaid domestic/familial care role.
• Limited social rights for care – why not seen as social contribution? • Paid labour presupposes a support – system of unpaid work outside
the labour market. • Lack of recognition of importance of human interdependence (Dean,
2013; Fraser, 1989; Lister 2003). • Gendered division of unpaid labour. Negative impact on women’s
labour participation: “unjust distribution of money, time and work” (Lister, 2003).
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Citizenship within policy context • Since 1980s citizenship encompassing disciplinary practices: “individual
responsibility”, “principle of duty”, “principle of conditionality” to make citizens more committed to paid work.
• Paid work as central obligation of citizens: • Exclusionary consequences. • Neglects other forms of contribution. • Binary distinction between citizens who are ‘deserving’ ‘independent’ citizen-
workers and ‘underserving’ ‘dependent’ unemployed citizens reliant on welfare rights.
• Neglects in-work poverty. • Welfare ‘consensus’ undermine welfare rights of most in need (Dwyer, 1998):
• Different experiences of ‘risks’ by social groups. • Lack of consideration of structural contextual conditions which constrain some
people to develop their ‘full’ citizenship.
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Lone mothers as citizens• Historically stigmatised as social problem.
• “Non – traditional” family composition. • Social threat: reliance of welfare entitlements due financial
difficulties (paid work + care commitments). • Historically excluded of appropriate welfare rights. • Dependency (feminized): lone mothers as paradigm. • Care is constructed as barrier to work rather than as activity of value in
its own right (Duncan and Edwards, 1999) • Currently defined as workers rather than mothers (or both). • Current ideas involving ‘good’ citizen reaffirm inequalities which lone
mothers experience to access full citizenship rights. à Lone mothers as occupant of multiple disadvantages. à Intersectional approach to citizenship: locate lone mothers in unequal
dimensions at the normative and empirical level.
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Intersectionality • Black feminist theory (Crenshaw) Metaphor of intersections to
oppose invisibility of overlapping discriminatory forces. • Focus on intersections of various dimensions that produce
multiple inequalities: Interrogate complex unequal diverse locations of social actors.
• Acknowledge multiple power differentials/ categories: gender, class, ethnicity, geopolitical location, family status, occupation, education, age, employability, health, etc.
• Methodological and theoretical tool to explore those power differentials and how they interact to produce different kinds of societal inequalities and unjust social relations (Lykke, 2010).
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An intersectional approach to citizenship
• Recognition of diverse multiple dimensions in which citizenship is experienced: need for complex analysis of differential subjects, sites, acts, responsibilities regarding citizenship (Oleski et al).
• Lived multi-layered experience of citizenship(Lister): material circumstances, social and cultural backgrounds which affect people’s lives as citizens.
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An intersectional approach to lone mothers as citizens
• Situated within a determined social, political and institutional context + other particular individual multiple dimensions.
• Deploy lone mothers as locating not only on complex unequal intersections, but also allows exploration of differences within lone mothers based on those diverse intersectional locations.
• Exploring lone mothers under times of austerity would consider the multiple intersecting dimensions in which they experience their citizenship and how the potential diversity of strategies and narratives could be explained by delve into these multiple intersections.
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Methods Purposeful sample of twenty five qualitative interviews with a biographical approach in South Tyneside Metropolitan Borough. Themes explored: recent changes in spending, changes in economic activity, childcare arrangements, use of time, caring work and welfare entitlements; together with their understandings and meanings regarding those changes. Data collection techniques: semi –structured interview schedule, demographic questionnaire and timeline.
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Findings: exploring lone mothers in times of austerity
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Findings: Group 1 (13 interviewees) • Usually having more than two children and/or currently young mothers. • Younger children. • Lower levels of educational attainment. • Patchy paid employment trajectories characterised by long spells of
unemployment (low paid, no pay cycle). • Early motherhood. • ‘Unexpected’ life events (domestic violence, care leaver, health
problem). • Renting occupiers. • Low or none social support network. • Low or irregular levels of financial support. • Not in paid employment. • Background of multiple disadvantages.
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Findings: Group 2 (8 interviewees)
• One or two children, school-age. • Long term paid employment trajectories. • At least one spell of unemployment. • Usually routine or manual occupations. • Renting occupiers. • Low levels of financial support. • Strong social support network.
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Findings: Group 3 (4 interviewees)
• Stable and long-term paid employment patterns. • Only one child, school-age. • High levels of financial support (child maintenance). • Owner occupiers. • Strong social support network. • Diverse social occupational class. • High levels of education attainment. • Usually older lone mothers.
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Living austerity group 1: ‘It is always a struggle’ • Constant struggle (surviving mode) to make ends meet even before the context of austerity
started. • Rent arrears, payday loans, door step lenders, change one debt for another, they usually are
not allowed overdraft, cut back food shopping, constant borrowing from family and friends, using food banks.
• Caring responsibilities circumscribed the narratives of the strategies chosen to deal with inadequate budgets.
“my mum will always like, she’s always, she’ll give us a bag, a bag of bread, eggs, tea and a tin of beans or something”.
“I’ve had doorstep lenders [..] I’ve applied for people who come to your door and take weekly payments”.
“Have to get payday loans over the last couple of years”. “Never had any money left”. “which one can I not pay this week and then you know for a fact you’re going to get a
horrible letter in the door saying you owe this and that money”. “Normally rob Peter to pay Paul”. “I’d rather spend money on Medina than I would on myself”. “I’ve got to make sure them things are paid and there’s food and she’s got everything she
needs before anything else”.
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Some mention difficult transition from JSA to IS because there weeks without not having any income at home. More debt, reliance on social support network:
“when I was on the jobseekers allowance, that was the biggest
struggle I mean I literally felt like I couldn’t even afford, I couldn’t afford anything”.
“My real dad helped me out with gas, electric and food and at the time my step dad helped me out as well”.
“applying for crisis loans all the time, every week getting a crisis loan, just to try and live really”.
“basically just by going round to a friends for a cuppa, you know what I mean, having something to eat. You were just living from hand to mouth basically”.
Living austerity group 1: ‘It is always a struggle’
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Living austerity: group 2 “Normally always overdrawn”���
• Most commonly the use of overdraft, sometimes behind paying bills. There is usually a need to borrow from the social support network.
• Consolidating the debt helped to feel more financial secure. • Shopping strategies to budget better their income, less leisure activities
for the children, more use of ebay and search for offers. “you kind of live off your overdraft don’t you?”. “I always have enough food, gas and electric and stuff but there is still
no money left for anything else”. “We’ve got to cut some of the nice things you know, your Sky
television and all the nice things and going out, you know we didn’t go on holiday”.
“Cutbacks in food and grocery I find I’m buying a lot of ASDA smart price”.
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Living austerity group 3
• This cluster also changed their shopping but not in regards to cut back material goods altogether but to buy in cheaper places.
• Loans are mentioned and less holidays also. • Going to study further to improve better paid employment
chances. “Now I can’t afford to buy organic”. “I tend to shop at Aldi, whereas before I used to shop at
Sainsbury’s”. “I look to see what deals are out there [..] the best deal for the
broadband”.
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Following the pathway of the responsible working adult citizen- the best route out of poverty?
Current struggle of coping with low incomes, more workload and unstable working conditions, particularly for lone mothers who work in the public sector.
“I don’t feel safe in my job and every year they say they have to save every million” (G1, receptionist).
“We had to reapply for our jobs and very close colleagues lost their jobs” (G2, outreach worker).
“I do feel as if sometimes we get penalised for working full time and having a half decent job […] but when you’re on your own, there’s only one income coming in, it is still a massive struggle” (G2, outreach worker).
“I’ve only just narrowly missed redundancy this year by the skin of my teeth, let’s put it that way” (G2, science technician in school).
“ There is cuts as well every year certain people get letters for the redundancy poll fortunately I have not received a redundancy letter yet but we are in the same situation and the morale is so low now” (G3, lecturer in college).
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Embedding the austerity neoliberal discourse: exclusionary and stigmatised narratives
“I do see a lot of people who don’t want to work and they won’t work and I just happy to stay at home with the kids and have more kids to live off the benefits so I don’t agree with that because the tax payers are paying to keep them” (G1).
“I’m not trying to sponge more money out of the government, anything like that because I think what we get is more than enough” (G1).
“There is a lot of people on benefits that are happy to stay on benefits.” (G2).
“No one should be better off in benefits that if you are working as it defeats the object” (G2).
“If you work you should have the better standard of living than if you don’t work” (G3).
“I think it is good that they have cut the benefits and things like that and I have never agreed with people being able to sit and knock out kid after kid without actually going to work” (G3).
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Contesting the ‘ welfare dependency stigma’“I love working and earning my own money and I hate being
on benefits” (G1). “There were a lot of stigma on two kids with benefit and we
don’t waste it – I don’t hardly buy myself anything” (G1). “I don’t have any luxuries – I don’t smoke, drink and
drive” (G1). “I would like to think in five years’ time I am doing the teaching
course” (G1). “I always knew that I wanted to go to University” (G1) “If I don’t get a job when she starts nursery, go back to college
and then get a job” (G1).
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Only an individualised adult worker model?
From the interviews it can be perceived that without a second regular source of income, most lone mothers will face more economic struggles and spells of poverty due to a combination of their caring responsibilities and having only one regular income.
Evidence for the recognition than the current system not only
promotes an individualised adult worker model, but also a dual earner, gender – specialised one (Daly, 2011).