Capturing life histories about movements into and out of poverty: A road with pits and bumps

Abstract

In order to take into account the power imbalances typically implicated in knowledge production about the complex social problem of poverty, social work researchers have increasingly acknowledged the importance of grasping the viewpoints and perspectives of people in poverty situations. In this contribution, we accordingly reflect on a current life history research project that retrospectively explores the life stories of parents with young children with regard to their mobility into and out of poverty that is examined in dynamic interaction with social work interventions. In this article, we discuss methodological and ethical challenges and complexities that we unexpectedly encountered in our research venture, as illustrated by three exemplary vignettes. These examples demonstrate issues of power between the researcher and the research participants that are not only inevitable, but also generate dilemmas, struggles and ambiguities that often remain underexposed in the ways scientific insights are reported. Rather than disguising these pits and bumps, we argue for a reflexive research stance which makes these issues of power in knowledge production susceptible to contemplation and scrutiny.

The relevance of biographic narratives for social workers’ professional memory, reflexivity and identity

“…This idea brings us closer to the notion that biographic narratives are particularly useful to reach not just stigmatised, marginalised and less empowered actors. As Thompson (2000) suggested and Schiettecat et al. (2018) have demonstrated in their study on mobilities in and out of poverty, life histories can also provide access to the accounts of other less visible and ‘rarely heard narrators’ (Shaw and Holland, 2014: 151), like in the case of this research, social workers.…”

Montage and the illumination of developmental thinking in welfare work

“…In Qualitative Social Work historical perspectives mainly appear in oral history studies (e.g. (De Wilde et al, 2020;Williams, 2019) and in life history studies focusing on methodological and ethical questions when life history interviews are used to capture the perspectives of marginalized people in for instance research on poverty (Schiettecat et al, 2018) or child welfare (Røkkum and Kojan, 2019). The aim of this article is to contribute to discussions about the use of history when analysing social work.…”

How to make sense of cultural difference in mental health care: analyzing biographies of diasporic Muslim women with mental health problems

“…Biographical research evolves as a practice in which the interrelation between biography and society is interrogated. It is an attempt to understand and situate individual life experiences and biographies within their historical, social, cultural and political context (Roberts, 2002;Schiettecat et al, 2018). Essential to our biographical research design was the belief that the perspective and lived experiences of the diasporic Muslim women with mental health problems can provide valuable sources of knowledge (Booth and Booth, 1996).…”