Critical reflection of the reintegration process through the lens of gender oppression: the case of social work with mothers in shelters

ABSTRACT

The article discusses the impact of the construct of motherhood on the process of reintegration of single mothers from shelters into permanent forms of housing in the Czech Republic. At the beginning of the article, we deal with the construct of women and mothers in Czech society and apply this construct to the construct of homeless mothers who are clients of shelters. We also describe the system of shelters in the Czech Republic. Our research involved 33 communication partners, who were either currently staying in a shelter or already reintegrated into permanent housing. When analyzing the results of the research, it showed that the construct of motherhood was one of the key themes and oppressive mechanisms. Mothers in interviews thematised the label of ‘bad mother’, the forced masculinization of their own conduct and takeover of the competence of mothers by the service, the construct of anti-mother and the need for ‘public mothering’. Based on the research data, we created a two-level model of the reintegration process.

Abstrakt

Článek se zabývá dopadem konstruktu mateřství na proces reintegrace matek samoživitelek z azylových domů do trvalých forem bydlení v České republice. Na začátku článku se zabýváme konstruktem žen a matek v české společnosti a aplikujeme tento konstrukt na konstrukt matek bez domova, které jsou klientkami azylových domů. Popisujeme také systém azylových domů v České republice. Náš výzkum se týkal 33 komunikačních partnerek, které buď v současné době pobývají v azylovém domě, nebo jsou již znovu začleněny do trvalého bydlení. Při analýze výsledků výzkumu se ukázalo, že konstrukt mateřství byl jedním z klíčových témat a jedním z opresivních mechanismů. Matky v rozhovorech tematizovaly nálepku ‘špatné matky’, nucenou maskulinizaci jejich vlastního chování a převzetí kompetencí matek touto sociální službou, konstrukt anti-matky a nutnost ‘veřejného mateřství’. Na základě údajů z výzkumu jsme vytvořili dvouúrovňový model reintegračního procesu.

KEYWORDS:

• Motherhood
• social work
• participatory research
• homelessness

KLÍČOVÁ SLOVA:

• mateřství
• sociální práce
• participativní výzkum
• bezdomovectví

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Doc. PhDr. Alice Gojová, Ph.D. is an associate professor in Social Work at the Faculty of Social Studies of the University of Ostrava. In teaching and research, she is involved in community social work and social work with families. She regularly publishes in Czech and foreign scientific literature.

Mgr. et Mgr. Kateřina Glumbíková, Ph.D. is an assistant professor at the Faculty of Social Studies of the University of Ostrava. In her dissertation she dealt with the topic of Reintegration of Single Mothers Living in Shelters; she is currently studying the topic Critical Reflexivity in Field Social Work with Family.

Mgr. Barbora Gřundělová is a Ph.D. student at the Faculty of Social Studies, University of Ostrava. She has a master’s degree in Social Work and Public Policy and Human Resources. Her research focuses on the family social work. In her dissertation, she deals with the gender perceptions and stereotypes in social work practices, the gendered constructions of women and men as clients, and the gender competence of social workers.

Notes

1. Social constructionism originated in the classical work of sociologists Berger and Luckmann (1967). It is necessary to distinguish it from constructivism. Both directions combine the idea of human construction of reality, but basically these are two different metatheories. What constructivists regard as real is everything that the human mind creates. Every individual thus creates his/her own inner world. There can then be as many different realities as the minds that construct them. However, attention to how an individual creates a model of reality in his/her mind shifts to how people interact with each other in order to create, modify, and maintain what the particular society believes is true (Freedman & Combs, 2009). Constructionists consider real everything that is the result of social relations. This means that the world as a product of social processes cannot be determined in advance.

2. Ostrava is an industrial city with a total population of 320 000. The city was chosen because there is a large range of services provided to homeless people, and because the city creates a highly dynamic (the number of hostels and socially excluded localities is growing) and complex environment regarding the housing exclusion. In the census of homeless people in Ostrava (2011) 448 homeless people staying in shelters and dormitories were counted, of whom 61 were mothers with children (in total 88 children) living in a shelter. In the city of Ostrava there are currently 12 shelters, of which 5 are shelters for the target group of mothers with children (Background analysis, 2015).

3. Alternating stays in different shelters during their period of homelessness.

4. According to Keller (2014), constructivism has its origin in the term ‘construct,’ which means to design, or to construct, while constructionism is derived from to ‘construe,’ meaning to interpret, understand, or to narrate, and Keller understands it as the ways people in interactions create and transform their notions and concepts of the world. In this sense, we see a constructivist grounded theory by Charmaz (2003) as a constructionist direction, although Charmaz uses the term constructivism to designate his grounded theory.

5. In the presentation of the data, the abbreviations CP (communication partner) and PR (peer researcher) will be used.

6. Institutionalization is a process where, for example, the concept of a social role, an object of one‘s own value and/or one’s ideas or a type of behaviour, becomes firmly linked to an organization, social system or society, in its specific part (see, for example, Janebová, 2014).