Welfare recipients communicated pathways to resilience during stigma and material hardship in the heartland of America

Abstract

When individuals and families experience material hardship, government assistance programs and community services are there to help. The use of government assistance programs in the United States is highly stigmatized due to neoliberal ideology. The present study centers the lived experiences of those who have experienced material hardship and had firsthand experience with public assistance programs. This phronetic research study analyzed 27 semi-structured interviews with welfare recipients to explore how they used communication to cultivate resilience in response to material hardship and adversity. The findings of this study demonstrate the connection between communication behaviors and resilient reintegration. Resilient communication behaviors included the use of a communication network and the construction of occupational and familial identity anchors. When participants lacked resilient communication behaviors, they faced more isolation. This study points to the importance of communication as a resilience process in response to material hardship and neoliberal stigma.