In-depth Life History Interviews Research Articles

A Qualitative Study of the Social Relationship Experiences Across the Life Course Among Black/African American Women Aging With HIV in the South.

Black/African American women continue to be disproportionately affected by HIV, facing multiple intersecting challenges that influence how they age and effectively manage their health. Supportive social relationships have been shown to help mitigate challenges and improve health in women with HIV, but little is known about Black/African American women's perceptions of social relationships. Guided by Life Course Theory, in-depth life history interviews were conducted with 18 Black/African American women aged 50+ years. In older adulthood, most important relationships among Black/African American women were with their adult children and grandchildren, intimate partners, God, and friends from the community. Factors that influenced relationships over time included: (a) a desire to build a community; (b) a need to empower oneself and give back; (c) yearning to engage the younger generation; and (d) battling HIV stigma. Older Black/African American women with HIV played a critical role in the education of the younger generation.

What Helps Young People in Australia Create Healthy Relationships After Growing up in Domestic Violence?

Abstract Purpose This study aimed to discover what enables young people in Australia to create healthy relationships despite exposure to domestic violence (DV) in their families of origin during their formative years. Method Taking an ecological systems theory and mixed qualitative methods approach, a survey was designed to identify different factors that young people recalled as helpful when they were enduring DV as children and, later, as young adults. Two hundred and three young people aged 18–30 years completed the national online survey. In addition, to achieve richer insights and an understanding of the complexities in individual experiences, fourteen of the survey respondents then participated in in-depth life-history interviews. Results Although most participants believed they had been adversely affected by growing up in DV, empathetic family members and friends, achievements through school and sports, and gaining knowledge about DV and healthy relationships, often through social media, enabled many to distinguish the difference between healthy relationships and DV. These influences then affected how they approached partnership relationships as they matured. Conclusion Analysis of survey and interview data led us to consider that all strata of the ecosystem could, through applying prevention and early intervention strategies, support children and young people to identify and choose healthy relationships rather than accept prescriptive, pathologizing predictions for their future.

Drivers and destinations: people with disability from Syrian and Iraqi refugee backgrounds making the journey to Australia

ABSTRACT According to global estimates, there are 10 million people with disability who are displaced representing diverse ethnic, religious, cultural and linguistic backgrounds. Little is known about the refugee experiences of people with disability and their family members or the journeys they have undertaken to seek refuge. This paper explores the drivers and destinations underpinning the refugee journeys made by people with disability and family members fleeing wars in Syria and Iraq, to settle in Australia. In-depth life history interviews were conducted in Arabic with two men with disability and two mothers with sons with disability to understand their refugee journeys. Results are grouped under three journey-related themes developed from seminal work by BenEzer and Zetter: ‘Why’ (Drivers and Temporal Characteristics) participants fled their country of origin, ‘How’ (the Process and Content of the Journey), including the dangers they faced while leaving, their experiences arriving at and living in the transit country, and ‘Where’ participants travelled from their country of origin to (Destinations and Temporal Characteristics). This study demonstrates that the refugee journeys made by people with disability and family members from Syrian and Iraqi backgrounds are complex and multi-dimensional, with the overlay of disability central to their journey experiences.

Classification and Coercion: The Gendered Punishment of Transgender Women in Immigration Detention

Abstract Although transgender immigrants are a highly vulnerable and growing population, little sociological or criminological work has examined their experiences. This paper begins to fill that gap through in-depth life history interviews with thirteen transgender women migrants in detention and a survey of fifty-five transgender women migrants who experienced detention. Though the detention system allows trans migrants to be classified as such for housing and immigration relief (e.g., asylum), we show that the classification processes that trans women encounter continue to marginalize them and expose them to particularly gendered forms of punishment. We thus argue that adding new categories does little to ameliorate gendered inequalities without a concomitant commitment to shifting organizational cultures of classification. To support these claims, we show that being classified as transgender can serve as a punishment itself, and secondly, that such classification still exposes transgender women to unique forms of gendered violence while in detention. We conclude with implications for the gendered nature of punishment and organizations, suggesting that carceral settings are not only gendered but cisgendered, favoring cis experiences and bodies in ways that disadvantage and punish trans people.

Life history mapping: Exploring journeys into and through housing and homelessness

This article illustrates the value of in-depth life history interviews using life mapping in qualitative research. We draw on our recent research into people’s experiences of homelessness, where all 39 participants were currently, or recently, homeless. Using the life mapping method, participants generated a visual representation of their transitions across housing and homelessness, beginning in childhood and ending in the present day. We critically discuss the potential for life mapping to move beyond rehearsed stories, briefly note further associated benefits, and acknowledge some potential drawbacks. We argue that the method can confer considerable depth and reflection, going beyond a traditional qualitative interview, and is especially valuable when examining sensitive topics.

Late-career language teachers in Austria and the UK: Pathways to retirement

This article seeks to explore personal and socio-contextual factors that supported or hindered the wellbeing of 13 late-career language teachers from Austria and the UK. Data were generated through in-depth life-history interviews, and analysed following a Grounded Theory approach (Charmaz, 2006). Findings revealed the interplay of various personal and socio-contextual factors that influenced teachers’ wellbeing and willingness to stay in the profession. Findings also showed four different pathways to retirement: Perceived stress and wanting to leave the profession; loved being a teacher but mentally preparing for retirement; busy with work, not thinking about retirement; and, thriving and not planning retirement.

The invisible thread: women as tradition keepers and change agents in Spanish pastoral social-ecological systems

Pastoral social-ecological systems (SES) provide myriad benefits to humanity and face multiple challenges in the 21st century, including interacting climate and land-use change, political marginalization, and demographic shifts, leading to loss of traditional knowledge and practices associated with sustainable use. Research and policy increasingly recognize women's roles in sustaining pastoral SES in the Global South, yet women pastoralists in the Global North have received scant attention. In Spain, like other countries in the Global North, the rise of intensive industrialized agriculture contributed to rural depopulation, land abandonment, and the masculinization of rural spaces. In this qualitative study, we address the empirical gap in studies of women pastoralists in the Global North by investigating Spanish women pastoralists' roles in pastoral SES conservation, adaptive transformation, and abandonment (regime shift). Drawing on in-depth life-history interviews with 31 women from 4 regions of Spain, and participatory workshops with women in each region, we explored women pastoralists' diverse identities and roles in conserving, transforming, and abandoning pastoral SES, focusing on 3 levels of social organization: the household/enterprise and local community, the extensive livestock sector, and society broadly. We found that women contributed to all three processes and we highlight synergies between women's roles as tradition-keepers and change agents that could serve as a leverage point for adaptive transformation. Our analysis also revealed key contradictions in women's material and discursive practices; how these are shaped by intersecting axes of social differences such as age, class, origins. and family status; and their implications for policy and practice to foster adaptive transformation of extensive livestock systems. This work advances SES/resilience research by addressing social science critiques of resilience approaches through the application of feminist theories and methodology that center the voices and subjective lived experiences of women pastoralists and attend to the roles of gender and power in SES dynamics.

Sustainable Family Farming Futures: Exploring the Challenges of Family Farm Decision Making through an Emotional Lens of ‘Belonging’

This paper illustrates the importance of moving beyond an economic focus, and towards an emotional one, to gain a more comprehensive understanding of why farmers can be reluctant to retire and/or pass their farm onto the next generation. We report on a two-phase qualitative study of family farm decision-making processes in Northern Ireland, drawing on 62 in-depth oral life history interviews with farmers, farmers’ spouses, and farm successors. In an attempt to gain a deeper understanding of the emotional aspects of retirement and succession decision-making processes, and their relationship with place belonging, in the first phase of this research we employed an innovative ‘Work and Talk’ method, whereby interviews were conducted while shadowing, or in some cases, co-working, with farmers on their land. The second phase of this research responded to restrictions arising from the COVID-19 pandemic, and involved remote telephone or online interviews with family farm members. This research revealed the complex relationships between a ‘longing for belonging’ and emotional attachment to the family farm, and the challenges associated with patrilineal farming structures, expectations and identities, in planning for succession. The emotional impacts of strained relationships with policy makers around support for retirement emerged as a surprisingly dominant theme throughout the interview process, suggesting the need for greater emphasis on the emotional aspects of farming retirement and succession planning to inform future rural development policies targeted towards the sustainability of family farms.

Searching for ontological security: women’s experiences leading to high drive for muscularity

ABSTRACT Women with high levels of drive for muscularity (DFM) may display what could be perceived as non-normative corporeal desires because their commitment to muscle may contrast Western societal expectations of femininity. Little, however, is known about women’s experiences with high levels of DFM. Thus, we explored the stories of women with high DFM and disclose the socio-cultural and personal influences shaping this desire. In-depth life-history interviews were undertaken with 10 females who had extreme scores on the Drive for Muscularity Scale. Participants’ stories focused on a set of early social interactions, in which they were exposed to dominant social narratives of femininity. As a result, they felt pressured to comply with contemporary appearance-related gender norms. Such pressures often manifested in situations where their body was perceived to be outside of gendered contours. Participants’ narratives also identified the lack of control they had over their circumstances. In turn, participants revealed that they developed a strong desire to gain control over their situation and, as a result, they responded by ‘tightly controlling’ and shaping their corporeal self as per gendered expectations. However, through a range of problematic moments (e.g. relationship breakdowns), participants’ gendered ontological security became unsettled. Consequently, these disruptions prompted them to reconsider their relationship to embodiment and its connection to their circumstances. This realisation led to the emergence of a muscularity-focused coping strategy eventually leading to high levels of DFM. Findings reveal that, similar to men, women in this study also use muscle to cope with and negotiate life events.

Traveling a Hard Road: Rites of Passage to Adulthood for Females of Haitian Descent Living in the Dominican Republic

This article examines the rites of passage for poor girls of Haitian descent living in the Dominican Republic. In the Dominican context, preparation for and the transition to wife and mother historically served as an important rite of passage to an adult identity. Industrialization and the global discourse surrounding young motherhood increasingly challenges this culturally sanctioned practice. No research has examined how perceptions around rites of passage to an adult female identity are evolving across generations within the Spanish Caribbean. The author conducted an ethnographic project that included the use of in-depth life history interviews with 42 participants. She interrogates the narratives of three generations of adolescent girls and women of Haitian descent using modified grounded theory to (a) describe current culturally acceptable pathways to becoming an adult woman and (b) examine shifts taking place across time regarding acceptable pathways to womanhood. Findings suggest that, increasingly, younger generations no longer perceive marriage and motherhood as the singular rite of passage to adulthood. Yet, additional skills and characteristics that the participants identified as important to effectively transition to an adult role are either very difficult for the poor to attain, or are acquired through the experience of marriage and motherhood.

Hate Exhaustion, Emotional Support, and Desistance From White Supremacist Groups

This study examines how and why people join, participate in, and leave White supremacist terrorist (WST) groups. In-depth life history interviews and biographic timelines of former White supremacists in the United States and Canada were collected. Findings indicate that former members’ decisions to engage and desist from WST groups are greatly influenced by their experiences of emotional support—or lack thereof. Participants lacked emotional support prior to joining WST and the emotional support they received from group membership was toxic. Participants exited WST because they experienced hate exhaustion and were willing to sacrifice all or most of their emotional support to alleviate it. This research contributes to the theoretical understandings of emotional support’s influence in engagement and disengagement from WST by speaking to Snow and Machalek’s (1983) characteristics of converts, the Identity Theory of Desistance (Paternoster and Bushway 2009), and Latif et al.’s (2018) WST emotional dynamics models. Moreover, this study asks if desistance is similar to burnout and if radicalization is similar to conversion. This work has practical implications regarding the prevention of initial involvement, the development of interventions to disrupt these activities, and the facilitation of disengagement from WST groups.

Male childlessness across the adult life course: A case study addressing a potentially 'vulnerable' population.

Like other Latin American countries, over the past half-century, Colombia has experienced rapid urbanization, dramatic fertility decline, and massive educational expansion. These socio-demographic changes have transformed gender roles and, with them, the landscape surrounding reproductive decisions, family life, and opportunities in other life 'domains.' I draw on the 'life course cube' (LCC) approach, which frames individual actions within a multidimensional behavioral process shaped by interdependencies between time, life domains, and levels to explore Colombian male childlessness. I seek to answer two questions: How does Colombian non-fatherhood vary across the life course (with respect to overall prevalence and associated factors)? and How do men frame their non-fatherhood, and, especially, how do they envision a future without children? To address the first question, I used the 2015 Colombian Demographic and Health Survey's men's dataset (N > 30,000) to explore the overall level of male childlessness across age/generational groups and separate voluntary/involuntary childlessness. Then, using generalized linear models, I analyzed the relationships between different life domains (e.g. education, employment) and non-fatherhood at time points representing early-, mid-, and later-life childlessness (among men in their thirties, forties, and fifties). To address the second question, I used qualitative data from in-depth life history interviews I conducted with male (N = 7) and female (N = 28) parents/non-parents in Bogotá, analyzing connections between different 'levels' of men's experiences: their inner feelings, past and (envisioned) future actions, and societal factors framing childlessness. The quantitative findings indicate that male childlessness across the adult life course is strongly associated with later start of first union/never entering a union, and with small ideal family size. Later-life, definitive childlessness is also strongly associated with relative economic disadvantage and lower-prestige occupations, though early-life fatherhood postponement is not. Qualitatively, interviewed men expressed more worry and less preparation for the future than childless women. Understanding 'vulnerability' as 'the dynamics of stress and resources across the life course', I discuss these findings, paying attention to older non-fathers' potential psycho-social, relational, and socioeconomic vulnerability. Therefore, this work seeks to contribute to the literature on the determinants and experiences of male childlessness, focusing on a Latin American perspective.

I Never Thought About Leaving: Why Residents Aged in Place Within Neighborhoods Experiencing Urban Decline

Despite the rich literature on “aging in place”, few studies have examined why older adults remain within neighborhoods that have experienced urban decline. This study defines “aging in place” as the process of aging within one’s neighborhood over the life course. Further, much of the literature surrounding disadvantaged, urban communities have concentrated on those who left and portray those who remain as trapped. This is particularly true for older African Americans. The purpose of this study was to understand what influenced older, African American residents to stay within their declining neighborhoods. Data was utilized from 4 years of ethnographic observations with 30 older (age 60+), African-American adults who aged within Cleveland. Additionally, multiple in-depth life history interviews were conducted with 13 of these residents. Data was analyzed using grounded theory techniques. All residents expressed a desire to remain within their neighborhoods and many indicated that they never thought about leaving. While each resident had their own reasons for staying, common themes emerged related to: 1) autobiographical insideness, 2) sense of identity, 3) home ownership, and 4) interdependent lives. This study has important implications for research related to aging in place and place attachment. For one, it provides a counter narrative to the dominant notion that residents of poor neighborhoods would leave if they had the resources to relocate. Additionally, by using a narrative method, the older adults were able to explain for themselves why they stayed and describe the meaningful lives they created despite neighborhood decline.

Living Through Decline: Resident Perceptions of Change Within Cleveland’s Urban Neighborhoods

Despite the vast amount of research focused on neighborhoods within the environmental gerontology, very little attention has been paid to learning how older residents make sense of and describe the changes that have occurred within their communities over the course of their lives. The purpose of this study was to provide a space for residents to tell their stories of what it was like to live through neighborhood decline within Cleveland. Older adults are an ideal group for examining perceptions of neighborhood decline as they have the perspective to address both the historical changes of their neighborhood and the biographical changes of their lives. This study utilized data from 4 years of ethnographic observations with over 30 older (age 60+), African-American adults who have aged in place within Cleveland since their childhood. Additionally, multiple in-depth life history interviews were conducted with 13 long-term residents. Data was analyzed using grounded theory techniques for emergent themes. While each resident had their own unique perspective of neighborhood change, common themes emerged related to 1) institutional decline, 2) changes in safety and crime and 3) changes to the people living in their communities. The findings suggest that resident perceptions can help us better understand how neighborhood dynamics work their way into the lives of long-term residents. The results are particularly important as they provide the foundation for exploring how residents responded to neighborhood decline and why residents remained within their neighborhoods when so many others left.

What Matters to Formerly Incarcerated Men? Looking Beyond Recidivism as a Measure of Successful Reintegration

This study explored how men recently released from prison conceptualized successful reentry. Qualitative analysis of 12 in-depth life history interviews with formerly incarcerated men revealed that they defined success beyond the literature’s typical focus on criminal behavior avoidance and future criminal justice system contact. The study found several interconnected definitions of success. Central to participants’ conceptions were connection to legitimate employment, ownership, or entrepreneurship, using past experiences to assist other former offenders or recovering addicts with their problems, and the achievement of heteronormative masculine expectations. The implications of these findings for future research and practice are discussed.

Measuring the Extent and Nature of Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) among Former White Supremacists

ABSTRACT While progress has been made to understand mid-life correlates associated with extremist participation, much less research focuses on adolescent risk factors. The purpose of the current study is to expand upon the focus on individual-level correlates by assessing the extent and nature of childhood adversity among a sample of former white supremacists. The current study relies on in-depth life-history interviews with ninety-one North America-based former white supremacists and the Adverse Childhood Experiences questionnaire. Overall, the current sample contained elevated rates of childhood risk factors with 63% of participants having experienced four or more adverse experiences during the first eighteen years of their lives (as compared to 55% of a comparison “high risk” sample and 16% of the U.S. general population sample). Furthermore, participants discussed a variety of maladaptive coping strategies associated with adversity that generated vulnerabilities to adolescent misconduct and extremism early in the life-course. Our findings indicate that extremist onset does not begin with a single life event but rather is generated, and further exacerbated by the cumulative impact of multiple adverse experiences during childhood.

Early career English teachers’ professional commitment change: a Macau study

ABSTRACT While the role of professional commitment in retaining early career teachers has been widely acknowledged in the literature, few studies have examined the commitment change of early career teachers over time. Informed by a developmental perspective, this study explores three early career English teachers’ commitment change across the teacher education programme, the practicum, the first year, and the second year in teaching. Drawing on data from in-depth individual life history interviews, this study reveals how the participants’ commitment shifted among four commitment levels, i.e., committed passionate, committed compromiser, undecided, and uncommitted. The findings also show that such commitment change over time is an ongoing interaction between individual’s self-efficacy, outcome expectation and the professional autonomy and social support afforded by institutional contexts. These findings call for a need to take teacher commitment as a multidimensional construct and to how early career teachers’ commitment to teaching could be promoted over time.

The double hazard in recovery journey: The experiences of UK Chinese users of mental health services.

The recent interest in recovery from mental health problems has not meaningfully addressed the perspectives of ethnic minorities. To contribute to the discussion of recovery-oriented service with a study on the experience of Chinese people using UK mental health services. In-depth life history interviews were carried out with the users. The qualitative data were analysed using thematic analysis. Four themes emerged as hindrances to personal recovery: (1) language difficulty creates hurdles, (2) diagnostic label is experienced as a double-edged sword, (3) treatment-related stigma and (dis)empowerment are identified, and (4) grievances are found in hospitalisation. Having mental illness and being an ethnic minority in the UK experienced double hazard in their recovery journey. While the deprivation of agency and the stigma process in the health care system hinders their recovery, they are further disadvantaged by their ethnic minority status. Four pointers for service improvement, that apply to Chinese users in the United Kingdom and have general implications for users beyond this group, are proposed.

‘Safe spaces’ and ‘bad’ girls: ‘child marriage victims’’ experiences from a shelter in Eastern India

This article interrogates the politics of safety that underpin rehabilitative practices in a state-funded shelter run by an anti-trafficking NGO in Eastern India. It focuses on the experiences of a group of female adolescents, categorised as ‘child marriage victims’, residing at the shelter. The analysis of in-depth life history interviews collected over a two-week period in October 2014 reveals that the adolescents contest the legislative victimhood imposed on them. For them, their marriages and pre-marital relationships are an expression of romantic and sexual agency, in contravention of familial norms. In this context, the adolescents perceive the shelter as a punitive space and interpret their enforced stay for ‘protection’ and ‘rehabilitation’ as an extension of familial control and regulation of their lives. The protectionism-as-safety discourse rewrites their agency as victimhood and transforms the shelter into a site where everyday forms of gendered power inequalities within social relations in the household are authorised and reproduced by the state and NGO. The adolescents perceive themselves as ‘bad girls’ and adopt various strategies to insist on their rehabilitation into ‘good girls’ to secure release from the shelter often by enacting the ‘victimhood’ expected of them. This allows for unique expressions of agency in an otherwise constrained context but hinders relationships of solidarity with other residents. Overall, the article highlights the need to challenge the ways in which patriarchal norms continue to spatially govern and discipline the expression of female sexuality and agency through 'safe spaces' in India.

Anger From Within: The Role of Emotions in Disengagement From Violent Extremism

There is growing recognition about the similarities between generic criminality and violent extremism. Using data derived from a unique set of in-depth life history interviews with 40 former U.S. white supremacists, as well as previous studies of criminal desistance, we examine the emotional valence that characterizes actors' descriptions of the disengagement process. More specifically, results suggest that negative emotions (i.e., anger and frustration) directed toward the extremist group and oneself function as a catalyst for disengagement. Negative emotions become a source of motivation in re-evaluating the relative importance of the group as it relates to the individual. Ultimately, the reevaluation of the group is essential to the decision to disengage from violent extremism.