Gina Miranda Samuels

Identity, Oppression, and Power: Feminisms and Intersectionality Theory

In her poem, Aurora Levins Morales, a feminist poet, challenges our thinking about women’s human experience as multiple, shifting, and layered across time. She touches on multiple identities of women in terms of race, color, age, social class, ethnicity, culture, history, geographic location, language, and migrant status. She challenges us to view women as multidimensional, yet uniquely whole. In our teaching and research, we have used intersectionality theory in traditional and nontraditional ways to analyze and understand women’s multiple identities and the challenges that women face. In the traditional sense, intersectionality theory avoids essentializing a single analytical category of identity by attending to other interlocking categories. In a nontraditional way, intersectionality enables us to stretch our thinking about gender and feminism to include the impact of context and to pay attention to interlocking oppressions and privileges across various contexts. In this editorial, we provide two case examples from our research—one with Black–White biracial adoptees in White families and the other with Afghan refugee women—to illustrate the challenges that Morales posed and how we use intersectionality to analyze and understand women as multidimensional, yet uniquely whole.

Renewal and Risk: The Dual Experience of Young Motherhood and Aging Out of the Child Welfare System

This interpretive study examines how childhood history and the personal experience of being mothered impact the meaning attributed to motherhood among young mothers aging out of the child welfare system. Through the use of an interpretive approach, findings are derived from interviews with 15 females who reported an experience of pregnancy or parenting at the time of the interview. In the midst of the strain and challenge of motherhood, these young women report that motherhood has the potential to provide opportunities relevant to their own identity as well as to healing from their pasts. Findings aim to inform ways of understanding and responding to the unique and dual experience of mothering and aging out of the child welfare system.

Using the extended case method to explore identity in a multiracial context

Abstract Increasingly, multiracial research calls upon scholars to reconcile and clarify their stances on race as a biological versus a social construct and to situate their theorizing of racialized identities historically, socio-politically and as experienced subjectively. While multiracial scholarship offers both critiques against and support for a so-called ‘multiracial’ identity, few have outlined the methodological implications of pursuing inquiry responsive to this diverse body of work. This paper highlights the methodological challenges posed by empirical inquiry pursuing non-essentialist but structurally and subjectively grounded analyses of multiracial identity. The extended case method (Burawoy 1998) is introduced as one approach that epistemologically reflects these conceptual challenges in the field. Three elements of its application within a study of black-white multiracial adoptees are offered: 1) use of fluid concepts of race and identity; 2) conducting multi-systemic analyses; and 3) using interpretative findings to extend existing theory.

Transition to Adulthood of Former Foster Youth

This study examines the experiences of 28 emerging adults (mean age = 22; 16 female, 12 male) who have aged out of the child welfare system in the United States. Findings derived from in-depth interviews focus on the multilevel challenges these young people encounter in the help-seeking process upon aging out of care. Patterns highlight intrapersonal, interpersonal, and systemic barriers to help seeking that limit success of these young people during this developmental transition. These patterns include a sense of help seeking as both essential and inappropriate to development during this period. Patterns also highlight the myriad barriers faced by these young adults as they struggle to connect with critically needed resources during this stage. Implications inform work in child welfare, both with those receiving and providing care, during childhood and throughout the aging out process.

The Illinois State Foster Youth Advisory Board as a Counterspace for Well-Being through Identity Work: Perspectives of Current and Former Members

Foster youth advisory boards (YABs) are well known for their advocacy mission. Less is known about other benefits that may come from participation. This constructivist grounded theory study seeks to expand the conceptual understanding of one aspect of adolescent development and well-being—meaning-making around identity—among 33 current and former elected officers of the Illinois state foster youth advisory board. The findings suggest that the YAB created a platform for the participants to challenge and reinterpret their experiences in ways that normalized, protected, and enhanced positive aspects of their identities. Three interconnected conditions of the YAB supported this process: affiliating with peers, accessing generative adults, and trying on new roles. Our discussion explores a conceptualization of the YAB as a counterspace and draws attention to the specific role that institutional and professional contexts play in promoting healthy development and well-being of foster youth.

A Response to Anastas and Coffey: The Science of Social Work and its Relationship to Social Work Education and Professional Organizations

Relationships are central to the profession of social work; relationships with allied disciplines, among professional social work organizations, and between classroom and field education. However, embedded within these relationships are historical tensions, and contemporary opportunities that can advance both the science of social work and the status of the profession. This article mainly highlights opportunities for advancing professional relationships between Council on Social Work Education (CSWE) and National Association of Social Work (NASW) and provides exemplars for strengthening relationships between the classroom, field education, and practicing social work professionals. We argue that deepening the connections between CSWE and NASW as well as the Society for Social Work Research (SSWR) require parallel efforts to link research, evidence-based practices, and the training and education of future social workers.