Laura I. Sigad

Grandparenting across borders: American grandparents and their Israeli grandchildren in a transnational reality

Families are increasingly dispersed across national borders. Americans in Israel are one migrant group that represents the worldwide phenomenon of transnationalism. Grandparents separated geographically from their grandchildren develop new means of communication with them and new kinds of relationships. This study uses ethnographic interviews with the grandparents of transnational, American-Israeli children and youth to offer an in-depth examination of the experience of grandparenting across borders. We find that grandparenting children who are both geographically distant and raised in a foreign culture necessitates the development of new ways of maintaining relationships with grandchildren. This study considers the impact of transnational migration on the extended family, on those left behind, who struggle with redefining their roles as grandparents and with the sense of being deprived of the roles they had expected to play.

Cross-disciplinary craftsmanship: The case of child abuse work

Child abuse is a complex social problem that cannot be understood from a single disciplinary perspective. Successful intervention requires involvement of various professional groups. While such cooperation has many potential advantages, in practice, it presents challenges to effective intervention. The present study examines the lived experience of professionals in Israel engaging in cross-disciplinary intervention in child abuse. Qualitative data were collected by means of 40 in-depth interviews with professionals, including law enforcement agents, educators, mental health, and medical personnel. Two interrelated dynamics emerged: (a) responsiveness, based on immediacy, and (b) attempts to account for the intervention performed from the specific professional viewpoint of the intervening person and his/her professional belonging. A conceptual model is suggested that reframes child abuse work as an ever-emerging creative process, involving professionals’ attempts to balance the two dynamics in their daily work. Their cross-disciplinary activities are improvisational and situational, involving trial and error. Implications for practice are suggested.

‘You Can't Exactly Act American Here In Israel!’: Identity Negotiations of Transnational North American–Israeli Children and Youth

An increasing number of migrant families around the world maintain strong, simultaneous connections in their country of residence and their country of origin. North Americans in Israel are one migrant group representing this worldwide phenomenon. This study employs child- and youth-oriented ethnographic research methods with children of North American–Israeli transnational families. We present a phenomenological look at their identity negotiations and transnational experiences which straddle the North American–Israeli divide. The article focuses on perceived social-behavioural codes in peer groups of the social environments to which these transnational children belong. We find that the manner in which the transnational children and youth develop and understand their sense of self varies by gender. Their experience of transnationalism leads to the formation of a compartmentalised identity and to the development of skills that prepare the children and youth for effective global participation.

Working Poor Ultra-Orthodox Jewish Women and Men: Between Economic Distress and Meaning Based on Faith

The present article focuses on the interface between religion, work, and poverty as reflected in 20 in-depth qualitative interviews with ultra-Orthodox working-poor women and men in Israel. Based on a social constructivist theoretical framework, findings uncover the complex role of religion in the construction of the working poor. Religion demands a set of behaviors and belief systems that hinder the individual’s ability to break out of poverty, while protecting the ultra-Orthodox working poor in providing them with an alternative framework of interpretative beliefs that enables positive and constructive social meaning, even under the difficulties of economic hardship.

Working Men Views of Poverty: Ethnic Perspectives

Despite the alarming numbers of workers living in poverty in developed countries, work is still commonly seen as a way out of poverty. From a social constructivist perspective and based on qualitative research of the working poor in Israel, the article explores low-income Arab and Jewish working men’s views of poverty. It addresses research topics such as the meaning of work, the perception of the workplace, and the experience of poverty and coping strategies. In addition, the article examines the presence of ethnic differences in the social construction of in-work poverty. At the theoretical level, the article questions dominant views of work as the main exit from poverty, highlights the impact of gender and ethnicity in the construction of in-work poverty, and suggests the need for more context and gender-informed policies to respond to the complexity of the male working poor population.

The Social Construction of Disclosure: The Case of Child Abuse in Israeli Society

Based on 40 in-depth qualitative interviews with professionals, including law-enforcement personnel, educators, and mental health and health-care professionals, this chapter presents a study that describes and analyzes an insider’s view of the ways in which child abuse professionals perceive and understand the disclosure of violence. We found that disclosure is a function of social processes related to the values, ideologies, ways of thinking, and interests of the various social agents involved in the process. Thus, disclosure is not an objective fact-finding process and the subsequent assignment of visibility and proper societal reaction, but rather a social construction.

Toxic Knowledge Self-Alteration Through Child Abuse Work

The purpose of the present article is to examine the multiple ways in which the private lives of professionals are affected by involvement with child abuse intervention and prevention. Using a descriptive-phenomenological perspective and 40 in-depth interviews with professionals to present a model based on qualitative data, we studied the ways in which child abuse professionals conceptualize, understand, and integrate their experiences into their personal and family lives. We find that the process of internalizing child abuse knowledge occurs in two domains: One affirms or denies the existence of the phenomenon; the other concerns the strategies used to contend with the effects of working in abuse. Knowledge of child abuse is toxic, in the sense that it serves as a catalyst leading to the alteration of one’s self-perception and parental identity. We present a typology of self-alteration resulting from child abuse knowledge and describe the mechanism of this change.

Living on the Edges: Between Victims and Survivors, the Voices of Abused Adolescent Girls

The purpose of this article is to utilize an insider’s perspective to describe and analyze the experience of abuse and neglect of adolescent girls in Israel. A purposive sample of 20 adolescent, “at risk” girls was interviewed and chosen due to intensive experiences of abuse throughout their lives. Findings highlighted how these individuals negotiated and framed their experiences in order to enable them to cope with the abuse they had endured. Firstly, they manipulated space as well as time, using controlled, incremental processing (“dosing”) when narrating their experiences. For the adolescents in our study, communication was a central organizing axis of their abuse experiences and a tool for healing, encouraging a sense of self and facilitating relationships with others. In addition, the findings indicated that these adolescent girls possess a body of experiential knowledge that translates into coping skills extending beyond their abuse experiences.