Year: 2006
Type: dissertation
Abstract: This dissertation presents the findings of a one-year ethnographic investigation of \nhow 23 adolescent girls working as vendors in the streets and public markets of Mexico \nCity coped with adversity in their lives. The investigation focuses on the girls’ \nconstructed meanings about adversity, their pathways to resilience, and the contextual \nfactors that promoted or hindered their resilience across four ecological systems of \ndevelopment: the girls themselves, their families, their community, and their country. In \nthis study, resilience was defined as the girls’ ability to sustain adaptive functioning in \nthe face of contextual risks. \nTo facilitate interaction with participants, the researcher joined a non-profit social \nservices organization specializing in working with street youth, and accompanied the \norganization in their operative work. Data included observations and recorded interviews \nwith the girls and adult participants, typically members of the girls’ families. Interviews \nvii \nwere viewed as a co-construction of meanings between the participants and the \nresearcher, facilitated by the establishment of trusting relationships and prolonged \nengagement in the field. Two female team members conducted interviews with the \nresearcher to reduce gender difference tensions. \nAnalysis revealed three major types of adversity experienced by the girls: 1) \npoverty, 2) community violence and 3) emotional ruptures and stressors. In facing \nadversity, the girls embodied an active orientation towards life, which they expressed in \ntheir work activity. The girls perceived work as an adaptive response to reduce the effects \nof poverty and as a preparation for future financial and emotional hardships. The girls \nadhered to a collective life orientation in which they saw their work as a way to protect \ntheir family unit, which represented a sense of belonging and safety in the face of \nidentified violence. Finally, the girls adopted a self-reliant orientation, grounded in their \nlife experiences and cultural expectations. They felt they had to solve problems by \nthemselves, particularly healing from emotional ruptures. The analysis positions the girls’ \nnarratives against the narratives of family members, primarily mothers, and community \nactors. The use of multiple voices illustrates how cultural beliefs and practices both \nprecede and sustain the girls’ adaptive responses.
Authors: Perez Carreon, José Gustavo
Language: English
Topic: Resilience and Mental Health
Subfield: Clinical Psychology
Field: Psychology
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W1805055881