Sponsored By: MITACS/BC-IRDI
Principle Investigator: Sydney Weaver
Co-investigator: Amy Salmon, Ph.D.
Contact: Sydney Weaver, Doctoral Candidate
In partnership with Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users; Funded by MITACS/ACCELERATE BC. This qualitative study, with 5 drug-using mothers and 5 service providers, focused on mothers’ experiences of having children placed in kinship care. Individual interviews were conducted with the ten participants, and a grounded theory qualitative method was used. Data analysis resulted in major codes: 1) “Welfare reports” or Technologies of regulation; 2) “Meet them at the bus stop” or Control of mother-child contact; 3) “No supports” orLack of supports for mothers and carers; and 4) “We’re a distant family” or Mother as family scapegoat.
‘Structural Resistance Theory’ was developed from this grounded theory qualitative study. This theory emerged from codes that fell into two distinct categories: 1) mothers’ acts of resistance to power exercised against them by family members and/or child welfare workers and 2) impediments to mothers’ resistance. This theoretical framework builds on structural theory Carniol, 1992; Mullaly, 2007) and resistance theory (Coates & Wade, 2007; Reynolds, 2010). As an analytic strategy, it requires articulating from the data not only forms of structural violence and oppression, but also how and where subjects resist, and the impediments to their resistance.
