Trapped in a Maze: How Social Control Institutions Drive Family Poverty and Inequality

by Leslie Paik

Overview

Trapped in a Maze provides a window into families' lived experiences in poverty by looking at their complex interactions with institutions such as welfare, hospitals, courts, housing, and schools. Families are more intertwined with institutions than ever as they struggle to maintain their eligibility for services and face the possibility that involvement with one institution could trigger other types of institutional oversight. Many poor families find themselves trapped in a multi-institutional maze, stuck in between several systems with no clear path to resolution. Tracing the complex and often unpredictable journeys of families in this maze, this book reveals how the formal rationality by which these institutions ostensibly operate undercuts what they can actually achieve. And worse, it demonstrates how involvement with multiple institutions can perpetuate the conditions of poverty that these families are fighting to escape.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780520344648
Publisher:	University of California Press
Publication date:	08/17/2021
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	185
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Leslie Paik is Professor of Sociology at Arizona State University. She is the author of Discretionary Justice: Looking inside a Juvenile Drug Court. 

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments ix

Prologue: The Hernandez Family xi

1 Introduction 1

2 Concurrent Involvement 20

Challenges in Navigating Multiple Institutions at Once

3 Revisiting the Past to Understand the Present 47

The Temporal View of Family Multi-Institutional Involvement

4 Who's in the Family? 70

Multihousehold Exploration of the Maze

5 Mitigating Factors 90

Institutional Mismatch and Unpredictability in the Maze

6 Conclusion 116

Reflections on the Maze and Practical Steps Forward

Postscript: Brief Update about the Families 127

Appendix A Methods and Reflexivity 129

Appendix B List of Families 139

Notes 145

References 161

Index 169

Editorial Reviews

"In this concise, excellent book, Leslie Paik demonstrates how these institutions, while intended to support poor families, instead trap them deeper in poverty."

American Journal of Sociology