Disentangling an Invisible Trade

State Interventions in Dutch and Dutch-Curacaoan Single-Mother Families

Tessa Verhallen

• Publisher: Eleven International Publishing
• Year: 2015
• Topic: Law
• eBook ISBN:
  9789462743441
• Subtopic: Family Law
• Index: Law

This book sheds light on the interactional and institutional processes through which child welfare and child protection practices are delivered to 15 Dutch and 15 Dutch-Curacaoan single-mother families with multiple problems in the Netherlands in order to assess structures of power, dominance and oppression. It is important to 'Disentangle an invisible trade, ' because state intervention practices remain largely 'invisible' from the public gaze. The author draws on a 30-month ethnographic study, undertaken with the single-mother families between 2009 and 2012, in order to demonstrate how state interventions are carried out in these families. Using the empirically grounded theory of Agar (1985) on institutional discourse, the book addresses the question of how state interventions are shaped by institutional discourse and power asymmetries in encounters between single-mother families with multiple problems and state representatives. The chapters unravel the 'invisible trade' phenomena step-by-step, descending from the macro-level via the meso- and micro- to the ego-level. This is done through the combined ethnographic critical discourse analytical framework, which the author has developed for the analysis of empirical data upon which the chapters are drawn. *** Librarians: ebook available on ProQuest and EBSCO (Series: Willem Pompe Institute - Vol. 78) [Subject: Sociology, Ethnography, Family Studies, Social Work, Child Welfare, Women's Studies, Criminology]

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title page
• Acknowledgments
• Contents
• Chapter 1 An introduction to state interventions in single-mother families
• Chapter 2 Upon whom are we focusing? Defining a‘multi-problem family’ in theory and the consequences for social workers in practice
• Chapter 3 Caught in the Child Protection System: the impact of institutional diagnosis for Dutch and Dutch-Curaçaoan single-mother families in the Netherlands
• Chapter 4 In whose interest? An analysis of exemplary interaction between a family supervisor and a Dutch-Curaçaoan single mother
• Chapter 5 ‘Dancing in Dry Rain’: ethics during situated fieldwork in single-mother child protection families
• Chapter 6 Disentangling an invisible trade: state intervention in Dutch and Dutch-Curaçaoan single-mother families in the Netherlands
• Epilog: Beyond an invisible trade
• Samenvatting
• Resúmen
• Summary
• References
• Appendix 1
• Appendix 2
• Curriculum Vitae
• Pompe Reeks