Receiving assistance can be stigmatizing. As the cash welfare rolls have fallen to near-historic lows, the privatization of the social safety net in many states has brought up new questions about how recipients of assistance meet their material needs without sacrificing their sense of dignity. I draw on 15 months of ethnographic observation and 44 interviews with social service recipients in two majority Black neighborhoods in Houston, Texas to explore how they destigmatize their encounters with social service providers. I find that service recipients primarily seek out organizations that will treat them with respect due to the stigma attached to receiving assistance. This stigma is both racialized and gendered, such that groups with identities congruent with negative stereotypes about welfare recipients—like Black women—see themselves at higher risk of stigmatization and therefore practice destigmatization strategies with greater frequency. I build on these findings by highlighting two repertoires of destigmatization that service recipients draw upon to access both material and symbolic resources simultaneously: getting out of their neighborhoods to receive services anonymously and giving back by volunteering at local organizations. In doing so, I highlight multiple pathways through which residents of disadvantaged neighborhoods move from stigmatization to destigmatization in the welfare system.

中文翻译：

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走出去并回馈社会：私人社会安全网中的去污名化手段


接受援助可能会受到侮辱。随着现金福利金额跌至接近历史低点，许多州的社会安全网私有化引发了新的问题，即援助接受者如何在不牺牲尊严感的情况下满足他们的物质需求。我利用 15 个月的人种学观察和对德克萨斯州休斯顿两个黑人占多数社区的社会服务接受者的 44 次采访，探讨他们如何消除与社会服务提供者的接触中的污名化。我发现服务接受者主要寻找能够尊重他们的组织，因为接受援助会带来耻辱。这种耻辱既是种族化的，也是性别化的，因此，那些身份与对福利接受者的负面刻板印象一致的群体——比如黑人妇女——认为自己面临更高的耻辱感，因此更频繁地采取去污名化策略。在这些发现的基础上，我强调了服务接受者用来同时获取物质和象征资源的两种去污名化手段：走出社区以匿名方式接受服务，并通过在当地组织做志愿者来回馈社会。在此过程中，我强调了弱势社区居民在福利系统中从污名化转向去污名化的多种途径。