| Much of the scholarly work on welfare reform, poverty, and the implications of a changing economy for low-wage workers has focused on urban contexts. As a result, we know little about what is necessary for low-income mothers in rural areas to get and keep a job. This research is designed to fill a gap in knowledge by defining and exploring the negotiation of work, that is, the invisible and taken for granted labor necessary to attain and sustain paid employment. To reveal such labors, I utilize feminist critiques of objectivity and standpoint theory to focus on the efforts of two diverse samples of mothers (one Latina, many of whom migrate to perform agricultural labor, the other white, settled, primarily employed in the service sector) who lived in two different rural county contexts to attain and sustain paid work. In-depth interview data with thirty-three Latina mothers comes from a longitudinal, multi-state research project (2000--2001), which monitors rural low-income families in the context of welfare reform. In addition, in 2002 I conducted in-depth interviews with twelve white settled mothers in a different rural county.;Analysis of the material conditions of these low-income mothers' everyday lives reveal that both groups of mothers undertake an inordinate amount of overlooked labors so that they can work at low-wage jobs, such as maintaining social networks, dealing with inadequate transportation so that they can get to work, improving education, training, and/or English language skills, dealing with inconsistent and inflexible working conditions, and managing family life so that it does not interfere with the schedule of low-wage employment. Such efforts are necessary on an everyday basis to sustain low-wage employment and are compounded by the conditions of the work itself. The nuanced data also reveal variations in the experiences and obstacles that mothers face based on particular rural economies and life situations structured by race/ethnicity, residential mobility (migration), education, and family structure. Findings challenge current dialogue and theorizing about what qualifies as "work" and hold implications for social policy. |
