“Crisis or Turning point ?”-life changes and coping experiences of families with unemployed breadwinners

• Main Authors: Chia-Ling Wu, 吳佳玲
• Other Authors: Wan-I Lin
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2013
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/59451886017293448913

碩士 === 國立臺灣大學 === 社會工作學研究所 === 101 === Nowadays, unemployment has become a global issue and also a universal social experience. The media uses "Unemployment Elegy" as the title to describe disintegration and fragmentation of family suffering from unemployment, indicating that the unemployment of an individual not only impacts oneself but also causes changes and imbalance in the family system. As we review domestic studies on unemployment issues, we observe that there are fewer studies on what changes the stressful event of unemployment causes in a family and how a family copes with thestress. Therefore, this study selects families with unemployed breadwinners as the study subjects to analyze the problems and changes in life faced by the families due to unemployment and the stress-coping experiences of the families so as to understand the deep needs and the real life status of the families suffering from unemployment. This study adopts an in-depth interview approach in qualitative research methodology and selects six families suffering from unemployment with children of school age or preschool age by purposive sampling for interview. In addition to the unemployed individuals as determined interviewees, we include other family members as interviewees depending on the family structure and their willingness. The research findings are that under the influence of post-industrialization and globalization, employment becomes a new social risk. The impact is not limited to traditionally disadvantaged population groups and the underclass; people of all classes, ages and genders are exposed to certain employment risks. In addition, unemployment results in comprehensive changes in families; the influence is not only present in economic deprivation in families, physical and mental health of family members and interaction modes of sub-systems inside the families but further extends to the interaction relationships between families and other external systems, social participation and the use of social insurance system and policy programs. The life change experienced by the families is to some extent a social exclusion experience with mutual influences and interlocking relationships between each other.In the end, the study finds that the coping experiences of each family are different in the face of the same crisis event. First, the family members establish their cognition of employment based on both external and internal factors, including their personal past work experience, the interactive experience between individuals and corporations, and their personality traits, work values and gender. Second, when faced with an unemployment crisis, the families perform coping behaviors by mixedly using cognition, emotions and resources, and the coping behavior is a dynamic process instead of a constant fixed one. In addition, in terms of the way in which families use and manage internal and external resources to cope with the unemployment crisis, the families suffering from unemployment may be classified into three coping types: “resource scarcity,” “resource self-sufficiency” and “utilization of external resources.” Third, the coping outcomes of the families vary; it is possible to trigger another wave of crisis or to turn the crisis into an opportunity. If the coping outcomes of the families are presented in two dimensions of “economic conditions” and “self-discrepancy,” the families suffering from unemployment may be classified into three types: “economic self-reliance with significant self-discrepancy,” “reliance on social welfare support with significant self-discrepancy” and “reliance on social welfare support with insignificant self-discrepancy.” Based on the findings , the study provides suggestions for social welfare policies and social work practice.