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Advancing Out of Poverty

Social Class Worldview and Its Relation to Resilience

Tulane University, New Orleans, mabelev{at}tulane.edu

Children born into poverty in the United States are at higher risk for a number of nonresilient outcomes. An extensive body of work examines and then confirms the qualities of resilient children, emphasizing the importance of four social-psychological characteristics—social competence, problem solving, autonomy, and sense of purpose—and three categories of protective environmental factors—family, school, and community. Extant research has done an excellent job of identifying the protective factors, but more work is needed to understand the processes through which the protective factors influence positive outcomes. Through life-history interviews with 48 educationally resilient African American adults who were "at-risk" children, this study highlights the factors that facilitated respondents' social mobility. By using an in-depth qualitative method grounded in sociological theory, it adds to the literature that identifies what are the protective factors, by elucidating the processes by which the protective factors operated in the lives of resilient adolescents. In this way it provides a view toward how and why the protective factors facilitate resilient outcomes, and does so through a connection with Bourdieu's habitus and, specifically, how accessing the interactional style of the middle class fostered resilient outcomes for the study's respondents.

Key Words: resilience • social mobility • adolescence • poverty

Journal of Adolescent Research, Vol. 24, No. 1, 114-141 (2009)
DOI: 10.1177/0743558408328441


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