Getting out and giving back: repertoires of destigmatization in the private social safety net

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.