Help-seeking and help-receiving experience of impoverished unemployed women in urban China: A narrative analysis

Using narrative analysis of the qualitative approach, this study explores and describes the subjective interpretation of the help-seeking and help-receiving experience of 15 impoverished laid-off female workers in urban China. This study reveals how these impoverished women make meanings for their lived experience in the context of drastic social and economic changes in China.; The major findings of this study include: (1) poverty resulting from being laid-off is the direct reason for help-seeking and help-receiving to take place, and the lived experience of the research participants is the result of their interpretation of the causes of their poverty; (2) the actions of help-seeking and help-receiving are due to the fact that basic needs not being fulfilled and have demonstrated a task-centered characteristic; (3) help-seeking and help-receiving have different meanings, and cultural value is the root of this difference; (4) the research participants' willingness or readiness and their actual practice in seeking and receiving help show a ranking structure. Amongst formal and informal social support systems, the State ranks the first preference while the family and informal social networks are considered to be their second choice. However, in reality they have to resort to depend on informal social networks, they would seek and receive help in an order determined by the relatedness in blood relation and psychological distance; (5) in the transition period of inadequate social security system in China, social solidarity is based on the family which has been the major source of help; (6) the major support of the participants is from family members, relatives, former colleagues, friends who could only provide limited help due to their own limitations in resources and power; (7) participants' idea of the responsibility of the State under the market economy system is the result of their subjective interpretation of their relationship with their family, society and the State under the situation of restricted resources of the family and informal social network; (8) the social and psychological costs arising from help-seeking and help-receiving are found to have derived from their concept of honour and dignity based on traditional Chinese cultural values.; The significance of this study are: (1) it is a break-through from the traditional positivist objective analysis framework and has presented the subjective experience of help-seeking and help-receiving of the impoverished laid-off female workers in China; (2) it has summarized and conceptualized the research participants' help-seeking and help-receiving action as "an experience of Confucianism-Socialism-Communalism ethical practice", and thus provides an analytical framework for the study of help-seeking and help-receiving behaviour in the Chinese context so as to develop indigenous social work theory of helping; (3) it has put forward suggestions to eradicate social exclusion of the impoverished laid-off female workers and improve their social participation in regard to social policy and social welfare services.