Struggling families in Britain: Addressing the absence of ethnic minority lone mother families in scholarly and policy work
by Sarah Akhtar Baz
Families across the UK find themselves increasingly vulnerable – years of austerity, the COVID-19 pandemic, financial crisis, the cost-of-living crisis and policies like the two-child benefit cap have plunged families into poverty, deprivation and desperation. Families are worried about “where the next money for a meal to put on the table is going to come from” (Angwet, 2024).
A growing body of research has started to attend to the experiences of minority ethnic families. This work suggests that the intersection of gender and ethnicity makes ethnic minority women particularly vulnerable to benefit cuts. The two-child benefit cap – which has increased child poverty and deprivation in the UK – has disproportionately impacted women, ethnic minorities and lone mother families (Andersen, 2023; Fenton-Glynn, 2015). Ethnic minority families also face socio-economic disadvantages that compound their vulnerability. For example, “the poverty rate for people of Pakistani (48%) and Bangladeshi (56%) ethnicity is more than twice as high as the rate for people of white ethnicity” (The Health Foundation, 2024). It has been argued that as larger families are found to be more prevalent amongst ethnic minority families, they are more affected by the cap (Anderson, 2023). However, while this observation is not insignificant, it could be argued that the over-emphasis on ethnic minorities having large families results in those in specific types of family forms, also struggling due to welfare reforms and hostile policies – particularly (ethnic minority) lone mother families, being overlooked.
My doctoral research aimed to attend to the neglect of Pakistani and Bangladeshi lone mother families in both scholarly and policy work. It focused on the lived experiences of these lone mothers living in a Northern English city. I spent 18 months at a South Asian women’s organisation (hereafter South Asian Women’s Place) where I supported lone mothers with the challenges they faced, for example, applying for jobs and welfare benefits, ringing up utility companies or opening a bank account. I also conducted 16 interviews with lone mothers (see Baz, 2023; see also Armstrong and Baz, 2024). My time working with these mothers provided an eye-opening account of their everyday financial struggles and the hurdles they had to overcome to provide for their families. I illustrate this through the example of Zahra, a lone mother who I spent most of my time with at the organisation. This case study powerfully depicts the specific intersectional barriers migrant ethnic minority lone mothers face.
Zahra (Pakistani, 31-40 years old, unemployed) had been a lone mother for about a year when I met her. Zahra’s visa expired and she had no legal right to remain in the UK. Given the UK’s “hostile environment” policy, she had no recourse to public funds. She was left with no financial support when her husband left. Zahra was supported by an advocacy worker at the South Asian women’s organisation, solicitors and social workers who applied for a settlement visa under the right to family life. I supported Zahra to apply for welfare benefits while her settlement status was being sorted. This involved an endless cycle of bureaucracy, including applying for benefits online, failed job centre trips and trying to open a bank account (Baz, 2021). Benefit claimants are required to have a bank account to access benefits. I helped Zahra to set one up. An account could not be opened at first as she needed a letter with proof of address, which could not be provided until the house tenancy was transferred into her name. This could not be done until her immigration status was sorted. Thus, her benefits were delayed and Zahra had to rely on financial support from social services for which she often would have to travel to a local office. Zahra faced everyday struggles living on little money. For example, she had to shop tactically for food, looking for the cheapest prices in different supermarkets and stores. There was a sense of frustration and uncertainty, but Zahra persevered and tried to provide for her children. Being familiar with these systems, the advocacy worker encouraged us to keep on trying to access benefits. Eventually Zahra was given access to benefits. The immigration system and bureaucratic welfare system combined created vulnerabilities, precarity and financial insecurity for Zahra and her children (See figure 1).
Figure 1 – An Endless Cycle, illustrated by Sarah A. Baz.
Other lone mothers in my study too discussed the financial precarities they encountered and the strategies they used to budget money and spend less. For example, Zainab discussed limiting the use of heating in her home as a strategy to save money:
Zainab says her siblings help her with money, she can’t afford it. She says that she doesn’t even put the heaters on much. Her children and her wrap up in blankets or use hot water bottles. She only uses the heaters when it is very cold or when her sibling and nieces and nephews come over to her house. Zainab tells me that she’s mostly at SAW’s Place throughout the week, on weekends she goes to her sibling’s house and eats there.
(Observation recorded in fieldnotes, 6.03.2019).
Spending time at other places outside of the home can be a strategy used to save money and the social networks that lone mothers have can be essential to surviving financially. Such strategies have been noted in other studies of lone mothers (Hill, Hirsch and Davis, 2020; Stack and Meredith, 2018). This illustrates similarity of experiences amongst lone mothers in poverty despite ethnic background. Another lone mother, Sadiyyah, stated “my table, it has been six months since it broke, we eat on the floor, I cannot save this much that I can buy a table”. She stated the unemployment benefits she received went towards things that were necessary in the home, such as paying internet and phone bills. She managed on a “tight” budget.
In a recent collaborative paper about Bangladeshi, Pakistani and Afro-Caribbean heritage lone mothers my co-author and I suggest that these mothers are “absent” or “distorted” in the conversations and representations of lone motherhood (Armstrong and Baz, 2024, p.17). We argue for the inclusion and consideration of family structure as a category of analysis in exploring experiences of lone motherhood for the mothers in our studies. We found that their experiences were shaped by their intersectional positionalities – of womanhood, language, ethnicity, migrant background, class and religion. Moreover, lone mothers had to take on the role of both financial providers and carers and their experiences of these were shaped by a combination of cultural values (e.g., norms around caring and employment) and structural constraints (such as lack of job opportunities). We advocate for further inclusion of these lone mothers in academic research to fully understand the experiences of lone motherhood in Britain.
My research is only a starting point. It is important to include these lone mothers in the narratives around struggling families as the data here shows they face some similar disadvantages as White British lone mothers in relation to poverty, but additionally face disadvantages due to their positionalities, i.e., located at the intersection of gender, migration and citizenship status. Going forward it is vital to include vulnerable under-researched families and family structures, like lone motherhood amongst ethnic minority and migrant families in Britain, when exploring the impacts of policies such as the two-child benefit cap that disadvantage families, especially in an ongoing cost-of-living crisis. This is vital for providing support to those most affected and yet largely absent in the wider public and policy discourses around struggling families in Britain.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Sarah Akhtar Baz is a qualitative research fellow at the Health Sciences department, University of York. Her expertise lies at the intersection of health and wellbeing, ethnicity and family studies.
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