Models of Social Intervention and Constructionism: Current Narratives 1774911892, 9781774911891

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MODELS OF SOCIAL

INTERVENTION AND

CONSTRUCTIONISM

Current Narratives

MODELS OF SOCIAL

INTERVENTION AND

CONSTRUCTIONISM

Current Narratives

Edited by

Laura Karina Castro Saucedo

Fernando Bruno

César Arnulfo De León Alvarado

First edition published 2024 Apple Academic Press Inc. 1265 Goldenrod Circle, NE, Palm Bay, FL 32905 USA 760 Laurentian Drive, Unit 19, Burlington, ON L7N 0A4, CANADA

CRC Press 6000 Broken Sound Parkway NW, Suite 300, Boca Raton, FL 33487-2742 USA 4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN UK

© 2024 by Apple Academic Press, Inc. Apple Academic Press exclusively co-publishes with CRC Press, an imprint of Taylor & Francis Group, LLC Reasonable efforts have been made to publish reliable data and information, but the authors, editors, and publisher cannot assume responsibility for the validity of all materials or the consequences of their use. The authors, editors, and publishers have attempted to trace the copyright holders of all material reproduced in this publication and apologize to copyright holders if permission to publish in this form has not been obtained. If any copyright material has not been acknowledged, please write and let us know so we may rectify in any future reprint. Except as permitted under U.S. Copyright Law, no part of this book may be reprinted, reproduced, transmitted, or utilized in any form by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying, microfilming, and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without written permission from the publishers. For permission to photocopy or use material electronically from this work, access www.copyright.com or contact the Copyright Clearance Center, Inc. (CCC), 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, 978-750-8400. For works that are not available on CCC please contact [email protected] Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Title: Models of social intervention and constructionism : current narratives / edited by Laura Karina Castro Saucedo, Fernando Bruno, César Arnulfo De León Alvarado. Names: Castro Saucedo, Laura Karina, editor. | Bruno, Fernando (Social policy specialist), editor. | León Alvarado, César Arnulfo de, editor. Description: First edition. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20230170218 | Canadiana (ebook) 20230170285 | ISBN 9781774911891 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781774911907 (softcover) | ISBN 9781003314899 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Social service. | LCSH: Social case work. | LCSH: Social constructionism. Classification: LCC HM1093 .M63 2023 | DDC 361.3—dc23 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

CIP data on file with US Library of Congress

ISBN: 978-1-77491-189-1 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-77491-190-7 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-00331-489-9 (ebk)

About the Editors

Laura Karina Castro Saucedo, PhD Laura Karina Castro Saucedo, PhD, has been a full-time professor at the School of Social Work, Autonomous University of Coahuila (UAdeC), Mexico, since 2017 in the area of Risk and Social Welfare. Since 2013, Dr. Castro has published over six books, 11 book chapters, and 20 papers in indexed journals. She has collaborated as a consultant at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) evaluating three programs of social intervention in partnership with the nongovernmental organization “Pro Superación Familiar.” She was granted a Best Research in Human Sciences Award (2014) by the Autonomous University of Nuevo León and received a scholarship from the National Mexican Council of Science and Technology (CONACyT) and the State Council of Science and Technology (COECyT) in order to develop her research project “Expressions of youth violence from an intervention model with young people in social risk from 15 to 17 years old.” She is a member of the National Researchers System (SNI) since 2016 (level I). She was head of the PhD degree program in Social Sciences of the School of Social Work at the Autonomous Univer­ sity of Coahuila (2018–2020). She has been a member of the International Federation of Social Workers and belongs to the board of professors that manage the master’s degree program of Social Intervention Models Based in Social Constructionism since 2017. Fernando Bruno, PhD Fernando Bruno, PhD, has been a full-time professor at the School of Social Work, Autonomous University of Coahuila (UAdeC), Mexico, since 2015, in the area of Risk and Social Welfare. Dr. Bruno has published over four books and six papers in several journals. He has collaborated with the Center of Investigations and Studies in Sociology (CIES-IUL) in Portugal during three academic stays (2015, 2016, and 2017) on topics such as welfare, sexuality, and elderly people. He is a member of the National Researchers System (SNI) since 2017 (candidate level). Dr. Bruno is

vi

About the Editors

currently working on research projects on support networks for elder people and is also writing about social constructionism. He has assisted two PhD students as director of their theses, as well as other theses of students registered in master’s and bachelor’s degree programs. Since 2017, he has belonged to the board of professors that manage the master’s degree program of Social Intervention Models Based in Social Construc­ tionism of the School of Social Work at the Autonomous University of Coahuila. He is also currently part of the Taos Institute as an Institute Associate since 2020. César Arnulfo De León Alvarado, PhD César Arnulfo De León Alvarado, PhD, has been a full-time professor at the School of Social Work, Autonomous University of Coahuila (UAdeC), Mexico, since 2016 in the area of Risk and Social Welfare. He graduated in Philosophy at de Salesian Institute of Superior Studies. Dr. De Leon has published over 10 book chapters, one paper published in indexed journals, and three papers in reviewed journals. He has been teaching since 2005. He has collaborated with several public and private organizations to create intervention programs to develop emotional skills for the welfare of people in vulnerable situations since 2014. He collaborated in the research project “Diagnosis and analysis of the social impact related to culture, legality, public services and social participation because of the exploration and exploitation of shale gas/oil” (2015), promoted by the National Mexican Council of Science and Technology (CONACyT). He has been a member of the International Federation of Social Workers since 2016. He was head of the master’s degree program of Social Intervention Models Based in Social Constructionism of the School of Social Work at the Autonomous University of Coahuila (2016–2020). He has advised 29 theses as director since 2016 on topics related to emotional competencies, organizational development, social constructionism, and entrepreneurship. He is also broadcaster of the radio program named “La Colmena,” transmitted by the FM radio station of the Autonomous University of Coahuila, talking about current social phenomena with several guests each Wednesday.

Contents

Contributors......................................................................................................... ix

Abbreviations ....................................................................................................... xi

Preface ............................................................................................................... xiii

1.

Social Constructionism: Intervention in Social Reality and Diversity ..... 1

Fernando Bruno

2.

Social Intervention from Social Constructionism:

Building Intervention Models .................................................................. 23

César Arnulfo de León Alvarado and Laura Fabiola Núñez Udave

3.

New Challenges to Participatory Action Research in Academia:

Notes from the Field.................................................................................. 51

Beatriz Padilla

4.

Health Recovery and Reconstruction in Breast Cancer

Survivors: A Social Construcionist Approach........................................ 71

Gibrán Alejandro Valdéz Flores and Laura Karina Castro Saucedo

5.

The Erotic–Amorous Relationships of Young University

Students in Saltillo: Constructionist Approach Applied to

the Investigation of Their Communicative Practices........................... 109

Jesús Gerardo Cervantes Flores and Gabriela de la Peña Astorga

6.

Narratives of Family Abandonment: A Constructionist

Intervention in Institutionalized Adolescents....................................... 139

Francisco Alejandro Moyeda Martínez and Laura Fabiola Núñez Udave

7.

The Resilience That Is Built in the Interaction of

Migrant Children and Adolescents: A View from the

Institutional Care of Refugee Families.................................................. 161

Martha Virginia Jasso Oyervides, Laura Karina Castro Saucedo, Reyna Alicia Arriaga Bueno, and Blanca Diamantina López Rangel

viii 8.

Contents The Needs Felt by Female Breast Cancer Survivors Participating in a Reflective Communicational Support Group in Saltillo, Mexico ........................................................ 193

Laura Karina Castro Saucedo, Gibrán Alejandro Valdéz Flores, and

César Arnulfo de Leon Alvarado

9.

Social Reconstruction of Women Carers of Children with Disabilities: A Model from Socio-Constructionist Intervention ......... 211 Víctor Ramírez and Fernando Bruno

10. Social Constructionism and Male Narratives in Reflection Groups for Men Who Exercise Violence Toward Their Partners in Monterrey, Nuevo Leon, Mexico ....................................... 227 Laura Karina Castro Saucedo

11. Qualitative Constructionist Evaluation of Social Intervention Projects .............................................................................. 249 Laura Karina Castro Saucedo, Cirilo García Cadena, Esmeralda Jaqueline Tapia García, and Juan Martell Muñóz

Index ................................................................................................................. 273

Contributors

César Arnulfo de León Alvarado

Social Work Faculty, Universidad Autónoma de Coahuila, Coahuila, México

Gabriela de la Peña Astorga

Communication Faculty, Universidad Autónoma de Coahuila, Coahuila, México

Fernando Bruno

Faculty of Social Work, Universidad Autónoma de Coahuila, Coahuila, México

Reyna Alicia Arriaga Bueno

Faculty of Social Work, Universidad Autónoma de Coahuila, Coahuila, México

Cirilo García Cadena

Faculty of Psychology, Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo León, Nuevo León, México

Jesús Gerardo Cervantes Flores

Communication Faculty, Universidad Autónoma de Coahuila, Coahuila, México

Gibrán Alejandro Valdéz Flores

Universidad Autónoma de Aguascalientes, Aguascalientes, Mexico

Esmeralda Jaqueline Tapia García

Faculty of Social Work, Universidad Autónoma de Coahuila, Coahuila, México

Francisco Alejandro Moyeda Martínez

Faculty of Social Work, Universidad Autónoma de Coahuila, Saltillo, México

Juan Martell Muñóz

Faculty of Psychology, Universidad Autónoma de Zacatecas, Zacatecas, México

Martha Virginia Jasso Oyervides

Faculty of Social Work, Universidad Autónoma de Coahuila, Coahuila, México

Beatriz Padilla

University of South Florida, Tampa, FL, USA

Víctor Ramírez

Faculty of Social Work, Universidad Autónoma de Coahuila, México

Blanca Diamantina López Rangel

Faculty of Social Work, Universidad Autónoma de Coahuila, Coahuila, México

Laura Karina Castro Saucedo

Faculty of Social Work, Universidad Autónoma de Coahuila, Coahuila, México

Laura Fabiola Núñez Udave

Faculty of Social Work, Universidad Autónoma de Coahuila, Coahuila, México

Abbreviations

AR CESC CRs ICTs INCAN INEGI LGAMVLLV NCI NHS MMI MoU UAdeC UNDP UNHCR USAID WB

action research Questionnaire to Measure Unmet Needs of Cancer Survivors community researchers information and communication technologies National Cancer Institute National Institute of Statistics and Geography General Law on Women’s Access to a Life Free of Violence National Cancer Institute National Health Service Models of Constructivist Social Intervention Memorandum of Understanding Universidad Autónoma de Coahuila United Nations Development Program United Nations Agency for Refugees United States Agency for International Development World Bank

Preface

This book will not disappoint those who seek a new, critical, and multi­ disciplinary look at experiences and meanings of social intervention in different social contexts, taking the approaches of social constructionism as a theoretical approach. In addition, this book’s construction, like many, has a backstory, and the reader’s knowledge of it will help them to understand the writing process, the development of the book, and its usefulness. It is based on the ongoing debates that have taken place in the field of social work around intervention, and, precisely, the way in which the models are built, their foundation, and their application. Precisely, in a context where the global scenario has an impact on the local one, and, where, with the appearance of new social situations, contingency is the distinctive feature of reality, it is necessary to have professional profiles with the ability to promote change and social development. But are we able to intervene effectively? Furthermore, can we face the difficulties and conditions of project achievement? It is, however, essential to ask, Can we make other alternative interpretations of reality emerge to build new emancipatory possibilities? These are some of the questions addressed throughout the chapters of this book. These issues have currently taken on a greater importance as a means to achieve the most accurate knowledge of different social groups. Thus, we reach the diagnosis that, at present, intervention models need to add holistic views that adjust to new social conditions that had not been previ­ ously envisioned. Consequently, they need to renew not only an answer, but also a new way of questioning. The objective of this book is to collect the results of theoretical–prac­ tical experiences that, in recent years, social science professionals with a critical and constructionist vision linked to social work intervention have carried out in different spaces. It should be clarified that it is not a repeti­ tion of ideas or a simple story that has already been told. These are works derived from unpublished analyses and reflections from practice. This volume contains chapters that are characterized by the results of innovative research and interventions with alternative and appropriate

xiv

Preface

approaches to each problem. Taking care of every detail in the process of intervention and application of models from social constructionism has generated new dialectical, theoretical, and methodological proposals that promise to join the challenge of deepening the multidisciplinary work of social change. One of the premises featured in all the chapters is that we live in worlds of meaning, that is, the personal history and the culture we share shape meanings so that they make sense, and the reality becomes something that can be experienced and is nonhostile. But when these worlds of meaning, mediated by words, come together, new possibilities turn up. This is how our world remains open. Now, we cannot deny that a deconstructive reading of the previous paragraph undoubtedly leads us to the fundamental influence of Jacques Derrida—the father of deconstruction—to social constructionism. According to Derrida, deconstructing is an experience of the impos­ sible because the possible is what I can communicate or put into words. With the above, we can substantiate the importance of the works that make up this one when bringing two situations face to face. On the one hand, the task of unearthing the voices of those who, for multiple reasons, are not heard and thus left with a single discourse on reality. On the other, the task is of bringing the experiences into light and contributing to the discovery of emancipation toward the impossible. Then, Derrida would say that impossible is what one cannot have experience of, that is, we live in what is possible, because it is what we can put into words (transcribe) or label. In this context, we think and show evidence of another part of social experiences that are also real and deserve to be researched so as to open a dialogue with diverse discourses. In this sense, a possibility arises. Thinking about the reality—or, rather, what we are told to be real—may only be a part of the possible experience. There is nothing outside the text, which has become one of the most compelling phrases in Derrida’s thoughts. It all involves splitting the meaning of experience as truth and recognizing that we are constructed and determined by language. It is through this that we experience and translate the mundane. That is the reason why the works in this book get involved in what is not visible, but, if necessary, it is done under the standards of what is correct, expected, and normal. What is left out of experiences, what seems not very useful to show.

Preface

xv

Having said that, deconstructing also leads to destabilizing because it is also deconstructing oneself. Destabilizing the lived experience in a history under open development, which is not a past but a future condi­ tion, generates uncertainty by finding unsuspected meanings that escape a normalizing and standard vision of what has been lived, because there is no longer a single version of anything; the truth vanishes like all hege­ monic terms. This is how Derrida’s deconstruction is incorporated into the construc­ tionist thought body, insofar as it is not about destroying but allowing the emancipation of the fixed, the instituted, of what remains immobile, of what is defended as normal, true, or universal. Other versions appear, which is therefore invisible meanings that make the network of social rela­ tionships, that seemed immobile and comprehensible through a method, more complex. But if the path seemed to be solved, the nodal point is that once the word catches the experience, the opening condition is lost to become dependent because what the word determined and classified as something is no longer questioned. Finally, we must add that a different look is also proposed in this book: it is a contribution to understand reality as an effect and product of a construction; one that is possible to analyze and place elsewhere and what seemed to have a natural or normal order. The most universal categories are deconstructed to show another unsuspected story. In summary, this book will give the opportunity to approach different experiences related to social intervention with approaches from the social constructionism movement, which particularly seeks to generate knowl­ edge from current theoretical, methodological, and practical aspects, in different geographical settings and social groups. It is therefore a novelty resulting from the last 3 years of work of a research team and collaborators interested in models of social interven­ tion, community work, and new social realities. It is the right moment to place the debate around social changes, empha­ sizing the ways to approach them with tailor-made strategies and the need to accompany community processes and the impacts of external factors in local contexts, highlighting the importance of the social intervention that inspires others to transform by acknowledging diversity. —Editors

CHAPTER 1

Social Constructionism: Intervention in Social Reality and Diversity FERNANDO BRUNO

Social Work Faculty, Universidad Autónoma de Coahuila, Coahuila, México

ABSTRACT This chapter is a sociohistorical approach to the thought shaped by social constructionism based on the critical vision that the latter imposes on knowledge as symmetry with respect to the truth and raises the importance of openness toward other ways of understanding human experience. Starting with the construction of scientific thought as truth, the argu­ ment is shifted toward the search for the explanatory discrepancies that social constructionism makes emerge with its debates to finally reach certain basic consensuses of the movement that have been expressed over time as a contribution to the field of social sciences and social intervention. An important section, that shows the diversity of creative construction and the use of dialogic practices, is found in the analysis of the intervention models proposed by Valdéz (2020), Ramírez (2020) and Moyeda (2021). After that, it is better understood that the objective of an interven­ tion, from the point of view of social constructionism, is not to discover something new through a single universal method but to denature reality and truth as fixed and irrefutable criteria to give way to the task of decon­ structing and rebuilding everyday life from multiple meanings.

Models of Social Intervention and Constructionism: Current Narratives. Laura Karina Castro Saucedo, Fernando Bruno, César Arnulfo De León Alvarado (Eds.) © 2024 Apple Academic Press, Inc. Co-published with CRC Press (Taylor & Francis)

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Models of Social Intervention and Constructionism

1.1 INTRODUCTION The query about access to knowledge and truth, has occupied a significant position in the history of science, as a model and guide from which all the devices have been developed to achieve it (methods, techniques, theories) specially with the arrival of the scientific method. In contrast with the above, we are currently witnessing a rehabilitation and revision of the very notion of truth, which has been the basis of the development of science and that today places it in a novel place. The same driving force behind the knowledge model, has been left in a tight spot and debates about post truth have arisen. By this I mean that it deviates from that Aristotelian position that held an existing link between thought, expressed through language and what happens in reality (Klimovsky, 2005). Because of that, this context of displeasure is called postmodernity (Sztajnszrajber, 2009). The innumerable possibilities offered by this era of great changes and crisis of hegemonic speeches revolve around diversity and transdis­ ciplinary, but the reading of a different social intervention must also be added, which, from social work and constructionist movement has known how to verbalize, from the bowels of social psychology, a change in the social paradigms and put into practice intervention models generated from the social actors themselves. Given this scenario, this chapter addresses from social constructionism a judgment of the vision of knowledge as symmetry of truth and proposes the importance of openness to other ways of explaining the construction of reality. Accordingly, in a first moment the dyad between science and truth is addressed, considering the utopia that this meant (Dri, 2000) for the social sciences in their transition to a scientific approach. In a second moment, a debate is opened toward new ways of explaining in social sciences, with particular emphasis on the social constructionism movement with its debates and challenges, to finally review the implications that this movement has had in the field of social sciences and social intervention, using the models proposed by Valdéz (2020), Ramírez (2020) and Moyeda (2021). Definitely at this time, we will be in a better position to analyze both theoretical and practical forms of the contribution of social construc­ tionism at present.

Social Constructionism: Intervention in Social Reality and Diversity

3

1.2 THEORETICAL DISCUSSION

Let us consider that the social sciences and in particular sociology in their path to turn into a science category emulated the vocabulary and procedure of the sciences that dominated as an ideal model at that time, thus, as an example, medicine, biology and physics. That way, the founding fathers of sociology and positivism, St Simon and Comte (Zietlin, 2001), fleeing from the mechanical and rational vision of the world that the illusion­ ists had forged and taken into a material plane in the French revolution, defended a positive philosophy that, through social order as of science, reestablish the natural, dynamic, and dialectical yearned for. This is how positivism established a new way of understanding and shaping social action in everyday life, from the scientific method, and found the notion of truth with the necessary symmetry and empirical reality. For Zietlin, Comte’s opinion on prediction, a substantial element in the positivist doctrine and primary objective, simplified social control. Nonetheless, it should be mentioned that these mechanisms have not been able to understand, how positivism proposed, the coercion that men exert on each other and the opposite side of dominating the psychical -technical aspects of the world that surround us (Elias, 2008). However, the context of the scientific method applied to social sciences brought with it the possibility of creating theories and methods that are generally composed of four steps: (1) formulate hypotheses and research questions, (2) collect information relevant to the hypotheses or research questions, (3) test the hypotheses with this information, and (4) reject or not the hypotheses or answer adequately the research questions. This way of proceeding is related to the position called positivism. A way to provide more reliable knowledge about the world, where there is a truth that must be revealed (Cisneros, 2007). In this sense, it should be emphasized that once our ways of knowing have been reduced to a method (routinized), we lose sight of what we are trying to know because we focus on the conventional – right way and miss the creative goal of discovery. From another perspective, Bachelarad maintains that there is no science other than that of the occult (Bourdieu, 1990), and there is no better mechanism to develop what is repressed and censored in the social world, than to be scientifically prepared. Taking this panorama into account, Toledo (2004), maintains that:

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Models of Social Intervention and Constructionism

In the course of the last 40 years the epistemological analysis that goes from Popper to Lakatos and from Kuhn to Feyerabend (regardless of the difference between them), coincides in showing that no “fact” is indepen­ dent of an implicit theory of observation that constitutes it, and that in an underhanded matter “instructs” the observer in what to “see” when faced with a set of distal stimuli given. That means that what we call a “fact” is always constituted of a set of relatively amorphous stimuli (p. 202). These mechanisms are contradictory if we also think that formal and formalistic minds, as Bourdieu stated, do a very poor society. In this postulate, criticism emerges as a substantial element to understand the advance of science, beyond the method to discover the truth. That said, criticism reaches the scientific promise, rationality, objectivity, and progress, under the central term of postmodernism, in rescue of social unrest and lost subjectivity in the functional structure. Going further in this reasoning, we understand that it is in the context of postmodernity, that social psychology joins the critical debate toward neo positivism, and rejects the idea of knowledge as a privilege of the elected – enlightened – and launches a harsh criticism of the idea of explanation, objective and cause. Now we see that all this crisis of paradigms and the various consider­ ations had have been contributed at the level of social and human sciences in recent years in the global context (Estrada, 2011), is basically a crisis about the agreement on how to produce and validate knowledge, it went through a period that can also be called the crisis of modernity. In short, we are witnessing a historical process of rehabilitation and revision of the very notion of truth, which has been the basis of the development of science and that today places it in a novel place. So, the same driving force behind the knowledge model that reigned since the arrival of positivism and the development of epistemology, has been left in a tight spot and debates about posttruth have arisen, that is to say that it deviates from that Aristotelian position that held an existing link between thought, expressed through language and what happens in reality (Klimovsky, 2005). It is in short, from where it is inferred that this context of displeasure is called postmodernity (Sztajnszrajber, 2009). But if we put forward this notion and want to analyze its impact on daily life and social work, a brief sketch of the history of this process is necessary.

Social Constructionism: Intervention in Social Reality and Diversity

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1.2.1 THE BEGINNINGS OF SOCIAL CONSTRUCTIVISM To start, we can affirm that modernity supposes the incessant and legitimate emergence of changes with no precedent (Sztajnszrajber, 2009). Then, its future is conceived as an emergence of changes (permanent revolution of things) that may or may not be imagined, but will collide with the things we are used to (Ramos Torre, 2017). Nevertheless, these were not lived without contradictions, indeed, an aversion to that uncontrollable transformation arouse and in response anchors, certainties, and truths are created. The permanent material and intellectual revolution promised by science is institutionalized, and forms, methods, and techniques, as the truth to understand reality and dominate nature, are produced. Thereby, science is built in the age of modernity to give certainty to a world without certainty. However, there is no doubt that today postmodernity (Sztajnszrajber, 2009), presents challenges and paradoxes and one of them is greater diver­ sity, that makes the understanding of social phenomenon more complex, because many of the categorical references from the past are insufficient to understand the present, since the staging of social life primarily reveals the mutable, multiple, contingent character of social reality and its construc­ tive feature, more than fixed, structured and predictable as we argue before. Postmodernity is an escape from the fixed, and a declaration that there are different expressions than what science, and its doctrine of truth, had shown us. In this context we can quote Gergen (2010) for whom Kuhn’s funda­ mental contribution was widely disseminated, his arguments implied a very strong punch to modernism, upholding that what is taken as a fact—object depends on the perspective of each observer—researcher. (pp. 133–136). Hence, we will see the proliferation of works that are the product of the reflections from the sociology of knowledge and the validity of science, where the idea that behind a uniform, constant and valid social world, there is a contingent and socially constructed structure of daily life is defended. 1.2.2 THE BASIS OF SOCIAL CONSTRUCTIONISM: THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF REALITY For Peter Berger and Thomas Luckman, reality is socially constructed, and the objective of the sociology of knowledge is precisely to decipher

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Models of Social Intervention and Constructionism

that construction to understand the meanings that we attribute to action. Therefore, their analysis seeks to decipher how knowledge guides people’s behavior in everyday life. The explanation of social order, guiding question of the psychological thought throughout history, is the product of the behavior forged through a dialectic process composed of three elements at play: externalization, objectification, and finally internalization. The interrelation of the previous triad, based on language, forms the nucleus for understanding reality. If we approach the work in its original presentation, the first chapter reflects the movement of construction of reality of everyday life, that is, revealed already objectified, therefore, established by an order of material objects prior to the existence of subjects and independent of them and in this context, language is constituted in between of meaning construction. Here, it is necessary to highlight that, this way of seeing the world, it will be taken up by social constructionism by affirming the existence of social agreements and criticism of the lack of awareness on this construction. Later, in the second chapter, the authors focus on analyzing the construction of the second moment where the emergence of social order is overcome and reified in an external and objective world. The activities and routines are thus normalized until they reach institutionalization, where we finally find the solution to multiple and contingent reality to become meanings, foresight and social control. This objectification is materialized in the institutional world, which now presents itself as exterior and given, alien of each person, although a part of him participates in that process. In addition to the construction­ ists, also Elias (2008) describes this process and observes the inability of man to understand that coercive forces, are forces that the same men exert against others and himself. The third chapter closes the dialectical process with internalization, that we can find in any process of construction of subjectivity, such as normalization or socialization, which so much debate has aroused in the history of sociological thought. In summary, the three moments are synthesized in an externalization of activities of daily life, that go through an institutionalization, and it is that second moment that is perceive as concrete and objective and is now available to perceived as objective and internalized. The postulate of the authors that contribute an essential element to the constructionist reading and that is rooted in the debate about knowledge

Social Constructionism: Intervention in Social Reality and Diversity

7

and is the idea that subjects are not born social subjects, rather each one goes through a process in order to “become” a fellow man who identifies with others through internalization (moment of incorporation of roles and rules), reality is learned, it has social meaning. Socialization from families, friends, school among other institutions that accompany this process, being of vital importance to the success of this process in the first years of life. It is here where language material­ izes the internalization of the subject, what in Bourdieu’s terms is called habitus (Bourdieu, 1986). In order that the social construction of reality, separates the neutral­ izing vision of reality, by maintaining that it is constructed, incorporated and modifiable by the subjects but at the same time they are molded by it. The possibility therefore opens up to contingency, because this reality, they argue, is not immutable, but susceptible to modification by the members of a society and also by the researcher, who perceive the institutional world as determined and structured, but carries out that char­ acteristic, that of change in the diversity of possibilities. 1.2.3 THE OPENING CONTEXT, SOCIAL CONSTRUCTIONISM: TRUTH AND DIVERSITY The approaches of Berger and Luckmann (1986), are engraved on the one hand in the sociology of knowledge, that is, as a contribution from the way in which the world is known and experienced, but on the other hand, a wider intellectual context, modernity with its idea of breaking fixed and predictable schemes that imply a different approach to the possibility of social change. There is no doubt that postmodernity today (Sztajnszrajber, 2009) as we previously stated, proposes challenges and paradoxes and one of them is greater diversity, this makes the understanding of social phenomenon more complex, considering that many of the categories that allowed clas­ sifying and understanding reality in the past are insufficient for under­ standing the present. On the contrary, the staging of the social reveals primarily in our time its mutable, multiple and contingent character and its constructive trait other than fixed, structured and predictable, as we argued previously. In this sense, the identification of risks and their impact on society, can be

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Models of Social Intervention and Constructionism

interpreted as a social construction, and it is social constructionism that, with its approaches gives more light to this study. Postmodernism was particularly important for the formulation of the constructionist theory because the identity of men was questioned, leaving aside the idea of universal determinism to move on to multiple rationalities and with it multiple realities of the same being as well as the appearance of communication technologies (mobile phones, internet, new means of communication) and with-it new intelligibilities. The above allows to interpret men not as an I but as I’s that have different potentialities that can be used according to the constructions that are made in different contexts (Gergen, construct the reality: future of psychotherapy, 2006). Social constructionism, as conceived by Gergen is a set of conversa­ tions4 that take place in all parts of the world and they all participate in a process that tends to generate collective meanings, understandings, knowledge, and values (Gergen, construct the reality: future of psycho­ therapy, 2006). For the same author as mentioned in an interview. The West had a long affair with the truth, with a capital “T.” And before there was a scientific truth with “T” there was a religious truth for us. As Western society became more secular, science came to become the main support of truth (Yang and Gergen, 2012, s/p). Let us now consider within the contributions, as Sandoval Moya (2010) mentions, constructionism presents a critical response to some truths that were believed to be eternal, such as: A critique to language as a capacity to reproduce images of social facts; since the mind has no representations of external world without the interposition of senses and meaning; criticism of the accumulation and progress of scientific thought and in the same way, there is a critique of the modern notion of truth. These criticisms allowed constructionism in its time to explain new phenomena due to its characteristic of social construction, presenting in its history Bergan and Luckman, as new identities, power exercises, and contributions from feminism were added (Ibáñez, 2003). At this point, it is necessary to indicate that one of the arguments that Gergen presents as one of the foundations of this movement is found in the following extract: if human societies are historically changeable, so should the meaning that people attribute to reality, so that, if meanings influence the actions and decisions of the people who compose those societies, scientific knowledge itself, which is precisely characterized by

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giving new meanings to reality, would have the ability to affect the way we understand the world (Moya, 2010, p 32). However, it is necessary to understand the meaning of constructionist reality, considering that the positivist claim of being able to capture it as an “external thing,” measurable and determining, is abandoned, to be the meaning of what is lived and imagined. Is in this sense that for (Yang and Gergen, 2012, s/p), the world is full of meanings rather than “reality.” What emerges is a renewed interest in the world of narratives and mean­ ings, for this reason, for Ferrari (2012), two elements must be considered when investigating, on one hand, that there are multiple accounts of what happens and, on the other hand, that there is a historical moment where the story is situated. Specifically, the facts are particular and historical, not universal. Which comes to overcome the timeless dimension of phenomena and focus on the study of human interactions and meanings. So, in this reality that is multiple, contingent, and historical; an approach to reality that allow us to analyze how the subject construct responses to the context we currently live in is necessary. 1.2.4 THE CONSTRUCTIONIST PROPOSALS We can start by pointing out that the term crisis has been repeatedly used as a profound change, a negative symptom in our time, as if previously largescale phenomena such as a social revolution could not be located. But there is no doubt that a crisis was experienced within the social sciences as an epistemological paradigm shift, although at present this dispute is far from being resolved. Social psychology was no exception and, from epis­ temology, launches a critique regarding positivism and neo positivism. In addition, there is a second critique of political overtone, since it criticized the null social implications and practices of the discipline (Ibáñez, 2003). Literally, the context demands the lack of intellectual debates of social psychology, that has not participated in the intellectual revolution. Nevertheless, the only lived experience is social constructionism (Iñiguez, 2007). The notion of social constructionism appears in 1985 in an article entitled the social constructionist movement in modern psychology, as it has been argued gives it a specific context. The rise and spread of

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constructionism were spectacular. But its causes cannot be understood independently of the context of the late 1970s and early 1980s. An intel­ lectual climate characterized by the approaches of Michel Foucault in his second linguistic turn of the Oxford School and the pragmatism of Richard Rorty (Ibáñez, 2003), on the other hand, Gergen’s great success was not to build a disciplinary island with delimited borders, but rather a movement that built a galaxy that allowed the incorporation of different sciences, disciplines, and perspectives. What the author points out is to open a dialogue. What I found, he mentions, is that if you close the borders and say that only people who embrace social construction can enter, you create an island. This is dangerous and goes against the very spirit of constructionism. This same two-way dialogue occurs in many practical areas (Yang and Gergen, 2012). The contribution of constructionism must in this sense be valued and also establish bridges instead of establishing disciplinary boundaries and communication with anthropology, psychology, philosophy, linguistics. By the 1980s social constructionism was consolidated as a project, which is at the same time a reconstruction of knowledge, that revolves around some elements that need to be analyzed in greater detail. 1.2.5 SOCIAL CONSTRUCTIONISM AS AN OPPORTUNITY TO ADVANCE KNOWLEDGE We can start with the following statement: for constructionism reality is contingence and history. Constructionism maintains that the social is constructed in communication. Nevertheless, the way to build the world and conceive it, is symbolic and material in nature at the same time. Thereby, the real is not a human idealization, because it precedes it, but it is immersed in a symbolic world that, through language, is built as such. There are numerous works6 that address the premises of construc­ tionism and it is not the purpose of this chapter to expose them all, but somehow the following postulates coincide: a) Social origins of knowledge—Accuracy can be achieved in a community or tradition according to the rules that govern there. b) The central influence of language—When coordinating the events, human beings obtain a system of signs and words and if new ways of speaking are developed, the seeds of change are sown.

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c) The political stake of knowledge—Constructionism invites us to enter into a dialog about the possible and the impossible inherited from the past. d) From self to relationship—not thinking so much about individual autonomy solutions but of group and relational development (Gergen, construct the reality: future of psychotherapy, 2006). To this Gergen, adds four interrelated elements that determine the situ­ ations, that from social constructionism are nodal to understand everyday life, since experience in the world does not dictate what we understand, the world is understood from social artifacts, historical localized exchanges, understanding of the world prevails regardless of empirical validity, the ways of understanding are negotiated (Jubés et al., 2001). From it, it is simpler to understand that knowledge is not taken as something given, as an accepted and questionable truth but as a culturally and historically determined product. In consequence, when social constructionists mention the word “reality”, they refer to a kind of “meaning”, the meaning of something, of what we name, or what we think. For social constructionist, the world is full of meanings rather than “reality” (Yang and Gergen, 2012). Accurately, constructionism is recognized as a spokesperson for new approaches, because it is related to certain perspectives such as gender, the postcolo­ nialists, the postsocial, etc., with a critical position facing the obvious, the correct, the natural, the evident, to what is constituted as truth. It can give an account of our rigid core of beliefs and ideologies. From it, diversity can be thought, the encounter with different signs. For example, Ludwin Wittgenstein’s social constructionism takes up that Words are not, planes of reality, but they take on meaning through their use in social exchange, in the games of language, of a culture (Mamaní, 2014). Soon, the postmodern attitude of constructionism is to undermine the very idea of truth, also wondering that happens if something is declared false. Thus, from this constructionist framework, what we observe becomes an object of suspicion. We are suspicious of our beliefs and ideologies and the truths for all expected, because these are institutionalized and incorporated as such. These are now open to interactions, encounters and dialogs. With the world reality is built. That is why if we move to the methodological plane, the preferred methods used in constructionist research include action—research,

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narrative methods, ethnography, auto-ethnography, biographical approach, all of them characterized by seeking to interpret, starting from the actors themselves, the experiences and the senses of the action, in their own words. Before moving to the next section, it is necessary to point out a feature of social constructionism that until now has been little mentioned, its practical aspect. The analysis would remain incomplete if its critical and political nature were not affirmed insofar as social constructionism is opposed to theorizing without intervention. However, it could not be stated in a categorical way who is a constructionist or not, since it would not be respecting the fundamental premise of not being a close movement, all the same, the constant element is criticism which could be understood as: Critique of practical value: in the sense of reflecting on what is the practical value of a vision of the world that one has. Critique of political value: this is to say, to whom the discoveries and the investigations that are made serve. Critique of the value of everyday life: constructionism has strong roots in practice and together with previous aspects, insists that, what we call reality, it could be any other way (Bruno et al., 2018). This critical view allows us to finally understand that: We live in worlds of meaning and we act on it from our history and culture. Meaning and action in the interpretation we make of real, rational, good, and evil. No sense no action. The worlds of meaning are built from social relationships, they are not immobile. The possibility of exchanges of futures, arrives with the participation, and must take care of the relation­ ships that make it possible. From the meanings that are put into play, new forms, realities, and possibilities can be produced. On the contrary, conflicting meanings can cause alienation and destroy relationships and reconstructive outcomes. This destructive possibility can be addressed with creative relationship care. The above understandings do not constitute beliefs. They are neither true or false. They are ways of approaching life, that more many, have great promise (Gergen, 2021). These approaches are the basis that provides the opportunity to present three interventions carried through in the city of Saltillo, Coahuila, and the challenges carried out by master’s degree students who also present their work in other chapters of this work.

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Therefore, the idea is to leave the terrain of the theory of social constructionism and from the implementation of their intervention proj­ ects, understand how constructionist premises work in practice, to carry out an analysis of its contradictions and evaluate future possibilities. 1.2.6 CHALLENGES OF SOCIAL CONSTRUCTIONISM IN SOCIAL INTERVENTION In other chapters of this book, the authors Gibran (Valdéz, 2020), Victor (Ramírez, 2020), and Moyeda (2021) propose in an extended way, the challenges and development of social interventions that were oriented from the reading of social constructionism. We can start by mentioning that each one contributed with a new inter­ vention model deriving out of the construction of a research question from constructionist premises, with an intervention objective that arose from the actors themselves, their situations and meanings, and not from general recipes disconnected from their realities. In this way, Valdéz (2020) addresses the issue of women survivors of breast cancer who attended “Ayuda Rosa” in Saltillo, Coahuila. In his work, the diagnostic process revolved around Bruno’s approaches, et al. (2018) who point out that from the Social Work “Social Constructionism seeks to explain how people come to describe, explain or give an account of the world where they live” (p.5) In this way, and in relation to these postulates, the authors state that reality is socially constructed. Is from these situations and theoretical premises built that the work of Valdéz (2020), bases the process of Constructionist Social Intervention that, in an operative way, unfolds in five stages: 1. identification of a conflict situation, 2. the design of the model with which the identified situation will be intervened, 3. the operationalization of the model and its execution through an intervention project, 4. critical intervention of the process and, finally 5. the systematization of the experience in general An aspect that stands out in this instrumentalization of social construc­ tionism in a particular situation is that the diagnosis was made under the

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logical and operational sequence proposed by Bruno et al. (2018), in which it is mentioned that reality must be analyzed from three interaction perspectives: the one exposed by the subject, the socially constructed and the one identified by the professionals. In this matter, these pillars result from a dialect of elements that allow a new social intervention. After this stage, the author sought, from qualitative interviews, analyze the narratives and discourses presented in woman who are breast cancer survivors “in order to provide elements to understand their life experience throughout the disease, their historical reconstruction, the configuration of social relationships, and the construction of new meanings” (Valdéz, 2020, p. 50). In the same work Valdéz (2020), taking Gergen (1985) as a reference, the main promotor of the constructionist movement maintains that this appeared as a political position as well as a scientific one, since it assumes a critical stance mainly to a scientific claim, of order, control and power that submits the subject and makes him vulnerable. For this reason, “the intention is to understand the actions of individuals through a framework of interaction and interpretation that focuses on a dialogic, reflective practices and the analysis of the narratives of the social actors” (Valdéz, 2020, p. 25). When we approached intervention, it was born from the intention to analyze the historical reconstruction of their life experience with the condition, the configuration of their social relationships and the construc­ tion of new meanings. In coherence with the theoretical and diagnostic position, the author emphasized throughout the process the times between deconstruction, construction, and reconstruction of narratives and speeches, as detonating processes of resignification in order to achieve a configuration of the intervened reality. Among the conclusions, Valdéz (2020) argues that from Social Constructionism, “emotions are understood not as individual possessions but constituents of relational patterns of life narratives, so these become resources to reconstruct reality from meanings that function as articulating devices” (p. 143) For his part, Ramírez (2020) also assumes a position where reality is constructed, so there is no single way to understand it since there is no single reality. What’s more, an important argument is that, being built by different people and situations, it also offers a range of possibilities to be approached.

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In this conceptual framework, the authors advance in their research and intervention interest over everyday vision of the role of caring for a child with disability, with the purpose of knowing the way in which the day-to-day is organized and the challenges presented are faced. Ramírez (2020), maintains that Gergen’s takes postulates from Bergen and Luckman to refer to the fact that reality and the subject are social constructions. “Starting from this premise, constructionism proposes to emphasize the way in which people manage to explain their reality and themselves” (p. 50). Concerning the above, meanings are understood to be generated over time and in a particular context, for this reason a dialogical—historical process is declared. Finally, constructionism, as stated by Ramírez (2020) ponders the existence of multiple realities, the experiences and the mean­ ings from the figure of language. Social actors remain immerse in a complex reality, that is discovered from their practices and speeches. Knowing the narrative that sustains these speeches allows to access the meanings that give meaning to life. Therefore, it is necessary to intervene from points of view that offer a broad panorama that concede the reconstruction of narratives from the social (Ramírez, 2020). The intervention sought a place in daily life, from a model whose constructionist framework, empowers dialogue and interaction with others, allowing the emergence of a new relational context. In the chapter dedicated to construction and development of a constructionist interven­ tion model, the population with which we worked is shown, mothers and caregivers of a child with a disability. The model that Ramírez (2020) creates is called “H.A.R.A.” referring to the triad “Talk–Reflect–Act,” elements that are taken as a basis for the creation of new narratives around the experience of disability and the approbation of the caregiver (p. 55). Some conclusions this author exposes underline that deconstruction appears as a possibility to identify conflict situations, with the same social actors, offering the possibility of re-seeing “and experiencing them in a different way, positioning themselves from them to elaborate and give them meaning, that allow to act and dimension the experience differently” (Ramírez, 2020, p. 109). This could be named as the reconstruction of apparent reality.

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Finally, another theoretical and practical approach is found in Moyeda (2021), who uses social constructionism as a proposal to address child family abandonment and a look at the way adolescents use to express their experiences and the meanings they have given to this phenomenon. For him, narratives are complex constructions around thematic plots, built in a historical dimension and socially negotiated, always remaining open to collectively reconstruction within a social, historical and cultural system. Moyeda (2021) coincides with previous authors by highlighting in a theoretical plane the social constructionism reality from the reflective question of how people determine the ways of living a situation, of inter­ acting with themselves and with others. In this manner, the interpretations and reinterpretations that people may have about violence will depend on their life histories, culture, and life expectations. This is why, according to Gergen (2006) constructionism seeks to explain how people come to describe, explain, or give account of the world where they live, having language a central role, defined as the indispensable promotor to access and build social reality (Moyeda, 2021). For Moyeda (2021), this paradigm as an intervention proposal, provided a glance at the way adolescents use to express their suffering about their experiences of this situation. 1.3 REFLECTIONS ON THE CONSTRUCTIONIST INTERVENTION As it has been possible to demonstrate, the three authors show the relation­ ship between of social intervention with the premises of social construc­ tionism. The practical values of these investigations can be demonstrated, in a first moment, by offering a differently constructed vision of the world, where the actors themselves are freed from discomfort7 through their own voice (liberating effect) that is not of a personal, psychic, but social, yet seldom aware of this fact that, together with the researcher, it is possible to reveal—reconstruct to have an impact in each person daily life. Throwing down a priori categorizations about reality, that apparently that coherent one contains and hide, is not a simple task. However, that dialectic revelation constructed by the actor and researcher always has a purpose to offer a means for the people themselves, not exclusively theoretical and academic, but a political commitment, as previous authors have shown in each of their interventions.

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Discoveries are not left at a library, they serve to be applicable in everyday though, and be aware of the possibility of understanding situ­ ations and changing actions accordingly. It is because of that, more than in any other intervention, it is demonstrated and insisted that, what we call reality, could be another way. The change in people’s daily lives, a forgotten and necessary value, is the most valuable contribution of the investigations and interventions that were previously analyzed. To close we could mention that there are currently no doubts, although there is resistance to change within some social workers that the progress of a profession that was developed at the beat of the development of the functionalist structural theory has change dramatically. In that theoretical scheme, subjects were determined from the system and incorporated values and norms, the social worker’s job was to adapt and normalize deflected who had lost the connection, the way, to be functional again to society. However, the reconceptualization process led to a breakdown of these terms, moving away from a normalizing vision of adaptation and approaching a paradigm of social action and the idea that the subject and the system conflict and through intervention it can mediate. That is, the system creates order and progress to the beat of inequity, segregation, with a structure of opportunities differenced by class, sex, and race. A social worker appears more committed to justice to well-being, a panorama of claim toward integration in contexts of social exclusion. From here it is necessary to clarify that there is a distinctive sign of social work and is undoubtedly the intervention in the social. This char­ acteristic installs it in an epistemological place under debate, between intervention, theory, and its models. It is here where it can be found a relationship between social work, constructionism, and intervention. The contribution of the constructionist movement lies in diluting disciplinary boundaries and opening a space for a creative dialog between anthropology, psychology, sociology, philosophy, and linguistics, with the interdisciplinary objective of understanding the purpose, the meaning, and the creating new forms of possible reality. Therefore, social construc­ tionism serves as a framework for interpreting reality and at the same time as a collective and transformative collaborative action for a social worker. These considerations deserve to pose a question that is interesting to me in this context. First of all, about intervention in the social as a field under development and the possibility of coping with social reproduction, understood as the mechanisms that allow continuity in social relations

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that become predictable because manners and senses of being, thinking, and acting are imposed. That is to say, can social intervention interrupt reproduction, issue that I consider central in the job of social workers same as all those who practice intervention as a form of social change. Last, the objective of an intervention in social constructionism, has been established. It is not discovering something new, but it does denature reality and truth as a fixed and irrefutable element, to give a way to a work of deconstructing and reconstructing one’s daily life as from the meaning of people themselves. 1.4 CONCLUSIONS Beyond this argumentative path that we traveled in the previous para­ graphs, social constructionism is still under development, but it results from a debate that is key for social workers. We could mention that this distinctive sign, the one of social intervention, faces a social world that, even if it is in change, it is not a unique feature of our time, it discovers that things change, but also constant, immutable, irregular elements remain, at the end, there is social reproduction. This idea refers to the impossibility of calculating, whereas the best reliable and valid measurement system exists, the social action that is contingent, unpredictable at times, and in specific contexts. It is no wonder that in Buaman’s8 work, the author classifies modernity as a time without certainties, where also the other is a stranger. It seems that forgetfulness and emotional uprooting appear as a condition of success in current daily life, where human being thinks himself as the producer and architect of making everything possible. On the other hand, as we have shown, it is no longer a matter of discov­ ering the hidden truth by means of the adequate statistical methods that reveal it, but the truth is constructed and also its meaning, as historical and social constructions, not naturally occurring objects. Truth as a timeless and pure concept, free of impurities is demolished and with the critical capacity of social constructionism the way is paved to denaturalize what is presented as absolute and open a new path of knowledge. This raises a problematic field between the relationship of the social and individual, what was built and where the future is open and not

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exclusively determined by external forces. There is a diversity under the cloak of objectification and institutionalization of life courses that must be shown. The positioning toward social reality mainly reveals its mutable, multiple, and contingent characteristic where contradictory and shifting narratives and their meanings are not in front of object or things with determined responses, they only provide evidence of the diverse process of experiencing life depending on the context (historical, cultural, institutional) because we are in front of constructed subjects and their meanings and not in front of objects or things with determined subjects. The call to demolish common sense is today more than ever an urgency, especially in an unforeseen context confronting the impact caused by the COVID-19 pandemic on our social life, where, as shown in the interven­ tion works cited above, social constructionism, the researcher and above all, the same social subjects, allow us to think of a new reality where the priority is to reconstruct the effects that social events have on the daily life of the most diverse social groups. This new way of researching and producing knowledge can ever elude the political dimension, from where diversity is thought, the encounter with the other and the construction of the other, that ultimately passes through a sieve of suspicion, to put in parentheses the greatest certainties, beliefs, language, and ideologies, as a condition of possibility of reforming the construction of the relationship between subject – object and accepting the multiple and diverse of social diversity. KEYWORDS • • • • •

social intervention social reality social constructionism postmodernity reality

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REFERENCES Bauman, Z. Modernidad líquida; Fondo de cultura económica: México, 2003. Berger, P. L.; Luckmann, T. La construcción social de la realidad, Amorrortu: Buenos

Aires, 1986. Bourdieu, P. L’illusion biographique. Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales 1986, 62–63, 69–72. Bourdieu, P. Una ciencia que incomoda. En Sociología y cultura; Bourdieu, R., Ed.; Grijalbo: México, 1990; pp 79–93. Bruno, F.; Acevedo, J.; Castro, L. K.; Garza, I. El construccionismo social, desde el trabajo social modelando la intervencion social construccionista. Margen 2018, 91, 1–15. Cisneros, C. A. The Deconstructive and Reconstructive Faces of Social Construction. Kenneth Gergen in Conversation with César A. Cisneros-Puebla. Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung/Forum: Qualitative Social Research 2007, 9 (1), Art. 20. Dri, R. La utopía de Jesús; Biblos: Buenos Aires, 2000. Elias, N. Sociología fundamental; Gedisa: Barcelona, 2008. Estrada, V. Trabajo social, intervención en lo social y nuevos contextos. Ver, 2011. Ferrari, L. El construccionismo social y su apuesta: la psicología social histórica. Escrito para editorial EUDEBA, 2012. Gergen, K. The Social Constructivist Movement in Modern Psychology. American Psychologist 1985, 40 (3), 266–275. Gergen, K. Construir la realidad: el futuro de la psicoterapia; Paidos Iberica: España, 2006. Gergen, K. El yo saturado. Dilemas de indentidad en el mundo contemporáneo; Paidós: Madrid, 2010. Gergen, K. Social Construction: Orienting Principles; Taos Institute, 2021. Ibáñez, T. La construcción social del socioconstruccionismo: retrospectiva y perspectivas. Política y Sociedad 2003, 40, 155–160. Iñiguez, L. Nuevos debates, nuevas ideas y nuevas prácticas en la Psicología Social de la era “post-construccionista”. FERMENT AÑO 2007, 17, (50), 523–534. Jubés, E.; Laso, E.; Ponce, Á. L. Constructivismo y construccionismo: dos extremos de la cuerda floja. Tendencias actuales en investigación social 2001, 1, 279–296. Klimovsky, G. Las desventuras del conocimiento científico; AZ Editores: Buenos Aires, 2005. Mamaní, V. H. Construccionismo y Trabajo Social. Obtenido de Construccionismo y Trabajo Social, 2014. www.trazos construccionistas.blogspot.mx Moyeda, F. A. La percepción del Abandono Familiar. Una revisión desde el Construccionismo Social a través de las narrativas de adolescentes institucionalizados; Tesis de maestría en prensa: Saltillo, Coahuila, 2021. Ramírez, V. Reconstrucción social de mujeres cuidadoras de niños con discapacidad desde la Intervención socioconstruccionista; Tesis de maestría: Saltillo, Coahuila, 2020. Ramos Torre, R. Futuros sociales en tiempos de crisis. Arbor 2017, 193 (784), 1–14. Sandoval Moya, J. Construccionismo, conocimiento y realidad: una lectura crítica desde la Psicología Social. Mad. 2010, (23), 31–37.

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Sztajnszrajber, D. La cuestión posmoderna; Gestión Cultural y Comunicación—FLACSO: Buenos Aires, 2009. Toledo, U. ¿Una epistemología del trabajo social? Cinta moebio 2004, 21, 200–214. Valdéz, G. Sobrevivir al cáncer de mama: experiencia psicosocial de mujeres saltillenses en un modelo reflexivo-comunicacional socioconstruccionista; Tesis de maestría: Saltillo, 2020. Wright Mills, C. La imaginación sociológica; Fondo de Cultura Económica: México, 2002. Yang, L.; Gergen, K. Social Construction and its Development: Liping YangInterviews Kenneth Gergen. Psychol. Stud. 2012, 57 (2), 126–133. Zietlin, I. M. Ideología y teoría sociológica; Amorrortu: Buenos Aires, 2001.

CHAPTER 2

Social Intervention from Social Constructionism: Building Intervention Models CÉSAR ARNULFO DE LEÓN ALVARADO and LAURA FABIOLA NÚÑEZ UDAVE

Social Work Faculty, Universidad Autónoma de Coahuila, Coahuila, México

ABSTRACT This chapter seeks to explain the process implemented in the Master’s degree in Models of Constructivist Social Intervention (MMI) from the Social Work Faculty (FTS) at the Universidad Autónoma de Coahuila (UAdeC) to establish intervention models from theoretical principles and examples of some practices from social constructionism. In this sense, it is necessary to start from the questioning of social reality as an unam­ biguous and objective phenomenon, to give rise to the problematization of reality as the result of different social narratives that respond to the socially constructed agreements between the intersubjectivities that make up a certain group or society, and from which, the assessment criteria circumscribed to a specific historical–cultural moment are established. A social phenomenon that we are still living today and on which it is also worth reflecting in social terms is that of the COVID-19 pandemic, a situation that has brought countless social and emotional implications by sharply modifying, and in a short period of time, the social, economic,

Models of Social Intervention and Constructionism: Current Narratives. Laura Karina Castro Saucedo, Fernando Bruno, César Arnulfo De León Alvarado (Eds.) © 2024 Apple Academic Press, Inc. Co-published with CRC Press (Taylor & Francis)

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political, and emotional dynamics we were used to, and that, therefore, they also question the efficacy of traditional social interventions faced with emerging challenges because of the practices of confinement and physical distancing which in many cases result in emergent phenomena in terms of psychological health that are manifested in states of anxiety, fear, and irritability, among others. Given the need to generate social interven­ tions that allow us to adapt more easily to emerging realities such as those we are experiencing during the pandemic is that the main characteristics of social constructionism are mentioned (especially from the contributions of Kenneth Gergen) as principles of intervention research that can then be translated into the creation of intervention models that allow giving new responses to social realities both in form and in context. Finally, the steps we have followed in the experience of the Master’s program for the creation of intervention models are presented that starting from the theoretical foundations of social constructionism, they intend to respond to emerging social phenomena, not from the perspective of the expert who diagnoses a reality, but from the dialogical interaction with those who live it and from the inclusion of these as proactive agents and in constant change, able to symbolize, and resymbolize the social and emotional situ­ ations they are going through. 2.1 SOCIAL REALITIES Understanding the environment that surrounds us has not only been a desire but also it is been a task that human beings have imposed on them­ selves since the beginning of humanity itself since it is and still is relevant to the survival of both, individuals and the human species (and any other) the capacity to adapt to the environment in which it operates. This adaptation process that seems simple natural instinct, in the case of us human beings, starts to become more and more complex when the first societies emerge because thanks to agriculture they can begin to build human settlements that can be supplied with their own crops. Following Granada (2003), this adaptive process is not perfect, given that the inter­ relation of the subject with the environment has always interferences and loss of energy, and the form of survival is constantly altered. The appear­ ance of these groupings being purely tribal or ancient cities that could become great civilizations also demanded new forms of organization and adaptation.

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Since the same society began to generate its own norms to regulate the dynamics of interaction between one and the others, to establish what is allowed and what is not, including habits, perceptions, structures, and other social productions that we can group under the concept of culture: “Culture has allowed the individual to develop experiences and behavior patterns that determine stable patterns of action and develop more effec­ tive subsistence mechanisms than other species” (Bohrt et al., 1987). Thus, adapting for humanity has implied since then not only the satis­ faction of the basic needs of food, reproduction, rest, and security but it also involved satisfying them in the “right” way according to the current belief system in the culture of your social system at the historical moment in which you live, even if “certain levels of successful adaptation individu­ ally can be counterproductive for society; and backward: certain adaptive productive processes at a general level can be beneficial at an individual level” (Granada, 2003). Returning to Granada (2003), the concept of adaptation is even more relevant if it also includes in its analysis the processes in which the popula­ tion interacts with the environment and even more if it also considers the interaction between the different social subjects to be considered. On the other hand, Gergen (2006) points out that our conceptions of the world and the “Me” are built from the interrelationships that exist between people within a group of individuals who share a specific situation in history and culture. Since ancient times, different conceptions of reality have been proposed, which inevitably have had to come to define the “social reality” as well, that is to say, establish which is the best way to organize ourselves socially as humanity, both in matters of political organization (laws, structure) as in matters of social interaction (social norms, traditions, customs) both inescapable and inseparable elements one from the other. It is also when we seek to define what reality is, inexorably that we find ourselves immersed in different sociohistorical–cultural categories that will imbue our conception of what we will establish as real, as true or false, like correct and incorrect and that will also condition social rela­ tions, establishing what is fair or unfair, moral or immoral (Gergen, 2006). Historically, we can point out the visions of social political organiza­ tion laid out by ancient thinkers such as Plato and Aristotle in the western world, as well as Lao Tzu and Confucius in the eastern world, passing through numerous thinkers throughout time (Augustine of Hippo, Thomas

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Aquinas, Thomas More, Hume, Rousseau, Montesquieu, Voltaire, among many others) to the most contemporary conceptions (Novak, Bobbio, Bourdieu, Searle, Bergen, Luckmann, among many others) that continue enriching different elements and characteristics about society and its government based on its sociopolitical analyzes. Ligia (2001) points out in this regard that the knowledge of what reality is not something that is given, so the human being constantly tries to know and understand what reality is, that is, the way things are, both in their extramental existence and on the margin of this, and this exercise of thinking about his environment as of himself happens in a certain physical, cultural, and social context. With all the above, we can verify that, effectively, the conception of reality is so vast as the number of individuals who formulate them within its sociohistorical–cultural context, and who seek in some way to present categories of analysis that allow us to understand how social interactions are established in a given society, or well, how these should be established. This analysis of social reality, seeking not only to define what society is but how it is constituted, from where it was conceived, and how it conforms, has also practical purposes, given that today’s societies are increasingly complex and interdependent, no longer only at a local or regional level, but on a national, international and global level, also social demands, its problems and solutions are increasingly complex and interdependent as well. In this sense, García and Pulgar (2010) point out that there are different factors and social actors (economical, political, religious, etc.) in global­ ization and describe it as “an advanced stage of the international division of labor, characterized by greater interaction and interdependence of the factors and actors that intervene in the world development process.” Hence, the conceptions of society that perceive it as a whole, cohesive, properly articulated from a convergent vision, are less and less close to contemporary social realities, which rather have characteristics of no-linearity, no-casualty, heterogenous, and hyperdynamic. In this matter, following Bauman (1996), it is indispensable to consider that the social condition is permanent because that is how it is constituted in its essence when alternatively, there are a number of largely autono­ mous elements that end up justifying and they are perceived as a totally, a contingent, temporary, and casual result of interactions. Hence, this perception of an ordered and structured whole of the total is no longer

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accepted as obvious unless this is rather a representation as a result of a goal of the theoretical activity. That is why the need to address these social realities is becoming more and more evident from multidisciplinary analytical perspectives and holistic approaches that more than offering an image of absolute and immutable reality, allow us to have categories of analysis to help us make visible the microsocial interactions engraved in increasingly larger social processes to be able to recognize and address needs and social demands that require attention at different levels of action, from the individual and group to the macrosocial. 2.2 THE CHALLENGES OF PANDEMIC AND THE POSTPANDEMIC DEFIANCES By the end of 2019, a virus called COVID-19 began to spread in December in Wuhan, China, the seventh largest city in China, which is home to 11 million people, and that tells us about the magnitude with which the first infections began and spread (Valero-Cedeño et al., 2020). It is the beginning of a global pandemic that will put into question the way in which the different social–political systems for the planet had been operating up to now, releasing diverse social responses to uncertainty and fear, in the first instance, and later demanding new forms of interaction to be able to move forward in the search to adapt to living with the presence of the virus, but preventing it from continuing to be a threat to people’s health and lives: “Pandemics have very important psychological effects on the population, derived from the perception of uncertainty, confusion and the sense of urgency that they generate” (Taylor, 2019). The most viable solution is the creation of a vaccine that allows us to generate immunity (Chacón-Fuertes, Fernández-Hermida, & García-Vera, 2020), which would not arrive until the end of 2020, and which has yet to be applied to the entire world population. In the meantime, different social sectors experience the pandemic in very different ways. There are people who die on the streets because of having caught this new virus and not having access to the hospitals as they collapsed because of the concentration of patients while other people can enjoy personal­ ized and high specialty to avoid death or at least die with dignity. “The pandemic leads to a social crisis by creating a greater difference between the dispossessed and the powerful. Although the virus does not recognize

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each other, tests are applied first to important characters, relegating the humblest” (Laufer, 2020). These are people who have lost their job or their business (Brooks et al., 2020) so that, therefore, more than the new virus, their main concern is how they are going to solve their basic food needs while others may have the possibility to continue working from home or to continue receiving their pay because their source of income allows it. In this sense, Lopez-Calva introduces Castro’s (2020) text, pointing out that the pandemic interacts with the pre-existing heterogeneity of this crisis, in the acquisition of goods, income generation, work situations, and accessibility to public services, among other elements that make some families and individuals even more vulnerable to the economic paralysis that we are experiencing. Staying at home is the direction for most (if not all) of the world’s governments to reduce the number of infections by avoiding social inter­ action with other people, especially in public spaces with massive access. Some people get bored at home because they are already tired of watching television, surfing the net, or walking in their garden. Other people, espe­ cially if they are women, boys, or girls, want to stay at home but they experience physical or emotional abuse by other members of their family. In this regard, Castro (2020) points out in one of the documents published by the United Nations Development Program, about Latin America and the Caribbean, that it is necessary for public policies to be addressed from a gender perspective “since the scarcity and needs of women, in particular, if they are in charge of children, elderly people, disabled, or if they suffer violence from their partners, require a particular prioritization.” Since vaccines for this new virus began to be developed, some govern­ ments began to finance and even separate significant amounts of these vaccines to ensure their access to the population of their country while other governments do not even have the possibility of offering sufficient hospital care for their sick population. The resources required for the investigation, always hard to obtain, tend to flow more easily, at least in the first world countries. Its yet to be seen if something similar happens in our countries, but for now, a combination of pride and sadness is what provides knowledge about the involvement of Latin-America scientists in the fight against viruses such as COVID-19, working in first-world laboratories instead of being able to do it in their countries (Laufer, 2020).

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The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted, dramatically perhaps, that there is a great diversity of social realities (political, economic, cultural) that many times have not been recognized and less taken care of (Brooks et al., 2020) from the perspective of conceiving society as a rather homo­ geneous and stable ordered whole, when the pandemic has shown the need to approach reality from divergent and nontraditional perspectives, recognizing social needs and demands that have not existed before which also demand unprecedented analysis and attention schemes. Voluntary confinement (or in some cases in certain countries including coercion) has also had an impact on the emotional field. Staying home all or most of the time, and seeking to adapt daily social activities such as work and education to the family space, has been quite a challenge (Castro, 2020). This dynamic has also triggered an increase in negative emotions (fear, anxiety) associated with catastrophic thinking in the uncertain outlook of when the pandemic will end: “it is possible to point out that worry and catastrophic thinking are directly related to the emotional discomfort of Mexicans over 18 years of age in the midst of a global pandemic” (Nuñez et al., 2020). This just talking about confinement. If we also consider the negative emotions related to the losses suffered that can end in complicated duels, this has also increased. People who have lost their source of income have seen their health diminished by COVID-19, have lost contact with loved ones, or have passed away, they have experienced difficulties when living their grieving process due to the isolating situation that has conditioned the interaction with the social networks in the social rituals associated with accompaniment during the duel and also because of the suddenness of the losses. A totally atypical scenario even for those family members who have resources or coping strategies for facing the loss; but a totally discour­ aging scenario for those who have difficulties to assume the emotional burden this entails, with negative impact that increases the possibility of experiencing what science today recognizes as complicated grief (Larrotta-Castillo et al., 2020).

In the case of boys, girls, and adolescents, we can point out the loss of physical contact with peers, teachers, friends, family, their recreational spaces outside their home, and their routines. This has implied a drastic

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change, practically overnight, and has meant a sharp break in their life dynamics (Mendoza, 2020) which, also causes, a postpandemic challenge as a subsequent adjustment when they return to the classroom. According to Cáceres-Correa (2020), it is evident that there are condi­ tions for many and many students to drop out of their formal educational process, considering that the pandemic represents an unprecedented crisis, so this desertion phenomenon, more than a failure, it is rather a way of caring for the mental health of the population that seeks to adapt and better cope with stressful situations that are experienced on a daily basis. This is a challenging context where we are able to intervene socially from new perspectives of social approach that generate more suitable models to respond to complex scenarios like the one we are living today and those to come: “We are in time to anticipate the phycological conse­ quences of the disease, deaths, and long confinement can have at a medium and long term to a part of the citizenship” (Chacón-Fuertes et al., 2020). 2.3 THE SOCIAL INTERVENTION Social life has, as a consequence of the diversity and complexity of inter­ actions between the different members that compose it, endless needs to concentrate on, many of which can be perceived as unwanted since they put the relative stability of the social organization at risk, according to what each society considers desirable, good, and adequate: “The interven­ tion is based on a certain prescriptive consideration, in an assessment of the intervening actors and in turn, in a categorization of the intervened” (Sáenz, 2007). According to Sáenz (2007), social intervention originated within the welfare state in the middle of the 20th century to respond to social needs that had been addressed by philanthropic causes, almost always religious, from a main well-being approach, in which three actors were involved in the intervention: the state, some organized forms of civil society, and the academic world. From a more contemporary approach, social interventions could be understood as intentional actions that seek to modify habits, customs, and/ or beliefs of an individual, group, or society, in order to generate a change directed toward an expected result (Sáenz, 2007). Based on the above, we can place social interventions under two major approaches to address reality. The first approach we can call normative

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will seek to implement actions that anticipate, correct, or reduce imbal­ ances in relation to the interaction of people (Fantova, 2018), within the “should be” prevailing in this social status quo. For example, if the social paradigm establishes that the family is composed of a father, a mother, and children, the social interventions, from a normative perspective, seek to make this family model prevail. The second approach to addressing social interventions, which we can call an open approach where it starts from the unwanted situations that a person, group, or society manifest, ensuring that the interventions focus rather on generating a change from the awareness and responsi­ bilities of the actor or social actors: “The intervention is a producer of subjectivity and social reality: provides discursive constructions, ways of understanding and explaining according to a defined and organized directionality” (Carballeda, 2008; Ortega-Senet, 2017). From there, the path forward can be generated until the desired result is reached and established by the participants involved in this process, which may or may not adjust to the social mainstream. Starting from this second approach of addressing that the social intervention becomes a tool for change that allows integral intervention practices that also recognize the inescapable interdependence with the macrosocial, by viewing “the unofficial dimension of the processes of creation and recreation of social forms” (Ortega-Senet, 2017). In this sense, social intervention requires spaces, of processes, of actors that collaborate in the significance of social realities in which they are immersed, where awareness about a narrative in is situated as a social subject, which implies recognizing emotions, habits, discourses, structures, and social systems, offering at the same time the possibility of resignifying them and recreating them from this social reframing with their respective consequences in the different social praxis: “Language does not reflect a reality, whatever it may be, rather, it constitutes a pragmatic device that is nothing more than a mode of relationship” (Gergen, 2006). However, in complex and hyperdynamic realities like the ones we are experiencing from globalization, and in presence of phenomena that radically agitate traditional social organizations such as the COVID-19 pandemic that is being experienced, therefore it is essential to support efforts toward a creative and flexible intervention approach. In this sense, many of the emerging social needs and demands break with the responses provided by traditional social interventions, such as

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the incorporation of multidisciplinary teams for social-emotional care, the use of digital platforms and telemedicine, among others, in order to visualize and address the risk situations to which the population is exposed (Lozano-Vargas, 2020). Properly, in view of the aforementioned, is the incorporation of new theoretical–methodological approaches that allow the generation of social intervention models in order to establish a robust framework for action in comprehensive, creative, and flexible social interventions that can respond to contemporary challenges and those to come are considered necessary. 2.4 SOCIAL CONSTRUCTIONISM Find a theoretical perspective that can open new ways to respond to emerging social needs such as those existing as a consequence of global­ ization and, above all, with the presence of the COVID-19 pandemic it is an imminent task to be able to recognize and follow the social realities that are there to be able to offer them care mechanisms according to the innovation in the approach and the way of doing social intervention. One of the proposals for a theoretical approach to social intervention reality that we can consider of utmost importance from the second half of the 20th century is social constructionism, from 1967 with the publi­ cation of the book “The Social Construction of Reality” where Berger and Luckman affirm that “the subjects create society and this becomes an objective reality that, at the same time, creates the subjects” (Rizo García, 2015). This apparent simplicity in the statement below has generated a whole way of approaching reality where various authors have been nurturing this perspective coined from phenomenological sociology to later echoed also in social psychology from the contributions of Kenneth Gergen for whom social constructionism more than a theory is a “set of conversations that take place in all parts of the world and participate, all of them, in a process that tends to generate collective meanings, understandings, knowledge and values” (Gergen, 2006). And it is precisely that this perspective of approaching reality where emphasis is given on the construction of reality from interpersonal rela­ tionships and not focused on the subject’s cognitive perception or in some essence described by language who has positioned this paradigm as a bearer of a different vision that, nourished by Husserl’s phenomenology,

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it can allow us to think social interactions and the possible interventions that may be proposed. Such is the strength of social construction of their social narratives that construct the reality even “thought is a form of internal speech, a public act that takes place in public” (Gergen, 2006). In this sense, it seems pertinent to highlight some elements that I consider relevant in the proposal of social constructionsim which in turn can suport the creation of intervention models based on this theoretical approach. The first of them is evidently the principle that both knowledge and what we consider reality is social determinations (Gergen, 2006, Rizo García, 2015). This statement implies in fact a questioning of ontological positions that take for granted the existence of an objective world indepen­ dent of human consciousness, capable of being know by it and possessing an essence or nature that can be described through language and that determines the performance of everything that exists. With this, it seems that we are facing a blunt proposal of ontological relativism, completely arbitrary, and of little empirical support. Never­ theless, it could be questioned that social constructionism rather than promoting ontological relativism, it can be pointed out that it leans more toward an ontological silence, in terms of not being able to realize , with certainty, if it does or does not exist outside the linguistic tradition in which we are inexorably immerse (Aceros, 2012). In this respect, Gergen points out that social construtionism is not denying the existence of extramental realities, rather, he is emphasizing that there is no conception of reality that has not been the result of a specific social construction by its sociocultural context at a given historical moment in time, and its from there that concepts such as truth, objetivity, and science are being constructed with an impicit symbolic charge (Aceros, 2012; Gergen, 2006). As for the second element, I think that it is important to point out and which can be inferred by the above is that there is, therefore, no single social reality but multiple social realities, then, there is no absolute concep­ tion of truth but multiple conceptions of truths that respond to different social traditions that have built narratives that create reality from language (Gergen, 2006;2007). Following Gergen (2006, 2007; Aceros 2012), this concept of social narratives seems to me to be of utmost importance because it is precisely

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the social narratives, this is the way in which we construct reality and the “me” within the same is a central point to consider in order to enable social interventions from a socioconstructionist perspective, since the way to transform reality will then be by deconstructing social narratives in order to resignify them in a process of dialogue that has no other purpose than the exchange of narratives. And this could be an interesting challenge to approach social interven­ tions based on social constructionism: How to generate authentic dialogue contexts? Dialogue is understood as mutual exchange (take something, leave something), where from the encounter of two narratives a third one emerges that is neither one or the other but the evolution of them. Finally, I think that it is important to highlight as the third element the circular sense of social constructions; this is that each narrative constructs its own social artifacts and promotes certain coordinated actions so that the reality it builds make sense. In turn, each coordinated action validates that the constructed reality is the way it is and not otherwise (Gergen, 2006). This autopoiesis that generates the narrative as the creator of a social reality, of a given social system, is important to consider since as long as I continue to construct myself within a certain social narrative and act in accordance with it, such a social construction will continue to exist. That is, for example, as long as a person assumes himself to be “unhappy” within a social narrative that places it there, as “unable to have what he wants” and his actions coordinate to validate that he really wants something and cannot get it, then this socially constructed reality will continue to exist. For this reason, an important step is to be aware of the social narra­ tives from which the reality that each person is living is being constructed; next step would be to be able to recognize other narratives and enter into dialogue with them to finally build a new narrative that will lead me to different coordinated actions, this is, lo live a new reality. Here we have a path to follow for socioconstructionist social interven­ tion: “IF we manage to modify the way we use it (the language), whether we develop new ways of speaking or shift the context of its use, we sow the seeds of human change” (Gergen, 2006). 2.5 MODELS OF INTERVENTION Talking about models immediately implies referring to a specific way of representing reality, a simplified version of it, which seeks to make

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its complexity accessible in a simpler way, by taking into consideration some elements that considers relevant or essential and discarding others considered basically irrelevant. Objects are always the consequence of the concept that defines them; a concept is socially defined and immovable, whereas its phenomenal appearance is a concatenation of fortuitous and sudden events that can only be captured through a subjectivity ignited by a powerful concentra­ tion of the pictorial mind (Argudín, 2011).

In this regard, a model does not seek to thoroughly wear out the compo­ nents that could be shaping reality as a whole, since this task would be practically impossible in the view of diversity of both constituent elements and approaches, and perspectives, which are subject to time and space they are sociohistorical. Therefore, an important feature is to highlight the models, as represen­ tations of reality in their finite and contingent nature, even when we talk about holistic approaches that build them. They are finite because they cannot encompass the whole but only the paradigms on which they are based. They are contingent because they are “children” of their time, of their sociocultural context in which they arise, are nurtured, and to which they respond. Of course, this is not to say that model building is a useless activity or waste of time. On the contrary, modeling is a privileged and useful tool that allows us to approach reality from previously built structures, either to explain some natural or social phenomenon or, to be able to generate processes of change in natural environment or as it corresponds in this occasion, to generate processes of change in a social environment through intervention: “Undoubtfully, social intervention models are conceived as part of the need for public policy implementation” (del Roble Pensado Leglise et al., 2011). In this respect, Rubio and Varas (2004, cited in del Roble Pensado Leglise et al., 2011) define social intervention models as a system of rela­ tionships that seek to achieve change, development, or improvement in front of individual, group, or social situations that present a problem that needs to be solved. Hence the importance of paying special attention to the architecture of intervention models, because of its discriminatory nature we mentioned previously, which does not necessarily exclude the possibility of further

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reconfiguration from the integration of new elements from research or from the experience of working under their guidance. In this sense, any intervention model is susceptible of feedback, of being empowered, to be renewed from the dynamics that it promotes. Unfortunately, as Sáenz (2007) points out, there is a strong tendency to place evaluative approaches to intervention models that focus only on positive measurement indicators, which are not necessarily related to the dynamics of a participatory intervention, and therefore would not be provide all the necessary elements for an adequate feedback. Social intervention models, like all models, are sustained, on one hand, of a theory or paradigm that gives support and cohesion to its existence, this is to say, to the perspective from which it will approach reality, to offer from there a structure that allows to make understandable the social reality of those who are approaching it, highlighting the elements with which it is required to work and offering at the same time, an orderly methodological path that makes possible to operationalize the intervention actions in phases or stages around the expected result. On the other hand, they are also sustained by the social reality in which they seek to intervene, it is also essential to know the social-historical­ cultural context of the person, group, or society in which the situation in which the change process is to be implemented takes place. An intervention model is designed on a basis of previous diagnoses, where risk situations are encountered, that need to be addressed urgently, through the construction of alternatives that meet the needs according to existing resources (Program for Citizen Coexistence, 2005, cited in Hernandes Aros and Buitrago Mejía, 2018).

From there, social intervention models are a privileged tool to link the theoretical-methodological framework that supports professional social intervention, allowing the generation of reference framework to respond to the social needs for which they were created, or from which they were proposed and from where they will be evaluated and strengthened. 2.5.1 TOWARD THE CREATION OF CONSTRUCTIONIST SOCIAL INTERVENTION MODELS Considering the theoretical approach, perspective offered by social constructionism based on the recognition of multiple realities constructed

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by social narratives arising from the interactions between the people who makes up a given social context, it is possible to consider this paradigm as a basis for the creation of social intervention models that promote the recognition of these narratives, the need to talk with others, and the need to transcend the narrative space. In this respect, emerging and complex realities such as those that have arisen from the globalization phenomenon, or that are happening as a result of COVID-19 pandemic worldwide, can be approached from this socioconstructionist perspective in order to recognize the different narratives from which the pandemic is being constructed and to be able to develop contexts of dialogue that allow to generate better conditions for the different social actors that move grouped under concepts, such as pandemic and confinement but who do not live in the same socially constructed realities. These socially constructed realities already had their social narra­ tives before the pandemic and it is from them that this new condition has been incorporated and the implications it has brought, as well as its consequences. In this sense, we can say that social and economic conditions of people already existed prior to the pandemic and were only accentuated with the arrival of it, just like that, similarly, there were already social narratives that were creating reality before the pandemic, that only stressed them “Fairly, this conception of the person is the result of a particular tradition, which includes both their linguistic genres and the institutions in which they were immersed” (Gergen,2007). In such a way, the implications of the pandemic such as social alien­ ation, confinement, homeschooling, work, and among others, as well as the consequences, such as the loss of one’s own health or that of a family members, dead of loves ones, loss of employment, the increase in inten­ sity, and temporality of certain emotions, such as fear, anxiety, and stress, to name a few, are lived from one or several social narratives that give meaning to this way of seeing and understanding the world. In other words, it is not the pandemic that has come to change the way we act, but rather the narrative from which we approach its existence. From here that there are social narratives from which there are doubts about the existence of COVID-19 as of many other questionable historical factors, such as the arrival of man to the moon.

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Besides, there are social narratives that consider the best way to deal with the pandemic is to recognize the advances from the scientific approach, following the recommendations that health science personnel have been integrating as knowledge of the new virus advances from this approach. Finally, to close this example, we could mention other social narra­ tives that indicate from their construction of the pandemic that this is a conspiracy on the part of the powerful corporate men to wipe out the weakest or control by vaccination of mankind by injecting them certain substances, or that it is simply something that was bound to happen as a consequence of the environmental impact of mankind and that promotes these viruses to evolve and pass from certain animals to be able to infect us. If we take into account the example above, we can consider that working with social narratives is as important as the implementation of actions that seek measurable results, for example, the World Health Organization can establish very detailed protocols for dealing with the pandemic, but if the population and their government have a narrative of unconcern or disbelief will hardly adopt them even if they make themselves known, and its application is encouraged and even its omission is penalized. 2.5.2 MASTER’S DEGREE IN CONSTRUCTIONIST SOCIAL INTERVENTION MODELS The School of Social Work of the Autonomous University of Coahuila (Mexico) developed the Master’s program in Models of Social Construc­ tionist Intervention with the purpose of “responding to the needs of training professionals from different disciplines who wish to develop competences to build intervention models that respond to the character­ istics of their immediate social environment with a solid theoretical and practical training” (Basic Academic Core of the Master’s degree in Social Constructionist Models of Social Intervention, 2019). In order to achieve the above, a Master’s degree program with a professionalizing approach was designed, which includes 17 mandatory subjects and one optional topic, including a total of 42 h of theory and 41 of practical work, which is covered in four semesters, which was approved in agreement No. 48/16 during the session on December 1, 2016, issued

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by the G. Permanent Planning Commission of the Autonomous University of Coahuila (UAdeC). The purpose of designing this program was to enable the creation of an intervention model based on the theoretical foundations of social constructionism, integrating the point of view of the person or group to be intervened with, enabling the student to become upon graduation “a professional who applies social constructionism intervention models that provides the theoretical-methodological bases that contribute to addressing the conflict situations faced by the current society of the region” (Basic Academic Core of the Master’s degree in Social Constructionist Models of Social Intervention, 2019). This Master’s program was offered to two generations, 2017–2019 y 2018–2020, currently, it is being restructured on the basis of the experience gained. 2.5.3 SOME ASSUMPTIONS Based on the above, the following is a proposal for the generation of social intervention models based on social constructionism based on the experi­ ence of the students in the Master’s degree in Models of social construc­ tionism intervention of the School of Social Work of the Autonomous University of Coahuila, in order to recognize and address unrecognized or unknown (emerging) social needs, leaving aside the narratives that there is a professional who knows how to intervene and a socially disabled population that needs to be rescued through social intervention. Social constructionism places us in the same position, as people who have social narratives that need to enter into a process of authentic dialogue to deconstruct and reconstruct themselves at every stage. In this respect, the social intervention leader becomes rather a facilitator of the dialogue process in which it also participates by contributing from its social narra­ tive and at the same time receiving contributions from the other narratives. The dislocation of those who intervene from a narrative of power is an important requirement in order to be able to recognize and make visible the narrative from which the reality of the person, group, or society with which we wish to intervene is being constructed. In this sense, the intervention is not intended to achieve a specific outcome (e.g., people to stop littering on the streets) but the process of dialogue between the narratives is in itself its point (e.g., people who

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litter on the streets talk to people who do not litter on the street and from dialogue they arrive to a narrative that surpasses previous ones: the point is not to throw away or not the garbage, but to understand that we have the possibility of establishing different ways of relating to each other and of constructing reality). Here is the challenging part to promote a process of signification and resignification of social narratives and not knowing what the final outcome will be, since each experience, each session, each step brings elements, confronts, convulses, deconstructs, and builds at the same time. 2.5.4 METHODOLOGY FOR THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE MODEL AND THE ELEMENTS OF WHICH IT IS COMPOSED Having pointed out the purpose of the proposal that we are presenting for a socioconstructionist social intervention (the dialogue between narratives) and the role of the facilitator of this process (detached from authority as a social actor who contributes and receives from its own narrative) is that the elements to be considered to build models of socioconstructionist social intervention are indicated below: “By abandoning any moral and scientific certainty our social construction extends the field of possible choices” (Gergen, 2006). 2.5.4.1 STEP 1 The first element to consider is to connect with the socially constructed reality of the people in the group with whom we wish to work in a social intervention process. It is important to remark that in this proposal for intervention models, only micro-social approaches are taken into consid­ eration in order to more easily operationalize authentic dialogue contexts that can even be developed from an individual work approach. This first approach can be based on interviews with the members of the group with whom you wish to work from which to explore the narratives with which they interact their immediate environment (family, friends, neighbors, work, school, religion, etc.), with the possibility of including in the interviews a person from this environment if he/she is able to collaborate: “[Gergen] The fundamental concern for championing

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research practices that are relational has to do with the impact of one’s practices on the range of relationships” (Aceros, 2012). Based on this first approach, it is suggested to locate the prevailing social narrative from which the different members of the group position themselves, as well as the different narratives with which each one of them interacts; also include your own as a facilitator. This analysis can be represented by means of a conceptual or mental map; representative phrases of the social narratives encountered can be included. 2.5.4.2 STEP 2 Once we have the first approach to the narratives in which the group members are immersed, a draft intervention model can begin to be constructed that contemplates: (1) social actors to work with (age, gender, characteristics, and situations of the group important to consider; (2) social constructions (predominant narratives, relevant meaning found in the first approach); (3) interaction dynamic (establish the way in which the dialogue and interaction will be proposed, the roles to be used and the rules or guidelines to be followed, all this according to the characteristics of the social actors). These three components are the basis on which the first draft of the social intervention model is built. For example (1) it was decided to work with women of legal age who are living in violent situations at the hands of their partners, the group was made up of seven women from different socioeconomic and religious backgrounds; (2) the predominant social narratives in the group focus on the fact that their partner is the one who gives them value and that without their partner no one will love them and they will not be able to make it on their own; (3) virtual meetings will be held to provide a space for individual reflection and expression and group interaction based on a story of couple relationships (not necessarily violence) to trigger the process of reflection and dialogue, based on truth and openness, with the roles of meeting leader, meeting secretary, and meeting facilitator. Although the example mentioned above lists in a general way the elements that make up each of the three fundamental components of the model, this must be duly listed and described in detail, specially, it is necessary to point out how they will operate within each other as from

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the interaction dynamic components that will guide the interaction to be triggered by the intervention model. 2.5.4.3 STEP 3 Once the first draft of the social constructionist intervention model has been developed, the considered necessary phases to be followed in order to reach the expected result are established, which, as we had previously pointed out is none other than to promote dialogue between the dominant narratives and other different narratives in order to achieve a process of signification and a resignification of the narrative itself, overcoming narrative reality to open up to an endless number of relational possibilities. Following the example of a woman living in a situation of intimate partner violence who had as dominant narratives that their worth depended on their partner, the objective of the intervention would be to put this domi­ nant narrative in dialogue with other different narratives, as a woman’s worth on her own, who does not need a partner to feel important, that she can be alone and be happy or that she can be happy with a partner without depending on him to feel valued: “[Gergen] When people see what is possible, when they see that they can participate, then you have set the fire for change” (Aceros, 2012). In this sense, different phases can be established to guide the process of signification and resignification of the dominant narratives, as this implies that those who participate begin to become aware of their narratives, from where they are placed, and that they can express what they think and feel, while listening to what other people are also sharing. We can say that each phase needs to respond to the needs of the process of the people in order to develop the dynamics proposed the model, which can also be susceptible to being enriched and modified based on the expe­ rience of intervention with people. It may have been proposed in our example of intervention with women experiencing intimate partner violence to hold virtual meetings where spaces for reflection and dialogue could be triggered based on the stories of couple relationships, and it is possible that this is not the best way to trigger a dialogue between the narratives of the seven women who, as we said, attend the group.

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The same group may want to share their own experiences; it may be that some, most, or none of them want to talk about their personal issues at first: it could be that incorporating external guests who have not lived through a situation like theirs can arouse interest by being confronted with an opposed reality. A basic proposal is to develop three phases in the process of operation­ alization of the model: (1) The first phase focused on sensitization; (2) the second phase focused on the significance of the narratives themselves; (3) the third phase focused on the resignification of the narratives themselves. Although these phases are laid out in a linear design and can also be understood as a part of a circular process where each session inserted in each phase acts under the same structure and grows in depth as an inter­ vention process advance. In this respect, establishing phases to operationalize the intervention model is a tool for generating a methodology to organize both the sequence of the sessions and the activities to be developed within each of them and in this way to have greater clarity in guiding the process. Based on this model and methodology, an intervention project that will last approximately one semester is designed, in order to put the theoretical and methodological design into practice and from there be able to receive feedback from this eminently practical experience with the person or group with whom the first approach was made in Step 1. 2.5.4.4 STEP 4 Carry out the intervention based on the proposed model and the estab­ lished phases entails recognizing that triggering this dynamic with the person or group to be worked with is not something casual or fortuitous, it, therefore, requires the student to take on the role of a guide to facilitate and encourage this dynamic and that, at the same time, is detached from the role of expert and rather assumes himself as an agent who catalyzes the process and who is also part of it, since he carries his own narrative. Even more so if we take into account that there is often no culture of genuine dialogue or openness in our contemporary societies, since the debate is proposed instead of dialogue, where one position deserves to come out a winner and the other the loser; where more than the openness

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to accept to listen to what the otherness thinks and feels even if we do not agree with its position, tolerance is rather promoted, where perhaps even reluctantly there is a resignation to coexist with the otherness but without having a real interaction process beyond the fact that each one expresses his or her feelings and everyone returns exactly the same, from the same original position. For some, new solutions to problems will emerge and for others a richer narrative sense will turn up. For others, the point of view on meaning may evolve gradually, to the point of tolerating doubt and freeing the self, to participate in the continuous cocreation of the meaning of life (Gergen, 2006).

It shall be noted that this does not imply that by the fact of interacting in these dialogue processes, empathetic narratives have to be formed with the other narratives. It is more about living a process that allows me to distance myself from my own dominant narrative and from there, to decide whether or not to modify it, as part of a responsible and conscious exercise, which does not imply that I am prolife and I dialogue with who is in favor of the death penalty, I end up by taking on their narrative and that person mine. In Colombia I [Gergen] think of the work of Jeanette Samper and her colleagues. They are working with a hospital in Bogota where they are bringing into dialogue people from all parts of the hospital—doctors, nurses, administrators, cleaning maids, and more—to talk about how they might work together to make the hospital a more humane care center (Aceros, 2012).

What it does imply is that people can at least go through the process of questioning whether their firm and unconditional prolife stance is as valid and solid as they believe it to be and be willing to listen to other positions and experiences that also allow them to put themselves in the shoes of those who think differently or even the opposite, and listen to their argu­ ments and even experience why they think and fell that this is the narrative that most satisfies them. Instead of scrutinizing the client’s interiority, we focus on their relational contexts and we try to explore the pragmatic meaning of their discourse within those contexts, we ask ourselves for whom and with whom that

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speech makes sense and, wether it is accepted within the framework of such and such relationship, what it means to both for the person who supports it and for those who are part of its environment (Gergen, 2006).

At least, they will be able to understand that why there are people who build in this narrative and will be able to decide whether their position remains unchanged or whether it needs to be redefined and made more flexible, no longer as blind followers who have been indoctrinated into a narrative but as a consious person who have chosen a narrative because they consider it to be the most appropriate one, at least at that historical moment and in that sociocultural context, same that someday may be subject to change. Or may even transcend the narrative, opening up to the possibility of a myriad of new relationships and ways of signifying the world. Undoubtedly, truths vary according to the community traditions. The constructionist, however, wonders about what happens for better or for worse, when we approve what one tells us and not the other. There are no words that, having a meaning, do also have consequences (Gergen, 2006).

In short, the intervention experience gives feedback to the dynamics of the intervention, so we can include or exclude phases as the group progresses in the exercise of sharing its social narratives and putting them in authentic dialogue withn others. This does not mean, therefore, that the methodology is a rigid structure that must be followed rigidly because it was established or designed that way. As previously established, a facilitator is required to have the sensi­ tivity and ability to adjust the activities and the proposed dynamics to the needs of the working group, so it requires not only the preparation of each session with materials and an order but also empathy and the ability to adapt what is planned to the situation of the group and from there give feedback to both the model and the methodology that we are building and reconstructing, in a rather circular process, as mentioned before. The methodology is a tool to gain clarity in guiding the process, not to impose it on the people with whom it intervenes, since it is from their narratives and from their context that the intervention process or guided. [Gergen] This is not to say that we are determined by the [social] process, because we are indeed part of it. The very idea of cause and effect

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Models of Social Intervention and Constructionism becomes obsolete, as does the long-problematic distinctions between person and group, self and other, self and society (Aceros, 2012).

In this regard, the planning of the sessions, the proposed timetable, the activities planned for each session, the proposed schedule, and the agenda itself are at the service of the objective of triggering a dialogue between the narratives of those who participate in the intervention process: “[Gergen] Thus, your meaning is not yours without me. In effect, in the process of coordination, we are coconstituting everything we subsequently take to be real, rational, or good” (Aceros, 2012). 2.5.4.5 STEP 5 Lastly, the collection of postimplementation experiences through an evaluation process is required, which collects the experiences of the users after having lived through the whole process, reprising the social narra­ tives with which they began the process and being able to describe what awareness they came to and how they came to it throughout the different sessions and from there what decisions they choose to make. In the second instance, a hermeneutic interpretation is made and which gathers the experiences lived by the Master’s program student who led the intervention process based on the proposed draft intervention model and the methodology designed for it. With these feedback elements, corrections can be made to both the initial proposal of the social intervention model and its methodology, as well as to specific sessions of the intervention project that was carried out, closing with this part the process of construction of the model of social constructionist intervention offered by this Master’s program. 2.6 CONCLUSIONS To speak of generating a social intervention model from social construc­ tionism is a paradox in itself since social constructionism does not emphasize academic or scientific architecture, but rather in the cultural contribution of the intervention proposals in order to be able to provide innovative responses to social needs, without unilateral visions based on dogmatic scientific or academic traditions.

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In this respect, the challenge of constructing a social intervention model based on social constructionism and not trapping its practical flexibility in a rigid structure remains in force: this proposal is still being fed back and enriched from praxis. So far this model of social constructionist intervention described above has been the basis for guiding the construction of three intervention models in the Master’s program in constructionist social intervention models at the School of Social Work of the Autonomous University of Coahuila, Saltillo, Coahuila, Mexico. The final results presented at the end of the interventions carried out based on the models built on the basis of the model described above show that it was possible to trigger dialogue processes and generation of new meanings from a different approach to conflict situations that were initially expressed by the people we worked with. The simple fact of generating contexts of dialogue that transcended the barriers of the “label” of previous conceptualizations of their situations and their condition, allowed to generate the possibility with whom the three interventions projects were applied could at least come to choose more functional narratives and to begin to understand that we are cocre­ ators of these narratives through our social interactions. According to constructionism, it is advisable at the outset not to approach the client with a set of routine or compelling assumptions or methods such as those that, too often associated with psychoanalytic, behavioral, or cognitive theories. Because we must not forget that therapist’s theories are, in turn, constructions of theories (Gergen, 2006).

The presentations of the results of the evaluation of the interventions carried out by the students of the aforementioned Master’s program are material to be addressed more thoroughly in a space of their own, there­ fore, this section only mentions in a general way some elements that allow us to dimension the impact that social constructionism can have on the process of social intervention. Most of all, at a time when we are going through a myriad of social needs resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic that requires innovative approaches to address the emotional demands in particular and the situa­ tions of vulnerability that are emerging and that will have an impact whose magnitude we do not yet know and that for sure will be with us when the pandemic is over.

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Models of Social Intervention and Constructionism Concurrent with the loss of lives and profound health crisis, the world is witnessing an economic collapse that will severely impact the welfare of large segments of the population for years to come. Some of the actions being taken to counteract the pandemic will affect our lives in no trivial ways in the future (Castro, 2020).

We are in a historical moment where the traditional narratives from which we had been living as a society, as a government, as an economy, as a science, as an academy, as a world are being put to test, are being questioned: “However, once we started describing or explaining what exists, we inevitably proceed from a pre-structure of shared intelligibility” (Gergen, 2007). The invitation to rethink how we are living our lives, what is really important, what is really valuable, and what we need to learn in order to move forward as humanity is on the table. KEYWORDS • • • • •

social reality COVID-19 social intervention intervention models social constructionism

REFERENCES Aceros, J. C. Social Construction and Relationalism: A Conversation with Kenneth Gergen. Universitas Psychologica 2012, 11 (3), 1001–1011. Obtenido de http://www.redalyc.org/ articulo.oa?id=64724634027 Argudín, L. Modelos. Análisis. Revista Colombiana de Humanidades 2011, 78, 61–86. Obtenido de http://www.redalyc.org/articulo.oa?id=515551988003 Bauman, Z. Teoría sociológica de la posmodernidad. Espiral 1996, 2 (5), 81–102. Obtenido de https://www.redalyc.org/pdf/138/13820504.pdf Bohrt, R.; Wilde, C.; Aliaga, A.; .;Roth, E.; Salinas, E. Actitudes y patrones de conducta hacia el medio ambiente, 1987.

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Brooks, S. K.; Webster, R. K.; Smith, L. E.; Woodland, L.; Wessely, S.; Greenberg, N.; Rubin, G. J. The Psychological Impact of Quarantine and How to Reduce It: Rapid Review of the Evidence. Lancet 2020, 395, 912–920. DOI: 10.1016/S0140–6736(20)30460–8 Cáceres-Correa, I. Educación en el escenario actual de pandemia. Utopía y Praxis Latinoamericana 2020, 25 (5). Castro, A. Desafíos de la pandemia de COVID-19 en la salud de la mujer, de la niñez y de la adolescencia en América Latina y el Caribe. Programa de las Naciones Unidas para el Desarrollo (América Latina y el Caribe), 2020. Obtenido de https://www.latinamerica. undp.org/content/rblac/es/home/library/crisis_prevention_and_recovery/desafios-de-lapandemia-de-covid-19-en-la-salud-de-la-mujer--de-.html Chacón-Fuertes, F.; Fernández-Hermida, J.-R.; García-Vera, M. P. La Psicología ante la Pandemia de la COVID-19 en España. La Respuesta de la Organización Colegial. Clínica y Salud 2020, 31 (2). DOI: 10.5093/clysa2020a18 del Roble Pensado Leglise, M.; Alonso Reyes, M. d.; Bucio Yáñez, R. Modelo de intervención social y ambiente: el caso de algunos barrios antiguos de Xochimilco. Estudios Demográficos y Urbanos 2011, 26 (2). Obtenido de https://www.redalyc.org/ articulo.oa?id=31223581007 Fantova, F. CONSTRUYENDO LAINTERVENCIÓN SOCIAL. Papeles del Psicólogo2018, 39 (2). Obtenido de https://www.redalyc.org/jatsRepo/778/77855949001/77855949001. pdf García, J.; Pulgar, N. Globalización: aspectos políticos, económicos y sociales. Revista de Ciencias Sociales 2010, 16 (4), 721–726. Obtenido de https://www.redalyc.org/ pdf/280/28016613014.pdf Gergen, K. Construir la realidad. El futuro de la psicoterapia; Paidós: Barcelona, España, 2006. Gergen, K. Construccionismo social, aportes para el debate y la práctica; Universidad de los Andes. Facultad de Ciencias Sociales: Bogotá, Colombia, 2007. Granada, H. La cultura como estrategia de adaptación en la interacción sujeto socialambiente. Investigación Desarrollo 2003, 11 (1), 134–161. Obtenido de https://www. redalyc.org/pdf/268/26811106.pdf Hernandes Aros, L.; Buitrago Mejía, A. APORTES DE UN MODELO DE INTERVENCIÓN COMO RESPUESTA A LA PROBLEMÁTICA SOCIAL DE LOS JÓVENES QUE CULMINAN LA ETAPA DE APOYO DEL ESTADO. Revista Científica Hermes 2018, 21, 230–249. Obtenido de https://www.redalyc.org/jats Repo/4776/477656634001/477656634001.pdf Larrotta-Castillo, R.; Méndez-Ferreira, A.-F.; Mora-Jaimes, C.; Córdoba-Castañeda, M.-C.; Duque-Moreno, J. Pérdida, duelo y salud mental en tiempos de pandemia. Revista de la Universidad Industrial de Santander 2020, 52 (2), 179–180. Obtenido de https://www. redalyc.org/jatsRepo/3438/343864478019/343864478019.pdf Laufer, M. CIENCIA Y LA PANDEMIA COVID-19. Interciencia 2020, 45 (3), 121–123. Obtenido de https://www.redalyc.org/jatsRepo/339/33962773001/33962773001.pdf Ligia, C. Teorías, Categorías y Conceptos: Una visión interdisciplinaria en el análisis del espacio y el tiempo. Comunicación 2001, 11 (003). Obtenido de https://www.redalyc. org/pdf/166/16611311.pdf

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Lozano-Vargas, A. Impacto de la epidemia del Coronavirus (COVID-19) en la salud mental del personal de salud y en la población general de China. Revista de Neuro-Psiquiatría 2020, 83 (1). DOI: 10.20453/rnp.v83i1.3687 Mendoza, L. Lo que la pandemia nos enseñó sobre la educación a distancia. Revista Latinoamericana de Estudios Educativos, 2020. Obtenido de https://www.redalyc.org/ jatsRepo/270/27063237028/html/index.html Núcleo Académico Básico de la Maestría en Modelos de Intervención Social Construccionista. Protocolo de Tesis de la Maestría en Modelos de Intervención Social Construccionista, 2019. Nuñez, L.; Castro, L. K.; Tapia, E.; Bruno, F.; De León, C. Percepción social del Covid-19 desde el malestar emocional y las competencias socioemocionales en mexicanos. Acta Universitaria 2020, 1 (30). DOI: 10.15174/au.2020.2879 Ortega-Senet, M. El estudio y análisis de las intervenciones sociales consideradas como culturas políticas. Cinta de moebio 2017, 60. DOI: 10.4067/S0717–554X2017000300286 Rizo García, M. Construcción de la realidad, Comunicación y vida cotidiana – Una aproximación a la obra de Thomas Luckmann. Intercom—Revista Brasileira de Ciências da Comunicação 2015, 38 (2), 19–38. Obtenido de https://www.redalyc.org/ pdf/698/69842551002.pdf Sáenz, J. D. Temas de reflexión en la intervención social. 2007, 1. Obtenido de https:// www.redalyc.org/pdf/4763/476348365007.pdf Taylor, S. Psychological Reactions to Pandemics. En The Psychology of Pandemics. Preparing for the Next Global Outbreak of Infectious Disease; Taylor, S., Ed.; Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2019; pp 23–39. Valero-Cedeño, V.; Jhon, M.-O.; Veliz-Castro, T.; Merchán-Villafuerte, K.; Perozo-Mena, A. COVID-19: La nueva pandemia con muchas lecciones y nuevos retos. Revisión Narrativa. Kasmera, 2020. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.3745322

CHAPTER 3

New Challenges to Participatory Action Research in Academia: Notes from the Field BEATRIZ PADILLA

University of South Florida, Tampa, FL, USA

ABSTRACT This chapter situates action research (AR) and its several variations in the context of the social construction of knowledge, while it also brings to the forefront some of the challenges that arise when applying this meth­ odology. Because AR aims at making a difference and bringing change to society by connecting research with action, social justice is embedded in this approach, while objectivity is not at the center. Even if throughout time AR has evolved, this methodological approach has some common features. On the one hand it recognizes plurality of knowledge arising from several institutions and locations and on the other, it values the unique wisdom of those who have been systematically excluded. In this sense, AR offers a counter-hegemonic approach to knowledge production. This approach has many positive features such as problem-solving, improving interventions, versatility, and promoting critical reflexivity. AR is useful in situations when subaltern subjects are overlooked or silenced, including migration studies. Many times, migrants are seen as passive and incapable of finding solutions to their problems, when in reality most have over­ come barriers and have found viable paths and overcome many problems, especially during times of crisis, such as the great economic recession,

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the so-called refugee crisis and the COVID 19 pandemic. This chapter provides concrete examples of research projects in which different AR methods have been applied with migrant and refugee populations, along with other relevant actors such as civil society organizations, local authori­ ties, universities, public agencies, etc., in different ways and capacities. Here we also identify pros and cons of using AR, assessing that overall, the positive aspects of AR outweigh the many limitations. 3.1 OBJECTIVITY AND NEUTRALITY Social sciences were conceived originally following the same paradigm as hard sciences. Yet, even if proven that they are not comparable or compatible, many social scientists highlight objectivity and neutrality as the basis for any type of scientific knowledge. That is wishful thinking and we know better. Social scientists cannot be totally neutral, even with methodological and epistemological cautions. Reality and truth are in the eyes of the beholder, and researchers take along such enterprise. Our “scientific” views follow methods but they also derive or are shaped by our own values and training, the priorities of those funding research, among others. Thus, the sooner we accept these conditions, the better. Moreover, there is nothing wrong to use research not only to gather data but to change society. Howell stated “If one considers that knowledge or reality exists external to individuals then the researcher is required to undertake data collection procedures in an empirical and distanced manner; usually this perspective pursues an objective detached stance. However, if one considers there is a relation­ ship between reality and mind then such a stance is impossible to attain and subjective tendencies will resonate throughout the research process” (2013: 2).

One of the lasting consequences of the advancement of social sciences and inquiry during the 20th century, which we must take along the 21st, has been recognizing and accepting that knowledge is constructed. On the other hand, if focusing on the construction of knowledge, different methods allow for different types of the construction of such knowledge, some of these methods being more participatory and from bellow, others not. Another legacy from the 20th century stems from the efforts of activist academics to integrate knowledge production with action. This approach

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truly believed in the engagement of the researcher in the community. Such engagement translated into militant research and search for solutions (Fals-Borda, 1985). In this sense, participatory action research (AR) enables a process that is built in consensus and agreement with the community that is object/ subject/participant of the investigation. So, the process of constructing knowledge, results in a coming together, at least up to a certain point, of the researcher and the researched. However, because knowledge is constructed and because its construction involves a participatory or shared process, we need to recognize that it “operates from a relativistic point of view, since participants create diverse meanings in their interactions” (Kvale, 1996, in Sirca and Shapiro, 2007, p. 102), thus narratives are not in isolation from the individual’s points of view of the world, as values, discourses, power differential, among others are relevant for both, the researcher and the researched. In addition to identifying the connection between the construction of knowledge through AR, this approach intends to “make a difference” by finding links between research and action in the search for social justice already embedded in the approach, to affect or lead to social transforma­ tion (Abraham and Purkayastha, 2012). There is no neutrality involved in such aim. 3.1.1 ACTION RESEARCH Thus, what is AR? There exists a full range of AR methodologies; more­ over, AR is an extended family of methodologies, including the develop­ ment of several models as alternative paths to embrace the construction and production of knowledge: participatory, emancipatory, communitybased, action-oriented, collaborative, participative planning, activist research, engaged research, public sociology, feminist participatory or AR, among many of the assigned labels, as well as to articulate, promote, or suggest change at the policy and community levels. Selener defined AR as a “process by which members of an oppressed group or community, collect and analyze information, and act upon their problems, with the aim of finding solutions and promote social and political transformations” (1997, p. 17). Thus, it “represents a major epistemological challenge to mainstream research traditions in the social and environmental sciences” (Kindon et al., 2007, p. 9).

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AR was developed to overcome the dualism between theory and practice, the gap between researcher and the researched, to reduce power asymmetries, and to find common and agreeable solutions to the real problems communities face. Noffke, an activist researcher in the field of education, one of the fields where AR has been more utilized reminded us that education, in order to serve the interest of the powerful to main­ tain the status quo of the powerless, displays a safeguarding function, in consequence there is a need for AR in education to work toward building a new social order (2009). Her visionary call for action in challenging the existing ways of knowledge, addressing antiracist education and economic and social justice reminds us of the importance of reflecting on AR in this specific moment, in the context of the recent uprising and protest against the murder of Black and minoritized people in the United States in times of the COVID-19 pandemic, along with the international support and awareness about racism at the global level. Elsewhere, she defended that “for many who are engaged in AR, teacher research, and other forms of practitioner inquiry, the goal is to transform both the workplace of teaching and the workplace of academic researching. The goal is not to assist practitioners in the transition from the world of educational practice to that of academic research; the goal is to transform academic research to encompass research emanating from practice” (Noffke, 2008, p. 430). In other words, AR is a methodology and tool to create a safe space where research can be conducted from bellow and ensure the participation of those normally excluded or silenced be that in education as well as in other fields, such as migrations. Thus, there is no doubt about the role that AR can play in academia nowadays. The literature attributes to Lewin, a social psychologist, as the first scholar to systematize and theorize AR, even if its applications in several geopolitical spaces led to different outcomes. His research, in the field of intergroup interactions, dealing with inter-racial and interethnic relations, is still very up to date. Advocating for an experimental approach based on cooperation between practitioners and social scientists, he recognized that “the ideologies and stereotypes which govern intergroup relations should not be viewed as individual character traits but that they are anchored in cultural standards, that their stability and their change depend largely on happenings in groups as groups” (1946, p. 40). Lewin envisioned AR as a flexible and reflexive methodology, which takes place in spiral steps, each composed of a circle of planning, action,

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fact-finding about the result of the action applied, replanning, acting and observing again, and reflect to start over if necessary. According to AR, knowledge can be perfectioned and improved, and once changes are intro­ duced then further research can be carried out. However, a different approach to AR was developed in Latin America. In the context of revolutionary pedagogical projects, AR was groundbreaking not only for being participatory but for being anchored in liberation theology and critical consciousness. AR implied a dialogical, self-reflective, and participatory approach to knowledge, rejecting the hierarchies between the researcher and researched to explicitly empower the oppressed. Paulo Freire in Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1972) advocated for emancipatory education, which is a process that can only be achieved from within by the active participation of the oppressed to overcome domination. Fals-Borda took the pedagogy of the oppressed and applied it as a participatory approach to sociological research, which he defined as “experiential methodology [which] implies the acquisition of serious and reliable knowledge upon which to construct power, or countervailing power, for the poor, oppressed and exploited groups and social classes—the grassroots—and for their authentic organizations and movement” (1991, p. 3). Both Lewin and Fals Borda made significant contributions to AR; however, that was embraced differently in Latin America, more strongly than in the United States, gaining more visibility and diffusion. JiménezDomínguez (1994) compared the impact of both authors concluding that their contributions should be complementarily reinterpreted and updated to validate and refine the knowledge produced, especially to turn it into an action plan for the community. Overall, ARs have evolved in different paths in the Global North and South which also translated into different levels of support and funding. Even if the advancements of AR have been significant, it has not become mainstreamed, probably due to increasing neoliberalism within academia as well as the dominant scientific paradigm. Anyhow, since its conception AR has evolved significantly. Research suggests that two features define AR as well as the researcher that carries out AR. One is that AR tends to recognize a plurality of knowledge arising from several institutions and locations. Second, AR also recognizes that those who have been systematically excluded, oppressed, or silenced possess a unique wisdom about social injustice that should be valued and taken into account. In other words, because they suffered and experienced

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exclusion and oppression, they know better. In consequence, AR offers a counter-hegemonic approach to knowledge production (Kindon et al., 2007). AR has many supporters who described positive features of AR; Corey (1953) pointed out solving problems as an asset, Elliot (1991) improved the quality of action, and Tripp (2005) its versatility. On the other hand, others focus on AR as a methodological approach; Melin and Axelsson (2016) described AR as an orientation to inquiry, sounding detached from its real aims, Kemmis and McTaggart (1988) referred to a family of AR that embraced several methodologies incorporating critical reflexivity, describing several evolving generations of AR. 3.2 MIGRATION STUDIES AS A SUITED SCENARIO FOR ACTION RESEARCH Arising from social sciences and establishing it as a new field of research, not as a new science, migration studies initially developed in a “pretending to be neutral” environment. As such, migration scholars were expected (and wanted) to be objective, thus, they saw themselves as detached from immigrants and refugees, simultaneously creating and reinforcing a divi­ sion between “us” researchers and “them” migrants, without common grounds or interest. Many of those researchers doing research from these detached or us/them perspective, reinforced the othering process while also searching for validity by avoiding involvement with the researched. On the opposite end of the spectrum, AR, in any of its manifestations, just does the contrary. It challenges othering processes and neutrality in knowledge creation, and it favors taking a stand while recognizing power differential and strengthening the links between theory, research, and action. In this sense, Abraham and Purkayastha asserted that “linking research and action has important implications for knowledge creation, distribution, shifting power relations for achieving social change, and, ultimately, challenging existing social structures to attain social justice” (2012, p. 125). In other words, what matters is to “make visible the invisible, to make the private public” (Clawson et al., 2007, p. 5). While many of the participatory research methodologies have been embraced in education and health for a long time, migration has been less forthcoming. However, there is a lot of potential and advantages to incorporating AR in migration studies. I believe that its adoption can turn

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migration studies into a new fertile field for these transformational meth­ odologies because they value the engagement of research participants. Moreover, because migration studies encompass many different actors (state and its different agencies and levels, immigrants, civil society orga­ nizations, international organizations, countries of origin and destination, among others), AR could involve several different stakeholders. Additionally, since the outbreak of the global COVID-19 pandemic, there is more need for AR and for alternative ways to carry fieldwork with the communities to envision their transformation through empowering and agentic actions. Moreover, since people experience life with different degrees of virtuality, there is a potential for enhancing collaborations across actors, sectors, and countries. At the same time, the restrictions to face to face interactions due to the pandemic have also translated into more inequalities for migrants in different spheres of their lives, exacerbating the already existing disparities in terms of housing, health, education, nutrition, work, documentation, and access to welfare programs. Old and recent studies (Knesebeck et al., 2006; Muller, 2002; Deaton and Paxson, 2001; Diez-Roux et al., 1997; Raphael, 2004; Kaplan and Keil, 1993; Wu et al., 2020) have highlighted that many migrants lack health insurance coverage are no eligible to state-sponsored relief programs and that their “health outcomes are related to social and economic condi­ tions such as poverty status, ability to speak English, level of education, housing conditions, and health insurance” (Virgin and Warren, 2021, p. 1). Moreover, the pandemic has also shown that migrants and minorities are overrepresented among essential workers (Kerwin and Warren, 2020); they “serve as frontline health care workers, which often puts them at higher risk of exposure to the disease and of infection” (Virgin and Warren, 2021, p. 4). All this to say that migrants have much to win from becoming active participants in research, and researchers have the responsibility of generate and foster participatory research. For example, previous research in the field of migration and health (Padilla, 2017) suggests that participatory methodologies can play an important role because they allow to collect information while involving key actors, be those who are connected to policy-planning and imple­ mentation with power to make changes (policy-makers, public servants, health professionals, etc.) and the subjects/participants themselves (immi­ grants, refugees, asylum seekers) who will experience the changes and transformations.

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3.3 COMPLEXIFICATION: AR IN TIMES OF GLOBALIZATION AND CRISIS AR approaches and methodologies can be incorporated in research projects comprehensively (full research project design) or partially at different levels and/or stages. Thus, AR could be embraced in full from the beginning or combined or integrated along the way as research moves forward. Moreover, AR could take a middle ground, involving different publics, audiences, subjects, or participants. When research projects are presented to funding agencies (mainly national sciences foundations, generally more ascribed to hard sciences models), adopting a fully AR strategy and methodology is not advisable because it leads to the low prob­ ability of receiving funding. On the other hand, if AR is incorporated as one of several methods and focuses on certain steps or when dealing with given populations, it has more chances of being approved. AR is a more politized methodology. Along this situation, globalization has further added layers of complexity and new structures of local, regional, global, and glocal dynamics into the social world in need of transformation, making more meaningful the connections between theory, action, and practice. In this context, the researcher may turn activist and the activist researcher, rising social justice awareness along the way. Thus, globalization along with migrations and mobilities have contributed to participative methodologies gaining momentum because AR responds better to increasing diversities, scales, and temporalities. At the same time, because our social world has been numb for a long time, not paying attention to increasing inequalities and injustices, it is now experiencing more contestation, especially since the outbreak of the coronavirus. For those researchers working in/with/for certain communi­ ties, namely migrants, refugees, and minorities, the COVID-19 pandemic has been bringing unexpected challenges to existing theories, methodolo­ gies, and practices, which are changing the known landscape of research. As people transition to social distancing, living secluded lives online, participatory and action methodologies have been walking sandy path. Social interactions, which are the baseline for participation and actions, are facing an inflection point. As usual, an inflection point implies a twist that can lead to positive or negative outcomes, but we need to risk a chance.

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3.4 LESSONS LEARNED FROM THE FIELD

In different capacities, I have been involved and applied AR and some of its different methodologies in many several occasions, especially in the field of migrations, most of them have taken place in Portugal. These experiences have provided me with a better understanding of when, how, and where AR may render better results, including what is possible and achievable. So, in this section, I share some of them to later be able to make some recommendations. Migration studies as a field are very suitable for incorporating AR in research design for several reasons. On the one hand, migrants, refugees, and asylum seekers tend to be silenced, excluded, voiceless, ignored, infantilize, or victimized or revictimized, thus methodologies that envision and value participation from bellow are desirable. Along with participation comes agency which could open avenues for empowerment. Also, other actors that are vital in social transformation processes can be involved. As mentioned, policy-makers or those who implement policies, along with representatives from civil society organizations such as grassroots, nonprofit, and nongovernmental, charity and faith-based organizations can take an active role in the process, partially or in full. The researcher also can assume the role of a mediator, negotiator, observer, or active participant, according with the role he/she/they adopt. Thus, actors and positioning open a diverse range of possibilities for AR. Because of its nature, academic research does not always offer space to design a research project that is 100% AR; yet it is not impossible. However, it is more common to adopt AR at a given stage, as one complementing method applied specifically to collect information with participatory tools, create consensus building in relation to problem-solving situation, and assist the process of building alliances within and across communities. Many times, AR becomes more relevant during crisis as a path to identify a way forward. These crises have been the broader context for the examples I will be sharing. The 2008 world financial, which in Portugal arrived later in 2011 and implied the signature of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between the Portuguese Government and the International Monetary Fund, the Central European Back, and the European Commission, known as TROIKA. This MoU translated into overall austerity with significant cuts in health and among others. Another crisis was the so-called refugee crisis

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of 2015, which forced the European Union to come up with a common plan to face the arrival of refugees, asylum seekers, and migrants from the Middle East and other countries. A more recent crisis relates to the COVID-19 global pandemic, affecting the world. The first project entitled “Health Citizenship: Gaps and Needs in inter­ cultural care to immigrant mothers,” funded by the Portuguese Science Foundation, aimed at identifying the health needs, barriers to access and accessibility to healthcare services among migrant women, focusing on maternal/child and reproductive health, while also hoped to make policyrecommendations. The methodology was elaborated, using a multimethod approach that different qualitative methods including participatory AR. It involved two different populations, migrant mothers (pregnant or with young children) from different countries who need healthcare services, and health professionals/staff (doctors, nurses, social workers, psycholo­ gies, NGOs’ advocates, etc.) as key actors in providing those services. Interviews (about 158 total) were carried with immigrant women (and a control group of native women), health professionals, and key informants from civil society working with migrant populations. Results from the interviews would translate into a needs assessment. The project also involved ethnographic cases built from shadowing women and their children (accompanying or taking them to their appoint­ ments or whatever they asked us to do) to solve problems or when facing barriers to access health or other related services. AR was embedded in the research design in several stages and with several audiences: immigrant mothers and health professionals and civil society. With immigrant mothers, the project aimed at fostering empowerment through the promotion of health citizenship (increasing involvement in taking responsibilities in health to make informed decision, enacting their rights) and health literacy (improving their ability to understand health information and to use that information to make good decisions about your health and medical care). In theory, promoting health citizenship and literacy seem attainable, however, in practical terms, it was a challenge. In practice, it was more complex. How to decide what actions, training, and information-sharing would translate into empowerment for them? What would be the best way of “delivering”? Where? At the time of planning the research, it was not possible to estimate such details for many reasons: needs assessment had not been done yet; partners had not been identified; the context was changing rapidly due to the crisis.

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Because there is no need to reinvent the wheel, the research team decided to partner with two different community organizations located in the most disadvantaged neighborhoods. In one of them, the local NGO, after talking with migrant mothers residing in the area, indicated a preference for doing an interactive session where mothers could learn more about nutrition, sleep, breastfeeding, tantrum, etc. The session was facilitated by an immigrant doctor, who as ice-breaking planned a game in which mothers had to buy nutritious food for their children; and then gave some answers to the questions posed by the mothers. Half of the rest of the research team babysat the children, and the other half observed. Overall, mothers left the workshop happy and satisfied because they felt they had gained relevant information, which for us meant that our project had partially provided some tools for boosting their health citizenship and literacy. The second intervention was planned for Mother’s day with another community organization, as a special baby shower with included a set of activities chosen by the mothers and mothers-to-be. This time the agenda included a doctor, a dentist, and a yoga instructor who held short workshops on relevant topics, and in the end, some presents were given to the mothers, depending on their needs (toothbrushes and paste, summer and winter clothing for babies and children; diapers, car seats, etc.) which had been donated by university students, faculty and staff, and the collected by the research team). Most mothers and their children left pleased; however, because of the gifts given, which attracted most of their attention, it was harder to assess whether the informational sessions offered met their expectations and translated into empowerment. With health professionals, including those working in the National Health Service (NHS), NGOs, and other entities, AR was planned differ­ ently. One objective was to give some sustainability to the project once it was over. The second purpose, tied to the first one, was to foster a community coalition that continues the first steps given with/through the project. This was built along the research project. As we were interviewing different health professionals, we began to create a web of connections within and outside the NHS, municipalities and local governments, faithbased and grassroots organizations, and foundations, among others. By the end of the study, we had identified representatives across the Lisbon Metropolitan Area and held a community forum to engage them. In that event, we shared preliminary results to be discussed with the participants to get their feedback. In a second moment, we organized

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parallel workshops touching upon relevant issues that have arisen from our research, specifically: relationships between health professionals and services users: the achievable dialogue; influence of socioeconomic factors health access and the empowerment of migrant women in their communi­ ties. In addition to the rich data collected during the community forum, one significant outcome is having generated a space for dialogue and rich exchange among health professionals working in different fields and types of organizations, which leads to coalition building and networking to solve community problems. The community forum is perceived as a friendly and safe space to share experiences, it enables that people working with similar objectives or whose job complement each other, make the necessary connections to work together in the future with long-lasting consequences. This is the most common outcome that I have witnessed in every single community forum I have organized. Moreover, even if it is not an expected outcome, it opens opportunities for future research and collaborations, strengthening the engagement capacity of academia. The UPWEB project (understanding the practice and developing the concept of welfare bricolage), funded by Norface and the European Union, built AR in its design, yet a different variant from the mentioned above. UPWEB aimed at understanding how residents in superdiverse neighbor­ hoods dealt with their health concerns, what actions were taken when searching for daily solutions. UPWEB was developed in four countries, taking place in one city but assessing two neighborhoods in each (UK, Germany, Sweden, and Portugal). The study used a multimethod approach including interviews with residents and providers and a survey, and incor­ porated community (CRs) researchers who “were paired with academic researchers and together identified interviewees via their networks, local organizations, snow-ball sampling through street mapping and interaction with locals.” (Phillimore et al., 2019). Here, we refer only to Portugal. Elsewhere, we critically assessed the inclusion of CRs, reflecting both on the method and its methodological challenges, focusing on the several steps involved working with CRs, from recruitment and trainings, to considering the quality of the data collected, the interpretation of findings, and the coproduction of knowledge. “We adopted a community-based research methodology integrating community researchers (CRs) as members of our research teams, hoping to enhance the quality of collected data as well as to democratize the

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research process itself, creating a more egalitarian epistemological cycle based on mutual learning, while taking away some of the researchers’ freedom to addresses their own research interests or agendas, forcing them to share the role of experts with people from the community. Thus, community-researchers became partners for knowledge production along the research process.” (Padilla and Rodrigues, 2017, p. 65).

The choice of CRs was also grounded on the importance of building the research capacity of the community which could lead to more agency and empowerment while it would also “compensate for the limited existing knowledge about particular vulnerable communities such as those very mobile, of very recent arrival, marginalized and/or that have not even been spotted previously” (Padilla and Rodrigues, 2017, p. 65). Overall, having CRs was instrumental to achieving more diversity in our sample, identifying populations that would have gone unnoticed other­ wise which translated into better and more accurate findings, enhancing the potential outcomes and policy recommendations. However, CRs entailed some challenges, including their recruitment, their training until they gained the necessary skills and then, their retention. In the first place, the requisites to be a CR in the UPWEB project implied a certain level of complexity and sophistication not always found among locals and included being familiar with the neighborhoods, knowing other languages and cultures have certain skills to be able to carry out research such as approachability, interviewing, translation, and transcribing skills. Initially, no candidates applied thus we had to use other strategies to recruit them, ranging from asking local NGOs, international or immigrant students, and among others. After an initial round of recruit­ ment, they were trained. Once they were trained, getting them on board and ready to start fieldwork took longer than expected while some face personal insecurities others were not able to organize and others realized their technical abilities were not as developed as they had imagined, once on the job. Moreover, because some of them were immigrants themselves, they faced employment and tax restrictions that were incompatible with the rigid hiring policies of higher education institutions and research centers. Hence, some of them left given this inconvenient situation, and we had to start the process over again: identifying new CRs, training them (personal­ ized and express training), and accompany them to the field. Overall “we underestimated the amount of ongoing support and supervision that was

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necessary to guarantee an ongoing data collection process according to the objectives and deadlines of the study” (Padilla and Rodrigues, 2017, p. 68); thus, we had to adjust accordingly. A solution that we found along the way was hiring an activist researcher who was working for an immigrant association and showed interest in joining the team; she “played a crucial role in outreaching hidden popu­ lation such us irregular migrants or residents facing multiple levels of discrimination and exclusion. Her familiarity with the local context through the individualization of situations enriched superdiversity in our sample” (Padilla and Rodrigues, 2017, p. 69). On the other hand, as a research team anchored in higher education with inflexible hiring policies and definitions of who can be a researcher (framed only in education attainment), some of these rigidities were not able to be overcome. The last example from the field is a project entitled “Trajectories of Refuge: gender, intersectionality and public policies in Portugal,” which took place between 2019 and 2021 in the context of the so-called refugee crisis. In Portugal, the arrival of relatively large numbers of refugees was a new phenomenon for society in general as well as for the government agencies and for civil society organizations. The reception of refugees involves different official programs: the traditional spontaneous requests (regulated by the Geneve Convention), the newly created European Union Relocation program, the UNHCR Resettlement program, and the recent ad hoc relocation program for those rescued at the Mediterranean sea by humanitarian missions. Thus, refugees and asylum seekers are diverse populations, even if Syrians were the majority in the EU Relocation program. In the new context by the EU relocation program, later the resettlement and ad hoc relocation, the arrival of women alone or with their families was also a new phenomenon. Thus, there were no policies with a gender perspective in place to guide this process. This project aimed at understanding the trajectories and lived experi­ ences of female refugees or/and asylum seekers in Portugal, through the prism of a gender perspective and intersectionality. It embraced a quali­ tative methodology including in-depth interviews with refugee women and participant observation/volunteering in organizations that work with refugees, semistructured interviews with authorities and civil society organizations, and focus groups with entities working serving refugees, with scholars and with refugee women.

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The project also mapped programs and reception initiatives for refugees, designing its AR strategy through: (1) CRs and/or community translators embodied by refugees/asylum seekers or immigrants from the same country of origin; (2) coalition building with civil society, grassroots organizations, and some leading to the organization of a community forum, (3) interventions to generate empowerment, autonomy, and citizenship with refugee women and asylum seekers. AR was explicitly selected because the target population was perceived as vulnerable (due to recent arrival, lack of knowledge of the local language, culture, and how social and other services work) which made refugee women hard to reach. We assumed that in order to reach out to refugees and their families, CRs were the adequate strategy to solve the communicational and relational gap. Identifying CRs was more chal­ lenging than expected, and interestingly, gender played a role. Purposely, because we sought to talk to women to focus on their own vices and experiences, we wanted to hire a female CR who could act as a bridge between the participants and the research team. However, gender became the first limitation to identifying a female CRs. On the one hand, most refugee women were already getting some kind of government support which prevented them from holding another job even if part-time. On the other hand, most of the recently arrived refugee women did not speak any common language spoken by the research team (Portuguese, Spanish, English, and Italian). Overall, the arrival of refugee women was so uncommon and recent that there were no women with the language/ cultural skills to act as translators. Nevertheless, using a male CR or trans­ lator was not a desirable option because many women would not speak freely in front of or with a man, we did not want to try a strategy that could be interpreted as disrespectful. A solution we found, for a short period of time, was to hire a young female refugee who was a college student in the field of health, spoke an intermediate level of Portuguese as well as Arabic and Kurdish. We provided training and close follow-up sessions (with meetings before and after each interview). She was able to conduct nine interviews to Syrian refugees. According to her, she learned new methodologies and gained knowledge she could use in the future, as she wanted to become an advo­ cate for refugees. Once we reached a saturation point with Syrian women, we had to envision other strategies to reach out to other refugees, who were arriving from other geographical areas with other cultural, religious,

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and linguistic backgrounds, we strived to identify community translators (Somali, French, and Tigrine) who supported us while conducting more interviews, providing translation, and intermediation; in this way, we added eight more interviews with women from Iraq, Kenia, Somalia, Cameroon, Guinea Conakry, and the former Yugoslavia. Unexpectedly, mapping policies and programs with gender perspec­ tives was another obstacle. Focusing on gender was our priority as it was important to identify policies and practices, if and how they accounted for women and family issues. Reality showed us that gender was rarely taken into consideration in general in services planning or provision. Thus, the project raised awareness about this situation, even if generating some discomfort with certain governmental or nongovernmental organizations, who in overall believed that refugees in general should be the focus and gender could only be secondary. This approach clearly undermines a gender perspective and contra­ dicting even the dominant trend of gender mainstreaming promoted by EU policies. The exception was to focus on gender as determinants in two specific situations: domestic violence (assuming that their husbands were violent and aggressive, based on cultural assumptions) and women’s participation in the labor market (encouragement of women to work outside their home, regardless of their previous experience). This biased gender focus generated distrust toward programs and services. Thus, by generating discomfort among the governmental and nongovernmental organization, our project made them aware of the relevance of gender and in what other ways gender should be accounted for. Along the project, the COVID-19 pandemic was declared interrupting the final phase of the project. This had a negative impact on the implementa­ tion of the interventions and actions with refugee women, which were part of the AR strategy, because they were dependent on the decision and interest of refugee women, with whom, once the pandemic started, we lost track. However, our work with civil society organizations and academia showed to be productive and enhance the process of coalition building. Thus, because life became virtual since the global health crisis, the community forum was carried out virtually with the participation of over 100 people. The methodology used in the community forum included an initial presentation of preliminary results followed by discussion, a session of sharing experiences, breakout discussion rooms focusing on different aspects pertaining to reception challenges (motherhood and gender role

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changes; health and education, labor market and housing; COVID-19 pandemic and collaboration between civil society and governmental organi­ zations); and a final moment with sharing the main point of each discussion group. Without knowing, the virtual community forum was useful to create a space of exchange, and the days following the event, we were approached by some local organizations who wanted to discuss potential initiatives and innovative strategies to reach out to refugee women and asylum seekers. Our AR efforts rendered results, hopefully in the right direction. 3.5 FINAL THOUGHTS Given that knowledge is constructed, it is relevant to know how it is constructed and by whom, as knowledge can contribute to strength or counter-balance power asymmetries existing in society. Knowledge is not neutral in social sciences, even when objectivity is sought, values, biases arising from training (or lack of training), and priorities y funding agen­ cies shape research process and outcomes. Thus, our effort as researchers should focus on announcing our own positionalities, biases, and view­ points from the start. Thus, there is an intrinsic value in constructing knowledge more demo­ cratically; there is value too in identifying problems and finding consen­ sual solutions. This ethnical and practical shift in the research paradigm grants AR and all participatory methodologies a new perspective under the umbrella of a noble purpose, in which AR and participatory methodolo­ gies play a protagonist role. In this sense, AR offers the opportunity to include communities that have been silenced, made invisible, or are under­ represented which could lead to more effective and consensual answers to their own problems. Nevertheless, AR has pros and cons. On the positive side, AR bridges theory and practice and engage the researcher in the community to find solutions to their problem. As we have seen, the strategies and tools that promote AR are very diverse, as well as the multiple ways and possibilities to integrate AR in studies, in full or selectively in certain steps. Also, the role of the researcher in AR can vary, ranging from traditional, community, translator, advocate, and activist researcher; inclusively, a research team may count with different types and roles played the researchers involved, each contributing their own perspective and pulling together more nuance voices and assessments. All these aspects make AR a vehicle for all

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terrains or a four-wheel-drive, giving versatility and adaptability to this practice-oriented methodology. On the other hand, AR is confronted with limitations that rise issues when making decisions about its incorporation or when justifying it in research proposals and budgets. Bureaucratic and budgetary rules tend to undermine AR, mainly in recognizing the “value” of the contributions from the community. As experienced in the field, higher education and research institutions make it difficult to pay community researchers, translators, and activists, especially when those are migrants. Sometimes, they are not eligible to be hired as researchers because the definition of researchers is related to holding university degrees or being a student in such insti­ tutions. Other times, they migration status, even as refugees or asylum seekers disqualify them because they cannot legally receive a complement to their meager stipend, re-enforcing a basic survival lifestyle, in which migrants or refugees are not allow to grow personally and professionally, gaining skills and accessing other social networks that allow them not only to get by but also to get ahead. These elitist organizational and institu­ tional practices, sometimes enforced by funding institutions, endorse that migrants and refugees “stay in their place,” constructing walls, and fences around migrant and refugee communities instead opening a door gate to empowerment to allow them to become more fully engaged with and in the society where they live. As a researcher in the field of global migrations, I believe that AR meth­ odologies are worth and that the potential benefits outweigh the downside; however, in academic settings, where traditional scientific research para­ digms are the norm, more advocacy is needed from within. AR might bring new vitality and a different turn to migration studies as well as open a new venue for transformative knowledge and humanistic policy-making. KEYWORDS • • • • •

action research migrants refugees gender knowledge production

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Kindon, S.; Pain, R.; Kesby, M. Participatory Action Research Approaches and Methods. Connecting People, Participation and Place; Routledge; New York, 2007. Knesebeck, O. et al. Education and Health in 22 European Countries. Soc. Sci. Med. 2006, 63 (5), 1344–1351. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2006.03.043. Lewin, K. Action Research and Minority Problems. J. Soc. Iss. 1946, 2, 34–46. Muller, A. Education, Income Inequality, and Mortality: A Multiple Regression Analysis. BMJ 2002, 324 (7328), 23–25. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.324.7328.23. Noffke, S. Revisiting the Professional, Personal, and Political Dimensions of Action Research. In The SAGE Handbook of Educational Action Research; Noffke, S. E., Somekh, B., Eds.; Sage Publications Ltd: London, 2009; pp 6–24. DOI: 10.4135/9780857021021 Noffke, S. E. Comments on Bulterman-Bos: Research Relevancy or Research for Change? Educ. Res. 2008, 37 (7), 429–431. DOI: 10.3102/0013189X08325680. Noffke, S. Professional, Personal, and Political Dimensions of Action Research. In Review of Research in Education; Apple, M. W., Ed.; American Educational Research Association: Washington, DC, 1997; pp 305–343. Padilla, B. Saúde e migrações: metodologias participativas como ferramentas de promoção da cidadania. Interface—Comunicação, Saúde, Educação 2017, 21 (61), 273–284. https://doi.org/10.1590/1807–57622016.0624 Beatriz, P.; Rodrigues, V. Doing Community Research with the Community? Reflecting on Practical Issues. La Critica Sociologica 2017, 203 (3), 59–74. Phillimore, J.; Bradby, H.; Knecht, M. et al. Bricolage as Conceptual Tool for Understanding Access to Healthcare in Superdiverse Populations. Soc. Theory Health 2019, 17, 231–252. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41285–018–0075–4 Raphael, D. Social Determinants of Health: Canadian Perspectives; Canadian Scholars’ Press: Toronto, 2004. Selener, D. Participatory Action Research and Social Change: Approaches and Critique; Cornell University: New York, 1997. Sirca, N. T.; Shapiro, A. Action Research and Constructivism: Two Sides of the Same Coin? Or, One Side? Int. J. Manage. Educ. 2007, 1, (1/2), 100–107. Tripp, D. Pesquisa ação: uma introdução metodológica. Educ Pesqui. 2005, 31 (3), 443–66. Ulf, M.; Karin, A. Action in Action Research: Elaborating the Concepts of Action, Roles and Dilemmas in a Public E-Service Development Project. J. Syst. Inform. Technol. 2016, 18 (2), 118–147. http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/JSIT-10–2015–0074 Virgin, V.; Warren, R. Mapping Key Determinants of Immigrants’ Health in Brooklyn and Queens. Center for Migration Studies of New York (CMS) Report; CMS: New York, 2021. Warren, R. Democratizing Data About Unauthorized Residents in the United States: Estimates and Public-Use Data, 2010 to 2013. J. Migration Human Security 2014, 2 (4), 305–328. https://doi.org/10.1177/233150241400200403. Wu, Y-T. et al. Education and Wealth Inequalities in Healthy Ageing in Eight Harmonised Cohorts in the ATHLOS Consortium: A Population-Based Study. Lancet Public Health 2020, 5 (7), e386–e394. https://doi.org/10.1016/S2468–2667(20)30077–3.

CHAPTER 4

Health Recovery and Reconstruction in Breast Cancer Survivors: A Social Construcionist Approach

GIBRÁN ALEJANDRO VALDÉZ FLORES1 and LAURA KARINA CASTRO SAUCEDO2

1Universidad 2Social

Autónoma de Aguascalientes

Work Faculty, Universidad Autónoma de Coahuila, México

ABSTRACT This paper reports the experience of a Social Constructionist Intervention based on a socio-constructionist reflexive-communicative model, whose objective was to trigger interaction processes among five women from northeastern Mexico who consider themselves breast cancer survivors in order to analyze and understand their lived experience with the disease. For this purpose, a model was designed based on the reflexive dynamics (Fraga and Araujo, 2015) and the four communicational dimensions of Strategic Communication (Massoni, 2014): informative, interactional, ideological, and enactive. The operationalization of the model took place in the Nueva Oportunidad project, carried out in Ayuda Rosa a civil association in Saltillo, Coahuila, Mexico between September and December 2019, with the participation of five survivors. The results were analyzed within the framework of the Grounded Theory (Strauss and Corbin, 2002; Charmaz, 2006) highlights the process of resignification

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of the lived experience from two stages: the recovery of health and the construction of identity. This became evident through the historical memory of these women’s experience as patients and the appropriation of their new status as survivors, where one of the main motivations is to help and accompany other people going through similar health crisis. So, it was concluded that women who have overcome breast cancer require social dynamics that allow them to reorder their meanings in a common space with other survivors and thus organize the meaning of their lives, therefore the socioconstructionist reflexive-communicative model becomes a suitable option to generate such reflexive interactions. 4.1 INTRODUCTION Gradually, breast cancer survivorship is gaining ground in social science topics, specifically in the discipline of Social Science (Greenblatt y Lee, 2018; Wilson, 2019), due to the complexity of the condition, which not only impacts on the physical and biological levels, as it transcends the emotional, family, and social spheres of the patients who face a series of transformations in their daily lives (Londoño, 2009). As an object of research, the focus of the study on women’s cancer survivor has been on assessing the needs of this population group, as Hobbling’s work reports et.al. (2018), which identified the main psycho­ social elements present in breast cancer survivors attending the National Cancer Institute in fertility concerns in young woman, reduce the altera­ tion of their body image over time, overcoming the barriers of unemploy­ ment after illness, reconstructing their family and social relationships, and unsatisfied psychological care. In this sense, Alcocer (2013) conducted a study to explore the processes of reconfiguration of female subjectivities in the absence of the breast in breast cancer survivors in Guadalajara, a city in central-western Mexico. Based on the methodological strategy centered on women’s narratives with a biographical approach, the author recovered five life stories with these patients who had undergone surgery to remove one or both breasts. Among its main results is a biographical reordering with new forms and meanings that help women to cope with whatever comes up in their daily lives, that is, the modification of her position on the world from the conception of being a woman without one or two of her breasts.

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In this way, the need for approaches that recover the voice of the social actors in order to understand the series of psychological processes that they set in motion to recover their health becomes evident to undergo the biomedical treatments involved in a condition such as cancer. Thus, Social Constructionism (Gergen, 1985) fits in with this interest, for this paradigm holds that knowledge is a collective construction that emerges as a response to the social sciences. And behavioral studies that traditionally seek to produce objective and predictive descriptions of human behavior, even though these may only respond to controlled conditions or specific spatial-temporal contexts (Gergen, 2005). With this precedent, this chapter reports on the experience of social intervention with a group of five women breast cancer survivors in the city of Saltillo, located in northeastern Mexico. The perspective from which the project was formulated was socioconstructionism, with the aim of approaching the reality of cancer survival from the narratives of the social actors themselves, as suggested by Bruno et al. (2018) in the social constructionist intervention methodology consisting of five moments: the identification of the conflict situation, the design of the model with which the identified situation will be intervened, the operationalization of the model and its implementation through an intervention project, critical evaluation of the process and, finally, systematization of the experience. By considering that reality is a social construction (Gergen, 1985, p.1), Bruno et al. (2018) argue that the socio-constructionist perspective within Social Work seeks to explain and understand how people describe, explain and report the world they live in through their relationships, the intervention from this position is governed by the collective construction of knowledge and wisdom from social interactions that promote personal and community transformation. In the first stage of the project, a diagnosis was made to the conflict situation of a woman breast cancer survivor, analyzing her socially constructed reality in the voices of her eldest daughter and that of the director of the civil organization Ayuda Rosa, where she goes to participate in different programs of the organization as well as to live with other cancer patients and survivors. In this first phase, carried out between October and November 2018, it was identified that cancer is socially interpreted as a synonym of death, so there is an emotional breakdown for the diagnosed women and their family members. However, with timely attention and social support from their environment, this dominant narrative gives a way

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to a number of alternative narratives that focus on interpreting the disease process as an opportunity to improve one’s own life and the lives of others. Consequently, the conflict situation identified in this woman breast cancer survivor was that after the journey with the condition and the evolution of the dominant narrative, ranging from associating the disease with death to viewing the condition as a new lease of life, the social actor maintained a tension with this event that generated a problematic in his own identity and position in the world by positioning himself sometimes as a patient and a sick person, and sometimes as a survivor. In such a way that the conflict situation present in the social actors was the need to re-signify their lived experience with cancer based on the recovery of his health and the reconstruction of their identity in order to overcome the interruption that the illness represented in their lives. On this basis, the second phase of the constructionist social interven­ tion methodology, consisted of the elaboration of a theoretical and concep­ tual model to address and identify conflict situations. In this case, two processes were highlighted in the intervention, interaction, and reflection. For this reason, it was decided to work with a group of women survivors in order to broaden the understanding of cancer survivorship in the female population and not only to remain with the interpretation of the social actor. Thus, with the support of the civil society association Ayuda Rosa a group of five survivors was formed. The basis of this model, which we call reflexive-communicative socioconstructionist, is to be found in the systemic reflexive model (Fraga y Araujo, 2015) and in the communica­ tional dimensions of the Strategic Communication perspective (Massoni, 2016). In this way, the reflexive component of the social intervention was guided by the presentation of the personal reflections of each participant in the group to elaborate together a group reflection on the reviewed topic. The essence of the systematic reflexive model (Fraga and Araujo, 2015) lies in the therapeutic dialogue that consists of the participant as well as the members of the group, tell a story describing the problem and how it relates to other people, and what possibilities for alternative solutions they manage to co-construct, as those tried so far have been unsuccessful. Although this model consists of three stages: the individual interview, the individual reflection in the group, and the collective reflection on the reflections, only elements of the second and third stage of the systemic reflective model were used in the socioconstructionist reflexive-communicative model.

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As for interaction, this was guided by the informative, ideological, interactive, and enactive dimensions proposed by Massoni (2016) within the perspective of Strategic Communication, where the author argues that these can be found in all communication processes and networks, although for the operational purposes of this intervention it was decided to place them as phases to emphasize the women’s reflections and actions in each of this processes that are associated with the search for objective or specialized information to understand their suffering, the need to interact with others who have gone through the same thing, the way they position themselves in the world as cancer survivors, and the implementation of transformations and strategies to support other patients on the basis of awareness and the knowledge they gained in their personal processes and which they were able to share with others in the group to broaden their individual perspective on breast cancer. In the third stage of the development of the socioconstructionist reflexive-communicative model, its theoretical foundations were opera­ tionalized in a social intervention project entitled New Opportunity and consisted of 10 sessions held at the facilities of the Ayuda Rosa civil association, in the west of Saltillo, between September and December 2019. Each session lasted approximately 2 hours and was held weekly every Wednesday. In these spaces for interaction and reflection, women participated in different dynamics in which they made a personal historical reconstruction of their suffering in order to re-signify their experience and broaden their individual perspective on the condition with the support of the narratives and interpretations of the other participants. In terms of evaluation, for this model of social constructionist inter­ vention, an evaluative method was chosen, oriented toward the audiences involved and, in the results, achieved, that is, the evaluation was aimed to learn about the experience of women in the New Opportunity project and whether it responded to the general objective of triggering individual and group reflection processes to analyze the historical reconstruction of their lived experience of the condition, the configuration of their social relations and the construction of new meanings from the communicational dimensions. In this way, three dimensions of the intervention model were evaluated: the reflections achieved in the New Opportunity project, the significant impact, and the conditions of the process experienced. It is important to highlight that according to the evaluation model, two moments of execution took place: the management evaluation, this is,

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the analysis carried out during the intervention, in this case with the last session of the project, and ex-post evaluation, at the end of the project, on the dimensions of significant impact and the conditions of the lived process, with a dialogue forum between women survivors and the School of Social Work held in December 2019, and a qualitative online question­ naire tested in April 2020. Lastly, the systematization consisted of a personal and professional review of everything experienced during the social intervention, as analyzing the effectiveness of practice through retrieval of experience as a process that promotes critical reflection and that through the evaluation of projects, plans, or programs that constitute a working model, improve­ ments could be made or substantiate its replicability in other similar scenarios and contexts. In the case of Social Constructionism (Gergen, 1985), which postulates that knowledge is relational, the study is the result of social interaction and focuses its attention on the narrative of social actors, interpretative approaches are required to recognize the sense and meanings that each subject gives to his or her experiences in society and that consequently end up shaping his or her reality. In short, this was the process of implementing the social constructionist reflexive-communicative intervention model that was developed within the curriculum of the master’s Degree in Social Constructionist Intervention Models at the Faculty of social work of the Autonomous University of Coahuila. Due to space issues, what you will find in the following pages is the analysis of the narratives of the participants of the social intervention project New Opportunity, carried out in the framework of the Grounded Theory (Strauss and Corbin, 2002; Charmaz, 2006) and which served to respond to the research objective, which was to analyze the characteristics of the resignification of the meaning of life of women breast cancer survi­ vors who attend the Ayuda Rosa civil association in Saltillo, Coahuila as of the historical reconstruction of their experience of suffering, the configura­ tion of social relations and the construction of new meanings. 4.2 CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK 4.2.1 THE ONCOLOGICAL SURVIVAL IN MEXICO From biomedicine, the American Cancer Society (2017) defines breast cancer as an uncontrolled growth of cells in the breast, which eventually

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forms a tumor that is visible by X-rays and can even be palped, mainly affecting the ducts that carry milk to the nipple, known as ductal breast cancer, or in the glands that produce milk, called lobular breast cancer, For their part, the World Health Organization in its report for the commemo­ ration of World Breast Cancer Day (2018), an estimated of 1.38 million cases were diagnosed worldwide every day, maintaining a mortality rate of 571,000 deaths annually. On their part, the National Institute of Statistics and Geography (INEGI) in Mexico, reported in its press release for World Cancer Day (2018) that in the country breast cancer stands out as the third leading cause of death for malignant tumors. In oncology, INEGI (2018) itself points out that in the Mexican popula­ tion there is a greater impact on women in contrast to the male population, because two out of ten female deaths from breast cancer are due to breast cancer, while breast cancer mortality among men is marginal. Also, in 2016, the institute recorded the highest mortality rate for woman from this disease, with 16 deaths per 10,000 women age 20 and over, detailing that while there are no direct causes, there are risk factors that increase the likelihood of this problem: age (the older the age, the higher the risk), genetic predisposition, obesity, smoking, drinking alcohol in excess, use of hormone replacement therapying the treatment of menopause, not having children or having them after the age of 35, not breastfeeding and a sedentary lifestyle (MedlinePlus, 2017 in INEGI, 2018). In addition to the physical impact, the disease ends up marking a biographical break in the lives of the women who are diagnosed, thus affecting the meanings they had already built up and, consequently, the development of their social relationships, and are therefore forced to reconfigure their beliefs and habits through a complex process of adapta­ tion in its sociocultural context (Palacios et al., 2015; Londoño, 2009). Facing the performance of health institutes in the country, emphasizing prevention, and early detection, the national movement Juntos Contra el Cancer in its report Panorama de Cancer en Mexico (2017) noted that the Mexican Social Security Institute reduced breast cancer mortality by 5% during the period from 2016 to 2011. In this respect, the National Cancer Institute (INCAN), is the public health institution that is working to characterize this segment of the population that has overcome clinical treatments against different types of cancer through the First National Registry of Cancer Survivors, a digital platform created in 2014where survivors from all over the country can

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register directly by filling out a form (Miranda, 2018). INCAN’s main objective is that the information collected will be useful for oncology staff to generate better strategies for patient care, as well as describing the physical and emotional needs of survivors. Thus, after 4 years of data collection, in March 2018, the institute released some preliminary results to the public: at that time, 3201 survivors had been registered from all over the country, where 96% had physical side effects as fatigue, bone pain, and neuropathy, 95% showed emotional conditions such as depression and anxiety, while 82% had sexual prob­ lems such as lack of desire and rejection by their partner, symptoms that occurred up to 5 years after overcoming the disease (Miranda, 2018). In this way, INCAN is committed to the description and characteriza­ tion of survivors of all types of cancer in Mexico, but is limited to remote data collection via the internet, the register is therefore increasing slowly and, moreover, it does so from a positivist and objective position in which there is a marked distance between the health institution and this group of the country’s population. 4.2.2 SOCIAL EXPERIENCE OF CANCER AND SURVIVORSHIP: PREVIOUS STUDIES AND INTERVENTIONS As Sanz and Modolell mention: “cancer treatment is more than just saving the life of the patient” (2004, p. 4), this is why a very close interdisci­ plinary relationship between oncology and psychology emerged in the mid 1950s, later called Psycho-Oncology, at a Psychiatric Unit of the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York. In this way, in the years that followed, a great interest was generated in a comprehensive approach to oncology patients and so, in 1991, the Span­ iards Durá and Garcés analyzed the relationship between social support and the psychosocial adjustment of patients by reviewing the different interventions that had been carried out up to that decade. The authors explain that social support becomes an important adaptive weapon, but the sociocultural implications of the disease, that reflect it as mythical and feared, complicate the proper provision of social support to the patient (Durá y Garcés, 1991). For the above, they point out that, in the end, communication problems seem to be the most frequent among cancer patients and, consequently,

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the Reach to Recovery program in the United States, created in 1952 by survivor Teresa Lasser, stands out and which in 1969 became a service of American Cancer Society because of its face-to-face nature. The dynamics of the program consisted of a volunteer visiting a mastec­ tomy patient (who had undergone surgery to remove one or both breasts) in the hospital 3 or 6 days after the operation, providing them with a series of brochures containing information on their situation (appropriate reha­ bilitation exercises, type of activities they can do, information on breast prothesis, etc), while handling her a breast prothesis. These volunteers were selected from among women who had undergone mastectomies at least 2 years previously, and all received adequate training (Durá y Garcés, 1991). In this way, the authors report what may be the first socially targeted intervention from women with breast cancer, where the participation of the women survivors themselves in support of the patients stands out. On the other hand, from a quantitative point of view, Arrighi (2014), designed the Questionnaire to Measure Unmet Needs of Cancer Survi­ vors (CESC) in Spain, after three focus groups with a total of 20 women survivors. With the above, the author constructed a first version of the CESC, which was evaluated with a panel of experts and pilot test with 109 cancer survivors, and as a result of the statistical analysis three factors were obtained: physical, emotional, and work-economic. At the end, the CESC includes 25 items for assessing these needs and its application to 2,67 cancer survivors in Spain through an online platform, the three most prevalent unmet needs were: loss of energy and physical fatigue (64%), fear of relapse (61%), and distress, anxiety and worry about the future (53%). This approach to the phenomenon of cancer survival is similar to that of INCAN in Mexico, with a form that is answered remotely, leaving aside the face-to-face interaction that Durá and Garcés demand for an interven­ tion. It is worth mentioning that, in any case, Arrighi’s work thus contrib­ utes to a further characterization of the cancer survivor population in these four categories that analyze biological, emotional, and social conditions in addition of economic and employment needs. In the opposite case and with a focus on the biographical–narrative approach, Alcocer (2013) explored the processes of reconfiguration of female subjectivities in the absence of the breast in women breast cancer survivors in the city of Guadalajara. In this research, five life stories were constructed through – in-depth interviews with women who had undergone

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a radical mastectomy, that is, to the removal of one or both of her breasts. The analysis focused on making visible the wealth of meanings the women construct, take, and reproduce from the culture about the body, after surgical interventions (Alcocer, 2013, p. 187). Therefore, facing the absence of the breast and the release of the disease, there is a biographical reordering with new forms and meanings that help women to cope with the situations they face in their new life situation. Further on, Hubbeling et al. (2018) conducted research with young breast cancer survivors in Mexico, identifying five main psychosocial needs: minimizing fertility concerns, reduce the alteration of their body image over time, overcoming the barriers of unemployment after illness, reconfiguring their family relationships and social networks, and unmet psychological care and information needs. Under the qualitative approach, the researchers designed a semis­ tructured interview lasting between 30 and 60 minutes each, which was administered to 25 young women breast cancer survivors at INCAN, among the results, suggest the need for early interventions focused on fertility education, suggestions to survivors about the possibility of breast reconstruction and the use of prostheses, support for labor reinsertion, childcare assistance, the integration of psychological care, and the fulfill­ ment of information needs to reduce stress on survivors. 4.2.3 A CRITICAL VIEW OF BREAST CANCER AND IDENTITY According to Figueroa (2018) and Porroche-Escudero (2016), at a social level, there are two major discourses that have a direct impact on the female subjectivity of women breast cancer patients and survivors: forced positive thinking and false female empowerment. This, in short, ends up becoming a form of symbolic violence that alters identities, because people do not recognize themselves under these discourses, despite adopting them as a way of adapting to the situation and maintain stability, as far as possible, of their family context (Figueroa, 2018; Garassini, 2015). According to Laza (2017), these two social discourses are the result of the positioning that the movement has had in the past and the interpreta­ tion of breast cancer in the United States, despite the fact that in the 1970s a dichotomy emerged in the way public health dealt with the condition. On one hand, the bow movement and pink marketing became the dominant

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model that favors the biomedical and epidemiological paradigm, where women have the primary responsibility of their health. On the other hand, in the second position, known as the environmental movement, the epide­ miological paradigm is criticized because it blames women for their sick­ ness, it argues that in order to fight breast cancer, the structural factors that impact on de incidence and experience of the disease must be unmasked (Laza, 2017; Porroche-Escudero, 2016). Along the same lines, Figueroa mentions that sociocultural problems and the hegemonic culture of biomedicine are social determinants of health because “they have translated cancer into media campaigns where people are told what to think, feel and act when faced with cancer” (2018, p. 135). This type of content produced from different social discourses is often constructed on the basis of survivors’ experiences, thus turning overcoming the disease into a commodity that has a discursive value in the current socioeconomic context. In this manner, the way in which this condition is approached from the macro-social structure ends up impacting on women’s identity and in the way, they narrate their experience, as according to Alvis et al. (2015), identity is a dynamic, active, and open phenomenon that is subject to permanent transformation as a function of social interactions. Also, Gergen (2006) warns that in today’s postmodern world where the universal deter­ minism of truth has resulted in multiple rationalities and realities (Bruno et al., 2018), there is a colonization of the self that is reflected in the fusion of partial identities due to social saturation, a condition generated by those discourses that prevail in society and that in breast cancer are the forced positively and the false female empowerment. Hence, Figueroa considers these discourses to be new cultural imposi­ tions, to think positively about patients and to try to empower them by always having faith, hope, and the belief that things are “going to be OK,” reaching the desired cure that avoids death, this makes cancer an “enemy” that must be won over at all costs, even if one’s own quality life is lost (2008, p. 143) in reference to the treatments that eventually wear down the body and affect its composition, which impacts on women’s identity. This was analyzed by Méndez et al. in the discourses inscribed on the bodies of mastectomized women in Chile, where they found that the biggest obstacle to survivors achieving full recovery lies in entrenched beliefs about the role of female beauty, biomedical models, the role of the media and the market, social entities that cultivate the value of the youth,

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“and these dynamics contribute to the segregation between the healthy body and the sick body, that fall heavily on the female body affected by breast cancer” (2012, p. 153). In this sense, Baeza and Ulloa (2018) consider that this causes women, both patients and survivors, to experience body mourning because their body image leads them to think of themselves subjectively as lacking and even castrated, this annulling the effigy of the erotic breast as a reference to pleasure and playground of male desires, which represents a breakage of their identity. Likewise, Meloni et.al. (2014) in Brazil points out that cancer repre­ sents a critical event that mixes perplexity and fear of possible death, leading to concerns about recovery and quality of survival, through a study on the experience of sexuality after breast cancer. The authors also take up the idea that the absence of the breast creates a symbolic void in women with breast cancer, since by means of a methodology based on sexual scripts they conclude that “some accounts expressed feelings of distress and handicap, caused by bodily alterations after treatment, for not containing physical characteristics related to the culturally valued models of beauty and femininity (Meloni et al., 2014, p. 410). Following this conceptual framework, the experience of socioconstructionist intervention with the group of women breast cancer survivors in northeastern Mexico is reported below, as well as their main narratives around the recovery of their health and the identity reconstruc­ tion they faced once they were discharged by the medical staff and began the process of readjusting to their new living conditions. 4.3 METHODOLOGY Under the premise of Social Constructionist Intervention (Bruno et al., 2018), a model was designed for a group of women survivors of breast cancer based on the reflective and communicational practices (Fraga and Araujo, 2015; Massoni, 2016) to trigger participants’ narratives and approach their constructed meanings based on their experience of the condition (Gergen, 2006; Magnabosco, 2014) and the impact of their identity (Alvis et al., 2015). From the proposed model, the New Opportunity project was devel­ oped and implemented between September and December 2019 with five women breast cancer survivors in northeastern Mexico. Next, the

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characteristics of the women who participated in the group and the outline of the intervention from the sessions are presented. 4.3.1 PARTICIPANTS The group with which the socioconstructionist intervention worked consisted of five women survivors from Saltillo, a city located in north­ eastern Mexico. According to Hernandez et al., the group of people with whom we worked is a sample of typical cases, as the aim “is to analyze the values, rituals, and meanings of a given social group” (2010, p. 397). At the time of project implementation, all participants had completed their clinical treatments, but they were still undergoing medical check-ups at regular intervals to monitor that the cancer did not appear. Table 4.1 presents the sociodemographic characteristics of each using a pseudonym to safeguard the ethics and secrecy of the study. TABLE 4.1 Pseudonym Age School grade Occupation

Characteristics of the Participants. Mary 51 years old Jr. high school Housewife & seamstress married 30 years

Marital Status Years of relationship Children 3 Diagnosed date 2013 Date end of 2014 treatment

Rosy 67 years old Post graduate Housewife, retired nurse divorced n/a

Lucy 45 years old High school Housewife

Juany 52 years old Jr. high school Housewife

Aby 25 years old Bachelor Housewife

married 20 years

married 26 years

Married 5 years

1 2014 2013

2 2012 2012

3 2018 2019

n/a 2019 2019

4.3.2 OPERATIONALIZATION OF THE SOCIOCONSTRUCTIONIST REFLEXIVE-COMMUNICATIVE MODEL In order to meet the general objective of detonating processes of resig­ nification of the lived experience of breast cancer in the participants of the group, socioconstructionist activities focusing on conversational, dialogical, and narrative processes were developed, following the logic of deconstruction, construction, and reconstruction (Kisnerman, 1998);

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dialogue of knowledge and analysis of narratives (Gergen, 2006; Magna­ bosco, 2014). The methodology focused on deconstruction, construction, and recon­ struction was used to promote changes in meanings through reflection on a concrete situation. The dialogue of knowledge consisted of confronting what each participant had experienced in their process with breast cancer with the social and biomedical discourses. As a complement, the production of narratives and their analysis allowed us to access some of the ideological positions that women have assumed due to their quality as survivors of breast cancer and the new meanings that they have built throughout their experience with the disease and what that they project for their lives in the future. Thus, each session used a different constructionist methodology, as shown in Table 4.2 where the methodological relation­ ship with the activities is established. TABLE 4.2

Structure of the New Opportunity Project.

Dimension

Session

Informative 1. Meeting Mr. Cancer 2. Breast Cancer Impact Interactional 3. Breast Cancer and I 4. Breast Cancer and my environment Ideological 5. I’m not alone 6. I look with new eyes

Enactive

Evaluative

7. Thinking Action 8. Planning action 9. I celebrate memory and commit myself 10. A new history, a new opportunity

Constructionist methodology Deconstruction, Construction and Reconstruction/ Dialogue of Knowledge Narratives Analysis and Discourses Dialogue of knowledge Narrative Analysis and Discourses Dialogue of Knowledge, Narratives Analysis and Discourses Deconstruction, Construction and Reconstruction, Narrative analysis and Discourses Deconstruction, Construction, and Reconstruction Dialogue of knowledge Narrative Analysis and Discourses Dialogue of knowledge

4.4 RESULTS In order to analyze the characteristics of health recovery and identity reconstruction of the women breast cancer survivors in this study, half of the sessions of the New Opportunity project were selected and were

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coded using Atlas.ti software version 8.4.4.4 within the framework of the Grounded Theory (Strauss y Corbin, 2002; Charmaz, 2006). It should be noted that each session analyzed is part of one of the dimensions of the intervention project, as shown in Figure 4.1.

FIGURE 4.1

Session analyzed by communicational dimension.

Source: Own elaboration.

This decision was made to conduct this research report in the face of the vast world of data that was obtained from the total intervention, taking care that each selected session fulfilled most of the elements required by the dimension it represents, the content requirements for approaching the historical reconstruction of women’s lived experience of the disease are thus fulfilled, to its configuration of social relationships and the construc­ tion of new meanings in these five women breast cancer survivors. The process of the information followed the process of coding for theorization through three key stages: initial coding, focus coding, and

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theoretical coding (Charmaz, 2006). In the first part, researchers should remain open to exploring any theoretical possibilities they can detect from data, targeted coding is the second part, in which the codes have a greater direction, are more selective and conceptual, Charmaz (2006) explains that at this stage of the analysis, the most significant or frequent initial codes are used to filter large amounts of data. In the third stage, theoretical coding is a sophisticated level that follows the codes that have been selected during focused coding, and this is where the hypothesis or conceptual framework emerges to be integrated into a theory, so this type of treatment in qualitative research seeks to tell an analytical story that has coherence. In sum, in the open coding stage, 45 codes were obtained from the five sessions analyzed, these were then converted into 20 focused codes that eventually resulted in six theoretical codes, three on health recovery and three on identity reconstruction, as shown in Figure 4.2.

FIGURE 4.2

Process of re-signification of the experience with breast cancer.

Source: Own elaboration.

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4.5 HEALTH RECOVERY

After the implementation of the intervention project, the activities made clear that when the topic of breast cancer is discussed with women who have had breast cancer, the latter always resort to defining it on the basis of the perspective they gained from their practical experiences, as the majority of New Opportunity participants expressed that they, even after suffering it, did not know how to define it, that is, they did not have a constructed concept because they had not thought beyond what they were experiencing in the clinics and health centers they were treated. For the above reasons, the process of re-signifying the lived experi­ ence of the disease emerged from their own storytelling, what they did chronologically throughout the sessions and activities, addressing their first suspicions, confirmation of diagnosis, receiving their treatments, and what they consider to be overcoming cancer the conclusion of any oncological intervention. Nevertheless, the interaction in the group allowed them to broaden their perspective to realize that, although the process is very similar among all of them, each of them approached breast cancer in their own way and in their own understanding, this involved recognizing the diversity of coping strategies that exist. Also, the reflections achieved by them allowed us to observe that the re-signification of the experience starts from this very point, of the medical discharge, although the regular check-ups are never finished, despite the fact that the periodicity is extended to an annual visit to the health care, for most doctors, finishing treatment means becoming a patient in remission, according to what the participants expressed during the project. In this way, in recounting their experience with breast cancer, women survivors present a series of psychosocial elements ranging from felt needs and key elements in their treatment to coping with their condition, to the changes experienced in their bodies and in their feminine identity. As a consequence, women frame this process in what can be identified as the first stage of the resignification of their experience, which for the purposes of this research is located in the recovery of health, because in these personal and chronological narratives it can be interpreted that the three theoretical codes located in this phase generate a sequence toward the reconstruction of identity and the appropriation of new meanings from the overcoming of clinical treatment.

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4.5.1 NEEDS FELT DURING THE PROCESS The first theoretical code that makes up the health recovery stage is the manifestation of the psychosocial needs felt during the process, a theo­ retical component related to a historical reconstruction of the experience and linked to the needs that the women breast cancer survivors demanded for themselves and for others once their cancer treatments are completed, which in most cases was with the medical discharge after constant revisions. In addition to the above, the end of the clinical interventions can be considered as a kind of first exit door from this health condition for the five women who were part of the group that was formed thanks to the New Opportunity project. However, throughout the sessions and the narratives that came into play during the activities, it also becomes clear that this first door seems to lead to many others that they do not yet have a key to open, because the search for meaning, economic hardship, absences, spiritual, and socioemotional needs, as well as social stigma, are still present in them, only now they are no longer in their condition as patients, but as survivors. This is important to note because then the sole conclusion of the onco­ logic procedures, such as chemo and radiotherapies, do not actually imply the totality of health recovery and their full reintegration into social life, therefore, this first component can be considered as the beginning of this first stage of a larger process of re-signification of the lived experience. Since the beginning of breast cancer suspicions, women give account of an experience full of doubts and concerns that increase with the confir­ mation of the diagnosis and mark the direction taken by the strategies to face the disease and its treatments, but they also mentioned that this forces them to assimilate this event, as Aby points out. I know people who never assimilate and die, who don’t go over it and go down and don’t assimilate their situation and so no one can get you out of there [Aby, session 5]

This is why the need arises to abandon oneself to the confidence that all things happen for a reason and that, sooner or later, situations will fall into place in the best possible way, something that is not understood until sometime later, as Mary indicates.

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It changes many things for the better, many things for the worse, of course in the process we don’t understand, you can go through a lot of pain, a lot of sadness, a lot of bad things, but as time goes by we see the shy and the wherefore of things [Mary, session1]

Within the memory of the breast cancer event, these five women from Saltillo agree that the high cost of treatment makes the economic factor one of the main determinants in overcoming the disease, for all the expenses involved in surgical interventions, as well as chemotherapy and radiotherapies. This situation is linked to the lack of medical coverage in the public sector, forces women to give up their material goods, as Aby and Lucy point out. Economic resources do affect many people and, in my case, I struggled a little bit [Aby, session 5] We had to take what little we had to survive, to buy medicine for the disease [Lucy, session 1].

Among the narratives of women in this economic scope, the one that puts the survival of the disease in the first place stands out, although the material aspect is altered by the costly treatments carried out that, if they do not perform some in the private health care system, the disease could progress with fatal consequences in the face of cancer progression in the breasts and in the body in general. It is faith, hope and the desire to be well in the physical, the material is the least of it [Aby, session 1]. I was diagnosed with cancer in October and I was surprised that they gave me an appointment for September of the following year, so I said no, and I told my husband that I had to start treatment privately [Lucy, session 4]

Once they go through the breast cancer experience, participants become aware of a number of needs that exist when dealing with emotional social and spiritual consequences, elements that one covered can become strengths to face the future. However, the experience of breast loss as pat of treatment is one of the strongest experiences that requires a lot of emotional work to react in the best possible way, as stated by Lucy,

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who asked herself this question after having cancer-affected left breast removed. The moment they removed my breast, a lot of things came to my mind, and maybe there is a lot of trust in family, in friends, but this is something very personal that you carry inside you, how am I going to react? How am I going to see? [Lucy, session 7].

The group narratives also identified how they had to deal with the social stigma that exists in society with reference to breast cancer, from finding other patients who do not accept the disease and hide it, to suffer discrimination in the workplace because of their medical condition. In that way, Rosy acknowledge that there are many patients who refuse to talk about the condition when the diagnosis is confirmed they end up hiding it through another supposed illness, which ends up complicating de process, they do not accept help and attention from the outside in order to get ahead. She said she had pneumonia, that is, she gave everything an outlet except that she had cancer and I think that is wrong because you close yourself to everything you can receive to cope with it [Rosy, session 5]

Similarly, there are family members who do not accept or understand their loved one’s condition, this is manifested in the lack of support for cancer patients and survivors, as Aby’s case. I was operated and no one came to my house, it seems I chased them away [Aby, session 5]

4.5.2 KEY ELEMENTS FOR ADAPTATION This component of health recovery focuses on women’s identification of what they consider to be the key elements of their diagnosis and treat­ ment that helped them to move forward, a range of psychosocial resources linked to their internal processes and those around them. In the case of resources originating from outside, this group of women emphasized perceived social support through family, community, and health institutions, and overcoming the isolation of living with others, who helped them to forget a little about cancer. Thus, it is observed that some of the key elements identified in this second component seem to be some of the answers to the first theoretical code about the manifestation of needs.

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Within perceived social support, the women highlighted three types of sources of solidarity that help them to get ahead, these are the family, community, and institutional spheres. This way, Mary explains that to be able to obtain all this kind of support, it is necessary not to hold anything back and always express what you are feeling so that the people around you can react and respond as expected. That is impossible, you can’t hold anything back, you have to say every­ thing and get it out so that they can give you support, because you need family, friends, other people and everything [Mary, session 7].

In this sense, Rosy pointed out that in her case, having only one daughter, the latter never left her alone and even asked for permission from her job as a teacher in the Ministry of Education to accompany her throughout the treatment. In terms of family, I only have one daughter from whom I received a 100% support with all expenses paid and my daughter told me “I’m not going out until you go out” [Rosy, session 4]

On her part, Aby also recognizes that the help provided by the institu­ tions is crucial, as the support given by specialists physicians in the health systems where cancer is treated, as well as civil associations such as Ayuda Rosa, where they promote the well-being of those who have experienced this condition, mainly in the social and labor spheres. Here in the association, they support people with this problem to work, that is also an important part, addressing the labor and social issues I think are important [ Aby, session 7]

One of the most recurrent ideas in these women’s narratives for coping with breast cancer is to remain optimistic at all times, with a positive attitude to avoid focusing on the negative aspects of this complicated event, because, as Juany mentioned, the opposite could end up weakening the person. If you are not positive, you go down, that’s why you have to be positive [Juany, session 7]

In this understanding, going down could be a form of resignation to the disease and stop putting effort into treatment in order to succeed, an element on which all participants apparently agreed, as Rosy pointed out.

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Models of Social Intervention and Constructionism Because I know that maybe we were different, we were positive, but there are people who are very negative [Rosy. Session 1]

Aby even sees it as an additional element to all the support received from the environment, this is very important for the best possible way to cope with the condition. What is to be listened and not to ask uncomfortable questions and not to be isolated from family and society, that has to do with people in our environment and being positive, on our pat [Aby, session 5]

For this reason, Juany defines what it means to maintain a positive attitude toward breast cancer and health recovery in one sentence, for the most and foremost, it is essential not to go backward. There is nothing else to do but to put in the effort, everything forward and nothing backwards [Juany, session 1].

4.5.2.1 CHANGES IN THE FEMALE BODY AND FEMALE IDENTITY During their cancer treatments, women faced an experience of loss and relinquishment of key elements of their physical appearance of women: one or both of their breasts and hair loss. In addition, these absences were compounded by changes in the role in the household do to impossibility of carrying out the same tasks as before, which also ended up having an impact on their female identity. Consequently, this theoretical component links personal experience with the sociocultural environment in which the participants of the New Opportunity project operate, shows that the impact of the disease is not only limited to the physical impact, but rather a series of obligatory change to adapt to her condition of being a woman with cancer. In this sense, participants agreed that, as mother’s they have little right to be absent from their active role in family life, despite suffering from a disease that places them between life and death, In the same way, this physical impact on identity, is evidenced by reduced performance more strenuous household chores such as sweeping, mopping, and washing. Of course, all of these forced changes require significant emotional manage­ ment which, in these five cases, went from sadness to acceptance of their new corporeality, to the extent that in one case, the participant is interpreted as a woman equally, breast or not breast.

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However, as she adjusted back to her life, confusion arises between the use of protheses or applying them to breast reconstruction surgery, which shoes that despite possessing a narrative of acceptance and self-love despite the lack of some of her breasts, the dominant discourse of female identity, where a woman has two breasts, ends up imposed. The breast cancer treatment does not end when you leave the health center, as the repercussions are spread over time and space, this refers to what the body suffers as the months go by and what this means at home or at work. To better illustrate the limitations that are the main consequence of surgery as well as chemotherapies and radiotherapies, just look at this part of Lucy’s narrative, where she refers to reduced physical performance in ordinary household chores that were previously not a major problem. We can’t carry heavy things, the movement is different both in mopping and sweeping, we don’t give the same performance [Lucy, session1]

Likewise, Lucy argues in these cases, household dynamics are affected “the mother has no right to get sick”, and that their complete absence from household activities ends up disrupting family. However, these changing roles are often seen by women as an opportunity to change their narratives around women’s value as individuals and as women, as Mary points out, that in the midst of all the difficulties involved in this condition, there was a personal reflection on self-esteem. I also found this illness to give me more courage as a woman, because sometimes you don’t value yourself and that’s what I found in this illness, that made me value myself [Mary, session 4]

In this way, adaptation to a new role in social life ends up taking place through the reformulation of her own value as a person and, especially as a woman, through a change in the narrative in this area of her personality. To some extent, the acceptance of interventions to remove one or both breasts come as a resignation to the only option there is to cope with the absence of the affected area of the cancer, so once the decision is made to remove the area of the body that is most at risk, women ask respect for their decision to do so. As experienced by Rosy, she was faced with an imminent relapse due to the spread of malignant cells throughout her breasts, she decided to remove both breasts as a way to prevent remission, but one of her friends,

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who had experienced the same thing, but with less risk, questioned her about the decision, since for her it was enough to remove only a small part of the breast. My friend arrives, she had had the quadrant done and she tells me “no Rosy don’t take them off” and then I tell her that it is my body and I want to take them off [ Rosy, session 7]

However, these losses have a major impact on the body, which has to do with effects in other parts of the body, reconstruction therefore becomes a viable option to improve health status and not just an aesthetic element, as Lucy notes. Is like the man who has his leg cut off and gets a prothesis, you don’t know how much he needs it, I need my breast because of my spine, which is getting twisted, and it’s not because of vanity [Lucy, session 7]

In the end, an adequate management of the impact of these decisions can be the beginning of the reconstruction of identity from femininity, just as it happened to Lucy when she faced questions from her relatives about her breasts and could only reply that she is a lot more woman with or without breasts. My brother-in-law asks me “what have they told you about the breast” and I tell him “what do you want them to tell me? And then my mother­ in-law asks me, and then I tell them “look, I am a lot of woman with breast or without breast” [Lucy, session 5]

Also, from the first suspicions of breast cancer, women face a “whirl­ wind” of emotions ranging from uncertainty to anger at the frustration of this condition that is beyond their control. For this reason, Lucy and Rosy remember how difficult it was to receive the confirmation of the diagnosis of this disease, which is associated with death and which, for this reason, many people do not know about, not even in their own family. It’s something that not even the family understands how you feel, it is a whirlwind, a Tasmanian devil in here, you are afraid, frustrated, scared [Lucy, session 7] When I got the news that I tested positive for cancer, it’s the hardest thing you have to face because you think it is going to be difficult, that you are

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going to be able or you are not going to be able, but well, I faced it, that’s what we all do, face it with courage [Rosy, session 10]

However, once the treatments have been overcome, perspective offers a reconstruction of these emotional shocks, although this is something they are unlikely to be able to pass on to other cancer patients, as Juany point out in her serene and calm approach to dealing with cancer. Some people who are going through the same thing say to me “well, you have finished and I still have a way to go”, but they just keep thinking and thinking, and I tell them “well, I took it very easy and my year went by very quickly” Juany, session 5]

4.5.3 RECONSTRUCTING IDENTITY It is necessary to specify that in the present work an approach of identity reconstruction was made to overcome the limits of resignification that could pigeonhole the evolution of the narratives experienced by women in the fact of a refeminization of their identities, this means that far from approaching a real discursive practice in the reality of the participants, we would only be talking about a change of words and concepts that are not experiential. In this sense, it is worth pointing out that, throughout the interven­ tion project, women referred to a change in their daily practices, this also implied a repositioning of themselves face to face with the world and social dynamics at different levels: family, community, and institutional. In this way, the bodily conditions that changed as a result of the treatments also made them to change the way they are exposed to the world and the way they approach different situations related mainly to their role as mothers and heads of household. This is why we speak of socialization of new knowledge that they acquire after experiencing the difficulties that accompany a disease such as breast cancer. As a result, they showed that they gradually came to terms with their new status as breast cancer survivors, which has led them to act in their experience: accompanying other women who are going through the same thing and promoting prevention in the community. In addition, they also emphasized their postdisease modification as a way to prevent relapse and to demonstrate the learning gained.

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At the end of this section, a comparative analysis of the initial signi­ fication of cancer and the significance after the disease is made, as a way of reviewing how women’s narratives evolved through the recognition of new meanings in their lives about the suffering they faced. 4.5.3.1 KNOWLEDGE GAINED FROM EXPERIENCE The first component of the identity reconstruction stage is the socialization of the new knowledge obtained, after overcoming clinical treatments and embarking on the road to health recovery through reflection of felt needs, the key psychosocial resources in coping with the changes experienced, both in the body and the female identity. From there, the participants reported that they begun to recognize with a greater level of understanding and awareness of the changes left in them by breast cancer, and the diffi­ culties that led them to seek the help of others to adapt to these changes in their lives and the situations they were going through. In this heading, they expressed their perception of their survival through plans and projects for the future that varies from the idea of starting a busi­ ness and further education to starting a family and traveling abroad, for as one of them explained, it is never too late to take up against those activities or aspirations that had to be put aside due to the illness. Even though we all live about the same thing, a very difficult process, we have also had very different things and that helps me because I am learning more about cancer even though I lived through it [Mary, session 1}

For this reason, Aby mentions that she is willing to accompany other women through what she has learned from her experience in order to lighten their burdens of uncertainty and provide them with motivation. Some have approached me and I tell them, “well, it already happened to me, you have to work hard and if you want me to tell you how it feels, I will help you [Aby, session 4]

In the end, in Rosy’s case, all this process they lived through with breast cancer translates into a lesson to enjoy life in a better way from now on, when they have managed to overcome the disease and regain health. I learned that life is short and we are here and we think it won’t end and we don’t know [Rosy, session 10]

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4.5.3.2 THEIR NEW STATUS AS SURVIVORS Based on this new knowledge, participants indicated that they began a process of taking ownership of their new status as breast cancer survivors, this is therefore the second theoretical component that forms part of the identity recognition stage, because this definition of themselves in the face of life sets the tone for women’s social interactions with regard to the general problem of cancer. In this way, the participants showed in their narratives their interest in accompanying and helping other cancer patients, for them, this represents an increase in their capacity for empathy, which is accompanied by a desire to share their experience with other women so that others do not feel alone. Similarly, in their new status as breast cancer survivors, the participants expressed a special interest in promoting prevention and early detection of this condition, encouraging female self-examination and knowledge of women’s bodies as a way of raising awareness, but not scaring women away, as they expressed themselves. We have to transmit the knowledge of life and try to address the issue in a way that raises awareness, but do not scare them, not to make them fearful, but to make them aware of what it entails not to have a timely detection [Rosy, session 7]

On a personal level, these five women mentioned that after their breast cancer process, their lifestyle hanged, as they changed their eating habits and are now working to improve their physical and mental condition, the latter being one of the most important items for them, as today they recog­ nize the importance of keeping stress at bay in order to better enjoy time. As survivors, we have to change our eating habits, have more physical activities, seek psychological help from people who when through the same thing, enjoy our family, walks, go on vacation, walk as much as possible in nature, this strengthens you a lot, it fills you with energy [Mary, session 7] I don’t take any medication to control hormones, I check myself every six months, I was discharged and then I came to Dr. Posadas (renowned doctor from a private hospital in the city), he sees me and tells me that I will continue to see him every six months [Lucy, session 10]

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Thus, in sum, it is possible to observe how women survivors adapt to a condition where they feel vulnerable to a possible relapse, but far from interpreting it as such, they take it as an opportunity to improve their habits. 4.5.3.3 RECOGNIZING NEW MEANINGS The last theoretical code can be considered the most important component of the whole process of resignification of the lived experience of women with breast cancer, it is here that the change in the participants’ narratives is observed, although it is necessary to clarify that this is part of everything they went through since the first suspicions of the disease and culminates with this intervention that served as a space for reflection and communica­ tion in which these five women from Saltillo interact from the paradigm of socioconstructionism in order to sort out their emotions and feelings about the illness they experienced. Having mentioned the above, the two focused codes that make up this component of recognizing new meanings are highlighted, this contain the initial significance of breast cancer and the significance of breast cancer once women have overcome it, to report how these meanings evolved from the onset of the disease to the appropriation of their new condition under this identity reconstruction. First, breast cancer burst into the women’s life as a shocking disease that came in a silent way, altering all the personal, family and social stability of the group’s participants, resembling a whirlwind and a Tasmanian devil, as one of the women from Saltillo explained. On the other hand, at the end of their treatments, the women realized that this condition is not synonymous with death, the main social actor in this intervention model, the condition can be overcome through the early detection, medical attention, and care, which undoubtfully implies a reconstruction of their identity and sense of life. For all these reasons, the following are the main results achieved with the activities of the New Opportunity project to explore the new meanings of the participating women after going through the breast cancer process. Initial cancer signification. At the onset of the disease, it is undeniable to think about the possibility that cancer can be life-threatening, this is why the fear grips those who are confirmed with this condition, that is

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what this group of five women from Saltillo who overcame breast cancer have shown. Dealing with the disorientation caused by the diagnosis, there is no other way to begin to understand it than to look for metaphorical figures to try to get some control over the disease associated with death. It is strongly reflected in Lucy’s narrative, who in the first session defined breast cancer as a termite that plagues and enters the body to form its nest, that in the worst-case scenario, it kills. I always said to cancer, you were a termite, like a plague that came in, made its nest and left [Lucy, session 1]

For her part, with a more technical support thanks to the nursing profession she practiced throughout her life, Rosy talks about cancer as a malignant cell that grows and reproduces in the organism with such force that, if it does not kill the person, ends up changing his or her life completely. Cancer grows by invading part of your body and changes your life completely or, coldly, leads to death [Rosy, session 1]

Thus, in this initial signification, kit can be seen how the narrative of cancer is leaning toward a catastrophic scenario that may end in great suffering for the last of the losses that the process may have to suffer (after mutilation of the chest, hair loss, lack of performance), and that is life itself. In contrast, after overcoming the illness and recovering their health, women survivors begin a process of resignification of the experience that is based on the reconstruction of their identity by appropriating a new condition of life and position in the world. In this way, there is a new meaning of cancer that moves away from the first idea of the disease as a direct path to death, in most cases, it becomes an opportunity to improve one’s life and find a new meaning to existence. However, the idea that manifests itself as indispensable is the one where care is the main source of survival and the pillar of identity reconstruction after regaining health, as Lucy puts it succinctly. If there is care, there is healing and if there is healing there is life [Lucy, session 5]

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In this regard, now that they have decided to accompany and help other patients, as well as preventing complications of the disease among the population through body awareness and early detection, the main narrative is that cancer is not death, as Mary refers to in an experience with another woman. An acquaintance of mine was diagnosed with cancer and her family was so worried that one of the sisters told me to talk to her and I said to her, give it a shot, cancer is not death [Mary, session 5]

Consequently, women also reveal in their narratives that, even though it seems impossible to overcome cancer, as they will practically have to refer to it on many occasions in the future, it is possible to transcend this complex situation through the re-signification of the live experience, as Aby put it in the last group session. Now the words illness, difficulty, cancer, challenges or the mistakes we have made have turned back into learning and teaching, into love and blessing [Aby, session 10]

4.6 DISCUSSIONS AND CONCLUSIONS After analyzing the narratives of survivors who participated in the New Opportunity project, it can be pointed out that most of the pressure they face is a consequence of this overload that makes their own identity a complexity, it is not only a point of labeling oneself as sick, also to ensure that those that determine their social roles remain in place, such a wife, mother, daughter, friend, among other, as it is pointed out by Gergen (2006) when speaking of social saturation. In that sense, when overcoming their treatments, it becomes a conflict to appropriate the title of survivor or healthy person, this happens because it does not form a single identity, but multiple identities that change and evolve with time. The above is part of a relational process in which, Gergen (2007) himself defines as narrative construction that emerges through interaction with others. Thus, the act of narrating their lived experience of illness can become a restorative act (Alvis et al., 2015), which allows women to reconstruct their stories with another perspective that is fed with their peers in the group who have experienced the same thing, but in a different way, which in the end also puts them in a position of action and which they express

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with the desire to accompany other patients and to promote early detection among the young female population. In terms of projections for their life, each of the participants of the model mentioned that they have plans and projects for the future, most of them focused on business entrepreneurship, but they are also aware that it will be difficult to resume or start productive or even work activities, that is why they visualize their role as survivors in an immediate framework of action to give their testimony to society, mainly to other women at risk of breast cancer or already suffering from it. 4.6.1 REORDERING MEANINGS Although it would seem that getting rid of cancer treatments is the best direction of breast cancer survival, the truth is that this only initiates a process of reordering meanings around the lived experience, considering a biographical break in the women’s life, as pointed out by the project participants. In the historical reconstruction of their experience, there is a tendency for the participants to maintain a positive attitude, to value the transforma­ tion of their social relationships, to demonstrate their spiritual gain, and their interest in accompanying other cancer patients, but there are also contrary elements, such as experiencing absences, limitations, losses, abandonments, criticisms, and indifference in their closest social groups or in the midst of daily interaction due to the stigma that exists in society toward this disease. In addition to this, overcoming cancer has led them to perceive changes in their bodies and in their feminine image, a disruption that is also present in their role within the household and family dynamics. In sum, these elements have led women to experience themselves differently than they did before the presence of breast cancer, this is why we speak of a reconstruction of identity that has triggered a series of psychosocial resources in the survivors, oriented toward the search of this biographical event, the construction of new meanings, the modification of habits, and the configuration of new plans and projects for the future. As a result of the emotional, social and spiritual needs identified in themselves, learning from their experience and their own adaptation to the changes they have undergone, the participants of the New Opportu­ nity project express their intention to support other woman in a similar

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situation, and also put special emphasis on prevention from their position as breast cancer survivors. In this respect, it should be remembered that identity as a social product is responsible for giving meaning to interactions (Alvis et al., 2015), but it should be noted that this production is part of a never-ending process throughout a person’s life, generating multiple identities in the current postmodern context (Gergen, 2006). Nevertheless, the project participants talk about the clarifica­ tion of a new meaning for them after their illness, this is about enjoying life more, valuing those around you, and helping those in need. Despite this, there are complicated situations they have to face and deal with, as they have done throughout their process. It is about criticism and indifference on the part of society and their own social relations, as expressed in one of the sessions when it became clear that there is a tension around breast reconstruction and the use of a prostheses. They discuss this among themselves: there are those who prefer not to use them and those who are in favor, a situation that is the result of a domi­ nant discourse in society related to the female image, as noted by Meloni et al. (2014), who take up the idea that the absence of the breast generate a symbolic void in women, generating feelings of anguish and handicap for not having physical characteristics related to culturally accepted models of beauty and femininity. Thus, each participant in the new opportunity project with a series of knowledge constructed and shaped through their interactions with the project and the social discourses existing during their experience of the disease, the participants’ prior knowledge was brought into play with that of the others during the sessions. It must be reiterated that the logic of development followed the communicational dimensions: inform, interact, ideologize and enact, from a generalized position to a stance of action taken by the group as a result of the reflections made in the activities, main purpose of this socioconstructionist intervention. 4.6.2 THE SPACE TO REORGANIZE MEANING As the women themselves expressed in the evaluation, the group became a platform for them to express everything they felt without fear of being judged or misunderstood, this created the ideal atmosphere of trust for them to be able to express their genuine feelings in the company of other people who had gone through the same thing.

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In this respect, it can be recognized that from the perspective of the social actors, the New Opportunity project became the space in which they were able to exchange their experiences, as well as the new meanings they arrived at after their whole process, what for Gergen (1996) is a communal exchange centered on the narrative basis of self-understanding. In this way, it is argued that, on the basis of socioconstructionism, emotions are not individual possessions but constituents of relational patterns or lived narratives, these become resources for reconstructing reality on the basis of new meanings that function as articulating devices. It is important to point out that, when referring to space, we are talking about the group of people who are part of the collective and not about a physical area of the site’s infrastructure, as was the case in the seventh session, the group had to be moved to the first floor of Ayuda Rosa civil association’s premises, compared with the rest of the sessions which were held in the hall located on the ground floor. In this way, it can be understood that the resignification of meaning after experiencing a limit situation, is accompanied by the stages of health recovery and identity reconstruction that reshapes people’s lives and is only possible in interaction with others, according to the social construc­ tionist position, where identities are shaped through bonding and social interaction. Thus, the reorganization of meaning was based on a communicational thread that went from the most general to the most specific, this was done in the first session on the basis of contrasting data and definitions between what it is said by the institutions to which specialty in health care is attributed, the American Cancer Society and the Mexican Institute of Social Security, with what these five women survivors experienced in their individual processes. In this process of contrasts, it would be observed that the assimilation of the conception of the disease is achieved through what we will call here narrative re interpretation, between what is said at the institutional level and the metaphors people use to make sense of these complex conceptual frameworks, the clear example is to think of breast cancer as a harmful cell that spreads or as a termite that threatens to devour life entirely. Next, in the interactional phase, participants were able to identify with each other by putting their situation into perspective, which allowed them to appropriate what we call a double experience, first as a cancer patient and now as a survivor.

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As far as the ideological dimension is concerned, the women in the group generated a recognition of the situations and complications that each of them experienced in their personal process with the disease, this allowed them to become aware of their situation and that of others, recog­ nizing that they are not alone and that there are multiple positions in rela­ tion with the condition, despite the fact that they are dealing with the same disease, so here we observe an openness to the diversity of oncological confrontations. Finally, the enactive phase is where the projections of the transforma­ tions that the women made were made, once with their proper survivor status, they want to get going, therefore, under this dimension, the partici­ pant devoted a series of possible actions and shard meanings to respond to the conflicts agreed upon the group, related to the experience of living with an overcoming breast cancer. This is why we can affirm that the space that can help reorganize the meaning of women breast cancer survivors is a communicative and multidimensional space, is therefore relevant, for the design of future socioconstructionist models and interventions aimed at patients or people who have overcome an illness, this implies the beginning of the process of recovery of integral health and the re-signification of life itself. KEYWORDS • • • • •

cancer woman survivorship social intervention social constructionism

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Alvis, A.; Duque, C.; Rodríguez, A. Configuración identitaria en jóvenes tras la desaparición forzada de un familiar. Revista Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales, Niñez y Juventud 2015, 13 (2), 963–979. https://doi.org/10.11600/1692715x.13229270614 Arrighi, E. Necesidades de personas que han finalizado tratamientos oncológicos en España [Tesis de doctorado, Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona]. Barcelona, España, 2014. https://ddd.uab.cat/pub/tesis/2014/hdl_10803_284858/ea1de2.pdf Baeza, C.; Ulloa, D. Aproximación a la conformación de la subjetividad femenina a partir de la imagen corporal en mujeres mastectomizadas. Revista Universitaria de Psicoanálisis 2018, 18, 81–87. Recuperado de http://www.psi.uba.ar/investigaciones/ revistas/psicoanalisis/trabajos_completos/revista18/baeza.pdf Bruno, F.; Acevedo, J.; Castro, L.; Garza, I. El construccionismo social, desde el trabajo social: “modelando la intervención social construccionista”. Margen 2018, 91, 1–15. Recuperado de https://www.margen.org/suscri/margen91/castro-91.pdf Charmaz, K. Constructing Grounded Theory A Practical Guide Through Qualitative Analysis; SAGE Publications: Londres, 2006. Durá, E. y Garcés, J. La teoría del apoyo social y sus implicaciones para el ajuste psicosocial de los enfermos oncológicos. Revista de Psicología Social 1991, 6 (2), 257–271. https:// doi.org/10.1080/02134748.1991.10821649 Figueroa, M. La identidad “positiva” como violencia simbólica en mujeres con cáncer. Géneros 2018, 22 (2), 134–158. http://192.100.162.123:8080/handle/123456789/1102 Fraga, R. y Araujo, E. Modelo de terapia familiar reflexiva sistémica en un entorno hospitalario en Cuba. En Diálogos para la transformación. Experiencias en terapia y otras intervenciones psicosociales en Iberoamérica; Schnitman, D., Ed.; Taos Institute Publications/WorldShare Books: Buenos Aires, Argentina, 2015; pp 143–160. Garassini, M. Narrativas de familiares de pacientes con cáncer. CES Psicología 2015, 8, 76–102. http://www.redalyc.org/articulo.oa?id=423542417005 Gergen, K. The Social Constructionist Movement in Modern Psychology. American Psychologist 1985, 40 (3), 266–275. Recuperado de https://works.swarthmore.edu/ fac-psychology/328/ Gergen, K. Realidades y relaciones. Aproximaciones a la construcción social; Páidos: Barcelona, 1996. Gergen, K. La psicología social como historia. Anthropos 1998, 177, 39–49. Recuperado de https://dialnet.unirioja.es/servlet/articulo?codigo=193162 Gergen, K. La construcción social: emergencia y potencial. En Construcciones de la experiencia humana Vol. I; Pakman, M., Comp.; Gedisa Editorial: Barcelona, 2005; pp 139–182. Gergen, K. El yo saturado. Dilemas de identidad en el mundo contemporáneo; Páidos Surcos: Barcelona, 2006. Gergen, K. Construccionismo social, aporte para el debate y la práctica; Ediciones Uniandes: Bogotá, 2007. Greenblatt, A.; Lee, E. Cancer Survivorship and Identity: What About the Role of Oncology Social Workers? Social Work in Health Care 2018, 57 (10), 811–833. https://doi.org/10.1 080/00981389.2018.1521893 Hubbeling, H.; Rosenberg, S.; González M.; Cohn J.; Villarreal C.; Partridge, A. Psychosocial Needs of Young Breast Cancer Survivors in Mexico City, Mexico. PLoS ONE 2018, 13 (5). https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0197931

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Sanz, J.; Modolell, E. Oncología y Psicología: un modelo de interacción. Psicooncología 2004, 1 (1), 3–12. Recuperado de https://seom.org/seomcms/images/stories/recursos/ sociosyprofs/documentacion/psicooncologia/numero1_vol1/capitulo1.pdf Sociedad Americana del Cáncer. ¿Qué es el cáncer de seno?, 2017 https://www.cancer.org/ es/cancer/cancer-de-seno/acerca/que-es-el-cancer-de-seno.html Strauss, A.; Corbin, J. Bases de la investigación cualitativa: técnicas y procedimientos para desarrollar la teoría fundamentada. Medellín: Universidad de Antioquia, 2002. Wilson, E. Social Work, Cancer Survivorship and Liminality: Meeting the Needs of Young Women Diagnosed with Early Stage Breast Cancer. J. Soc. Work Practice 2019, 34 (1), 95–111. https://doi.org/10.1080/02650533.2019.1604497

CHAPTER 5

The Erotic–Amorous Relationships of Young University Students in Saltillo: Constructionist Approach Applied to the Investigation of Their Communicative Practices JESÚS GERARDO CERVANTES FLORES and GABRIELA DE LA PEÑA ASTORGA

Communication Faculty, Universidad Autónoma de Coahuila, Coahuila, México

ABSTRACT A methodological strategy is presented for the analysis of the construction meaning and communicative practices around erotic–amorous relation­ ships of young university students in Saltillo from a constructionist approach, based on the contributions of both phenomenology and prag­ matics in the field of social communication. The establishment of a meth­ odological tied up in the theoretical–empirical categories of meanings of love and erotic–amorous relationships, and the dynamics and phases of courtship in virtual spaces during quarantine by COVID-19 have led to the triangulation of qualitative techniques and the design of instruments that have been validated in the first stage of the research. This paper pres­ ents the methodological contributions of this experience, as well as some preliminary results of the first stage of the research.

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5.1 INTRODUCTION Under the premise that erotic–amorous relationships are those that are built on the meanings of love and eroticism that agents immersed in their life experiences exchange with each other and redefine themselves perma­ nently in the communicative practices to which the creative use of language gives rise, this paper examines first, how from the socioconstructionist approach it is possible to establish the theoretical relationship between social bond, communicative practices, and social use of language in situa­ tions of confinement due to the COVID-19. Subsequently, this argument is transferred to the proposal of methodological strategy that has been tested in an exploratory stage to investigate the construction of meaning and their consequent actions in the courtship stage of erotic–amorous relationships by young university students in Saltillo, Coahuila, México, through virtual platforms. 5.1.1 EROTIC–AMOROUS RELATIONSHIPS IN POSTMODERNITY AND DURING QUARANTINE BY COVID-19 Tenorio (2012) defines romantic relationships as those that fall in an increasingly range of models: dating, marriage, civil union, open relation­ ship with love, open relationship without love, sex without an affective relationship, affective relationship without sex, relationship of three, four or more people, among other forms that are decided as a couple or those who are part of the agreement. In this respect, various authors have commented on the characteristics, origins, and consequences that relation­ ships of this type offer to the people who decide to become involved in them. Morales and Diaz (2013) take up the social condition of the human being that led people to form a skim of networks and links with different systems, the same people who provide them with physical, material, emotional, and social support. Bauman (2005) argues, for his part, the people living in a liquid world—generally associated with post-moder­ nity—are desperate to relate to each other and to the world around them, but they are not comfortable with an idea of a long-term commitment because it will limit their possibilities to interact with more people and to have more and different kinds of experiences.

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As they do so, he adds, they leave open the possibility of relating to other people and this causes them distress, as it positions them as easily disposable and potentially abandoned. Suffering in love relationships is not mitigated in this way; it is only distributed over time and within the possibilities of social networks, it ends. On the other hand, Estupinyá (2013) asserts that the state of maximum happiness, emotional wellbeing, and even physical health occurs when people are in a satisfying romantic relationship. In both types of relations, information and communication technologies (ICTs) have played an important role, the relationships between the couple and all its correlated are being affected by them: courtship, casual flirting, affective communication, the search for public recognition, and romantic or sexual sociability (Rodríguez and Rodríguez, 2016). In this sense, virtual proximity is considered a reality: virtual chats are not a preparation for the terrain of the real, but are part of the real terrain (Bauman, 2005). Estupinyá (2013) refers to the commodification of affective relation­ ships, which consists of connecting to an online dating site or application where profiles are viewed as if they were a product for purchase. On these sites, people commonly search for users who are similar to them. In fact, the very algorithms of the sites lend themselves to the user being presented with people similar to him, promoting what Sztajnszrajber (2020) proposes as an expansion of the individual and inhibiting what the same author calls the encounter with the other. In the same vein, Zizek (2019) adds that relationships hardly assault the individual by surprise today. There are more and more applications on the Internet that allow people to find a partner without the unexpected of falling in love, but rather engage in digital practices that are more akin to the pursuit of infatuation. According to the same author, individuals enter current relationships by protecting themselves, afraid to feel. Short encounters with safe sex are sought, without the fatality of falling in love. However, Simmel proposed that mating practices are associated with the forms and practices of society, and García (2015), taking up the German philosopher, adds that it is in courtship where a series of communicative practices are manifested through which people show mutual interest with the aim of building an erotic–amorous relationship. On the same topic, Blandón and López (2016) conducted a study with a phenomenological approach in the city of Guadalajara, Jalisco, where they conducted in-depth interviews with 18–25 years old who were asked about current partnership

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configurations. In it, they found that young people refer to courtship as the best part of a relationship; both men and women expressed positive experiences in this regard. Bourdieu (1997) argues that the forms of partner choice are determined by society, the partner is chosen through the habitus 10 situated in a social space in the form of a market in which individuals seek to maintain or increase capital. In this way, the individual chooses people with similar habitus to match with. People outside that social field will be unattractive to the individual. If all the above is taken to the erotic–amorous relationships of the young university students in Saltillo during the COVID-19 pandemic, we can foresee that in the face of the forced limitation of their face-to-face interac­ tions, these should further explore the use of ICTs and social networks to initiate or sustain courtship activities through the virtual applications that are already part of their habitus, from where they might be rethinking their meanings of love and eroticism as well as the communicative practices through which they court and construct their love relationships. 5.1.2 EROTIC–AMOROUS RELATIONSHIPS: LANGUAGE, COMMUNICATIVE PRACTICES, AND CONSTRUCTION OF SYMBOLIC UNIVERSES ON DIGITAL PLATFORMS One cannot love or relate freely because what it is to love but to enter into a previous device that means to love that establishes in advance what it means to love; a device that teaches individuals what is to love (Sztajnsz­ rajber, 2020). We feel love and relate through the emotional techniques in which we are trained by our social environment (García, 2015). Heraclitus (540–580 BC) states that no one can bathe twice in the same river, this is, it is not possible to have the same experience twice because everything is constantly changing, constantly becoming. In this sense, nor do individuals establish a single, unequivocal, and unshakeable idea of what it is to love and relate, they learn how to do it and reconfigure it throughout their love experiences. The social construction of the idea of love as well as the way of loving and relating to others are learned by individuals in society through two communicative processes that objectify it in discourse and behavior: language and communicative practices.

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Communication is defined as a reciprocal social action using a variety of signs. It is a process of knowledge production and mediation that is fundamental to the production and reproduction of social structures (Rizo, 2015). Watzlawick (1967) posits communication as a condition of human life and social order. The individual, from the beginning of its existence, starts a complex process in which it acquires the rules of communication and the interaction with others, through which we will give meaning to his existence and his environment. For his part, Ramos (1995) points out that language is the main form of human communication. Through language, knowledge and experiences are transmitted, and in this way, the reality of a social group is formulated. This is the so-called common sense that is constructed, within the frame­ work of the social reality that constitutes everyday life par excellence. Language is the mechanism through which people experience the world and give meaning to things (Swadesh, 1996). It is through interac­ tion that collective meanings and the justification of social practices are constructed. “Language is what provides us with a way of structuring our experience of the world and of the self that we are” (Burr, 1996, p. 3). In this sense, Halliday ([1978], 2017) points out that the construction of reality is inseparable from the construction of the language of that semantic system through which reality is encoded. It is the main channel through which life models are transmitted and how to be and act as a member of a society is taught, adopting the culture, values, beliefs, ways of thinking and acting. Echeverría (2006) sees the language as a product of interaction between people and, therefore, as a social fact. Language cannot be produced by one person alone, as it arises from interactions with others. Language is therefore not an invention of the individual, but the individual is a construction of language. Language is understood as a tool that people have to shape themselves and to shape the world they live in. Thus, language is a product of a process of social and symbolic interac­ tion. When people learn language, they learn other things through language at the same time. It is in this way that the internal reality is formed and which defines it (Halliday, M [1978], 2017). Language is generative: it not only describes reality, it creates realities. While reality precedes language, language also precedes reality. In this way, language is understood as action. Through language, things happen; language creates (Echeverría, 2006).

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Halliday ([1978], 2017) understands language in two components: as a means of reflection on things, which has to do with meaning, and the ideational component; as a means of action on things, which has an interpersonal, interactive component. Through language, people reaffirm and reshape concepts by which society is defined. Therefore, language is the only way for human beings to build and construct themselves as persons and in society, as interaction with others takes place through this means. The meanings held about the erotic– amorous relationships are also constructed through language. Bruner (2006) argues that meanings are created through the individual’s experience with his or her environment. The way they understand their environment is constructed on the basis of meanings and concepts build and share with the collective. Berger and Luckmann (2006) understand collective meanings as symbolic universes, which they define as theoretical bodies that integrate different meanings and include the institutional order in a symbolic totality; are a series of meanings and everyday theoretical conceptions that are constructed from the interactions between the people who make up a social group and give rise and meaning to social practice; and these, in turn, to symbolic universes. For the case of the research of interest in this chapter, it is understood that the meaning of love and eroticism are the product of the interactions that individuals have in their erotic–amorous relationships, and that these are constructed in the basis of their appropriation of collective language in communicative practices in which they permanently feedback, resignify, or reconfigure their definition and behaviors in relation to their erotic– amorous relationship. While it is true that the signifying activity around the social construc­ tion of love is permanent, this does not start from an empty conception of prior knowledge. The habitus of love is reinforced through cultural mythology, which represents the most archaic form of maintenance of symbolic universes and legitimation in general. Mythology can be defined as a conception of reality that outlines the penetration of sacred forces into the everyday world (Berger and Luckmann, 2006). Duch and Chillón (2012) argue that there is a direct link between the mythical and the symbolic, since “mythical universes are great symbolic complexes that set-in motion, narratively and often culturally, the various resources of the imaginative faculty” (p. 183).

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Barthes ([1957] 1993) argues that everything is susceptible to becoming a myth because myth corresponds to a way of approaching reality with historical determinations and without a basis in the nature of things. Cassirer (1972) adds that what is important is not the content of myth, but the way in which it is narrated and the function it fulfills in society. These myths can be generated and reproduced by media, sociodigital networks, cinema, school, family, friends, partners, or any other space, group, or relationship to which the individual belongs, as is the case with myth of the romantic love. Most societies are pluralistic, meaning that they share a central universe and different partial universes that coexist in a state of mutual accommoda­ tion (Berger and Luckmann, 2006). Social groups share a central universe toward which they can go build and share partial universes from which they distinguish themselves. For example, love is the central universe and the partial universe could be the different types of erotic–amorous relationships in which it presents itself: friendship, courtship, or marriage; and within these relationships, all possible ways of practicing them. Within the pluralism of today’s societies, the Internet and sociodigital networks play an important role in the construction of symbolic universes that, from the myth, they create a legitimization process that conditions the ordering of the life and the actions of the person and his or her identity (Ramos, 1995). In the construction and maintenance of meanings through symbolic universes, individuals collectively reaffirm their meaning and the meanings of these meanings. Each community and each person develop their own way of coping with different situa­ tions throughout their lives (Echeverría, 2006). These forms are social, cultural, or communicative practices. It is this last that of interest to the present study. De Certeau (1980) understands the concept of practices as the set of forms and ways of thinking and doing of a community that has been cultivated and transmitted through time and cultures. Communicative practices, in particular, are networks of actions and thoughts that aim to maintain, recover, or transform the living conditions of groups and their social, cultural, and political environments (Restrepo and Valencia, 2017). They are forms of social participation that is represented through social uses of communication and forms of appropriation of symbolism, as well as aspects of peoples’ behavior (Barbero, 1981).

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Communicative practices expand and deepen the networks of senses and meanings of social groups, through which a social order is created (Valencia and Magallanes, 2015). Pérez (2013) defines communicative practices or acts as “intentional processes of transmitting symbolic information,” involving transaction­ ality between senders and receivers, and which can be mediated by a variety of sociotechnical devices to extend their reach to different time and spaces (p. 199). The meanings and communicative practices that young people construct for their erotic–amorous relationships are a series of ways of thinking, understanding, and doing that they have constructed through interactions in their social and cultural context. Under this premise, virtual spaces are a significant part of the indi­ vidual’s daily life and the communicative practices that result from these give place to various types of relationships that generate dynamics of integration and exclusion (Rubio, 2012), where the strategic management of the introduction of the person is a part of the dynamic of interaction between users who seek to initiate or maintain a courtship relationship by making use of their knowledge of symbolic displays in the presence of others, in the more or less public or more or less private spaces offered by today’s digital platforms. In today’s most popular sociodigital networks, there are, for example, public spaces such as the Facebook wall or the Instagram feed, and private spaces such as Facebook messenger or Instagram direct messages. In virtual spaces, interactions arise similar to those that would arise in any public space not mediated by ICTs, the same goes for the virtual private space where private or intimate practices, such as sexting, emerge. In fact, the user can determine how private or public he/she wants a publication or interaction with another user or users to be, by selecting who can access it. Medina (2010) points out that the virtual world has blurred the bound­ aries of the intimate, the private, and the public. The private face-to-face action, at times, becomes a disembodied and shared experience in the virtual public space. In the virtual space, moreover, communication is crossed by personal means of communication. Unlike face-to-face communication, individuals can communicate despite physical and sometimes temporal distances. Personal means are all that enable interpersonal communication (Helles, 2014), although they also have the potential to be used as mass media.

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Personal means not only allow the individual to act in several contexts and different times at the same time, but that its users have the freedom to decide if, when and how they want to participate in an interaction, without the need to show their faces or give explanations. ICTs have profoundly transformed communication between people. The uses that individuals confer to them, particularly to the Internet and social networks, have changed communication practices and daily life activities (Tabernero et al., 2009) In a relatively short period, accelerated by ICTs, cultural changes have been generated in the field of norms, values, and costumes that guide and regulate affective relationships (Hernández et al., 2017). Communication mediated by cell phones has become a component of everyday life where public, private, and intimate issues are addressed. Interpersonal relationships are affected by virtualization processes and it is necessary to pay attention to the uses and social practices that give rise to the construction of meaning around technological innovation. The Internet plays a relevant role in the changes in communication around subjective relationships, including relationships crossed by eroticism and love (Caceres et al., 2009). The omnipresence and ubiquity of technology in everyday life have given rise to a virtual space where physical copresence does not limit human sociability, allowing the multiplication of meetings with uninter­ rupted availability (Caceres et al., 2017). Today’s youth are in a social dynamic where technology is fully integrated into their daily lives, being part of most of their daily activities (Serrano-Puche, 2017, p. 76). Virtuality has allowed the development of various fields of interaction that are constantly multiplying and diversifying, that give rise to different forms of interactions mediated by ICTs and the reality that their users construct through them, as De Pablos (2018) sets out, where this media­ tion is currently linked to the deconstruction of the concept of reality and its representation. So, mediation is the interaction that occurs in virtual space through technological devices that develop new meanings and ways of understanding and representing reality, generating changes in the prac­ tices, and meanings of love and erotic–amorous relationships. Remediation, on the other hand, is that interactional back-and-forth between a means of communication and information and another; between one space and another (De Pablos, 2018). This form of remediation allows us to understand the ways in which contemporary young people

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interact in different media in the virtual space around their erotic–amorous relationships. In this regard, Caceres et al. (2009) reread Goffman’s thesis on the presentation of the person ([1959] 2001) and sets out that the presentation of the processes of interpersonal communication mediated by technology gives rise to an individual characterization, the young’s people roles in the relationship with others are more complex, given that through these spaces, young people can manage multiple identities, as well as the falsifi­ cation, concealment, and alteration of data where “young people construct and reconstruct their identity in the scenarios of everyday life, [where it is necessary to investigate] what is the map traced by the multiple trajec­ tories in which the subject puts into play the different characters that he constructs and manages when he relates with others” (p. 214). 5.1.3 YOUTH MEDIATED BY ICTS DURING THE QUARANTINE PERIOD In the current pandemic environment that young people are going through love and erotic–amorous relationships seem to be marked by what Reguillo (2020) describes as “covidianity,” by which the author refers to the interactions that occur between the event and everyday life; normality and abnormality; risk and safety in conditions of social isolation. Reguillo (op. Cit) adds that this is a metaphor from which to name those processes, practices, configurations, and meanings that are present in everyday dynamics, in the media accounts, and the way how social media is used during the COVID-19 quarantine. In “covidianity,” he continues, what is happening is a disrupted locus, a place where the outside and the inside are not entirely clear, and where, on the basis of this logic, an effort should be made to reconsider the idea of the body and the public. Since the body is a locus of contagion, this gives space to rethink relationships, to see them without the element of the body present, as has been done up to now with regard to erotic–amorous links. The covidian context (Reguillo, 2020) leads us to live an experience where we jump from screen to screen, from application to application, where communication and the condition of presence are reinvented, and concludes the author.

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5.1.4 MEXICAN YOUTH AND THE INTERNET In terms of digital social spaces, Lucas (2009) mentions that the Internet can be understood as a social construction, since it is not that this is being done through individual habits that later become group habits and that have been shaping virtual institutions and eventually become legitimizations. The Internet is part of Mexican’s daily reality, with young people being the main users of this service and who have given ICTs a central role, by considering the Internet as an allied means to manage their communica­ tion and entertainment needs (Rivera and Carriço, 2019). The Internautas Mexicanos survey (IAB Mexico, 2019) shows that sociodigital networks are increasingly relevant in Mexico since 84% of Mexicans use social networks in an average of four social networks per user. In Mexico, Internet use has grown exponentially in recent years. According to figures from INEGI (2019), there are currently 79.1 million people in Mexico who use the Internet, where young people between the ages of 12 and 24 make up the 35% of all users. Unlike in 2009, when there was a connection average of 4 h with 28 min per user, today the connection to the digital world, due to the use of smartphones, is 24/7 (IAB Mexico, 2019). According to the MX Internet Association (2018), the smartphone is the main connected device of the Internet user in Mexico with 76% compared to other devices and the domi­ nant activity is accessing digital social networks with 89% of total Internet activity, where Facebook (98%) is the most widely used. The second most consumed sociodigital network by Mexican Internet users is WhatsApp, with 91%. In addition, Mexican users have, on average, five digital social networks, and only 1% have no social network at all. Meanwhile, 64% of Internet users are connected to the Internet 24 h a day. These figures reinforce what Rubio (2012) argues, that young people, through the Internet, its applications and related meeting sites, present symbolic appropriation of a reality with which they identify and through which they feel part of the generational group to which they belong. Thus, the Internet represents a space in which people—and particularly young people—cement their identities and establish social groups through which they construct their realities, with social digital networks as a tool to achieve this. Through them, they can carry out—in addition to recreational and leisure activities—socialization practices such as establishing new friendships and even finding a partner (Domínguez and López, 2015).

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Digital social networks are also known as social media allow users to be a part of both the means and the message in their communicative prac­ tices (Del Fresno, 2012). According to Crovi (2016), the most significant youth digital practices are found in sociodigital networks, a space through which they socialize and communicate among peers. Rivero and Carriço (2019) add that young people use these networks to expand or enrich their offline social life through online activities, interacting in both cyberspace and physical space without making much of a distinction between the two. “Access to new forms of interaction and communication brought about by digital environments, therefore, broadens the sphere of meaning in which the meaning in which the subject moves on the stage of everyday life” (Rizo, 2013, p. 61). Sociodigital networks have resulted in a virtual space that has repercus­ sions on face-to-face interactions: a space where young people can access a countless number of people with whom they can interact and initiate an erotic–amorous relationship. They are also a public space for the surveil­ lance of each other’s lives, a space where they can access information from others without the need for a physical encounter or direct interaction with the person. Finally, it is proposed that the internalization of communicative prac­ tices that take place in physical and virtual spaces is giving space to new symbolic universes around love and erotic–amorous relationships, this means that today’s young people are interacting in spaces with new rules and codes. Social constructionism, approached from the perspective of language and communicative practices, allows us to observe the social reality of young university students in Saltillo, particularly of their communicative processes on virtual platforms, from which they construct meanings and practices around love and their erotic–amorous relationships. 5.2 SUBJECTIVITY AS A WAY OF KNOWING VIRTUAL REALITY It is through subjectivity that the meanings of young university students have about love can be accessed, as well as the communicative practices that take place in courtship: how they attract attention, the way they intro­ duce themselves to others, the first approaches and encounters in virtual spaces.

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This work seeks to generate knowledge from subjectivity, understood as the experience that people have; the construction of their ideas, senses, and meanings around a topic. Methodologically, it is necessary to turn to the approaches of three theoretical aspects that focus their analysis on subjectivities: the interpretative paradigm, the phenomenological approach, and the socioconstructionist perspective. Subsequently, the corresponding empirical approximation techniques are proposed in order to present our object of study from a theoretical approach: focus groups, interviewing, and nonparticipant observation as complementary qualitative information construction techniques and, in addition, the results obtained through each of them can be triangulated for the final analysis and interpretation of the phenomenon. In this research proposal, we understand knowledge not as something that is discovered but as something that is constructed with subjectivity. In this way, knowledge is recognized as a process of construction that arises through the communicative act between the researcher and the partici­ pants. Therefore, research instruments are seen as qualitative techniques for constructing information rather than for collecting it. Coulon (1998) argues that the world is not given once and for all but is constantly being constructed through the daily actions of the individuals who make it up. Galindo (1998), for his part, suggests that all that exists is perception. Objectivity is nothing other than a moment of reflexivity that arises from constant observation. This research is framed in an emic and micro context: emic because it seeks to observe perspectives, the representations stated and explained from the point of view of those who live it, trying to put aside the researcher’s cultural framework in order to aspire to understand that of the other (Orozco and González, 2011); and micro because it analyzes what happens at the level of the individual in their interactions and their particular cases (Orozco and González, 2011). 5.2.1 INTERPRETATIVE PARADIGM An interpretative paradigm is understood as that which is based on the idea that the world is explained from within individuals, that is, from the ideas, senses, and meanings arising from their experience; from their subjectivity. The interpretative paradigm does not seek to discover objective knowl­ edge—as positivism pursues it—but is interested in reaching a consensual

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knowledge (Orozco and González, 2011). It is relevant to understand consensual knowledge because it is through it that individuals assign mean­ ings to things and produce their practices. In this sense, Thomas (1928, cit. in Orozco and González, 2011) points out that it is not relevant whether a situation is true, what really matters is whether individuals define it as real because if they do, it will be real in its consequences. Positivism seems to deny that reality can be constructed from subjec­ tivity not only of the study population analyzed but also of the researcher, this is not to say that this should be recognized as an individual that will interpret his or her research work from his or her own cultural framework. There is no other way to know a subject in depth if it is not by recognizing oneself and recognizing it as subjective. The subjectivist and interpretative dimension state that reality is made by people, therefore, they can only be explained on the basis of individual’s perception of them (Murcia and Jaramillo, 2000). 5.3 PHENOMENOLOGICAL AND SOCIOCONSTRUCTIONIST APPROACH The whole knowledge of a person is constructed in society. Through their membership groups, learns the meaning of things and codefines the mean­ ings of their experiences. Phenomenology is a movement characterized by its focus on the personal experience of individuals (Álvarez-Gayou, 2003), the knowledge of the world, both everyday and scientific, is based on constructions, this is, of the abstractions, generalizations, and idealizations that individuals make regarding the organization of thought and social order (Dreher, 2012). Phenomenological research assumes that reality depends on who is looking at it and is therefore subjective (Orozco and González, 2011). Positivists observe social facts independently of the subjectivity of the individuals who experience them; phenomenology seeks to see things from the point of view of the people who experience them (Taylor and Bogdan, 1987) and aims to understand what they experience and how they experience a particular event, issue, or phenomenon (Creswell, 2007). Social constructionism as a methodological approach focuses primarily on explaining the processes by which people describe or explain the world

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in which they live (Gergen, 1985). Constructionism can only be seen as an approach to the subject, to his daily life, to his day-to-day life, to his social reality. Crombie and Nigthingdale (1999) maintain that four factors link the different versions of social constructionism: (1) the supremacy of social processes. Our knowledge is fabricated in our everyday interactions; (2) the historical and cultural specificity; (3) knowledge and action go together; (4) a critical stance: by understanding that knowledge is relative and that it also emerges from social practice, constructionism takes a critical position toward positivism. For Berger and Luckmann (2006), social constructionism is the process by which reality is constructed. In other words, is the process of building the parts. The process takes place through social dialectics, which allows knowledge to be built; knowledge is objectified in things, activities, signs, or symbols that materialize this knowledge and give it different values. 5.3.1 QUALITATIVE APPROXIMATION Izcara (2014) states that there is no standardized procedure in qualitative research because it is constructed according to the object and population in study, resembling a craft process. Quantitative research is flexible and inductive. Flexible because it does not start from a previously approved and rigid model, but is assembled and configured in the process of data generation; and inductive because it seeks to create a theory from the data that emerges from the empirical world, of the study population’s own voice (Taylor and Bogdan, 1987). It is a way of confronting the empirical world with the aim of knowing and explaining it and refers to the type of research that produces descrip­ tive data, this is, all those words, gestures, actions, expressions, reflec­ tions, and other communicative acts that emerge from informants (Taylor and Bogdan, 1987). In qualitative research, validity is more important than the reliability or reproducibility of the study (Taylor and Bogdan, 1987). Validity refers to the relationship between what is sought to be explained and what the study ultimately explains; as well as the relationship between the knowledge presented in the study and what happens in the empirical reality (Izcara, 2014).

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Reliability is the degree of agreement between independent observers and the conclusions that emerged from the observations produced by the measurement instrument. A reliable study is replicable and its results are predictable (Izcara, 2014). However, in qualitative research, reliability loses relevance because when the context of the study changes, this can lead to different results and this is where the richness of qualitative studies lies: in explaining in depth the context in which it is found. The qualitative perspective—unlike the quantitative one—does not aim to bring up universal truths or laws but recognizes the diversity and plurality of social realities (Arellano, 2013) and seeks to understand the experiences on which the meanings give rise to individual’s social prac­ tices are based. 5.3.2 METHODOLOGICAL STRATEGY As it is intended to analyze the social construction of love and erotic– amorous relationships of young university students in Saltillo through the meanings and communicative practices carried out in virtual spaces from a phenomenological and socioconstructionist approach, a combination of complementary techniques is used: focus groups, semistructured inter­ views, and nonparticipant observation as techniques for the qualitative perspective for the construction of information. The first two techniques are part of the discursive techniques of information construction. Izcara (2014) argues that focus groups allow the construction of shared notions previously negotiated among the group and, individual interviews, the understanding of the individual elements of the phenomenon. In the present research, they are used to understand the meaning and the processes of construction of meaning that give rise to communicative practices around love and erotic–amorous relationships. Sierra (1998) lays out that both focus groups and interviews are quali­ tative techniques for the production and interpretation of complementary information that are often used simultaneously as forms of validation of the information produced, as used in this study, with the addition of the observation. Social scientific research is going through an unprecedented scenario due to the COVID-19 pandemic that has forced mankind to modify its relation of coexistence where social distance has become a necessary

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practice and digital platforms, the appropriate channels of communication to reduce or eliminate the risk of contagion. From the above condition, it was verified that the techniques to be used could be adapted to virtual fields without compromising the discourse or performance of the key informants. 5.3.3 FOCUS GROUPS: FIRST STAGE Although the expressions discussion groups, focus groups, and session groups can be used interchangeably, the difference in the denomination lies in the meaning or use given to them. Discussion groups are used with the aim of getting participants to argue, discuss, and reach consensus; the focus groups are used especially in market research; group interviews or groups sessions are described by Russi (1998) as a series of arguments where—rather than generating a discussion or reaching a consensus—the diversity of opinions of those who make up the group is sought. In this study, the focus group is proposed as the ideal technique for young university students to argue, discuss, and reach a consensus of how they understand love and erotic–amorous relationships, where and with what meaning the courtship of these relationships takes place. Focus or discussion groups, according to Álvarez-Gayou (2003), are a tool that allows the researcher to interact and make clarification with the participants; collecting nonverbal information, going deeper into the subject under discussion, and be flexible in the treatment of the topics. Orozco and González (2011) define the focus group as a multiple interview in which the most important thing is the focus group, over and above indi­ vidual perceptions or contributions, is to capture the consensus reached by those involved. The focus group is an artificial group as it is originated and unraveled in the very exercise of research and seeks to capture the experience of indi­ viduals, their way of thinking, feeling, and living Álvarez-Gayou, (2003). The ultimate aim of the focus group is the production of a discourse on a particular topic (Izcara, 2014), in this case, the meanings of love and erotic–amorous relationships, as well as the courtship of erotic–amorous relationships in virtual spaces. The discussion highlights the processes of identification and differen­ tiation, as well as social and personal values, conflicts, alliances, and other

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dynamics that provide relevant information that transcends the individual argument (Álvarez-Gayou, 2003). 5.3.4 SELECTION AND NUMBER OF PARTICIPANTS Álvarez-Gayou (2003) points out that the criterion for group membership is not statistical, but structural, this is to say, consists of the selection of people who possess the social type under investigation, in this case, young university students. Furthermore, the group must combine minimum homogeneity and heterogeneity. In this study, all participants are hetero­ sexual male and female university students, aged between 18 and 23, from different schools and careers. However, age in the concept of youth is also a social construction, for the practical purposes of the methodology, the participants in this research have a biological age between 18 and 23 years. These limits do not obviate social age, on the contrary, but are still in play because there are concep­ tual and experiential differences between the ages in this range, in terms of time-intensity as stated by Valenzuela (2009). Several authors (Izcara, 2014; Ibañez, 2007; Álvarez-Gayou, 2003; Russi, 1998) point out that a focus group should be made up of a minimum of four and a maximum of 12 people, preferably unknown, belonging to spaces of collective identification. Based on the above, eight focus groups were conducted with partici­ pants from four different universities, two groups per university: one out of five male students and one out of five female students. Thus, four focus groups of women from four universities and four focus groups of men from the same four universities were conducted. The decision was made to have separate groups by gender, since a validation session of the instrument was held with the participation of potential study participants, it was observed that given the nature of the topics to be addressed in the focus groups, would feel more comfortable if it were between people of the same sex. 5.3.5 VENUE OF THE SESSION Álvarez-Gayou (2003) suggests that the place of the session should be a neutral place that does not represent threats or discomfort that determine or condition the arguments and discussion of the participants.

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Because of the above-mentioned situation with regard to the COVID pandemic, the focus groups were conducted online via the Zoom platform, the same that has the feature of being able to record audio and video of each session, with the prior consent of the participants. 5.3.6 SESSION DETAILS Izcara (2014) recommends that participants should not be given detailed information on the specific objectives; at the most, a general idea about the object of study. In this research, Izcara’s suggestions were followed by providing the members of the discussion group with the general ideas of the discussion. Prior to the session, a questionnaire was administered to collect demo­ graphic information about the participants, also, an informed consent form was sent to them, which each member accepted via email. Before each session, a focus group form was filled out, detailing various data—gender, age, career, semester, university—for each group member. In the session, once all the participants were connected, began with a general presentation of the study and the researcher, the researcher then gave a general explanation of the dynamics of the session, including the importance of confidentiality and the need to record the audio and video of the session. 5.3.7 FOCUS GROUP INSTRUMENTS This part of the methodological strategy sought to answer the four research questions, concerning the meanings of love, the meanings, and practices of erotic–amorous relationships as well as on the virtual spaces where diverse communicative practices are carried out around courtship and erotic–amorous relationships. 5.3.8 PRELIMINARY RESULTS OF THE FOCUS GROUPS Some preliminary results from the analysis of the first stage of this research are presented below. Analyzing the experiences and meanings of the participants allowed us to find that what was theoretically held as erotic–amorous relationships in this work, it is more convenient to refer

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to them as love relationships, love is an essential element in this type of relationship, but not the erotic moments that are not inherent to the rela­ tionship, according to the informants themselves. In the field of virtual space, Instagram was found to be the social network most used and that courtship settles especially on this social network and not on others. Although Instagram is not a network aimed to courtship—in contradistinction to tinder, for example, participants stated that they prefer to use Instagram for these purposes because they are distressful of social media and dating apps. A clear route was finally found around the courtship of Saltillo’s University youth on Instagram: (1) they follow each other on Instagram; (2) women postpictures in their stories or feed where they think, they look beautiful and wait for reactions; (3) men, once they see the stories, they react to them; (4) they (women) decide which reactions to respond to and which not to respond to. The reactions that are answered are followed by a first conversation; (5) if the conversation flows in the Instagram chat and they like each other, one of them suggests exchanging WhatsApp numbers. This point is considered a considerable sign of progress, to the big step; (6) if the conversation continues and intensifies on WhatsApp, the first date is proposed. In this route, there seems to be more active role for men than for women. But it is women though who decide with whom to start a conversation. The focus groups triggered, through the information that emerged from them, the instruments for semistructured interviews and nonparticipant observation. 5.4 INTERVIEWS, SECOND STAGE For this research, the interview is a suitable technique if the three elements marked by Taylor and Bogdan (1987) for its use are taken into consider­ ation: (1) the interests and the objectives of the research are defined; (2) scenarios or people are not otherwise accessible; and (3) the aim is to clarify the subjective experience. The interview is an instrument that generates knowledge from the interaction between two people: the interviewee and the interviewer. It focuses on the everyday world, the lived experience of the interviewee and the meaning he/she gives to it (Steiner, 2011) as well as allowing

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understanding beyond what it is observed, in order to unravel the hidden motivations of informants (Izcara, 2014). Interview questions and answers tend to be extensive. Unlike quantita­ tive questionnaires, qualitative interviews seek to capture the discourses and language of the interviewee (Orozco and González, 2011). Interview can be used as a research technique when seeking to under­ stand systems of norms and values, collective representations, as well as individualized beliefs about a particular issue (Sierra, 1998). The interview in addition to being a source of information to the researcher is in some cases an enriching experience for the interviewee, as long as it becomes a space where, from their discourse, they find new ways of understanding their vital world (Steiner, 2011). In other words, it can generate reflections in the participants that give meaning to his or her life, as was the case with the focus groups in this research. 5.4.1 INTERVIEW CONSTRAINTS However, the interview has the following limitations: (1) the interviewer, not understanding the experiential context of his interlocutor, and may not understand his language (Sierra, 1998); (2) some interlocutors are not able to express their experiences (Sierra, 1998); (3) it is possible that there is a difference between what the informant says in the interview and what he/ she does in his/her practical, everyday life (Taylor and Bogdan, 1987); (4) the interviewer does not directly observe the informant in his or her daily life, which makes it difficult to understand the context from which he or she is speaking and has to limit himself or herself to verbalizing it (Taylor and Bogdan, 1987). For these reasons, the interview is not considered as the only technique for gathering information, as by triangulating it with another discursive technique such as focus groups, and with a nondiscursive and informa­ tion gathering such as a nonparticipant observation, the limitations of the interview reduced in the present study. 5.4.2 SEMISTRUCTURED INTERVIEWS Two types of interviews stand out as research techniques in the social sciences: the in-depth interview and the focused interview. The first is

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distinguished by its holistic character, looking for experiences, ideas, values, and meanings of the interviewee regarding a specific topic; the second aims to answer very specific questions, takes a topic as a focus of interest, and directs the conversation toward the questions it seeks to answer (Sierra, 1998). For this study, a hybrid approach between these two types was gener­ ated, taking the free structure of an in-depth interview with specific topics to be addressed. Such a technique is a semistructured interview, which allows the adjustment of the sequence of questions, as well as their number, depending on the situation of each interviewee (Álvarez-Gayou, 2003). The semistructured interview aims to understand social reality from the perspective of the individuals who live it. It is similar to an everyday conversation, but has a specific purpose and focus, previously set by the researcher (Steiner, 2011). 5.4.3 SELECTION AND NUMBER OF INFORMANTS Sierra (1998) points out that it is not possible to fix in advance the number of participants that the research will have in its application of the inter­ view, because it is not possible to define, a prior, at what point theoretical saturation will occur 12. Nevertheless, a starting point can be set, that is, how many interviews will be conducted at the outlet. One way to establish a group of informants is through quotas, which Pimienta (2000) defines as a type of sampling in which the number of interviews to be carried out is established beforehand, considering the different segments that make up the study group to be questioned; in this case, to a group of young university students from Saltillo. Given that the results of the focus groups are still being analyzed, it is proposed for now that there will be four interviews: two students from public universities—one male and one female—and two students from private universities—one male and one female—in which they will delve into the communicative practices in virtual spaces of pandemic courtship activities. 5.4.4 INTERVIEW INSTRUMENT For the structure of the instrument, the semistructured interview instru­ ment of the Casa del Migrante de Saltillo study was used as a reference. Health and solidarity in the phenomenon of Central American migration

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in transit through Mexico (De la Peña et al., 2020), since its design takes into consideration the categories of meanings and sociocommunicative practices, considering the cultural, social, and economic diversity of the interviewees, as well as their power of operation in the topics of interest. 5.5 OBSERVATION, THIRD STAGE For mankind, observation has been the cornerstone of knowledge (ÁlvarezGayou, 2003). Hernandez Sampieri (2014) points out that observation is the only means used in all qualitative studies. Regardless of the techniques used to complement it—interviews or focus groups—observation should not be omitted; it must be present in any study with a qualitative approach. Although observation is normally located in physical spaces where direct contact with the study population is possible, due to the nature of this research, the observation will be conducted in the virtual field, specifi­ cally on Instagram. 5.5.1 NONPARTICIPANT OBSERVATION Campos and Lule (2012) define nonparticipant observation as an observa­ tion carried out by an external agent—the researcher—who does not inter­ vene in the facts, in such a way that it is not linked to the study population. Nonparticipant observation is the part of what Hua (2017) defines as nonintrusive research techniques. In this type of technique, data are collected without the researchers directly interfering in lives of the participants. Hua (2017) sets out that digital media have greatly expanded the horizon for the use of nonintrusive techniques, among which the observa­ tion in social networks stands out. One of the disadvantages the author raises is that with nonintrusive methods such as nonparticipant observa­ tion, limited information can be gathered. However, the triangulation of this technique with other techniques such as focus groups and interviews in this research can significantly reduce the risk. Although it would seem that nonparticipant observation is closer to a technique used by positivist approaches and participant observation to interpretive ones, in this case, nonparticipant observation is chosen because of the historical moment (the universal quarantine situation) and the risk of emotional involvement of the researcher and the participants.

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5.5.2 CATEGORICAL OR STRUCTURED OBSERVATION SYSTEM Observation systems refer to the forms and techniques used to observe the object of study. This research will take the categorical systems proposed by Rodriguez et al. (1999, cit. in Álvarez-Gayou, 2003), which refers to closed systems made up of categories prefixed by the researcher, where the phenomenon and categories are pre-established in the research itself are observed. Campos and Lule (2012) define structured observation as method­ ological observation based on an observation guide in which categories previously defined by the researcher are indicated in order to obtain clas­ sified and systematic information. This system was chosen because the analysis of the focus groups made it possible to define the specific categories of the communicative practices carried out on Instagram around courtship. In this way, it seeks to validate or refute the results obtained in the first and second stages of the study. 5.5.3 SCOPE AND LIMITATIONS OF THE OBSERVATION Observation, like any other research technique, has its scope and limitations. Within the scope, Campos and Lule (2012) state that it is possible to observe events in a natural way, to describe facts accurately, to obtain meaningful data from a specific context if categories are considered a priori, and that it is a relatively affordable instrument in terms of cost of implementation. On the other hand, the limitation considered by Campos and Lule (2012) is that the researcher may encounter variables that are difficult to observe, that there is a risk of bias in what is observed, and the use of erroneous judgment if the categories are not adequately linked to the observed reality. Based on the above, in this research, it is planned that observation will not be the only instrument for the object of study and to be used in combination with the interview and focus groups. 5.5.4 OBSERVATION GUIDE The observation guide is the instrument with which the researcher— observer—focuses and systematizes the object of study when collecting information.

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Campos and Lule (2012) propose two phases for its application: in the first, the categories of the object of study and the indicators to be observed must be defined; in the second, it is necessary to organize the timing of the observation and to have the means to carry it out. In the present research, the category to be observed through this tech­ nique is the communicative practices in courtship. The observation period will be of 15 days and will be applied to accounts chosen at convenience on the Instagram social network. 5.6 FIELDWORK The fieldwork designed in three stages consisting of focus groups, inter­ views, and nonparticipant observation, lasts 7 months, and is conducted entirely online. Given that the informants in the study are young university students and that virtual platforms are part of their daily lives, it is expected to increase the feasibility of online fieldwork. 5.7 CONCLUSIONS The method of this research is based on an interpretative paradigm. From social constructionism and phenomenology, we try to explain that through the subjective experience of the individuals who live the problem of study, knowledge about the meanings of love and erotic–amorous relationships are constructed. It starts from the premise that the world is not given once and forever, but it is in constant deconstruction, it is therefore understood that knowledge is not discovered, but it is collectively constructed, and the way to build it is through subjectivity, this is, the personal experience of those who live the social phenomenon alongside others. In fact, all that a person has by the way of knowledge was learned through communicative processes in their social interactions, whether they are face to face, mediated by technology, time, space, and social and cultural memory. In this sense, the construction of scientific knowledge, especially in the field of social sciences, can only be constructed in interaction with others. One way to access the experience of those others is through the dialogic communicative process of the interview or focus groups, as well as the nonverbal communicative process of observation.

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These communicative processes can take place in physical copresence or through virtual spaces, as mentioned above and as happened in the present investigation where, since it was conducted in a pandemic and confined context, virtual spaces where ideal for safeguarding the integrity of the researcher and the informants. The informants of the present study explain, through their experience, what love is for them and how they experience their erotic–amorous relationships on virtual sites during the COVID-19 pandemic and take a leading role in this study, since they are the ones who construct it through their own interpretation of their social world in confinement. Although the information to analyze the results is based on the subjec­ tive experience of informants, it is the crossing of three qualitative tech­ niques that are expected to allow us to obtain a complementary panorama of the action and discourse of the participants, as to validate their answers in the instruments of both techniques. One of the most significant findings in the fieldwork conducted so far on social intervention is that the focus groups, in addition to being a qualitative technique for the construction of information, were also an intervention technique, since some participants reported that the group interaction allowed them to reflect on angles of the topic that they had not thought about before. For example, they are bothered by the assigned social roles and are capable of breaking them in order to generate a friendlier environment for people, as one of the informants commented: I take away with me the reflection of the responsibility we have as a next generation of adults to change these paradigms that to do so much damage to the society, because in the end these are things that our parents taught us and at some point, we are going to teach our children, then it is, literally, in our hands to break all these stereotypes (Male student from a private university)

Focus groups, as well as interviews and almost and qualitative research technique based on conversation, can be an instrument of intervention, since it is a space for dialogue and reflection that allows participants to question the state of things together with their peers—in the case of the discussion groups—and to devise how to make social changes. Thus, it is concluded that a social constructionist research that considers in its methodology not only the discussion of the participants’ experiences

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but can be a vehicle for collective dialogue processes, at the same time, the way to allow the participants to define their own problems, visualize their possible solutions in the settings of their experiences, and facilitate the path of an interaction oriented to social change. KEYWORDS • • •

construction of meaning and communication practices erotic–amorous relationships in young university students constructionist methodology in the field of social communication

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CHAPTER 6

Narratives of Family Abandonment: A Constructionist Intervention in Institutionalized Adolescents FRANCISCO ALEJANDRO MOYEDA MARTÍNEZ and LAURA FABIOLA NÚÑEZ UDAVE

Faculty of Social Work, Universidad Autónoma de Coahuila, Saltillo, México

ABSTRACT According to Chavez (2012), family abandonment causes severe damage to the person, affecting integral development and quality of life. The purpose of this study is to work on this issue through research and intervention, the narratives of five institutionalized adolescents from Saltillo were identified, all of whom mentioned feeling loneliness, sadness, uncertainty, fear, and failure. Based on these narratives, a socioconstructionist inter­ vention model was designed, based on Kisnerman’s (1998) deconstruc­ tion, construction, and reconstruction, and was operationalized through a project that contemplated as axes of intervention: the self, the family, and the context. An evaluation moment was added where the resignified narratives of the axes worked on were identified. Atlas.ti 7 software was used for data processing and the intervention gave voice to the social actors to share their narratives, which in turn favored the construction of new discourses. As part of the results, the social actors resignified their narratives on the axes worked on. An important accomplishment is that the

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authorities of the institution where we worked are interested in replicating this project. 6.1 INTRODUCTION This chapter focuses its attention on the issue of family abandonment, since as Chavez (2012) points out, when a minor is abandoned by his or her family, it causes severe damage to the person, affecting and bringing with it, problems in the integral development, and quality of life of each of the children and young people. In this sense, according to the authors such as Pineda and Moreno (2008), family abandonment is considered a type of violence in infants, as it alters their integral development. In this regard, Duque et al. (2003), cited in Pineda and Moreno (2008), establish the following categories to refer to the scenarios in which violence occurs: violence resulting from an armed conflict, violence produced by organized criminal groups, daily psychosocial violence, and domestic violence. In these classifications, reference is made to the fact that all violence falls directly on the subject and his or her closest dynamics (Ramírez Herrera, 2006). In this sense, it is considered important to study the issue of child or family abandonment because for the authors such as Pineda and Moreno (2008) emphasize should be placed on the different types of violence, as these generate the probability of child abandonment or other abusive behaviors that lead to breakup and separation from the family environment. Many of the minors who have experienced this problem are abandoned to their fate, others with a different situation are placed in shelters or foster homes, where they receive basic care and are provided with the necessary conditions to continue their integral development. It is precisely that this last type of infants with whom this research was carried out over a period of 2 years in the city of Saltillo, Coahuila. It should be noted that Coahuila has 46 shelters distributed throughout the state, these include 885 children and adolescents who are in the custody of the state. It should be noted that of the total number of shelters, 37 assistance centers are certified by the Office of the Attorney General for Children and Family (PRONNIF) for their operation (PRONNIF, 2017). In this regard, this research involved the participation of two popula­ tions, infants and young people, who were institutionalized, and worked from a qualitative methodology in order to diagnose the current situations

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or social realities that each participant witnessed. Once these social realities were identified, we worked with a social intervention based on Kenneth Gergen’s social constructionism. Social constructionism, in the words of López Silva (2013), arises from the analysis and work carried out by Kenneth Gergen, taking the ideas of Berger and Luckmann (1986) as a basis to indicate that reality and the subject are social constructions and that the claim of objective knowledge about them is a burden that comes from the rationalist tradition that founded the social sciences. As time passed by, Gergen radicalizes his postulates and centered his main premise on social constructionism is a relativistic theory of knowledge that places the emphasis of its analysis on the ways in which people explain reality and themselves. The social constructionist intervention carried out in this research focused on the development of an intervention model, which, in the words of Kisnerman (1998), “is a simplified and schematic construction of reality, which arises from a theory and as such can be empirically tested in practice” (Kisnerman, 1998). For the construction of an intervention model, three basic principles have to be considered: (1) have a series of phases or stages that define the set of actions to be carried out, also understood as a documented intervention strategy that can be analyzed, discussed, corrected, and evaluated; (2) to have a set of theoretical and methodological references to support the proposal and, finally, to have a set of theoretical and methodological references to support the proposal; (3) establish a flow or critical path of work (Ander-Egg, 1991). Taking as reference Kisnerman (1998) who plans the methodological process of constructionism in (1) deconstruction, (2) construction, and (3) reconstruction. The model for this study was called “Toward under­ standing my context,” which was structured in three phases, (1) previous narratives about the self and contexts, (2) social constructions of the self, family, and context, and (3) reconfiguring the SELF, each responding to the methodological process outlined by Kisnerman (1998). 6.2 DEVELOPMENT 6.2.1 CHILD ABANDONMENT AND INSTITUTIONALIZED MINORS To understand more about the issue of family abandonment, it is worth­ while to look deeper into the concept and before anything else, differen­ tiate between physical abandonment and child neglect, for this purpose,

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Arruabarrena and de Paul (1994), cited in Moreno Manso (2012), are analyzed who mentioned that abandonment or child neglect is understood as a situation of lack of protection where the child’s basic physical needs such as food, hygiene, clothing, protection, and supervision in potentially dangerous situations, education and medical care are temporarily or permanently unattended by any member of the unit where the child lives. Martinez and de Paul (1993), cited in Moreno Manso (2012), make a clear distinction between maltreatment due to neglect or physical abandonment. These authors consider that maltreatment by negligence is the consequence of inappropriate actions on the part of the parents or the carers, in the face of the physical, psychological, social, and intellectual needs of the child in their care. At the same time, they consider it to be typical for those families where there are additional priority needs, the situation of abuse may be conscious or unconscious, whether due to igno­ rance, lack of education, poverty, and among other situations. Also, physical neglect is understood as a situation of child neglect, in which the degree of neglect is extreme and the physical consequences for the child are very high. Therefore, an inherent difficulty with the concept of child neglect or physical abandonment abuse lies in establishing clearly what is the boundary for considering a situation as neglect or physical neglect abuse. And as a consequence, it can be judged, within the legis­ lative framework for the protection of minors, as a situation of risk or abandonment, with all that this entails in terms of the implementation of certain mechanisms by the responsible administration (Moreno Manso, 2012). Family abandonment has been a relevant issue that has been studied by several researchers, as part of these studies we can cite Dávil and Miliani (2018), who claim that since the beginning of the western civilization, in various circumstances, parents from different social strata abandoned their children in different ways. The most common form with which neglect is associated is exposure. Children sale, surrogacy, this is, when the child is given to a surrogate mother at the time of birth, and donations are the forms of abandonment that can be found at different times. The abandonment of children by their parents throughout history has had many causes, often deriving from personal, social, family situations, and among others, that lead to this event, Dávil and Miliani (2018) delve into some of the causes, mentioning that these are due to parent’s decisions when presenting situations where they could not support their children,

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due to their poverty or a disaster, they abandoned them out of despera­ tion; they also abandon them when they are the product of a forbidden relationship, such as incest or adultery. They also comment that because of selfishness or having an interest in another child, such as inheritance situations or domestic resources. By hope, when it was believed that the child could have access to a better life or a better social status, even by resignation, when the child was not welcomed because of his or her sex or because he or she was born under bad auspices. Insensitivity has also been a reason for abandonment of children and this was mainly generated when parenthood was seen as a nuisance. Another study that has been carried out from social work approach, regarding the issue of child abandonment, is that of Fuentes (2006) who is working on a master’s thesis in social work, in this document, the author studies the situation of institutionalized children and mentions that street children, working children, institutionalized, and supposedly “abandoned or homeless” children are in theory children temporarily and definitively deprived of the fundamental rights of the status of a child, this is, the right to be protected and provided for in their needs by their own family and the right to have school as their main activity, in addition, to play and recre­ ation. Children with high level of suffering, with severe psychic disorders, subjected to situations of daily violence, family mistreatment, sexual abuse, discrimination, exclusion, aggravated by the issue of poverty are added (Barcala and Lopez Casariego, 2002:5) cited by (Fuentes, 2006). For their part, Amores and Mateos (2017) conducted a study entitled a review of the neuropsychology of child maltreatment: neurobiology and neuropsychological profile of the victims of child abuse, in which they mentioned that childhood is a particularly vulnerable stage of stressful situations, such as maltreatment. Child abuse is an adverse environmental factor, capable of disrupting the neurodevelopmental process and condi­ tioning the brain maturation of the child, leading to a persistent cognitive deficit even in adulthood. The neuropsychological profile of abused chil­ dren is characterized by problems of attention, memory, language, intellec­ tual development, school failure, and high prevalence of internalizing and externalizing disorders. These authors mention that child abandonment or threats of child abandonment are part of child abuse. Similarly, Alanís (2014) makes a study on children and adolescents in a situation of abandonment, in this, he quotes UNESCO and describes that currently, about 150 million children in the world live on the streets;

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some because they work or spend a good part of the day there, but others have no place to go and live permanently on the streets. The reasons that generate this reality are diverse, among others, the absence or death of parents, natural disasters, or displacement due to violence or wars. In the case of displacement, according to the latest Millennium Development Goals report, by the end of 2014, conflicts forced an average of 42,000 people every day to leave their homes and seek protection. Half of this population consisted of children. There are numerous governmental and civil organizations that act to assist these children and to articulate actions that make it possible for these minors not to live in conditions of abandonment; so also, today we know about the living conditions of these children not only because of the statistics but also because they are visible through the stories they tell, sometimes in the first-person. They appear in writings, photographs, and recordings, both in paper and in digital format, which makes up testimo­ nies of a reality that has not always been living this way (Alanís, 2014). Other studies that have been carried out on the subject of family aban­ donment are those who emphasize minors who are sheltered in an institu­ tion as wards of the state, on these studies Fernández Daza and Fernández Parra (2013) conducted a research in which they mention children make up the most vulnerable group in a country and within this group are children deprived of parental care, this is, children who do not live with at least one of their parents for whatever reason or circumstance. In this sense, it is important to mention that the term institutionalization has been related to various alternatives for action in child social protection which, depending on the country, other names include: residential care, institutional care, foster care, protective care, and among others. Insti­ tutionalization is a protective measure that separates children from their parents so that staying at home no longer poses a risk to their integrity (Fernández Daza and Fernández Parra, 2013). Institutionalized children are the product of poverty, alienation, dysfunctional families, orphanage, lack of emotional ties, low social status, abuse, illness, loneliness, family ties immersed in neglect or abandon­ ment. Consequently, it is the state and private institutions, many of them charitable that assume part of this protective role. Regarding caregivers in these institutions, it is unclear whether they are trained to carry out the role assigned to them (Fernández Daza and Fernández Parra, 2013).

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Authors such as de la Iglesia and Di Lorio (2006), in their research, comment that in 1974, the first court case was won in North America defending a girl for the mistreatment of her mother. This process was initi­ ated by the Sociedad Protectora de Animales (Animal Protection Society), as there was no law protecting children, and child abuse was not a criminal offense, therefore it was not a crime. The defense argued that since the girl was part of the animal kingdom, she deserved at least as much protection as an ordinary dog. This fact reflects the secular abandonment that children have historically suffered and their extreme vulnerability to their parents, to those responsible for their care, and to educational and socialization scenarios. 6.2.2 THE SELF AND THE ADOLESCENTS CONTEXT It is interesting to know the theoretical positions that exist around the concept of self and context, these two topics are the central elements that determine the construction of the personality and the interpretation of life that they mature within themselves, the information they already bring from their personal, family, and very particular stories that they experi­ enced before arriving at the institution is based on their contact with the institution’s personnel and their previous information. In such sense, studies such as Silva and Martinez Guzman (2017) mention that the concepts of self and identity refer to the same phenomenon, which is the “self–self” the “who am I,” a phenomenon that is approached from different traditions and latitudes, the Anglo-Saxon world on one side and continental Europe on the other. Similarly, Brandtsstadtädter (1999), cited in Silva and Martinez Guzman (2017), stated that the self is a locus of personal adjustment that takes and active stance to create its own devel­ opment, carrying out activities to promote it. These positions lead to a reflection, as they are guided by mental repre­ sentations of how we are, how we could or should become, constructing schemas that comprise attributes that describe us in essential. The selfreflexive and action processes are mutually interweaved and build the development of the person. These representations are involved in the process of goal orientation, that is, the setting of goals and selection of strategies that adolescents make to achieve them (Nurmi, 2004 cited in Silva and Martinez Guzman, 2017).

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The self has also been defined in terms of the construction of a personal theory about oneself, based on the great cognitive advances that occur during adolescence as a period of development. In this process, the opin­ ions of significant people in the surroundings are decisive, as well as the available roles, in the exercise of which one’s own attributes are identified (Harter, 2008). Silva and Martinez Guzman (2017) comment that the self develops in interaction with the context, which provides resources, presents expecta­ tions, and offers opportunities to channel goals so that its supply is decisive. To better understand, it is important to define the meaning of context and according to Angulo Vergara et al. (2019), contexts are a dynamic construction from the active contribution of individuals, their social and cultural traditions. On the other hand, in a study conducted by Rueda Beltrán et al. (2014), they analyzed the concept of context, mentioning that according to the RAE Dictionary (2014), the most general and assigned meaning of “context” refers to the “physical or situational environment, whether political, historical, cultural or of any other nature, in which an event is considered.” They also point out that this concept is used from different disciplines and theoretical approaches, and although it constantly alludes to the environment, in some research it refers to conditions and elements that immediately surround social actors. In other studies, context refers to broader environments, including macrostructural factors such as national policies, culture, organizations, and international trends, to name a few. Rueda Beltrán et al. (2014) also mentioned that according to the psychosociological approach, the term context has two meanings; one is as a semiotic environment, composed of the universe of meanings, discourses, and representations. The other meaning is as a situation, this is, the term context designates the framework and circumstances in which the encounter between the actors and their interaction takes place. It is pointed out that the context is made up of the framework, which is where the social encounter is situated, it is both the physical environment and the temporality in which it takes place; the scene, which includes the relation­ ships that link the actors, and the dynamics, motives, intentions that drive them to the encounter, as well as the communicative strategies employed. In institutional contexts, interactions are strongly influenced by the roles of the status of the interactants, the norms that order their relationships, as well as the obligations and responsibilities assigned to them by the

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institutional structure (Marc and Picard, 1992 cited in Rueda Beltrán et al., 2014). This study took self and context as central variables, based precisely on the interaction that institutionalized children and adolescents have in the institutionalized environment, in addition to the construction of the selves that they already brought with them from their family contexts, previous structures that they built before arriving at the shelters where they are. As has been analyzed throughout this paper, talking about infants or minors represents a topic of interest for many professionals and for a large part of the people, due to the position of vulnerability that places this population in a vulnerable position, and as the authors de la Iglesia and Di Iorio (2006) point out, the history of childhood confronts everyone with the existence of various childhoods, including that which has been institutionalized, as it represents a group of children who are unprotected from their families, and who, before coming into the custody of the state and civil association, surely went through tormenting things. The constructionist social intervention model used in this study was precisely with an institutionalized population, whose general charac­ teristics are that they are male residents of an institution in the State of Coahuila and whose context refers to interaction with people who work in the institution. 6.2.3 SOCIAL INTERVENTION MODELS Regarding intervention models, Pensado Leglise et al. (2011) mentioned that social intervention models are undoubtedly conceived as part of the need for public policy implementation, considered as a process of interac­ tion and competition of the various social, political, and institutional actors with the state to meet the needs of public action in terms of environmental, economic, and social welfare regulations, as well as of cultural and political management associated with a framework of civil and political autonomy and rights of a society. Based on the contributions of Rubio and Varas (2004), cited in Pensado Leglise et al. (2011), the social intervention model can be defined as the system of relationships included in a process of action on social and educa­ tional reality, which aims to achieve development, change, or improvement of collective, group, or individual situations, who present a problem or

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need to facilitate their social integration, or their active participation in the social system on a personal, economic, labor, cultural, or political level. As part of the records, Pensado Leglise et al. (2011) comment that the emergence of social intervention models occurred in the mid-20th century when the welfare state of that time needed an effective public system of social services. Subsequently, it has been applied mainly in various aspects of the objects of study of the anthropology of development (Escobar, 1997 cited in Pensado Leglise et al., 2011), of the interdisciplinary nature of social work (Vazquez, Aguado et al., 2002 cited in Pensado Leglise et al., 2011) and social psychology (Viscarret, 2007 cited in Pensado Leglise et al., 2011) in view of the need to devise, and use useful instruments to provide social care to individuals, families, groups, communities, and minorities who are defenseless, at risk or vulnerable, as well as in crisis situations. Some of the professions that practice intervention models are social workers, and according to De la Paz (2011), the roles of these profes­ sionals in strengths-based social intervention are to nurture encourage, assist, enable, support, stimulate, and release people’s inner strengths, to illuminate their potentialities and resources available to people in their own environments, and to promote equity and justice at all levels of society. To do this, the social worker helps people to articulate the nature of their situation, to identify what they want, and to explore alternatives for the achievements of desires and to fulfill them (Cowger, 1994 cited in De la Paz, 2011). Some of the most commonly used intervention models are the ecological model and the systematic model in cases working with families. Although no single model is used, due to the richness of combining different models in the intervention, depending on the methodological needs of the cases. The main reasons for the use of these models are their suitability to the needs of the intervention groups and their more comprehensive nature in meetings the demands (De la Paz, 2011). It is precisely here that the difference between the intervention models traditionally applied to studies carried out by intervention professionals and the model used in this study is marked, the work was based on a constructionist approach supported by the central premises of Kenneth Gergen (1995) and the methodological process described by Kisnerman. The paradigm of social constructionism is taken as a starting point since, according to Gergen (1985), it enables not an absolute truth, but motivates

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to create of dialogues in the interaction with others. In this way, thinking about new points of view, a new way of talking about the same things, a heuristic means of resolving difficulties. The constructionist perspective can be identified in all that family abandonment gives rise to from the point of view of adolescents, discussed in the text. The interpretations and reinterpretations that people who have experienced this type of violence will depend on their life histories, as cultures have different meanings for these issues, such as the lack of care and affection during childhood, which in turn have been considered the origin of problems in the adolescents (Gergen, 1985). For this research, a group intervention was carried out with young people between 13 and 17 years of age, they are in temporary shelters in an institution that provides this service in the State of Coahuila. In this regard, reference is made to Lizardi (2002) and Molina (2002) who mention that group intervention methodology is defined as a helping process where the professionals use the group system to impact the individuals participating in the group. The professional who intervenes is seen as a facilitator and promoter of changes at the cognitive, affective, and behavioral levels of the members of the group. Through this methodology, the group can also be a resource for effecting change in the environmental context. When comparing the group intervention methodology, several advantages can be seen. Firstly, through group methodology, the practitioner can reach a larger number of people (Lizardi, 2002; Molina, 2002). However, reaching many people through the intervention does not necessarily guarantee success in the work, for this reason, the work carried out in this study included group work with the aim of interacting and sharing more than one narrative, in order to enrich the process in the resignification of each of these in the social actors. 6.3 INTERVENTION METHODOLOGY 6.3.1 SOCIAL DIAGNOSIS IDENTIFICATION OF REALITIES An interview guide was designed with four categories, family, current institutionalized environment, personal aspects of the self, and abandon­ ment, in addition to identification data, the predominant narrative in the

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participants that were identified after analysis in Atlas.Ti software was a presence of feelings of frustration and abandonment, they also lack clarity about what they will do with their lives when they leave the institution. With the identification of these narratives, the diagnosis was used as the basis for designing the intervention model and, in turn, the project with which the model was operated. 6.3.2 METHOD Based on the constructionist intervention model of this study, an interven­ tion project was designed in which the three methodological moments proposed by Kisnerman (1998) were taken into account, (1) deconstruc­ tion, where the subject of study deconstructs the social conceptions previ­ ously constructed from his or her life experiences, (2) construction, in which the subject undergoes a process through intervention in which, by sharing experiences with other subjects, he or her construct new meanings, on the (3) reconstruction, the social actor is able to identify the new social construction acquired throughout the intervention process, at all times in this methodological procedure, it is carried out by focusing on the subjects as a guiding axis of intervention, by sharing their narratives, analyzing them, and jointly modifying them. With all of the above, it was possible to make a proposal for dealing with child abandonment in the family, providing an insight into the way adolescents use to express their suffering about the experiences that this situation has brought their lives and who are shaped by the different meanings they have given to the phenomenon of family abandonment throughout their lives. 6.3.3 PROJECT STRUCTURE The intervention project was designed on the basis of three moments, which were (1) previous narratives about the self and context, (2) social constructions of the self, family, and context, and (3) reconfiguration of the self. The first moment was aimed at rescuing the participants’ previous discourses, considering their sociofamiliar origins and the self, where strengths and fears in each of the elements could also be identified and the experiences would also be shared between the social actors and the

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intervention practitioner, who was appointed as the monitor the process, this first moment responded to deconstruction. In the second stage of the project, the aim was to signify the different types of social and family contexts that can occur in life, for this moment we worked with six sessions where the reconstruction of the narratives after the interventions of the first moment was proposed including in different contexts which are sociofamily, social construction of the self, as well as the perspective that all the participants have of themselves, to this process the construction was attributed. In the third stage, the aim was to construct narratives regarding partici­ pants’ aspiration, based on the resignification of personal, social, and family contexts. This is the result of sharing experiences between social actors and monitors to reconstruct new narratives, this process responded to social reconstruction, as discussed by Kisnerman (1998). 6.3.4 ANALYSIS UNIT We worked with five institutionalized young people from the State of Coahuila, their ages ranged from 14 to 17 years old, one participant was 14 years old, one was 15 years old, one was 16 years old, and two were 17 years old, due to the confidentiality of their data, we omit the precise place where the intervention was carried out, as well as the names of the participants. However, it should be noted that the project monitor was in contact with them for 2 years, initially making a social diagnosis based on qualitative research. 6.4 RESULTS In order to analyze the results of the intervention, the materials worked on by the participants in each of the projects activities were processed, such as letters, drawings, and formats of each activities made on paper. It is worth mentioning that according to one of the main premises of the constructionism, where it is argued that stories come to life as individuals, group, or communities narrate their experiences, and discover their poten­ tial for change and transformation. Through this session, which belongs to the deconstruction phase, the aim was to bring people closer to identifying different options for seeing the world so that they could autonomously

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resignify their narratives about the perception they had of themselves and where they came from. Among the most prevalent narratives in the exercise, narratives, and feelings such as “loneliness,” “sadness,” and “uncertainty” were identi­ fied. It is important to mention that people are not necessarily determined by the past. Dysfunctional ways of living can be abandoned or dissolved and alternatives created together. Some questioning of generally accepted truths was put on the table: every word or feeling, it was suggested that each proposition or proposal should be provisional, open to deconstruc­ tion, the evaluation of these narratives, which can then be reconstructed at the moment when they are presented to the group in which they were working, when participants’ listened to each other’s narratives, they acted as a self-help group where everyone learned from everyone else and they realize that what they were experiencing was not exclusive to them and that there were cases that had already overcome these situations, moti­ vating those who had not, to do so at some point in their lives. In this regard, authors such as Fernández Daza and Fernández Parra (2013) mention that institutionalized children are the product of poverty, uprooting, and dysfunctional families, orphanages, lack of emotional ties, low social status, abuse, loneliness, family ties immersed in neglect or abandonment. Consequently, it is the state and private institutions, many of them charitable that assume part of this protective role. As far as the carers in these institutions are concerned, it is unclear whether they are trained to carry out the role assigned to them. From the point of view of psycho-affective development, this option is questionable. In comparison with the main narratives identified in this exercise, and according to what these authors mention, it can be identified that up to this first moment of the intervention, the narratives of the social actors are still associated with the feelings of “loneliness,” “sadness,” “uncertainty,” which shows that the attention they have received so far in the institution has not changed these narratives, this is probably due to the fact that the care they receive is based solely on the provision of purely welfare tools. With regard to the family issue, in one of the sessions they shared narra­ tives about their experiences with their family of origin and this allowed them to work on the concept they have of families, as well as their types and main activities. For the analysis of this session, reference is made to what Kisnerman (1998) states, “It is the moment to determine how the problem situation has been constructed and also what re-conceptions,

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representations, assumed prejudices are operating as barriers or obstacles.” By referring to the main characteristics of the paradigm where it involves uncovering the internal structure of meanings, constructing shared mean­ ings. There are no truths to verify, but meanings relevant to each person, which confirms that the search for truth is based on the diversity of how they perceive the concept of family and how abandonment has marked them. Therefore, the revealed phenomenon needs to be talked about and put on the table in order to be better understood. In the case of this session on the family, it was possible to identify that in principle everyone had in mind the nuclear family structure, father, mother, and siblings; however, with the interaction in the activities, the young people were able to integrate that in their lives and in other people’s lives it is normal not to have this type of family, that there are other fami­ lies, with other compositions and that all of them are good. At the end, they were motivated to think about the family they themselves will form, mentioning that they would love to form a nuclear one, but that at the meantime at this time, they understood that it was not possible to have one with those characteristics. In the reconstruction process, it was possible to identify each and every one of the things that social constructionism left a mark on each of the social actors. They no longer see the temporary shelter as a punishment, and one of them even said that thanks to the tools given to them by the institution, they will be able to “survive” when they leave. They argued that being in good health is something they had not even thought about and that the intervention itself was able to emphasize this. Accordingly, this project sought to understand what social construc­ tionism is and its implications as a process of self-reflection, organized around the concepts of mutual construction, in all that revolves around the issue of family abandonment in adolescents. This approach is considered an ideal space for adolescents to expose their narratives, exploring new meanings, and senses about what the experience, for it is in relational contexts that people construct their understandings of the reality around them and of themselves, organizing new constructions, and new linguistic arrangements. It sought options for the resignification of the concepts of the self, family, and the very context in which they are immersed. The narratives that emerged from this collaborative space is organized as a proposal for what is new, redefining people as the authors of their

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existence and inviting them to rescue their resources to confront the problem of family abandonment. The reconstruction, considered as a conversational game, is aimed at outlining the effects of this violence of life, on relationships, on the vision of the self, as well as their expectations for the future. Thanks to the intervention and as mentioned above, the adolescents themselves were able to identify those things they have that will help them when they leave the shelter, they completely changed their perception of the concept of family and saw the presence of such a group as strictly necessary in their lives in order to get ahead, at least the projec­ tion they have shown resilience. 6.5 CONCLUSIONS Social constructionist intervention breaks with traditional invention schemes, as it positions a professional as a monitor of the whole process, and even his or her own narrative is part of the social construction process experienced by both social actors and the professional. It is a complex process that implies a very close accompaniment with each and every one of the social actors, everyone counts and is important, and no one is more important than anyone else, narratives are shared discussed and analyzed, this is what makes it complex, as a space of great trust and respect must be created so that everyone involved in the interven­ tion can share their life stories, their experiences, ways of thinking and everything that defines them. In my particular case, it was highly satisfactory to have worked with young people who came to an institution as children to be looked after by it, and see the strengths and potential they have as individuals, which is part of the sensitivity that social constructionism has on people, as it sees the essence of individuals without prejudices, without positioning the professional as an entity superior to the group with which he or she works, but as part of themselves with their own social construction and their own structural dynamics. The impact of this intervention is considered to have been successful, initially because of the motivation shown by the social actors at the end of the activities, and at the end when they were grateful for the space and the opportunity to have worked with them, the institution where the work was carried out asked the intervention monitor if they could replicate the

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model in another institution with the same line of work to see if it could be adapted as a permanent way of working for them. KEYWORDS • • • •

social constructionism child and family abandonment adolescent intervention models

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CHAPTER 7

The Resilience That Is Built in the Interaction of Migrant Children and Adolescents: A View from the Institutional Care of Refugee Families

MARTHA VIRGINIA JASSO OYERVIDES,

LAURA KARINA CASTRO SAUCEDO, REYNA ALICIA ARRIAGA BUENO,

and BLANCA DIAMANTINA LÓPEZ RANGEL

1Faculty

of Social Work, Universidad Autónoma de Coahuila, Coahuila, México

ABSTRACT In the phenomenon of the mobility of families with children and adoles­ cents (NNA) in the refuge, situations that affect their development are present, and even more so when the conditions of violence under which they live represent an imminent risk to their well-being. The research is qualitative, based on the methodological assumption that, in an adverse context, where psychosocial risk converges, children and adolescents develop the individual capacity to appropriate the psychosocial, cultural, spiritual, and social resources necessary for the human development, nego­ tiating them through social interaction, not only in the family but also with the actors with whom they share their mobility situation and who favor the construction of resilience factors. This chapter starts with a theoretical reflection on risk vulnerability and resilience and presents the results from

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the narratives of institutional caregivers, considered as one of the main actors in interaction with the migrant population. Under a hermeneutic approach, the meaning they attribute to the process of family mobility is analyzed, together with the perception of how risks are assumed, allowing, from the socially constructed reality to approach the study of the construc­ tion of resilience of children and adolescents in social interaction and the generation, appropriation, and negotiation of resources in the context in order to face the risks that make them vulnerable. 7.1 THEORETICAL APPROACH TO THE CONCEPT OF VULNERABLE CHILDREN AND ADOLESCENTS IN THE FACE OF RISK It is from the 1970s onwards that the conceptual debate on the categories of social risk and vulnerability began, initially derived from exposure in contexts where situations related to environmental problems converged, and later it is applicable to social phenomena. Authors such as Fuentes (2018) attribute the potential of the concept of vulnerability to risk to the results of observing that capitalism, as an ideal model, is a utopia. At the end of the 20th century, the World Bank (WB) recognizes the failure of institutional models for addressing poverty, generated by the prioritization of the prevailing economic development. The same WB, in the 2000–2001 Development Report, proposed the need to create institutional working schemes that would guarantee the development and well-being of people, through three main components: the opportunity to access employment, empowerment through the elimina­ tion of inequities, and security to risks in the face of the vulnerability of social groups to economic shocks; this has resulted from in the need to establish structural actions to manage the risks faced by disadvantaged groups, increasing their social assets strengthening state support, and protection through institutional programs. Historically, the concept of vulnerability, linked to the notion of risk, has been established by the official and political provision, and in accor­ dance with the legal systems and ideology of those in power. According to Thomasz and Castelao (2014), the concept of social risk introduced by the WB in 2000 responds to an approach focused on institutionalism and the establishment of indicators, from which social protection instruments were

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proposed to address the effects in adverse situations, which are delimited according to the capacity of individual and/or communities to manage the same risk. From this perspective, Thomasz and Castelao (2014) argue that risk represents contingencies that adversely affect people, whose existence they may or may not be aware of, and which allows them to visualize future behavior from their own perspective, in which freedom, as an element included by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) in its 1998 report, is oriented toward the potentiation of the mechanisms of personal and collective fulfillment, based on the decision to assume it. On his part, Moreno (2008) defines risk as “a potential factor for gener­ ating harm or damage that may directly or indirectly affect individuals or human groups in the future” p. 16. Thus, the risk attributable to the situation of being a migrant is highly likely to have negative consequences for the individual and social development of NNA and their families. The same author endorses the idea of UNDP (1998) that risk is assumed on the basis of the decisions taken, however, the negative, consequences, or damage that are likely to occur. In view of this, it highlights the risk gener­ ated in the interaction of children and adolescents with the context and assumed from their place of origin, during their transit and destination. Under the WB’s eminently structuralist approach, a definition of risk is elucidated, based on the characteristics of risk in relation to the conditions found at the origin, its interaction with others, the frequency, distribution, and intensity with which it occurs, and which is assumed by the person him/herself, in other words, in order to understand the risk factors that make up a situation of social vulnerability, it is necessary to locate the way in which they present themselves and their interaction in the context with others, favoring disadvantages and reducing the potential that affects the development of children in mobility. Mancini (2015) points out that risks are a social construction, so that they do not result exclusively from individual relationships but are constructed in the convergence of personal attributes and the “social system of opportunities, (…) where social risk would emerge as a hyper­ modern condition of the new social inequalities” (DiPetre and Mayer, in Mancini, 2015, p. 240). Vulnerability seen from a structuralist perspective is sometimes inherent to NNA and their families, due to their particular qualities and the functionalist vision with which they are treated, and which, for some, can

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only be overcome through institutional protection, a conception of vulner­ ability is then conceived facing risk through personal and social capacity, vulnerability although it reminds us of our human fragility, it also gives us an account of the creative power and action that in any case, we are capable of deploying (Fuentes, 2018, p. 69). In the study with the families of migrant NNA, the starting point is the fact that it is in social action that risks are present and in which complexity of the damages that give meaning to the presence of the concept of social vulnerability are generated. While it is true, the fact that they are part of the construction they make regarding the experience of being a migrant is also the fact of the negative impact on their wellbeing, derived from the adversity in which they interact. In this way, without discarding the affectation that risk factors provoke in NNA by making them vulnerable, they are given the capacity to face risks base on the development of their potentialities, by deploying a response to risky situations. Thus, one more element is added to the conceptualiza­ tion of social vulnerability, which has to do with the consideration that NNA and their families can face risk situations in the interaction with the environment, reducing the impact of the effects or taking up either of the two alternatives offered by social vulnerability to counteract it, either by adapting to the situation or by developing their response capacity, which has been called resilience building. The various approaches to the concept allow the study to be placed in a vision of a dynamic reality, with implications of risk as a product of modernity. This leads to the need to look deeper not only into their nature but also into the way in which their response is constructed, in order to reduce the social vulnerability of resilient children. 7.2 RESILIENCE OF NNA IN MOBILITY In order to conceptualize resilience in this population group, it is necessary to place NNA in the presence of their own individual capital, the experi­ ence they have from their place of origin, as well as cultural, economic, and social transfers they already have at the time of immigration, the interac­ tion they have had with their family, peer group, and primary caregivers in institutional settings, starting from the consideration of their participation and the negotiation of resources, which translates into the construction of

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personal and social skills, as well as the construction of support networks that, among other things, provide for the physical and mental health care of NNA. As a category of the study, derived from the relational approach, it is supported by authors such as Ungar (2016c), who presents a concept of resilience, which, when applied to the study of migration, is related to the individual capacity of NNA to take advantage of the resources for the individual and relational improvement and the social assets they can find in their immediate context, as well as the capacity of each of them to negotiate with others for these resources. Under this theoretical-conceptual premise, when observing the founda­ tions and the way in which resilience is built from them, a dynamic process is glimpsed, inherent to the individual as a product of social interaction in an adverse context. This ecological perspective suggests that when a person is presented with kinds of opportunities to reach his or her potential, interventions should involve those who have the mandate to help (…), as well as for those who expect to provide support, namely the person in the family, peers, community and institution (Ungar, 2016c, p. 3). From this, resilience as a process constructed in a migrant reality allows us to locate NNA in social vulnerability when facing risks, as an agent of development based on their own potential, as social actors who, in adverse circumstances, can generate individual and social capacities. In addition to the ability to respond through survival strategies, individual adaptation, the development of abilities, and the construction of assets in interaction are observed. The importance of building social capital through interaction with the various actors is clear and how these generate benefits in the development of their creative capacity, built by the NNA on the basis of the transfers granted by the family, peer group, or institutional organizations that become the main social network. In this way, resilience would be the product of the negotiations that take place in that interaction. Whereupon, the response generated in the light of resilience building will account for the potential developed by the NNA, their families, and the usefulness of the relationship with the main caregiver, as well as the cultural transfers present in the context, this will elucidate the creation of survival strategies as legible options within the framework of the freedom it possesses and which gives it the strength of its own social capital face risks.

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Leibenberg et al. (2013) pronounce this same approach to resilience as an integral construct of individual, relational, and contextual attributes, this socioecological conception implies that the social actors urge the family, peer group, community networks, and institution to protect and promote good resources, this contributes to NNA being supported to engage in interactive processes in complex and dynamic multilevel environments to enable them to avoid threats and cope with adversity. This approach situates them as social actors capable of building resilience. 7.3 ON RESEARCH METHODOLOGY To elucidate the resilience factors of NNA, which are constructed in the interaction of migrant families in the shelter with institutional caregivers facing adverse situations generated by being or having been exposed to violence, the study was based on the resources available to this population, the way in which these were negotiated and constructed with caregivers, as well as the context in which mobility and subsequent shelter took place. The qualitative approach under the constructionist paradigm, which allows us to interpret the resilience that is built in the social interaction of NNA, seeks to investigate how risk factors are interrelated in the construc­ tion of resilient responses of migrant NNA with other actors with whom they interact, their family, the community, and institutional staff, based on negotiating or taking advantage of the individual and social resources found in their immediate context. For, in this paradigm, “practices enable the symbolic network that is constructed relationally and intersubjectively creating a context” (Jubes et al., n.d., p. 5) in which social interactions are the product of discourse, narrative, and interpretation of the world constructed by the subjects. Under this proposal, the study highlights the caregivers’ narrative as the mechanism that provides the vision of the reality that they construct as social actors interacting with the families of migrant NNA. In this sense, Gerger (2007) stresses the importance of “the relational view of language, through which the internal state reflected from the external expression, offering, what the author points out, an accurate picture or map of reality” (p. 22). Hence, the narrative of institutional caregivers is a substantial element in the interpretation of the reality of this population group. Gergen (2007) himself points out that:

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“As we have reconsidered the usefulness of storytelling, we have moved outwards from the individual mind to the relationships that are constituted by storytelling. Narratives exist in stories, and stories are constituents of relational forms” (p. 218). In this way, the significance of the reality of NNA and their families derives from the result of the interaction they have with other human beings, so that meanings are managed or modified through an interpreta­ tive process of people who have interacted with other actors in their depar­ ture, journey, and destination of migration, in this case, the institutional caregivers who provide shelter. According to the constructionist paradigm, the qualitative research design allows the phenomenon of migrant NNA to be approached from the perspective of their experience, with respect to the events and actions that take place in their experience, potentiating, in addition, according to Mella (1998), the capacity to be able to reach meanings. The same author points out that qualitative research, as a methodology, integrates procedures to discover the interconnected flow of events and the way they experience reality, and is based on the conception that the information that arrives “via the senses and its meanings, constitutes and indissoluble unit. In order for information to be understood via our senses, it must necessarily have a certain meaning” (Mella, 1998, p. 14). On this basis, a dialogue with the socially constructed reality is encour­ aged through the incorporation of qualitative techniques that guarantee the collection of information directly from those who have experienced it, thus contributing to the knowledge of the subject related to the migration of NNA. By interpreting the experience of working institutionally with the families of migrant NNA in a refugee situation and presenting it from the narrative of the actors involved is how constructionism contributes to the knowledge of the phenomenon of migration of this population group, the response that they generate in the face of risks, the forms of interaction, and the survival mechanisms that they construct in their daily lives, under the context of adversity generated by violence; using the resources avail­ able to them, as well as those appropriated in the interaction with other actors, such as those of an institutional nature, based on their relationship with caregivers. Sandoval (2010) points out that it is through the articulation between linguistic constructions and mental representations that knowledge is

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generated. He talks about the need for dialogue and negotiation to inter­ mingle acquired subjective knowledge with symbolic elements and the measurable material world, with “propositions such as situated action” (p. 34). It makes it possible to integrate relational aspects from an ecological perspective into the study of the construction of resilience of migrant NNA and their families in shelters, realizing that the meaning of construction in terms of the usefulness of the interaction with other subsystems, among them are institutional caregivers, which favors the existence of resilient characteristics, which, as a quality, can be observed and interpreted as individual abilities or personal skills necessary in the process of building social capital, based on the interaction between the family, the child, and the institution. According to Ungar and Leibenberg (2011), the study of resilience in children requires an ecological interpretation not only of the implicit quality of the person but also of their interrelationship with the environ­ ment. Thus, with Bronfenbrenner’s (1979) ecological approach, various factors are considered in the relational determination at the individual, community, and institutional levels; to explain the presence of resilience and the psychosocial risks they face in the context. To deepen and contribute to knowledge on the construction of resil­ ience, based on the interpretation of the reality experienced by families of migrant NNA in the refuge, with their experience of both the psychological risks they face and the resilience factors that influence their development, these two factors were identified as the main categories of study, these formed the basis for the design of the focused group interview guide for the staff of institutions that offer shelter to migrants in the context of violence, and by defining them operationally, the subdimensions to be considered in the collection of information were visualized, thus supporting the instrument. The incorporation of the experience, the significant data on the vulnerability that is generated when facing these risks, as well as the resilience that is built in the social interaction of NNA, contribute to the fulfillment of the objective of the research. In this sense, for Ungar (2016b), resilience research involving children looks at health-enhancing capacities, individual, family, and community resources, as well as how these groups thrive in spite of this. While these findings are part of a larger study, here we present the reality as expressed by the staff of institutions working with people in

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the shelter, establishing agreements for the analysis of the aspects to be investigated, based on the care and safeguarding of identity, respect for human rights, and the cultural elements of the population with whom they work from an institutional policy with a very particular ethic. The administration of the research focused on the application of a semistructured interview in a focus group, considering three caregivers, responsible for the social integration, development, and psychosocial care of migrant NNA and their families. Carers belonged to two care insti­ tutions for the mobile population in Saltillo, Coahuila. For the internal validation of the semistructured interview, it was subjected to three revi­ sions in which the congruence between the categories and subdimensions was verified with respect to the objectives and research questions. Also, congruence with the operational definitions and with the items sorted by categories was observed. With the second validation, the structure was adapted to improve fluency based on the actions requested of the interviewee in order to develop his or her discourse. In addition, opening questions were included to improve empathy and closing questions to reduce the emotional impact at the end of the application. The dimensions to be constructed by means of the narrative of the experts in the development of the research technique: the characteristics of the population with whom they interact, the sociofamiliar situation, socialization with the context, presence, and management of risks, the way in which the resilience of NNA is built, based on personal and social capacities, as well as the institutional caregiver’s perception of the situa­ tion of this population in mobility. The combination of the categories—resilience and psychosocial risk— in the development of the interview sought to induce the interviewees into a natural dialogue about the lived experience, the interaction with others, the resources or social capital that children and their families possess and have acquired as a result of being mobile and as refugees, this is in addi­ tion to the strategies it implements to address risk factors and the care provided by the institutional environment. With the implementation of the semistructured interview guide in the focus group, information was obtained that gave an account of the resilience built in the interaction where risk factors are present, from the narrative of the institutional carers with which the socially constructed reality is observed, from the constructionist paradigm.

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The information obtained from the application of the focused interview with the groups of institutional caregivers, and its analysis using the Atlas. ti computer package, through the method of categorization by coding, it was possible to obtain families of codes that were named: the profile of the migrant in refuge; psychological risks, with the decision to migrate the family; the institutional environment and resilience. Their treatment led to the results presented in the following section. 7.4 FINDINGS 7.4.1 ABOUT THE PROFILE With the focused interview with the group of institutional caregivers, the profile of the migrant person was observed, allowing the characterization of migrant NNA and their life experiences in the interaction with social actors. This category emerged in the analysis when 10 codes emerged, including causes of departure from the country of origin, the decision to leave, the difference between migrant and refugee, place of origin, psychological needs, perception of NNA about their migrant or refugee situation, perception of migrant, profile of the NNA, general profile of refugees, migrant population inn Saltillo. When dealing with migrants in a refugee situation, caregivers provide great significance to the need to establish the connotation of a person and the obligation to avoid any situation that leads to disrespect, for them, it is necessary to establish the difference between the terms migrant and refugee, which nevertheless have as a common denominator the fact that they are exposed to situations in which they have to survive, for the interviews, the main difference is that the term migrant is used for those people who make the decision to leave with the intention and expecta­ tion of improving their quality of life, while those who seek refuge have been expelled by a situation that forces them to move and leave their lives behind. On this point, Covarrubias et al. (2013) point out that migration is understood not only as a way of improving the economic conditions of families but also as a way of seeking social mobility that allows for a more stable quality of life is conceived by migrants: a person who leaves, transits, or arrives in the territory of a state other than that of residence for

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any reason whatsoever. In the case of this population group in refuge, the vast majority of them lost a family member in their country of origin in an aggressive manner, which keeps them distressful and with a defensive attitude, which sometimes makes institutional integration actions difficult. The families that are cared for in the institutions generally enter through the South, constituting the natural entrance to Mexico, population generally coming from Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador, and Nicaragua, once again making Central America the main expulsion zone for migrants. In the interview, caregivers noted that not only refugee families have suffered considerable losses and arrived in Mexico with great expectations but also with anguish and fear in the face of uncertainty. The intervention carried out by institutions begins with an intentionally test by the United Nations Agency for Refugees (UNHCR), in order to remain in the country, as well as to know the educational and employment profile. Taking into consideration, the aspirations of migrants, options for completing social integration with the population under institutional care are visualized, first by the civil association Frontera con Justicia: Casa del Migrante and then by UNHCR. The work with the population in mobility in Saltillo, Coahuila, Mexico, is carried out after having been looked after in other stations or having remained for a period of time waiting for refuge in another state of the Republic, near the southern border of the country. A totally different facet of the person, why? Because they come with a whole dream ahead of them, with a whole dream and expectations of the person, which can be to start a new life, to live their dreams, to take up their plans, and then there is a considerable change in their attitude, even with regard to the activities they can carry out in the country (AL2). The population of adult migrants in refuge currently ranges between 29 years of age, mainly working in the industrial area, earning a weekly income of between 1600 and 1800 Mexican pesos as a basic salary, since the main focus of attention consists of labor, educational, and social integration. 7.4.2 ON PSYCHOSOCIAL RISKS The category of psychosocial risk was operationally defined for the study as a potential factor assumed by people’s decisions, which is detrimental

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to their development. It is present in the social context and action; as it becomes more complex, the damage to social and individual competen­ cies, as mental and physical health, leads to social vulnerability. Thus, the risk attributable to the context of violence that leads them to assume the situation of being a migrant constitutes negative consequences on the psychological and social development of NNA and their families, from what motivates the departure from the place of origin, what occurs during the transit and the risk encountered at the place of destination, as well as the presence of contingencies arising from therefrom. Allowing to distin­ guish the concurrence of individual, social, and contextual risk factors experienced by migrant NNA in their social mobility. The construction of the category called psychosocial risks allowed made it possible to integrate into the analysis of 15 codes related to causes of departure from the country of origin, family composition, decision to leave, difference between migrant and refugee, the effects of the experi­ ence on NNA, limitations, support institutions, psychosocial needs, profile of NNA, cultural traits, reaction of NNA to the departure, psychological risks, risks in the place of origin, psychosocial mental health risks psycho­ social risks in the place of destination and vulnerability. This category allows the integration of harm caused by the presence of risks in subdimensions related to social competences such as inclusion, violence, discrimination, school performance, peer group and vulner­ ability, as well as the subdimension of individual competences among which indicators related to integral health are located. In this sense, the psychosocial risks from the perception of institutional care start from locating the factors they face and which constitute, as previ­ ously mentioned, the causes of their departure from their country of origin, derived from the extreme violence that they see as expulsion, with the risk of their lives, a situation that a large number of them have experienced, at least with a family member. Psychosocial risks in the face of violence have denoted physical aggression, which causes them psychoemotional and social harm. This context of violence that pushes them out requires psychosocial accompaniment for containment. In the experience of insti­ tutional carers, people feel the need to locate a life plan, which generates anxiety and the need for psychological care. In this regard, one of the interview participants pointed out that “many people make catharsis as soon as they arrive in the country, that is to say, there is a very strong

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psychological issue, where people arrive without obviously knowing very well what their life plan is going to be” (AL1). Parallel to the uncertainty, a sense of alienation is generated in people, this accentuates the psychological difficulties of those who left their lives in an unplanned and untimely manner, faced with the threats of losing their lives. This increases the emotional burden of seeing their social nucleus broken up, leaving behind part of their family, their patrimony, and the life they knew as their everyday life. This alienation makes “the backpack of everything they have been carrying even heavier” (AL1), it is not only the burden that usually accompanies a migrant person’s decision to face the risks, but people who are forced to migrate and seek refuge have to face the condition of frustration at the loss of what is left behind and the construction of what is to come. 7.4.3 NNA FAMILIES AND THE DECISION TO MIGRATE Although adults are usually responsible for making the decision to leave the country to save the lives of family members, according to the insti­ tutional caregiver, it is up to NNA to process it or to go hand-in-hand with the person who made the decision, a situation that is seen from the moment they arrive from their place of origin; however, there are many cases where they decide to migrate alone, the latter being more visible on the southern border of the country. According to the interviewees, NNA that arrive in Saltillo are generally accompanied and when they decide to travel alone, it is to meet up with another family member who migrated and then left them in the care of the third person in their country of origin, who is not necessarily one of their parents. This care is often limited, making them vulnerable and exposed to recruitment, which is why they make the decision to leave on their own. In the case of refugees, NNA is forced to mature and gain the ability to respond to risk, as they assume the decision of adults to migrate and their argument is often that “it was the decision of the adult I lived with, my mother and father, and I am part of that family plan” (LA2). In the caregiver’s narratives, the risks of leaving always involve mental health issue, given the complexity of the situations they face, the journey itself to go to Mexico from their home country imply stress and anxiety,

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the parent’s anxiety and worry, which has repercussions on their mental health, makes it difficult for them. This is similar to Vera (2010) who represents three types of risks related to mental health. These include those related to emotional stability, such as self-esteem, anxiety, stress, and depression, among other pathologies inherent to the person. Another type of risk is acculturation, represented by the cultural shock faced by the change in “their lifestyle, the way of thinking, moral standards, values, goals, among others, which (…) as a whole comprises their identities and can lead to certain health problems” (Vera, 2010, p. 349). The third type is grief, which, in the face of the various losses generated in the migration process, creates stressors that undermine the health of the migrant. In some cases, according to the institutional caregiver’s discourse, the initial reaction of children in shelters is usually anger and nostalgia, due to the feeling of leaving their world and the uncertainty of not knowing the situation and the direction their lives will take, especially for those who are approaching or are in adolescence. Sometimes there are confrontations about this situation, complaining to their parents with phrases such as “you did not ask me, I did not want to come, I did not take the risk, it was your fault, it’s your fault we came because of you, you ran away from my dad, it was not my problem… and things like that” (AL1). One of the caregivers interviewed argued that one of the first cases I received, where the woman left because of violence from her partner, it was a case of extreme family violence and she left with her 16-year-old son and one of the younger ones… this was the complaint of the 16-year-old son, we went out because it was for you, not even for me, you never consulted me about what I thought! And he added… you never looked after me, I was always looked after by my grandmother! (M3) From their perspective, they point out that the feeling that is generally observed in NNA is more one of nostalgia than anger, and that of the popu­ lation of adolescents they care for, only some are in the breakdown. Most of them share, from the interviewees’ experience, “the parent’s feelings of frustration, sadness and nostalgia for having left, in addition, family members at possible risk… a life built” (M3). Piaget in Papalia (2012) argues that NNA transition to a level of cognitive development, this refers to formal operations and it is in adolescence when they develop the capacity for abstract thinking. For a person in early adolescence, beginning at approximately 11–14 years

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of age, opportunities for physical, cognitive, and social growth must be provided. Seeking autonomy, self-esteem, and intimacy, which, as seen above, entails a number of psychosocial risks, “as some adolescents have problems managing the changes at the same time,” (L2) which shows the attribute of fragility attributable to NNA and their consequent vulner­ ability. In considering the personal attributes referred to in the UNICEF and CGAE (2009) concept, it is possible to contemplate factors such as age and physical characteristics that account for the undeniable condition of fragility that people under 18 years of age possess and that places them in a situation of vulnerability. In addition to the feelings that the departure and arrival of migrants and their refugee families, institutional caregivers identify the risks that are evident and cause harm along the way, whose individual and social psychopathologies require psychiatric attention, the institution is over­ whelmed in this area, as it does not have the support systems for these cases. This condition of mental health problems occurs in adults, but also in adolescents, especially women who have lived experiences related to sexual violence. In working with these groups of migrant refugees, it is necessary to consider that each family has its own priorities and its own vulnerabilities, which makes it necessary to work with them to build from their particu­ larity, a different reality in a particular way, the reminder of fleeing their countries often involve “wounds that are not closed and will certainly never close” (LA1). In this way, it is observed that emotional losses are linked to economic, educational, employment, and patrimonial difficulties, hence the need to be inserted in a local integration program from the institutional point of view, based on the discourse of the carers. 7.4.4 FAMILY CONTEXT Many of the families of migrant NNA taken care of by the institution are two-parent families; however, there are cases of single parents, either mother or father with their children. In most of these cases, there are family conflicts where violence is present, especially among the parents, mainly from the male toward the female, the interpretation of institutional care alludes to connotations of a cultural nature, even pointing out the similarity with the “machismo” that characterizes the Mexican population.

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This suggests that among the migrant population in refuge, violence against women is a normalized and “highly visible” issue, to the point of becoming part of their daily lives. The family is the main protective factor for NNA in the context of caregivers; however, in this population group, there is an omission of care due to the lack of consolidation of this network as a support. Based on the narratives of the interviewees, in many cases, NNA was cared for in their place of origin by grandparents and when they had to migrate, they were “detached” from their daily lives to accompany their biological parents, which contributes to the instability of the children in their overall health. From the perspective of institutional care, the population of NNA are people who have matured more quickly due to the life experiences they have had to face they are more much awake in terms of…well, they have a totally different understanding of situations than a child their age see… and of exposure to dangerous situations, very complicated and very strong things (AL1). The decision to migrate to avoid the risk of harm from extreme violence they face kin their place of origin is linked to avoiding the forced recruitment of NNA into gangs and stopping them from attending school. Among the migrant population in refuge, there are girls between 10 and 12 years of age who do not know how to read or write because they have left primary school without completing it, which has the effect of diminishing their individual and social capacities, making their possible reintegration difficult due to the level of educational backwardness with which they migrate and arrive at their destination. In this part, it is important to highlight the importance of the factors present in the construction of the personality that characterizes this stage of formation that ends with adolescence, and in which psychosocial aspects constitute an essential element to study, especially when considering the way in which NNA are affected by the risk they face, without the prepara­ tion and experience that comes with personal maturity, and which limits human and social development. On the other hand, among the risks that hinder the social integration of the families of migrant NNA in the destination place, the caregiver institution points out the cultural issue, highlighting even how linguis­ tics with the characteristic contour tones of the population of northern Mexico, this makes it difficult for them to interact socially with the rest of the population. In addition, the labor culture requires adaptation in a

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worker–employer relationship, which replaces the freedom of action and decision of self-employment from which most of the parents of NNA who settle in the city as a refuge and which represents a psychosocial adversity in the target context. This difficulty of integration, according to the caregivers’ narratives, is increased by the feeling of persecution and constant finger-pointing in the family, derived from the cause of leaving their place of origin, which the caregivers interpret as a common situation Feeling constantly persecuted and singled out. There are people who even see a person passing by on a motorcycle outside their house and believe that it could be an aggressive person, because in their country, that represented a matter of great danger… someone on his motorcycle was synonymous with imminent danger (AL1). This difficulty in social interaction is derived from the affection of rela­ tional resources by constantly feeling in danger and preventing them from developing personal skills, peer support, and group support, inhibiting the competencies that allow them to “open up” to share their emotions and life. “So, that danger could put them in vulnerability” (AL1). Trusting another person represents the risk of having to leave their life again, to start over, under the fear of being found by the person or person who caused them to migrate. For the caregivers, living under this state of stress and anxiety in the family and the NNA, being careful not to share even their most basic personal details, nor with the peer group they are building, let alone with those they left behind in the place of origin. In this sense, the social vulnerability of this population group originates from the coexistence of internal and external factors, the first is given by the resources and/or the assets that people possess, which are configured in strategies against external factors that presented as risks, whose conver­ gence causes situations that come to affect the welfare of migrant NNA, which determines their vulnerability. Based on the above, social vulnerability is associated with dynamic inequality, which according to Moreno (2008) gives details of the persis­ tence over time of situations of instability and uncertainty that selectively affect individuals or populations and tend—progressively—to differentiate them from other social categories (p. 15). According to the caregivers, this may be increased in single-parent families, although according to their discourse support can be given from the institution to enhance their independence, a network is required, which women traveling alone with

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their children usually build by accompanied by another woman during the migration journey, however, it is not always the case (AL1). It should be noted that the population of NNA requires the support of parents or primary caregivers, especially those who belong to the primary level of basic education, for whom the mother and her support is funda­ mental. From the caregivers’ experience, building an independent profile still requires work and interinstitutional coordination “cases such as these women’s are still left by the wayside, making it impossible for them to have decent opportunities to move forward,” (M3) with the connotation of gender-based violence that it implies. Relevant aspects in the interpretation of the vulnerability of migrant NNA are based on their migrant experience in the interaction with social actors in their contexts. 7.4.5 THE ENVIRONMENT: THE INSTITUTIONAL This category was constructed with the integration of 11 codes from the interview, among which we find the following: adolescents, NNA with comprehensive support in “Madriguera,” educational support, support provided by the institution, institutional limitations of support, care process, requirements of the institutional support program, final result of care, educational follow-up, times and main actors of care, work with family, and interinstitutional linkage. According to the carer’s narratives, the institutional work is basically the attention with the families, there is a need for it to contain the prepara­ tion phase that allows confidence to be generated from the insertion and for the family to verify the respect with which they will work, as there are delicate situations to be considered. It should be based not only on the socioeconomic characteristics and work profile, as mentioned above, but also on the fact that the care professional or institutional caregiver must always keep in mind the context of violence from which they come and the life experience that distinguish them, in order to be efficient in the process of family accompaniment. For the implementation of the care process, it is important to consider the profile and the form of entry into the country, to avoid complications in the care process, since according to the caregiver the “law states that where a person enters and where they first ask for recognition of refuge status, they have to wait to finish the process of recognition of this status, (…) or refugee” (AL1).

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In the case of those requesting refuge, accompaniment is initiated “to provide people with a dignified space to wait for their procedure, which can last up to three months” (L2), for which they are provided with legal advice, supported by shelters as the Casa del Migrante, for the duration of the process, as they first pass through the office in the South and it is in the North of Mexico “where the social integration program is carried out, starting with the study to verify the intentionality profile through interviews, both in the area of protection and in the area of solutions, in order to conclude the process of refugee status and subsequent acquisition of naturalization” (AL1). According to the institutional caregiver, the social integration of the refugee program includes indispensable elements in building a life, includes the insertion and community accompaniment, from the location of a dignified and adequate space for the population, to ensuring that migrant families are independent and have the relief that those who violated them will not be able to find them and what the institution will be aware of any situation. The program has been operating for 4 years with more than 3000 migrants’ refugees and 1300 currently in care. Once they are under the program, accompaniment involves a series of actions including base and follow-up home visits, for about 2 years, until naturalization is achieved at the migrants’ request. During this monitoring, caregivers can detect adversities that a family may be going through and that may become a risk, the institution’s actions with the population depend on the specific needs of the population. When there are situations of risk for any member of the family, the institution is obliged to direct them and give continuity, especially in the case of issues related to NNA, who are legally obliged to report to the Office of the Attorney General for Children and the Family (PRONNIF) for attention. If it is a case of LGBTI population, a woman at risk due to intimate partner violence, we have an alliance with the Center of Violence and Women’s Empowerment, that is, depending on what it identifies, is the course that is followed (A1). 7.4.6 THE SCHOOL AND THE CHILDREN WHO STAY IN SALTILLO In the case of migrants settling in the city, social integration includes education, from the institution being in contact with the Ministry of Public Education for the incorporation of NNA into the system, to the monthly

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monitoring of cases in schools and with teachers. According to the inter­ viewees, with the dynamic, they have become aware of the situations of abandonment of the city or of the program, which reactivates home monitoring. If a child drops out of school, it is directed to PRONNIF. Another of the migrant support services aimed specifically at the adoles­ cent population is the coordination is the coordination with “Madriguera,” which, as a public institution, provides comprehensive care services for educational regularization, dental, psychological, and recreational health, with which the adolescents’ personal follow-up is conserved. It should be noted that the institution provides, on a biannual basis, financial support for educational inclusion at the basic level. The aforemen­ tioned support has been increased due to COVID-19 and is conditioned to the permanence in school of the population of NNA. Moreover, according to the caregivers, there are currently 17 cases of migrant refugee NNA studying at University, who are also supported financially on a monthly basis. The development of competencies of the population in the refuge is promoted by the institution’s integration program, since, with the excep­ tion of providing basic education for the NNA and avoiding situations involving domestic violence, all the options available and offered to the migrant population in refuge are optional and each family and member of the family has the capacity and freedom to decide on them. From the point of view of the institutional carer, the truth is that obviously every family, it is a different story, but they have elements of general application in that everyone is going to need a job, everyone is going to need to go to school and everyone needs a house and a hospital (AL2). Even so, based on the caregivers’ narratives, the decision on which resources to use remains a family one. 7.4.7 RESILIENT FACTORS By analyzing the convergence of the context’s own and relational resources in the construction of the resilient factors of the child in the migrant experience, the category of resilience emerged from the discourse of the interviewees, which was operationally defined as the capacity of a person to respond to adverse situations in which they interact, developed from the negotiation of its own resources, the relationships it establishes,

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and the assets it acquires with other social actors in the context. Allowing the adaptation of personality traits from the way in which susceptibility to the environment occurs, which, in turn, contributes to the construc­ tion of strategies for its development. Thus, a child in mobility can build resilience based on his or her response, starting from his or her personal capacities, and taking advantage of the support networks found kin his or her family, guardian, community, or institutions, agents that constitute his or her social asset and main potentiating factor of opportunities for human development. This operational definition integrated subdimensions, such as adverse context and resource bargaining. In the categorization analysis by coding elaborated in ATLAS.ti, the resilience category was constructed with 13 codes derived from the interview with the institutional caregiver, placing among Adolescents, NNA with comprehensive support in “Madriguera,” educational support, the support provided by the institution, family composition, educational context, difference between migrant and refugee, community integra­ tion, cultural traits, spirituality resource, contextual resources personal resources, support networks in transit, security in Saltillo, and the form of the response. These codes can be interpreted the subdimensions referring to the nego­ tiation of resources, individual social interaction that refers to personal skills, peer support, and social skills, another subdimension consists of the relationship with primary caregivers, including the family and the care­ giver in the institution, highlighting the physical and psychological care they provide. This dimension also includes the social assets that NNA can count on, including spiritual, educational, and cultural assets. Besides, the dimension of the Response Form, contemplates among its subdimensions the sensitivity to the environment, locating as indicators three personality traits: extraversion, neuroticism, and emotional reactivity, contemplated in the operationalization of the categories and subdimension, indicated in the methodology of this research. It is important to consider the term resilience as an emerging factor in the issue of NNA, as well as the effects derived from the situation of being a migrant, as resilience is the ability of a person to recover from adversity, strengthened, and possessing greater resources, understood as new abilities. According to the institutional caregiver’s narrative, since their depar­ ture from their place of origin, the migrant family shows resilience factors,

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by wanting to leave and change their situation, “once they assume them­ selves as refugee applicants, they start the legal authorization to change their migratory status” (AL1). Migrants seeking refuge develop resilience from the moment they have to face adversity in their place of origin, by attempting and generating a way out in order to survive, and by assuming those risks they may encounter on the journey, in the hope of improvement in the place of destination; “I don’t care and I just jump in, let’s say into the uncertainty and where I think people start to recognize themselves as strong in the sense of being survivors of these situations” (AL1). They believe that when opportunities come their way, they began to find a balance, offering, and generating peace of mind for migrants seeking refuge. For institutional caregivers, once at home, the situation begins to normalize in the sense of, there is already work, I go to school, I start new friends, I see the city, and I like where I am, I start to identify that there are opportunities for me and in that sense, that is where the confrontation with the issue of personal resources starts, of saying: I can or I can’t, I do it or I don’t do it (AL1). Therefore, work within the family is important in building resilience. Affoué (2016) highlights the importance of relational interactions, locating the family’s significant relationships as a fundamental factor in the resilience process, in which, according to this approach they learn from negotiation to the extent that they become aware of the positive things that parents give back to them. The above finds consistency with Coleman and Capdevielle (2014), by attributing the utilitarian value of the capital provided by the relation­ ship and interaction with the family. This contributes to learning and the development of strategies independently of what a familiar environment can offer. From Affoué’s (2016) perspective, “one of the findings that is interesting (…) from this approach, is that they reach resilience despite the living conditions in which they find themselves” (p. 222). In this regard, Blanco (2014) points out that NNA, faced with emotional insecurity, develops the ability “to negotiate, solve problems, cooperate and form alli­ ances, as well as to give in in timely matter and solve conflicts” (p. 222). On the other hand, the relationship that the family of migrant NNA establishes with institutional care contributes to the search for recognition of refuge, and thus to the beginning of community integration, which is based on the development of people’s potential, skills, and abilities, for which the resources that are found in the context and that contribute to

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the construction of different reality belong to the sectors and are given from the collaboration of various actors such as academia, business, the community itself, neighbors, and schools. Affoué (2014) points out that individual factors that respond to the characteristics of a disadvantaged person (child) are present in the construction of resilience, and on the other hand, environmental factors, among which are elements that take place within the family, the community and institutions. Even though the majority of families are based on a two-parent nucleus system, single-parent families are present, especially among women, as they are limited in their economic development, given the lack of a social network that would allow them to freely choose their working hours in a formal job, as mentioned above, when describing the risks in the context of adversity they are dedicated to establishing survival strategies through informal commerce as a way of obtaining economic income for their families. Based on the institutional monitoring conducted by the interviewees, the construction of social networks carried out by migrant families seeking refuge during their journey is highlighted, during the waiting time they spend waiting in the southern states or interacting with others in temporary shelters (which can sometimes last for years) is noted, as well as the one they build in the target community, together with the network they integrate with the educational contexts in the case of NNA, and in the labor context in the case of adults. This interaction has allowed them to gradually over­ come the linguistic differences that initially impacted on communication due to the tone of the northern region of the country, which was previously mentioned as a risk present in the opening and development of social skills of the members of the migrant family in a refugee situation. In the caregiver’s perception, the trust that migrants have in institutions provides them with the opportunity to feel safe, a positive aspect of building resilience, from the situation of shelter and subsequent accompaniment with the development of abilities that allow them to take advantage of the opportunities found in the context, all of this derived from the certainty of the institutional objectives to whom they have entrusted family and individual security. With the migrant’s knowledge of their rights as refugees, as well as the recognition and operation of institutions, the person implements their personal skills freely, what contributes to their development. In addition, having the security that comes from obtaining official documentation,

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such as the CURP, social security card, or payroll card, and that from the development of their work they can acquire their own house and send their children to school, encourages not only physical well-being, but also emotional well-being. According to Cid (2019), from a psychological point of view, a person is resilient when he or she has the ability to face their own problems, over­ come obstacles and do not give into pressure, regardless of the situation. It is an individual’s ability to overcome periods of emotional pain and trauma. It corresponds roughly to the term “resilience” (Para. 4). Another element to feel safe and reduce the stress that causes mental health problems for the migrant in the refuge is the fact that the physical space where they settle provides tranquility due to the peaceful atmosphere they can perceive, “how is it possible that a city, that Saltillo, is so safe and that I can walk in the plaza, the Alameda, that I can go to drop my children off at school” (AL1). This situation is interpreted by institutional caregivers as community protection, based on the fact that there is a sense of comprehensive secu­ rity among migrants and their families, hence the relational resources that they find among the actors that intervene in an integral way to generate the options that migrants find and take advantage of in the place where they interact. Community protection, according to the caregivers, is interpreted as the service and attention they receive at the institution, school, work, neighbors, and church. It should be noted that spirituality is an important component for them, according to the institutional experience, which reaf­ firms the need for spiritual protection and its development, an element that is also present as a resilient factor in this population group. Under this approach, for building resilience in the migration process of NNA and their families, the contributions of Gutiérrez and Capdeville (2014) on social capital stand out, translated into social assets where the institutional, community, support network, and family vision is brought together in interaction, with a sense of collaboration, belonging, trust, and synergy, framed in the theory of social integration. Ungar (2016c) suggests that, in the context of exposure to signifi­ cant adversity, each person possesses the capacity to develop their own individual resources or assets, whether physical, cultural, psychological, or social, which support their well-being by allowing them to negotiate (Unger, 2016b, para. 1). This is how we move to a concept of building dynamic and interactive resilience of integral well-being, based on the

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relational, where resilient NNA develop the capacity to find resources while taking advantage of and negotiating the transfers that families, communities, and institutions provide in a significant way due to their migrant situation in need of refuge. This resilience constitutes the individual assets that allow NNA and their families to make decisions, despite being aware of the risk, and to show an attitude of response in the face of adversity, based on their own potential as an individual resource. Arguello in Covarrubias et al. (2013) considers that “resilience factors have to do with the human capacity to face life’s adversities, overcome them and come out of it stronger and even transformed” (p. 52), they state that migrants and their families possess qualities that enable them, in addi­ tion to coping with their new living conditions, to transform their path normally associated with maximum risk into stated resilience. Finally, although from the place of origin, educational lag is observed in the population of NNA, specially females, it is noted that even in the waiting time for integration in the North, it is not a priority, to that the caregivers point out as a cultural resistance coming from the South of the country. However, once settled in the North of Mexico, the families of NNA have educational options up to the professional level, as part of the institutional support of the social integration program, noting that “17 of the families’ children are in the process and one more has successfully completed university” (L2). This category derived from the relational approach is supported by authors such as Unger (2016b), who presents a concept of resilience, which, when applied to the study of migration, relates to the individual capacity of NNA, to take advantage of the resources of individual improvement, relational and social assets that can be found in their immediate context, as well as the capacity of each of them to negotiate these resources with others. In the same way, Luthar and Cicchetti inn Leibenberg, Ungar, and Van de Vijver (2012) point out that resilience building is associated with individual abilities, the relationships that the person may experience with their immediate environments such as adults and primary caregivers, and the provision of community inputs that lead them to identify, take advan­ tage of, and build on opportunities. From this perspective, resilience is not considered only as a person­ ality trait, nor as the measurement of capacities isolated from their social capital, but is built in interaction with people, with the actors who are

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the source of resilience factors, among which are the family, peers, and primary caregivers, in this case, institutional caregivers. 7.5 DISCUSSION The findings reveal the interrelationship between risk factors and indi­ vidual and social resources in the construction of resilient responses of migrant NNA in their interaction with their peers, family, community, and institution. The reality of migrant NNA in a refugee situation makes it possible to understand the vulnerability in which they and their families find themselves when they decide to face the risk of leaving their place of origin. In the attempt to avoid the violence that, per se, conditions their survival before the expulsion to which they are forced, facing limited, or null potential resources to survive in the space where they have built a life. In this way, the resilience that they build even in the presence of risks allows us to locate the actions of institutions that, as a category of analysis, a caregiver represents, where monitoring UNICEF (2020) objectives such as protecting and securing services, freeing them from exploitation, violence, and detention, as well as seeking to keep children in families, ensuring their legal status, and optimal quality of life indicators for their development, combating xenophobia, discrimination, and marginaliza­ tion, symbolizes the philosophy of action for the carer. In the search for the fulfillment of these objectives, the connotation and meaning of the institutional integration and care programs can be observed by offering transferences that as the support they represent a resource for the child and his or her family, considered vulnerable due to their condition as refugees, although this connotation does not imply the development of competencies to be “independent families,” the relational resources that they find in the institutions that act a caregivers constitute the basis for their potential development. It also highlights the lack of networks, the limited or slow process of building a social network that strengthens NNA and their families, given the particular characteristics of the population, due to their insecurity facing violence. It is precisely the institutional caregiver’s narrative, in pointing out the limitations of the program, that shows the creation of a comprehensive support system with greater coverage of the risks involved in meeting the

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needs of families with migrant NNA, as the extensive services and insti­ tutional opportunities generated for the support of migrants in the refuge will create opportunities for the social promotion of their development. The systemic character of individual, family, community, and institu­ tional care will strengthen the social network that will allow them to build the indispensable social capital in the construction of resilience, which, more than transferences, requires the empowerment of their abilities. The professional life experience offered by the institutional caregiver through his vision and discourse of what he builds with the actors in the process, allows us to have a plot of reality in which the interaction of the actors in the situation of migration in refuge takes place, to whom mental health, the construction of the community and institutional support networks for women, especially female heads of household, and education, are resil­ ience factors that cannot be negotiated by NNA and their families, and therefore constitute a focus of attention. These women head of household, most of whom have a history of gender-based violence, require greater accompaniment for the real social integration of migrant NNA in shelters and to avoid the omission of care, which in general in Mexico, as in all cases in the country, represents a chal­ lenge to reconcile and attend to for the well-being of the family. Where the reactivation of day-care centers is not only of greater coverage but also of diverse timetables for the attention of the population of NNA, who require special care due to the vulnerability that their age represents, thus making compatible the functions of mother, worker, and carer of the population of NNA, independently of the work activity that they may carry out. This can increase and strengthen the support network of caregivers of migrants with NNA in their families. This necessarily represents a comprehensive care solution for the women and their children. Based on this approach, we observe migrant NNA deprived of a set of factors that affect their human and social development, who perceive themselves as vulnerable due to the persistence of conditions of inequality compared to their peers, which also lead them to establish actions that promise them, even in uncertainty, to assume risks, seeking to improve their individual and family living conditions. In which the lack of social capital, given the nonexistence or limited networks, to establish strategies of solidarity and mutual support, together with the lack of capacities or ways of facing difficulties, which represent the presence of social risks, leads to an increase in social vulnerability (Fuentes, 2018).

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The findings show the impact on the mental health of NNA coinciding with Vera (2010), who points out that among the risks that people in mobility may face, three types related to this factor are elucidated, including those related to emotional stability, such as self-esteem, anxiety, stress, and depression among other pathologies inherent to the person, situations that the institutions declare to be limited in resources for their care. In addition, this generates among NNA in the refuge, the risks described by Gonzáles, in Vera (2010) constituted by acculturation, which represents a cultural shock they face, given the change in “their lifestyle, way of thinking, moral standards, values, goals, among others (…) as a whole comprises their identities and can lead to certain health problems” (p. 349) However, the certainty of the physical disadvantages and the impact that risks have on the development of NNA, together with the capacity to respond through survival strategies, can be seen from individual adapta­ tion, the development of capacities, and the construction of assets or social interaction. The importance of building social capital through interaction with different actors and how these generate benefits in the development of this creative capacity, built by NNA based on the transferences granted by the family or their peer group, which becomes the main social network, can be seen. In this way, resilience would be the product of the negotiations that take place in that interaction. With which, the response generated in the light of resilience building will consider the potential developed by the children, their families, and the usefulness of the relationship with their main caregiver, as well as the transferences present in the context, which will elucidate the creation of survival strategies as legible options within the framework of the freedom they possess and which gives them the strength of their own social capital to face risks. In relation to resilience, one of the most noteworthy factors is that NNA is placed in the presence of their own individual capital, based on the expe­ rience they have of their place of origin, as well as the cultural, economic, and social transferences they already have at the time of migration, the interaction they have had with their family, peer group, and primary care­ givers in institutional settings, this is based on the consideration of their participation and the negotiation of resources, which translates into the construction of personal and social skills, as well as the construction of networks, together with the care of the child’s physical and mental health.

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Under this theoretical-conceptual premise, when observing the founda­ tions and the way in which resilience is constructed from them, a dynamic process is glimpsed, inherent to the individual as a product of social interaction in a context, facing adversity. This ecological perspective suggests that when a person is presented with kinds of opportunities to reach their potential, interventions should involve those who have a mandate to help, for example, social workers, nurses, and educators, as well as those who hope to provide support, namely the person’s family, peers, and communities (Ungar, 2016c, p. 3). Based on this, resilience as a process constructed in the migrant reality allows us to locate NNA in social vulnerability when facing risks, as an agent of development based on their own potential, as social actors who, in adverse circumstances, can generate individual and social abilities. UNICEF (2017) points out that people in mobility respond to desire for the better opportunities to improve their lives and that is where they orient their action, “it has nothing to do with lower capabilities” (p. 33). The diversity of approaches to resilience defines the positions with which policy initiatives for NNA are built, most of which are based on the UNPD’s institutional vision, in order to develop the capacity, they need to face adversity. KEYWORDS • • • •

risk vulnerability resilience migrant children (NNA)

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Blanco, I. Mind Ware: Neuropsicología aplicada a la educación; Editorial ASC, SA de CV: México, 2014. Bronfenbrenner, U. La ecología del desarrollo humano; Harvard University Press: Cambridge, MA, 1979; pp 224–225. Cid, S. Resiliencia, En: Significados.com, 2019. Recuperado de: https://www.significados. com/resiliencia/ Coleman; Capdevielle, J. Capital Social: Debates y reflexiones en torno a un concepto polémico. Rev. Sociol. Politica 2014, 22 (51), 03–14. DOI: 10.1590/167-987314225101. Covarrubias, O.; Preciado, J. S. A., Arias, S. M. P. Desarrollo de Factores Resilientes en las Familias Colimenses para Enfrentar la Migración a Estados Unidos de América, Estudio en cuatro municipios; Ediciones de la Noche; Universidad de Colima: Colima, 2013. Fuentes, L. M. Las muertes que no deben ser. Natalidad y mortalidad en México; UNAM: México, 2018. Gergen. Sobre la práctica social. Estrada M y Diazgranados F. En Keneth Gergen. Construccionismo Social, Aportes para el Debate y a la Práctica; Primera edición; Universidad de los Andes, 2007. Gonzáles en Vera, N. J. A. Condiciones psicosociales de los niños y sus familias migrantes en los campos agrícolas del noroeste de México. Revista Intercontinental de Psicología y Educación 2010, 9 (1), 21–48. Recuperado de https://www.researchgate. net/publication/26506669_Condiciones_psicosociales_delos_ninos_y_sus_familias_ migrantes_en_los_campos_agricolas_del_noroeste_de_México. Gutiérrez en Capdevielle, J. Capital Social: Debates y reflexiones en torno a un concepto polémico. Revista de Sociología e Politica 2014, 22 (51), 03–14. DOI: 10.1590/167-98731422510. Jubes, E.; Laso, E.; Ponce, A. Constructivismo y construccionismo: dos extremos en la cuerda floja, s/f. Recuperado. http//estebanlaso.com. Liebenberg, L.; Ungar, M.; LeBlanc, J. C. Quantitative research, the CYRM-12: A Brief Measure of Resilience. Can. J. Public Health 2013, 131–135. Luthar; Cicchetti, 2000; Werner, 1984, citados en Uriarte, A. J-. La resiliencia. Una nueva perspectiva en psicopatología del desarrollo. Revista de Psicodidáctica 2005, 10 (2), 61–80. Universidad del País Vasco. EH. Mancini, F. Riesgos sociales en América Latina: Una interpelación al debate sobre desigualdad social. Revista Mexicana de Ciencias Políticas y Sociales Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México Nueva Época 2015, 60 (223), 237–226. ISSN-0185-1918. Mella, O. Naturaleza y orientaciones teórico-metodológicas de la investigación cualitativa, 1998. Recuperado de. https://marcoquiroz.files.wordpress.com/2018/08/mella.pdf. Moreno, C. J. C. El concepto de vulnerabilidad social en el debate en torno a la desigualdad: Problemas, alcances y perspectivas. Observatory on Structures and Institutions of Inequality in Latin America 1, Working Paper Series. Num. 9. February, 2008. Center for Latin American Studies. University of Miami, 2008 PNUD. Programa de las Naciones Unidas para el Desarrollo (PNUD), Desarrollo humano en Chile 1998; PNUD: Santiago, 1998. Resilience Research Centre. Qué es la investigación de resiliencia, 2016. Recuperado de. http://www.resilienceresearch.org/about-the-rrc/resilience/14-what-is-

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Sandoval, M. J. Construccionismo, conocimiento y realidad. Una lectura crítica desde la Psicología Social. Revista Mad. 2010, 23, 31–37. Thomasz, E. O.; Castelao, C. Riesgo social: medición de la vulnerabilidad en Grupos Focalizados 1. Cuadernos del CIMBAGE N 2014, 16, 27–51. Ungar, M. Resilience Research Centre; Qué es la resiliencia, 2016a. Recuperado de. http:// www.resilienceresearch.org/about-the-rrc/resilience/14-what-is-esilience?tmpl=compo nent&print=1&layout=default&page. Ungar, M. Resilience Research Centre; School of Social Work Dalhousie University Coburg Road: Canadá, 2016b. Recuperado de. http://www.resilienceresearch.org/ resources/tools/interviewuide?tmpl=component&print=1&page=. Ungar, M. The Child and Youth Resilience Measure (CYRM), Child Version USER’S MANUAL: Research; School of Social Work Dalhousie University Coburg Road: Canada, 2016c. Ungar, M.; Liebenberg. Evaluar la capacidad de adaptación a través de las culturas mediante métodos mixtos: medir la Construcción de resiliencia de la infancia y la juventud. Rev. SAGE, Oficial de Métodos mixtos de investigación 2011, 5 (2), 126–149: Disponible en http://www. sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav. Vera, N. J. A. Condiciones psicosociales de los niños y sus familias migrantes en los campos agrícolas del noroeste de México. Revista Intercontinental de Psicología y Educación 2010, 9 (1), 21–48. Recuperado de https://www.researchgate.net/publication/26506669_ Condiciones_psicosociales_de_los_ninos_y_sus_familias_migrantes_en_los_campos_ agricolas_del_noroeste_de_México. UNICEF, CGAE. Ni ilegales ni invisibles. Realidad jurídica y social de los Menores Extranjeros en España; Informe: Madrid, 2009. UNICEF. Migración resiliente, Herramientas de rescate emocional para niñas, niños y adolescentes migrantes, 2017. Recuperado de. https://www.unicef.org/.06 dejuniode2020. UNICEF, Para cada niño refugiado y migrante de América Latina y el Caribe, 2020. Párrafo 4. Disponible en https://www.unicef.org/lac/sites/unicef.org.lac/files/201809/20170508_UNICEF_LACRO_MigrantandRefugeeChildreninLAC_ESP.pdf.

CHAPTER 8

The Needs Felt by Female Breast Cancer Survivors Participating in a Reflective Communicational Support Group in Saltillo, Mexico

LAURA KARINA CASTRO SAUCEDO1, GIBRÁN ALEJANDRO VALDÉZ FLORES2, and CÉSAR ARNULFO DE LEON ALVARADO1

1Social

México

Work Faculty, Universidad Autónoma de Coahuila, Coahuila,

2Universidad

Autónoma de Aguascalientes, Aguascalientes, México

ABSTRACT This research analyzes the needs felt of five women of breast cancer survivors in the city of Saltillo, Coahuila, Mexico from a qualitative methodology with a narrative design and from a Reflective Communica­ tional Support Group model. The women participating in the model and the research shared their main needs from the diagnosis, treatment and recovery of the disease. The main findings show family needs, individual needs such as attention and psychological support, needs to be themselves and that their decisions about each of the processes they experience with the passage and recovery of the disease are respected.

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8.1 INTRODUCTION According to the American Cancer Society (2017), breast cancer occurs when cells start growing uncontrollably in the breast, forming a tumor that can often be observed on X-ray or even by touch. The World Health Orga­ nization reports that, on average, 1,380,000 new cases of breast cancer are diagnosed each year, with a mortality of 571,000 deaths annually. In Mexico, the incidence of breast cancer among the female population is high; each year, an average of 23,000 new cases are diagnosed, that is, 60 per day, according to 2016 federal data from the Ministry of Health. The Institute of Biomedical Research of the National Autonomous University of Mexico, in a statement issued for the International Day Against Breast Cancer in 2018, indicated that there are on average 10 deaths from breast cancer per day, and according to Maffuz (2016), it is the leading cause of cancer death in Mexican women. In the public health sector, in 2014, the National Cancer Institute (NCI) created the National Registry of Cancer Survivors, an online platform where survivors can register and answer a series of questions that serve as a basis for characterizing this segment of the population. This information is used to help oncology professionals generate better care strategies for the patients they serve. Another objective of this registry is to identify people who overcome the disease and to understand their physical, emotional, and social needs in their new condition as survivors. Four years later, in March 2018, the NCI indicated that 96% of the cases reported secondary physical effects, the most recurrent being fatigue, bone pain, and neuropathy, conditions that continued into the 5 years after overcoming the disease. In addition, 95% reported emotional effects, such as depression and anxiety, while 82.72% presented sexual problems, such as a lack of desire and rejection of their partner (Miranda, 2018). Londoño (2009) conducted qualitative research to identify the process that a woman experiences when she is diagnosed with breast cancer. Through in-depth interviews, the author defined four stages of the process: (1) discovering the disease, (2) accepting the disease, (3) overcoming the disease, and (4) adapting to a new body and a new life. The psychosocial resources that the women develop differ according to each stage experienced. In the first stage, the diagnosis is regarded with an element of surprise, while in the second, it is regarded with grief; in the third stage, the woman undergoes treatments, and in the fourth, she

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experiences recovery and a resignification of the meaning of life, in which cancer usually marks a biographical tipping point (Palacios et al., 2015). Similarly, Alcocer (2013) explored the processes of reconfiguring female subjectivities experienced by mastectomized female breast cancer survivors in Mexico. The results of this research show how women reconfigure the meaning of femininity after losing one of their breasts to treatment and the way in which they adapt to a new body and a new life. Sánchez (2016) analyzed the efficacy of two treatment programs for reducing fatigue in female breast cancer survivors between the ages of 45 and 66 years in Monterrey, Nuevo León, through active hypnosis and a psychoeducation program. To measure the degree and the different types of fatigue in female survivors, the researcher used the Multidimensional Fatigue Inventory, and after 3 months of work, Sánchez concluded that this program was a useful therapeutic strategy for reducing fatigue in female breast cancer survivors. On the other hand, Hubbeling et al. (2018) conducted research with young breast cancer survivors in Mexico and identified five main psychosocial needs: minimizing fertility concerns, improving their body image over time, overcoming barriers to unemployment after the disease, restructuring family relationships and social networks, and addressing unmet psychological care and information needs. Among their results, Hubbeling et al. (2018) raised the need for early interventions focused on providing fertility education, suggestions to survivors about the possibility of breast reconstruction and the use of pros­ theses, guidance for reintegration into the workplace, childcare assistance, psychological care, and necessary information to reduce long-term stress in these survivors. In Spain, Arrighi (2014) designed the Spanish Questionnaire for Cancer Survivors’Unmet Needs after interacting with three focus groups with a total of 20 Spanish survivors who said they had experienced disorientation during this new stage, lacked a medical itinerary to follow and felt abandoned, in addition to suffering physical fatigue and fear of a possible relapse. Based on these findings, Arrighi (2014) developed the first version of the Spanish Questionnaire for Cancer Survivors’ Unmet Needs. After its first administration to 2667 cancer survivors in Spain through an online platform, the three most prevalent unmet needs that were identified were loss of energy and physical fatigue (64%), fear of relapse (61%), and distress, anxiety, and worry about the future (53%).

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Thus, the main objective of this study was to analyze the needs felt by a group of female breast cancer survivors in Saltillo, Coahuila, Mexico through their participation in a reflective communication support group as part of the New Opportunity: Model of constructionist social intervention project (Valdez and Castro, 2019; Gergen, 1985). 8.2 SOCIAL CONSTRUCTIONISM Following Gergen (Aceros, 2012), Constructionism is a dialogue that allows the interchange of convictions, hopes, and values from speaker to speaker, basically by talking among each other. In this sense, Social Constructionism engages with the interaction of people and their own social narratives in order not only of sharing them or deconstruct them, but also to be aware that those narratives are social constructions in a certain society, time, and culture, and that why it is possible to be above them by understanding this contextual frame. According to the above, Social Constructionism enhances the oppor­ tunity of having an open context to share personal experiences without the shade of an authority that possesses the one and only Truth (Gergen in Aceros, 2012), allowing the interaction at the same level of importance and equity, in a dialogical attitude of knowing each other: This attempt to break down the barrier between the scholarly commu­ nity and the general public has been important to me for a long time. Constructionist ideas have been central to this attempt. This is partly because when you abandon the traditional notion that scientific disciplines generate pure or generalized knowledge, then you have to ask what the sciences do indeed offer to the world (Gergen in Aceros, 2012). This is how Social Constructionism supports qualitative research approaches and matches with different methods that are capable to promote the interaction and positive exchange of the social constructions through our narratives and the narratives of the otherness and the aware­ ness process that it starts. 8.2.1 METHOD Qualitative research requires narrative and conversational methods (Magnabosco, 2014). Therefore, the phenomenological hermeneutic approach of Van Manen (2003) was used to develop the materials, since “it

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emerges as a response to the radicalism of what is objectifiable. It is based on the study of life experiences, regarding an event, from the subject’s perspective” (Fuster, 2019, p. 202). 8.2.2 PARTICIPANTS The participants were five female breast cancer survivors in the city of Saltillo, Coahuila, Mexico, who were recruited through the charitable association Ayuda Rosa (Pink Aid). The New Opportunity project that was developed from a reflective communication intervention model (Valdez and Castro, 2019) with the aim of resignifying the lived experience of suffering from a paradigm of social constructionism (Gergen, 1985), was applied. At the start of the project, all of the participants had completed their clinical treatments, which consisted of the removal of breast in four partici­ pants and both breasts in one participant as well as a series of chemothera­ pies and radiotherapies. Four of the women were cancer-free at the time of writing, and one was a candidate for drug monitoring (tamoxifen) for 5 years to avoid recidivism. Below are the characteristics of the participants (see Table 8.1): TABLE 8.1

Individual Characteristics of the Participants.

Number and code Age Education

1. CR51 51 years Secondary Homemaker Occupation and seamstress Marital status Married Years in relationship 30 years Number of children 3 Diagnosis 2013 End of treatment 2014

2. JG67 67 years Postgraduate Homemaker and retired nurse Divorced N/A 1 2014 2015

3. JL45 4. TM52 45 years 52 years Baccalaureate Secondary

5. AP25 25 years Professional

Homemaker

Homemaker Homemaker

Married 20 years 2 2012 2012

Married 26 years 3 2018 2019

Married 5 years N/A 2019 2019

Note: Sociodemographic data of the five women participating in the study, who are identified by code: CR51 = 51-year-old female subject; JG67 = 67-year-old female subject; JL45 = 45-year-old female subject; TM52 = 52-year-old female subject; PA25 = 25-year-old female subject.

The main inclusion criterion was that the women had completed their clinical treatments at the time of participating in the project and were

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available to attend 2-hour group sessions once a week for 3 months at the facilities of the Ayuda Rosa charitable association, an organization that has worked with female patients and breast cancer survivors in Saltillo, Coahuila, Mexico, since 2012. Most of the participants were homemakers who were caring for their children, grandchildren, and their partner, with the exception of JG67, who was divorced and was retired from the Mexican Social Security Institute with a specialization in nursing. AP25 was the youngest of the participants (25 years old) and, according to her experience, a hormonal alteration during pregnancy triggered her breast cancer; family history was also a factor as both her maternal grandmother and her mother also had breast cancer. Therefore, she decided to undergo radical bilateral mastectomy in which both breasts were removed to reduce the risk of recurrence. 8.2.3 INSTRUMENT A qualitative narrative form for needs detection was designed around the leading question “What do women need when…?” based on the three phases of the disease-health process according to Londoño (2009): suspi­ cion and diagnosis, treatment, and survival. With this, the women reconstructed their lived experience with breast cancer and shared the meaning of those needs through a conversation that took place after they filled out the form. According to Fuster (2019), this approach allows the observer “to know the experiences through stories, stories and anecdotes (…) to understand the nature of the dynamics of the context and even transform it” (p. 202). 8.2.4 PROCEDURE Based on the social construction of diagnosis, a proposal for a model of social intervention based on the reality of women who have survived breast cancer in Saltillo, Coahuila, Mexico, was designed. The proposal was developed from the Reflective Systemic model (Fraga and Araujo, 2015) and the four communicational dimensions of the Strategic Communication perspective (Massoni, 2016). These models served to operationalize social intervention through the New Opportunity project (Valdez and Castro, 2019), which was conducted in 10 two-hour sessions held between September 11 and November 13, 2019, at the charitable association Ayuda Rosa.

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The first dimension of the reflective communicational model is informative, in which the participants’ reflections revolved around the conceptualization of breast cancer; the second is interactional, in which the exchange of experiences among the women in the group is encour­ aged; the third dimension is ideological, in which the shaping of a new narrative within the group is facilitated, and the last is the enactive dimen­ sion, which consists of sharing knowledge of the lived experience and connecting it with a new, collectively constructed meaning; in this way, the process corresponds to the foundation of constructionism, in which knowledge is constructed through relationships (Gergen, 2007). Within this framework, this article reports the results of the seventh session, entitled Thinking the Action, which is part of the enactive dimen­ sion and whose objective was to share the women’s achievements up to that point in the intervention and to propose a series of actions for the benefit of other women going through the same experience by identifying the needs that arise in each phase of the health-disease process. During the session, the group had a conversation about the needs that they identified, and each participant expressed the way in which she lived her process, the social actors in their environment who supported them, those who could help them with their identified needs and the tasks that they could perform themselves in their new condition as breast cancer survivors. 8.3 ANALYSIS OF THE INFORMATION The data collected on the Needs Detection sheet and in the audio recording of the group conversation were analyzed with Atlas.ti version 7.5.7 soft­ ware through a hermeneutic process of open and in vivo coding, axial coding, and theoretical coding to obtain the categories of needs felt by this group of female breast cancer survivors in Saltillo, Coahuila. 8.4 RESULTS 8.4.1 NEED FOR SOCIAL AND FAMILY SUPPORT One of the needs of women during the diagnostic process is sensitive and warm support from the medical side. In particular, women need for the situation to be clearly explained in a way that inspires trust and helps them feel safe when processing the impact of the diagnosis. Also included in this category is the need for psychological support that allows women to

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understand and accept the disease. JL45 pointed out the importance of psychological support in her diagnostic process and identified the need for schools and social work and psychology students to rethink the actions that social services should take to establish interventions and campaigns to care for women with breast cancer. She recognized the efforts that the government has taken to provide this type of care but pointed out a lack of outreach in these schools in terms of their contribution to establishing informational spaces and helping women with a breast cancer diagnosis. I think that yes, the government does help a lot, but I think that those schools they are planning, you see, they are being sent to a social service or something; well, to open up like that, there are many neighborhoods that already have their little salons or community centers, because in those centers, they give the helpful information, because there are many people (JL45).

The women recognized the support of family and friends as a transcen­ dental element, particularly during the treatment of the disease. Although at this point, women have assimilated certain diagnostic processes, starting medical treatments opens them up to other complexities, and accompani­ ment from family and networks of friends can keep them from isolating themselves and help them to maintain the social contact necessary to emotionally assimilate the disease. One of the women recognized the importance of her children’s opinions in helping her to make decisions and recognized that her children played a supporting role in the process, unlike her husband, her sister, and a friend, who tried to influence and question her decisions about the disease. The participants indicated that a lack of support from some family members could have adverse effects on coping with the disease. Support could even come from unexpected sources (sisters-in-law, sons-in-law, neighbors), people who tended to have awareness of the disease and the disease process from members of their own families and who, despite bad moods or previous poor behaviors, identified with the disease and let their guards down to support the participant in coping with the disease. Along with a need for understanding, social support emerged as an element that the women required, especially because it relieved them from the isola­ tion, either self-caused or due to the medical circumstances of the disease. In addition, the women pointed out that during treatment, emotional support was important, and they desired more accompaniment than usual

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during the disease process; two of the participants indicated that, along with their family, neighbors also remained attentive to the evolution of the disease. This can be observed in the following narratives of the participants: When you are in treatment, it is mainly family and friends that accom­ pany you (CR51). In this case, CR51 makes a direct allusion to the role that family and friends should play during this type of health crisis, since they are the patient’s source of support and emotional reference. JG67 alluded to the company provided by other social actors who are usually outside the circle family and friends; in her case, these were neighbors who accompanied her in the treatments, since she was divorced and had only one daughter, who, although she requested time off from the Ministry of Public Educa­ tion (SEP), could not accompany her throughout the treatment process: For me, support and company more than anything else. For example, I only have one daughter. Whenever I had surgery, my daughter asked for leave (she is a special education teacher in a multipedagogical care center of the Ministry of Public Education), but for the chemo and the treatments, my neighbors came with me, even though I could do it alone since I did not feel anything after I left the treatments until the second or the third day. But my neighbors would say, “When do you have chemo?” and would come with me. When it was not one, it was another, and yes, support is needed. As for the support of my daughter, of course, she was not there personally, but she knew what was going on, and that is also an incentive, that they are aware of you (JG67). 8.4.2 NEEDS FROM THEMSELVES In addition to what the cancer survivors felt they needed from other people, the participants also reported what they needed from themselves during diagnosis and treatment and for survival. These needs were focused on acceptance and understanding of themselves, acceptance and under­ standing of their disease, changing eating habits and physical activity, and enjoying leisure time. Many indicated that connecting with nature in their free time was essential, as were strategies for preventing self-isolation and letting go of harmful emotional and social components directed toward them from other people.

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From this point of reference, JL45 suggested the “law of Teflon, where nothing sticks” as a strategy for “ripping out what does not work” in terms of not only negative social messages that survivors sometimes receive, even from their own family members who do not support them, but also in terms of the symbolic representation of removing the breast as “ripping out what does not work” to prevent the return of the disease. This was clearly conveyed in her discourse: Because if tomorrow, I am wondering if it would be better to take it out, I say it is better to remove it, because I am the kind of person that gets rid of something that does not work anymore (JL45).

Other needs the participants expressed involved recognizing what they themselves need to do to face the disease, its treatment, and their new status as survivor. In this sense, they indicated that the need to be heard by others is intimately linked with staying positive and “laughing” to decrease the burden of the disease. Being heard by others also involved not being having to answer uncomfortable questions to meet the needs of others and at the same time needing to stay positive, despite insistent questioning. Another of the messages that the women uncovered in their reflections was based on the saying “help yourself to be helped”; they expressed the need to first help themselves so that they could be helped by others, as conveyed in the statement by JG67: That’s where the understanding of mainly the family nucleus comes in, which is the one that is closest, and because there are patients who do not accept it, they isolate themselves; they refuse to accept that they have cancer, even leaving everything to God, but as they say “help yourself to be helped,” then yes, understanding (JG67).

Thus, women stated that optimism, or facing the disease with a posi­ tive outlook, was crucial to their progress, and they emphasized the need for willpower and self-love as part of a personal transcendence necessary to face the disease emotionally. Similarly, they indicated that when they were in treatment, they needed psychological and spiritual help to cope with the clinical interventions and side effects, especially physically side effects such as hair loss, loss of strength in their limbs, dizziness, nausea, and headaches. They also expressed that during treatment, it was neces­ sary to have the support of their family in a specific way; that is, they

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needed their family to respect the decisions they made about how to face the condition. Within this group of needs, the female survivors expressed that autonomy in treatment decisions was a key element since they believed that throughout the process, they tended to “become an object” that people around them tried to manipulate because “they believe the doctors,” as noted by AP25. 8.4.3 NEED TO MAKE THEIR OWN DECISIONS The participants talked about the need to make their own treatment deci­ sions based on the diagnosis and the need for these decisions not to be questioned. Coming to a decision was costly in terms of their strength and energy; therefore, they wanted their decisions to be respected because they were based on their own experience and should be exempted from other people’s influence. They felt that they were the best people to make decisions regarding their own bodies, including whether to keep the entire breast, undergo reconstruction or not, and other issues. Comments, judgments, or confrontation from others was hurtful and made them doubt the conviction of their decisions. The women recognized the importance of words of support but at the same time recognized that the way they themselves directed or controlled those words of support influenced the outcome and the impact of those words. When words of support arose from the “fraternity and brotherhood of people,” they contributed to the women’s well-being, increased their strength and ability to cope with the situation, improved their emotional state, and helped them to recognize that “they are not alone.” On the other hand, words of support did not have this effect when they aimed to influence the women’s own beliefs and confidence in their own decisions. In this sense, the need for people to respect their decisions was mainly related to decisions about ongoing treatment; they felt that they knew what was best for their own body and wanted their decisions about what they would or would not do with it to be respected. In addition, words that cheapened the medical care they were receiving or the prestige of their doctor were perceived as having a negative influ­ ence. Some of these elements are reflected in the following argument of JL45:

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Models of Social Intervention and Constructionism Words of support, they have a lot to do with how they tell you, the fraternity and brotherhood in people that raises you a thousand [times], gives you a lot of strength; they take you out of that gray world where you live, [give] the support to go out, and they say, “We are here; you are not alone”… not interfering in decisions; there are times when people interfere in what you believe and in what you bring; “No, it’s just that way.” It’s that I was told, “No, it’s that your doctor is useless”; there are times when I’ve come to say, “Hey, he’s a doctor; he should know”; “it’s that my oncologist is this so-and-so, fulano, with more prestige” (JL45).

8.4.4 NEED FOR PSYCHOLOGICAL SUPPORT The women pointed out the importance of psychological support during the diagnosis, treatment, and survival phases; when this need is met, it allows them to understand and accept the disease. One of the women reported that the experience of the diagnosis is very intimate and personal and that even when there is trust in the family, there is a need for another type of care that allows them to understand how they should react and how they will face that moment. In this situation, trust in family members is insufficient, and the need for professional and specialized care becomes a determinant of the woman’s ability to face the disease process with better personal and emotional tools. Some of the women described this scenario with total clarity: Psychologically, we are not prepared for such news because many people see it as mutilation; many people say, “They mutilated me”; “I am not the same.” We do not have that culture of what we are going through (JL45).

In this sense, JG67 indicated that professional support can help over­ come the denial of many patients who do not accept what is happening to them: Psychological support also because many people with the diagnosis do not accept it, for the same reason (JG67).

Finally, AP25 recalled that she decided to go to a psychologist to improve her emotional condition after her treatments: [For] me, personally, psychological help, because I said no, I will not stay at home and go crazy; I need to analyze the situation, convey it, express what I am feeling (AP25).

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8.4.5 DIAGNOSTIC NEEDS The participants reported that the stage of diagnosis is when they reflected the most on the importance of prevention, since it is a stage when under­ standing does not exist even among family members and is experienced as a “whirlwind” of internal emotions in which fear, frustration, and dread are present at the same time. One of the women provided this analogy for the emotions she experienced: When it is diagnosed, because it is something that even the family does not understand, it is a whirlwind, a “Tasmanian” (in reference to the character the Tasmanian Devil) here inside; you bring fear, you bring frustration, dread.” (JL45)

According to the participants, at the time of diagnosis, there was a need for hope; that is, there was the need to know that the disease does not mean death and that treatments can overcome it. Consequently, it was very important for them to know of other patients who overcame the disease to help them put their situation in perspective. 8.4.6 THE NEED TO RESIGNIFY THEMSELVES THROUGH INTERACTION WITH OTHERS The participants’ need, as survivors, to help other women was represented as a need to resignify themselves. AP25 recognized that family and social support for their decisions is a key element for survivors because sometimes, going through the disease puts them in a position of female vulnerability in terms of other’s interpretations of their experience. Consequently, deci­ sions about life plans or, in the case of AP25, plans for reproduction, were viewed with a certain amount of displeasure by family members, who felt that the women should focus more on their recent illness. These attitudes prevented the women from moving forward with short-term plans, such as having a child. On the other hand, interaction with other female survivors was recog­ nized as an important need that allowed them to stay busy and take actions to help others: And it is true, because I have people who have asked me for support to help them get rid of cancer and everything; they say, “Hey, this person is

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Models of Social Intervention and Constructionism going through this; can you help me?” Yes, I can help you; tell me what I can do, and I will go, but almost everyone in my Facebook is people who have gone through cancer. I have even invited them, but look, they tell me they cannot (JL45). Yes, sometimes we were busy here (Ayuda Rosa)—the workshops, the courses that they gave us here, such as sewing, beauty, of all that, it helps you a lot, apart from what you learn and living together, and that is also the most important thing, living together, the coexistence among peers. We will be here (Ayuda Rosa) to live together to get to know each other (CR51).

This interaction also helped them to distract themselves and enjoy themselves “like being a kid” (including the presence of their partners in these interactions), which helps them forget about the disease a little. The narratives of the women in the intervention group constantly referred to the other participants’ comments and incorporated them into their own experiences, so that the discourses were constantly used as references to show the similarity of their lived experiences: My brother let me use his ranch so I could take some women to get out of the routine. I think that is therapy. We laugh like never before, we play like never before, we looked like little girls; we even jumped rope that day. I think that we need, as you said in the previous therapy, to be kids again and remember what dreams we have. That’s what is missing; letting go (JL45).

8.5 DISCUSSION This research shares the findings of Londoño (2009), Alcocer (2013), and Hubbeling (2018) in determining the needs reconstructed from the narratives of women who interacted and reflected in an intervention group aimed at determining the psychosocial elements of their subjectivity and lived experience (Gergen in Aceros, 2012). The needs for social and family support, their own needs, the need for support for their decisions, the need for psychological support, the needs during diagnosis, and the need to resignify themselves through coexistence with others coincided with the analysis of physical, emotional and social needs of survivors and their new lived experience, as indicated by the NCI (in Miranda, 2018).

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From the stages indicated by Londoño (2009), it is possible to specify that the needs that the participants in this study felt since diagnosis were similar to the stages of discovering and accepting breast cancer, while the needs to resignify themselves and make their own decisions coincided with adapting to a new body and a new life after overcoming the disease. Among these decision-making needs, the decisions women make about their bodies stand out. Considering the absence of the breast and decisions about it occupy a prominent place in this category of needs, and the contribution of Alcocer (2013) allows a better consideration of these interpretations. Thus, the need for psychological support confirms the findings of Hubbeling et al. (2018) regarding psychological support and support from family members as substantial needs for female cancer survivors. As Garassini (2015) and Biffi and Mamede (2010) reported, the demands of breast cancer patients, such as their needs from their families, are rarely made visible, which reflects the low expectations in society that someone with this disease can survive. However, after treatment comes a process of adaptation and reconfiguration of one’s life that also implies a new family dynamic and highlights the alignment of family roles according to gender; men and women do not experience this change the same way, and women work harder to regain stability in the family. Likewise, in this new stage, as Londoño (2009) pointed out, surviving women face the issue of self-transcendence when they recover a new sense of life. Among the participants in the present study, the case of PA25 stood out; perhaps because she was the youngest woman in the group, she asked “What’s next?” Therefore, it would be appropriate to conduct an in-depth analysis of the impact of breast cancer on the reality of young women and their adaptation to survivorship. KEYWORDS • • • •

breast cancer survivors needs felt communicational support group

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Organización Mundial de la Salud. Cáncer, datos y cifras [Nota de prensa] 2018. Recuperado de http://bit.ly/2v4MlkN. Palacios, X.; Milena, A.; Moreno, K.; Ospino, J. El significado de la vida y de la muerte para mujeres con cáncer de mama. Avances en Psicología Latinoamericana 2015, 33, 455–479. https://doi.org/10.12804/apl33.03.2015.07. Sánchez, M. Efecto de la Hipnosis Activa y Psicoeducación en el tratamiento de la fatiga en sobrevivientes de cáncer de mama [Tesis de maestría, Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo León]; Repositorio Institucional UANL, 2016. http://eprints.uanl. mx/14313/1/1080238008.pdf. Valdez, G.; Castro, L. Nueva oportunidad: propuesta de intervención social a partir de las narrativas de una mujer sobreviviente de cáncer de mama. Políticas Sociales Sectoriales 2019, 6, 896–924. Recuperado de http://bit.ly/38zFzkO. Van Manen, M. Investigación educativa y experiencia vivida. Ciencia humana para una pedagogía de la acción y de la sensibilidad; Idea Books: Barcelona, España, 2003.

CHAPTER 9

Social Reconstruction of Women Carers of Children with Disabilities: A Model from Socio-Constructionist Intervention VÍCTOR RAMÍREZ and FERNANDO BRUNO

Faculty of Social Work, Universidad Autónoma de Coahuila, México

ABSTRACT According to the World Health Organization, the term DISABILITY is used broadly to refer to impairments, activity limitations, and participation restrictions that a person may have. It is a complex phenomenon reflecting an interaction between the characteristics of the human organism and the elements of the society in which it lives. Within the family environ­ ment, the arrival of a child with a disability leads to changes in family dynamics, because it produces constant emotional stress, influences family interaction, and generates changes and crises in family functions and roles. Historically, the care of those who fulfill the role of the primary caregiver remains in the background and sometimes the need to intervene in the caregiver is not even made visible; the purpose of the present work lies in the recognition that there are different ways of understanding and being understood in this role and therefore different ways of constructing it. Therefore, the importance of giving voice to the narratives of carers and recognizing them as a segment that requires professional interven­ tion, puts on the table a challenge that every day demands new ways of understanding it. This summary is part of an intervention model based on

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Kenneth Gergen’s social constructionism, where, by putting into dialogue the narratives that primary caregivers have about the experience of a child with a disability, the way in which they deconstruct an apparently solid identity such as disability and the elements on which they sustain the construction of their reality. Favoring dialogue between narratives promotes exchange and communication between social actors, offers the possibility of approaching from a closer position to understand the symbolic universe that the conflict situation described represents for them, and provides elements for their intervention. 9.1 INTRODUCTION Caring for others is an act that has accompanied human beings since they began to conceive of themselves as a part of the community. Care is given in a variety of ways, most of them through relationship or kinship to the person in need of care. This implies that the person in this role has the skills to cope with the vicissitudes that may arise. Carers of children with disabilities are an example of this. Common practiced care becomes evident when it ceases to be performed or is taken by institutions as mentioned by Arriaga (2017). In this sense, there is a need for recognition as a group at risk, where leaving anonymity behind contributes to improving their living conditions. In Mexico, in recent years, attention to people with disabilities has been opening up spaces for attention, study, and reflection, also making the work of the caregiver more visible. According to the National Survey of Demographic Dynamics 2014, elaborated by the National Institute of Statistics and Geography (INEGI), the number of persons with disabilities in the country is equivalent to 6% of the population, which represents about 7.2 million people living with a disability condition (CNDH, 2017). It is important to note that, according to estimates by the World Health Organization, this figure is on the rise, so that care for this group also requires actions on a larger scale that are capable of offering alternatives for development and care in front of the complexity that this reality implies. According to the 2012 Labor and Social coresponsibility Survey— ELCOS (INEGI, 2012), 52% of households in Mexico (6.9 million) had at least one family member who depended on the care of a relative or service external to the family to carry out daily living activities. This is important because it indicates that just over half of all households in Mexico have at least one person who is dependent on a caregiver.

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The figure of the caregiver then, becomes relevant when identified as necessary in the statistics presented above, since for every person who requires care, there is at least one primary caregiver who takes care of him or her. Studies such as Blanco’s (2019) show that a large number of women carers are overburdened in this role. Rodríguez-González (2017) refers in her/his study that in the caregiver’s overload there are factors such as the lack of time for oneself, which generates negative effects on interpersonal relationships; and the physical health of the carer is sometimes aggravated by the excess of tasks they have to attend to, leaving care for themselves to one side. 9.2 JUSTIFICATION There are around 7.2 million people with disabilities in Mexico (CNDH, 2017). This data exposes a reality that is often overlooked: the figure of the caregiver. According to INEGI figures, in 2016, there were 286 thousand people in Mexico formally employed in the care of disabled (INEGI, 2016). It is estimated that the number of informal 20 carers engage fulltime in the care of persons with disabilities far exceeds this figure. Inherent to the disability, the exhaustion to which the caregiver is exposed is a risk factor (Espino and Martin, 2014), which breaks with work and economic stability, family dynamics and management of emotions, and the ability to make decisions. In addition, support networks are minimized by the social isolation that can occur. This complicates the situation, making care a hard to reach ideal. When talking about the care of the primary caregivers, the indispens­ able role within society becomes evident, if we talk about the fact that in Mexico there are around seven million people living with disability condi­ tion, then we talk about there being at least another seven million informal caregivers assisting them. This does not include formal caregivers who are paid and/or part of a health system that cares for them. Intervention models dedicated specifically to carers are scarce and those that do exist, for the most part, place the carer in second place. Traditionally, care for exhausted carers, from the public health system, revolves around medical follow-up in the area of psychiatry, this is, phar­ macological alternatives become the option for achieving functionality

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and continuing to carry out their work in this role. Hence the importance of identifying the factors that promote coping and the resignification of the various experiences that the caregiver lives through. Guevara and González (2012) mention that the birth of a child is, without a doubt, a moment of real change in the personal history of an individual, which restructures the flow of his or her experience; this enters into a story in line with personal, couple, and family evolution. 9.3 THEORETICAL FRAME Although there are immutable elements in society, there is a part of it that is constantly changing. In this change, the processes for understanding it also change. The social sciences, by their nature, seek to understand the relationships of human beings and the relationships they establish with their environment, their peers, and society in general. Today, social fragmentations are produced and presented on very different levels, as Villasante (2000) points out, these are very diverse for reasons of ethnicity, age, gender, etc., and do not find unifying elements for their common condition. Thus, we need to get closer in ways that are unique, thus allowing to maintain the richness of those who live an experi­ ence and it can help to have a universe of possibilities of knowledge. Detached from the above, reality becomes complex to deal with, demanding from the professional work a greater capacity to be understood and new ways of approaching it. This knowledge involves identifying elements and characteristics of the object of study itself. According to Acevedo (2010), this process is experienced as a function of the inter­ vention of the professional, who identifies the narratives, problems, and elements that enter into dialogue, so that the “social actors” are the protagonists of the research itself. In this sense, the present research takes Kenneth Gergen’s Social Constructionism as a theoretical framework to direct actions toward understanding the discourse of caregivers, with the aim of having a broad overview of the way in which this role is assumed and constructed from the individual perception. Sustained theory, participatory social research, hermeneutics, and critical discourse analysis are sources from which this work is enriched, seeking to suggest an including alternative that offer social science

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professionals, other ways of intervening and new ways of approaching complex reality. From its conception, this research seeks to find out how reality and the beings that live in it (women who cares for a child with disabilities) are configured. It is an academic work of the scientific rank and therefore has its foundation in theories that favor the intervention within a group or community and in this way enables its action for the understanding of the narrative put in dialogue. The main theoretical foundation is Social Constructionism, which, in the words of Kenneth Gergen himself, defines its functioning on two levels: First, it is a meta-theory of knowledge, similar to empiricism, for example, as a theory of all claims to knowledge. And second, it is a theory in practice, just like cognitive or psychoanalytic theory. Thus, on a metatheoretical level, constructionism says, let us realize that everything that is called knowledge is a communal/community construction (Yang L., 2014). In this sense, by assuming a position where reality is constructed, it is possible to understand that there is no single way of understanding it, since there is no single reality. The latter, when constructed, offers a range of possibilities to be known. The theoretical position of August Comte’s 25 Positivism is summa­ rized in that reality is given and is objective and independent of the subject. This premise permeated all areas of science. However, as science progressed, important theorists appeared who went beyond the apparent. For Berger and Luckmann (1986), cited by Henríquez (2010), reality is established as a consequence of a dialectical process between social relations, typified habits, and social structures, viewed from a social point of view. Therefore, from the individual, it is possible to have symbolic interpretations, internalization of roles, and formation of identities, which emerge from the social sphere. Accordingly, the social sciences should be concerned with the way in which knowledge interprets and constructs reality, in particular, everyday reality with its implications. Here it is possible to recognize to what extent social constructionism also implies a political stance, in that it holds that reality is constructed in relation to the given social order, thus everyday life is assumed as normal. With this frame of reference, understanding the way in which the selected social actors integrate the role of caring a child with a disability into his or her daily life is a determining factor in understanding the way in which he or she organizes his or her daily life

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and faces the challenges he or she faces; so that the façade of normaliza­ tion can be broken through by deconstruction, which, initially, is not by changing it, but by coming closer to understanding it. 9.4 OBJECTIVES With regard to the intervention objective, this allows us to guide the actions to be carried out during the sessions with the group of women, articulating their narratives within the discourse consistent with the reality they live. As Raya Diez (2014) points out, it contributes to the capacity for reflection and analysis of what is done, in what context and, above all, from what discourses meaning is given. We work with the following intervention objective: “Reconstructing the narratives that women have about the experience of having a child with disability, in order to contribute to the generation of greater social welfare.” 9.5 METHODOLOGY The intervention model is based on the experience of primary caregivers of children with disabilities and their means of adapting to this role. In this sense, it is important to point out that social intervention helps to understand the various discourses that emerge in reality, it is a way of generating knowledge that, from those involved (social actors) helps to shape the reality that is intended to intervene. According to Arroyo Rueda (2017), the intervention must be thought, reflected, and signified within the dynamics of social relations that occur in a society and as a response to the tension between such stakeholders. Therefore, the intervention implies reviewing models, methods, tech­ niques, and positions that allow the object of the intervention itself. Following the same category of ideas, Arroyo Rueda mentions that in order to achieve the construction and implementation of models it is necessary to consider the parts of a whole; the interrelation and the interdependence between the protagonists of the social, in a face-to-face interaction in a particular context, permeated by specific, particular social circumstances, from which the singularity of meaning arises.

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With the above, it is clear that the intervention and its methods represent a challenge by itself, because although there is a theoretical framework that supports it, it must also respond skillfully to various practical elements, such as flexibility and openness in the reasoning of interpretation and meanings; the ability to establish open dialogues that promote links, connections and mediations with reality, to act in the field of argumentation and not in the field of speculation and ideologies; in this way, it is possible to enter into the complexity of the social (Mancillas Espinosa, 2017). Thanks to the theoretical scaffolding of constructionism, it is possible to construct an object of study and knowledge that in turn becomes an object intervention. It is of utmost importance that the construction of the object of study is solid, since the object that will later become the object of the intervention will depend on this. Thanks to the social constructionism, it is possible to identify the narratives that construct the subjective reality of women caregivers of children with disabilities and, taking this aspect as a starting point, the design of the intervention acquires coherence. The model is called “H.A.R.A.” referring to the triad “Talk-ReflectAct,” elements that are taken as a basis for the creation of new narratives around the experience of disability and the appropriation of the role of caregiver. Among the theoretical and practical components is the narrative therapy, which helps to externalize and manage narratives, promoting changes from the structure of thought, which will later be reflected in the emotional area and in the daily practice of caregivers. Another component is hermeneutics, which, as pointed out by Mancinas et al., (2017) began to use within theology to know the exact meaning of sacred texts. It continued to be used later in philology, art, and, by the 19th century, in the social sciences. From this standpoint, it is argued that without understanding or gasping the meanings it is impossible to appre­ hend the complexity of the phenomena of the social sciences, which is the study from the subjective takes on a preponderant role. The third theoretical component is Kenneth Gergen’s Social Construc­ tionism, a position that contributes to the dialogue between narratives and helps in the elaboration of new ways of understanding a complex reality. A graphic representation of the intervention model is presented below.

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FIGURE 9.1

Models of Social Intervention and Constructionism

“H.A.R.A.” model of intervention.

Source: Own creation.

It is aimed for primary caregivers of children with disabilities. According to the diagnosis, the dominant narratives revolve around “a catastrophic vision of life” where personal life is fractured and has to be redefined because a new role has to be integrated: being the caregiver of a child with a disability. This “tunnel vision” is framed by ideas of handicap, guilt, and demands a process of adaptation both financially and in terms of time and routines. As a result, following up on a personal life project remains in the background, as well as the emotional management of one’s own life. Three phases are then established that respond to the methodological moments of constructionism proposed by Kisnerman (Mancillas Espinosa, 2017), where the capacity of the participants to dialogue is weighted and as a result of this process it is possible to create new narratives that help to go through the experience of a child with a disability taking the resilience elements they have.

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This context offers a guideline to raise the importance of the analysis of narratives, the appropriate elements of the context, and the historical moment. Although it is true that sometimes the method is given priority over the object of study, in this research, according to social diagnosis and the interviews, it is possible to maintain a narrative consistent with the purpose and objectives. As mentioned above, a social diagnosis was carried out for the inter­ vention, as a result of which some guidelines were established to stan­ dardize the inclusion criteria from the creation of the intervention group. The objective of the group is to know how women live the experience of disability, as well as the appropriation of the role of the caregiver, from which the social reconstruction of women will be obtained through the socio-constructionist intervention. Every model starts precisely from an identified situation where discom­ fort or tension is generated. An example of this may be medical models that address issues associated with organic wellness. Other models revolve around learning, such as educational and cognitive models. Models that seek to address large-scale social problems, such as public safety programs, poverty, natural disasters, or any type of contingency. As Castro (2014) points out, theoretical perspectives serve as an epistemological guide for professional attention and intervention, from what follows that the intervention model presented here is a constructed model that responds to specific needs that were identified through a social diagnosis. It integrates a methodological scheme that can be understood thanks to a theoretical framework that makes visible the need to explain in a casual way the problem to be intervened. This model gives weight to intersubjective processes such as the expe­ rience of disability, the meaning given to it by the person who lives it and how he/she relates to this reality on a daily basis. The intervention was carried out on the basis of the dominant narrative: The experience of a child with a disability changes the family’s life and focuses the mother’s attention on the child with a disability”. This narrative is the result of the social diagnosis and socialization with the other participants. The present model is presented in a circular form, referring to the fact that reality is under constant construction and is a constant process in construction. Each experience is anchored to another from which a new one is obtained through dialogue. In this process of dialogue, meanings are created and transformed as they are shared with others.

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The model shows three phases in which the constructionist work is condensed: a first phase called identity, which corresponds to the moment of deconstruction. At this point, we work with the dominant narratives that caregivers have in relation to themselves, how they perceive the experience of disability and how they have been appropriating the role of primary caregivers of their child with disability. We also work on emotional elaboration and management. At this stage, it is of utmost importance to rescue the narratives with which they arrived at the group, what is the social and cultural background with which they present themselves in order to enter into the knowledge of “their world.” The second phase, called conversation, corresponds to the method­ ological moment of construction. At this point of the intervention, the dialogue of the narratives is considered with the purpose of allowing the participants to conduct meanings about the experience and their own vision of the reality addressed. For this, we work on the basis of narra­ tives about the way they communicate in their family dynamics, how they establish roles and routines or how they share them. It is also an approach to self-care. In this second phase, the exposed narratives detonate the process of dialogue and reflection, with the objective of sharing their meanings and opening the possibility of creating new ways of understanding each other. The third phase of the model is the creation. In this sense, reflection translates into small actions that, from daily life, help to achieve significant changes. These changes take place gradually, as they develop new ways of understanding themselves and the world around them, and will be trans­ lated into practical life. The topics addressed in this third phase correspond to the creation of support networks, the development of resilient resources, and finishes with a reflection of the life project, which anchors the efforts toward a personal goal that sustains their daily lives. The model presented intervenes at the individual, family, and social levels. It encourages reflection on the microinteraction that women carers establish with their immediate environment (family) but also represents a change in the way they approach their role, as a multiplier effect, can be reflected in larger-scale contexts. As mentioned above, the intervention was organized in three phases, in response to the needs identified during the social diagnosis and the interviews with the participants.

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9.6 RESULTS

It is important to note as a finding that gender issues are beginning to become visible in the way they express their daily lives. One of the partici­ pants says: “because you grow up thinking that your place is in the house… that you have to look after your children, your husband, do the chores, but that shoun.t be the case” 26. The role played by parenting styles, the way in which the context provides elements for personal development and the way in which certain roles are assumed. In the experience of the intervention itself, the gender issue was involved, as we worked only with female caregivers and mothers of a child with disabilities. In her experience, this role is given immediately at the birth of the child, since she is the mother and there are sociocultural factors that impose to her the care of the children. This role is not unique; she also works outside the home and performs household chores. At first, the narratives appear to be solid, apprehended, fixed decla­ rations and with a catastrophic view of the experience of disability and the role of the caregiver. While the way she relates to her child and the disability is based on these premises, the caregiving role she plays seems to be a reality that is lived in loneliness. Hence, the feelings that arise are associated with depression, anguish, and stress. Fear of the future and even the social isolation experienced are normalized and integrated as inherent elements of caregiving and disability. These narratives awaken the interest in knowing the life history, since, at this point, it is possible to identify that the way in which difficulties are faced is learned, resources that allow or not to visualize alternatives to go through the life experience have been appropriated. An important reflection is that, in today’s society, those things are not “like the rest,” generate stress because they demand adaptation, the normalization of families and individuals is sought without thinking about the “normality” that integrates distinctive elements in each case and that is precisely where the richness of diversity lies. The reinterpretation that social actors make of their discourses allows for the exploration of other ways of coping with adversity. When care­ givers are able to put into words those situations that worry them or make them anxious, they open a door to position themselves from another angle in the same situation.

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This can lead them to inhabit differently the reality they have constructed, the way they have responded according to the elements that each one has. While it is true that the change in narratives occurs on a discursive level, the main challenge remains in the way it is translated into everyday life. When they allow themselves to think and talk differently than they usually do about their roles as carers, about being women, and about the experience they have had, it is possible to experience reality with a different emotional charge, which can lead to the appropriation of a new discourse in relation to themselves, to see differently and to conceive their reality from a kinder, more manageable and hopeful construction. 9.7 CONCLUSIONS The paradigm of constructionism allows research to be based on the reality that social actors have constructed. It is a commitment to offer different alternatives in the face of increasingly complex realities. Using social constructionism and its potentialities as a framework for investi­ gating social realities allows us to get close to the actors in a cautious but responsible way, to understand and analyze the elements at play that shape collectivity. The problems faced by the social science practitioner today is precisely how to intervene in society and give back to it a reconstructed contribution of what seems to be static and controlled, reconstructions are still in force depending on the room for maneuver in everyday social action. But it also seems important to give a proper place to social actors, cultural issues, and contexts. They are the ones who shape reality and they are the ones who know what they need. Starting from their narratives contributes to the humanization of the social sciences. To leave a little of the researcher’s prominence behind and recognize the importance of those who live and make the social construction of reality. As recommendations, it is possible to point out the importance of carrying out holistic research and interventions, that is to say, integral, based on and for the social actors. It is known beforehand that there is no better model for intervening in a reality than the one that is built specifically or each intervention, given that if it is recognized that reality is dynamic, research, and intervention models must also respond to this premise.

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KEYWORDS

• • • •

primary caregiver constructionism narrative disability

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desde la Intervención socioconstruccionista; Tesis de maestría: Saltillo, Coahuila, 2020. Ramos Torre, R. Futuros sociales en tiempos de crisis. Arbor 2017, 193 (784), 1–14. Rivera, Y. H. Resiliencia, recursos familiares y espirituales en cuidadores de niños con discapacidad. Obtenido de Journal of Behavior, Health & Social Issues 2017. http:// www.revistas.unam.mx/index.php/jbhsi/article/view/68370/60416 Rodríguez-González, A. M; et al. Rodríguez-Estudio observacional transversal de la sobrecarga en cuidadoras informales y los determinantes relacionados con la atención de personas dependientes. Atención Primaria 2017, 156–165. Sztajnszrajber, D. La cuestión posmoderna; Gestión Cultural y Comunicación – FLACSO: Buenos Aires, 2009. Tomás Villasante, M. M. La investigación social participativa, 2000. Obtenido de http:// www.redcimas.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/lcc1_investigacion_ participativa.pdf Valdéz, G. Sobrevivir al cáncer de mama: experiencia psicosocial de mujeres saltillenses en un modelo reflexivo-comunicacional socioconstruccionista; Tesis de maestría: Saltillo, 2020. Wright Mills, C. La imaginación sociológica; Fondo de Cultura Económica: México, 2002. Yang, L. El construccionismo social y su desarrollo. Entrevista a Kenneth Gergen. En prensa. Psychological Studies 2014. Yang, L.; Gergen, K. Social Construction and Its Development: Liping YangInterviews Kenneth Gergen. Psychol. Stud. 2012, 57 (2), 126–133. Zietlin, I. M. Ideología y teoría sociológica; Amorrortu: Buenos Aires, 2001.

CHAPTER 10

Social Constructionism and Male Narratives in Reflection Groups for Men Who Exercise Violence Toward Their Partners in Monterrey, Nuevo Leon, Mexico LAURA KARINA CASTRO SAUCEDO

Faculty of social work, Universidad Autónoma de Coahuila, Coahuila, México

ABSTRACT The objective of this research was to identify the elements of masculinity from the narratives of men, who experience intimate partner violence, participating in focus groups from a social constructionist perspective. Social constructionism was used as a paradigm of analysis and by means of the content analysis technique we worked with the documents produced in the men’s sessions and with the observation protocols. The sample consisted of 35 male participants in two focus groups in Monterrey, Nuevo Leon, Mexico. The results reflected an unattainable masculine ideal that generates discomfort; fatherhood as an attribute of masculinity but also of male violence from replicated patterns; and finally, male fear that gener­ ates violence.

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10.1 INTRODUCTION Currently, in Mexico, there are a series of programs, experiences, and inter­ vention models to deal with men who perpetrated violence as a result of the General Law on Women’s Access to a Life Free of Violence (LGAMVLLV) enacted by the Mexican Congress, with the focus of these interventions being on reflection groups for men (Vargas, 2009; Garda and Huerta, 2007). These groups seek to establish spaces for reflection, criticism, and confron­ tation of the masculine reality from the disarticulation of traditional gender stereotypes, the management of emotions, and the alternative of masculinity to establish an equitable and egalitarian context with women (Castro et al., 2015). Studies in masculinity have reported that men do not talk about their problems because this can be interpreted as a sign of weakness and femininity (Fleiz et al., 2008; Kimmel, 2008; Sabo, 2005). De Keijzer (2001) states that this practice is a form of violence, a concept he takes from Kaufman (1989) in order to understand that the deterioration of men’s physical and emotional health is a form of violence by men against themselves. In this sense, the construction of masculinity is a complex process in which power, pain, joy, and violence are combined as expressions of socialization, social demands, and dominant stereotypes on men who recre­ ates their subjectivity in accordance with these hegemonic representations of what it means to be a man; it is a process of situating men’s actions, thoughts, and decisions according to the model that society establishes as corresponding to the male gender (Wong et al., 2010; Rogers et al., 2017). Gender studies have linked the construction of masculinity as identity, traits, and roles to an articulated axis of power (Ramírez, 2005). Power is a difficult concept that has been adopted by masculinity studies in Latin America (Amuchástegui, 2006; Burin and Meler, 2000; Ramírez, 2005; Ramírez Hernández, 2000; Tena Guerrero, 2010) and other parts of the world (Bourdieu, 2005, Connell, 1987; Kaufman, 1989, 1999) to understand violence afflicted by men. In other words, male socialization and men’s vital trajectories are imbued with the learning and reproduction of the macho narrative articulated through violence. 10.1.1 SOCIAL CONSTRUCTIONISM, THE CONSTRUCTION OF MASCULINITY, AND MEN’S VIOLENCE Studies find that men who perpetrate violence are unlikely to recognize their behavior as violent, and many feminist activists and practitioners

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agree that abusive men attempt to rationalize their violence and use a series of tactics to trivialize and deny their violent behavior, and blame others (particularly their parents), to mitigate their own culpability (Mancera et al., 2017). In a study conducted by Flinck and Paavilainen (2008), with men who inflict violence, they suggest several reasons why they perpetrate violent martial behavior, including biological, social and mental health factors, their belief systems, and their traumatic experiences. Within their findings, abusive behavior was linked to several charac­ teristics: first, men strove to deny their violent behavior because of their ethical ideals; second, men did not interpret acts other than physical ones as violent, and attempt to underestimate and mitigate violence, justifying violence as an act of defense. And third, men used violence when they panicked by overloading themselves, and repressing feelings. In this sense, the authors explain a man’s violent behavior as an effort to achieve a sense of control or to force the woman into “communication.” Admitting violence was difficult for men and often the awakening to it happened after the physical act of violence, but this also contributed to identifying the violence from their own guilt, and thus became the first step in seeking help. According to the findings of the same authors, the central elements of violent behavior were to seek a way out of the overload (oppressed situations and feelings), to seek the right and the possibility to express their feelings, and to seek approval and communication in a partner relationship. Fundamentally, the abuse of men showed the need to be respected as men and sought to experience dignity toward them through violence. However, the authors also conclude that the men suffered from their behavior and sought means to restore their human dignity. Men’s violent behavior is a process from denial to waking up to reality and starting to move on and seek for help (Flinck and Paavilainen, 2008). From the onset, the concept of violence is linked to the construction of masculine identity in today’s society, as it constitutes an important part of the socialization process of men; violence is usually presented in their lives from childhood to adulthood, and the abuse perpetrated by male aggressors conceals a frustration and failure for not having managed to achieve the traditional model of masculinity (EMAKUNDE-Basque Women’s Institute, 2008). For the social construction theory of reality, human beings create what they see, so it is not possible to demand that truth rests on an absolute standard existing outside of them (Gergen, 2007). Moreover, one’s own vision and

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knowledge about the world cannot be separated from personal and profes­ sional histories, that is, from previous codes of understanding (Laird, 1995). In this sense, it has been possible to understand that gender has been established as a social construction built up over the course of human socialization; the meanings attached to gender have been recreated from the determining reality of each era and from each symbol given to feminine and the masculine. Schütz (1993) states that the person arrives at a pre-interpreted, and pre-symbolized world, from the point of view, traditional gender roles have been cited as risk factors for the perpetration of family violence by femi­ nist theorist, for their role in the socialization of men and certain norms, attitudes, and behaviors such as the acceptance of violence in relationships (Basile et al., 2013), taking these as the pre-symbolized elements. Some authors point out that the promotion of hegemonic masculinity; aggres­ sion; and physical, sexual, and social domination of men is associated with the perpetration of male violence (Connell, 2005, Messerschmidt, 2005, Peralta and Tuttle, 2013; Poteat et al., 2011). According to social constructionism, reality is constituted by an order of objects, ideas, values, and situations that were designated and designed before the person existed; however, what corresponds to the individual is a small fraction of the knowledge originated in the particularity of his or her individual experience and most of his or her knowledge is socially derived through his or her family, educational experience, and other significant people; this is what constitutes his or her social heritage (Gergen, 2007). In this regard, it is possible to link the construction of masculinity as a constant exercise of social construction, which goes beyond the notion of individuality and contributes to the production of normative systems that limit men and constrain them to undertake certain risky behaviors (Amorós, 1992, Castañeda, 2007). A central theme in social construction theory is that regardless of different views, positions, or stances on the world, every human being knows that he or she shares a common world with others (Gergen, 2007), yet the subjective experiences that construct these life stories converge in this common world. In the family, this is evident; it is not the same to be born at a certain time in the family as in another, for example, it could be that at the beginning of the family, the parents are hopeful and with many projects in front of a life that is all ahead and it could be that another child is born at a time when that hope no longer exists and the same father and the same mother are no longer the same for these different children.

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In the construction of masculinity, this family also plays a determining role in these subjective experiences. Working with perpetrators is mostly a perspective that considers the historical traditions and patriarchal struc­ tures of the family as well as their link to contemporary constructions of masculinity and femininity in the common world they inhabit (Flinck and Paavilainen, 2008). That is to say, those families where the exercise of violence has become one of the natural categories in the construction of masculinity inevitably have an impact on the construction of these subjective experiences prior to being a man. Contrary to the essentialist perspective on gender, where gender is seen as an inherent characteristic and attached to individuals, from a social constructionist perspective, masculinity and femininity are not seen as coming from women’s indi­ vidual minds and bodies, but as socially constructed. As being appropriate, natural, or desirable for each gender. Constructions of masculinity vary between and within different geographical, historical, and situational contexts; proscribe and prescribe certain behaviors and characteristics for boy and men; and are empowered by the belief that masculinity is natural and inherent to men. Gender behavior in accordance with the “maleness” and “femaleness” of men and women, respectively, legitimizes and reinforces the categories by providing “evidence” of their status (Everitt and Ratele, 2015). In line with the social constructionist perspective on gender, masculinities are seen as relatively robust, and its context is seen as central in determining the form and evaluation of different masculinities (Carrigan et al., 1985; Connell, 1995; Connell and Messerschmidt, 2005). Given the aforementioned discussion, it is possible to point out as an objective the identification of the elements of masculinity from the narratives of men, who exercise intimate partner violence, participating in reflection groups from a constructionist point of view. 10.2 METHOD 10.2.1 PARTICIPANTS The participants in the study were 35 men from two reflection groups for male assailant, with 15–25 members each, aged between 17 and 68 years, most of whom had been referred by the public prosecutor’s office for psychological counseling for the crime of domestic violence; the men

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were from a low or lower middle socioeconomic stratum and at the time of the research were participating in reflection groups for perpetrators of intimate partner violence. The experiments were conducted with the awareness and written consent of each participant. 10.2.2 INSTRUMENTS The instruments used were a nonparticipant observation protocol and the individual and group work produced by the men participating in the reflec­ tion groups as part of the experiential dynamics carried out. An analysis of documents and elaborated materials was carried out as a research tech­ nique (Hernández et al., 2006), and not as a research method (Kerlinger, 1988). Díaz and Navarro (1995) point out that document analysis can be conceived as a set of procedures that aim to produce an analytical meta-text in which the transformed textual corpus is represented (2002). Hernández et al. (2006) point out that documents are a valuable source of qualitative data because they determine histories and current statuses and are produced and shared by most individuals, groups, organizations, communities, and societies. 10.2.3 PROCEDURE The men participating in the study formed two refection groups, which met once a week for 6 months. During the intervention, the men’s work was collected and an observation protocol was developed. The observa­ tions were carried out in each of the 25 group sessions, each lasting 2 hours (the duration of the working session); the sessions and reflections were recorded; and the written work was collected and analyzed. The observer was introduced to the men in the reflection group by the group facilitator, who had been spoken to prior to the session in order to enable the emphatic process of observation and to obtain the participant’s consent to the research. Subsequently, the documents (written works and observation protocols) were analyzed using the Atlas.ti 7.5 qualitative analysis software. The interpretation for the written works as well as the testimonies collected by the nonparticipants observations protocols were analyzed from a construc­ tionist perspective as a paradigm that privileges the interpretation from

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the discourse and the narrative that is established in the social groups. The categories were formed following the steps proposed by Charmaz (2012), performing initial coding, focused coding, and axial coding, and finally establishing theoretical codes or codes families. 10.3 RESULTS The men who participated in the study had a minimum age of 17 and a maximum of 68 years old; however the average age was 37 years, so it was mainly a young male population and provides an indicator of the age range of men who participate in focus groups for perpetrators of intimate partner violence. On the other hand, when asked about the last level of education, 18 of the participants mentioned secondary level, followed by nine men who mentioned studying up to technical level and only one of the men studied up to university level; furthermore, seven male participants studied only up to elementary level. In relation to their work activity, they are predominantly men who work and a smaller proportion do not work, were looking for work, or were studying and working at the same time of their participation in the group. 10.3.1 THE IDEAL MASCULINE: THE MALE PROVIDER AND THE REPRESENTATION OF MONEY The male aggressors participating in reflection groups reflect the repre­ sentation of a masculine ideal based on different roles, among which the economic role stands out, which represents a complex expectation related to the standards of a capitalist society and its link with a symbolic power granted by the control of money from his role of the main provider, even though in some families women also generate a source of income and even a source of income greater than theirs. The difficulty in reaching this masculine ideal, which is in itself a double-edged trap (it is imminently attainable) generates frustration and pain where, when the established expectation is not met, a state of discomfort sets in and violent behavior toward the family emerges as the only way to regain control and domi­ nance of the situation. From the discourse of one of the male participants, the following elements can be observed: “I learned to give satisfaction to my family through money, but when I started to struggle with money I felt

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that I lost power and I started to mistreat my wife, now I see that I felt sad because I thought that I had to give them (money and luxuries).” Finally, the pain or sadness evoked by the recognition of the imposi­ tion of the culturally imposed masculine ideal, which has consistently led men to exert violence toward their partners because of the impossibility of covering it up, can be perceived. The constructionist social intervention seeks to deconstruct these connotations or categories that have become naturalized; in this sense, the constructionist view questions everything that has been considered as guaranteed because it was self-evident, obvious, or natural (Ibañez, 2001). 10.3.2 BEING A MAN—A CONSTRUCTION OF CHILDHOOD, YOUTH, AND ADULTHOOD In the group reflections on the construction of their masculinity, the men in the groups detect the representation of being a man at three points in their lives: as boys, as young men, and in adulthood. In the first, the need to show certain socially accepted characteristics for their gender is evident, where “not crying,” “being tough,” “fighting and defending myself,” and “being afraid of me” were some of the attributions that made participants of the groups refer to as elements that characterize their childhood. Secondly, in the stage of youth as a second step in the construction of being a man, the participants highlighted “riding in a car in the wee hours of the morning,” “going to brothels to drink and smoke,” “hanging out in a gang,” “hanging out in the street at night,” “not letting anyone get to me,” “giving me respect, being afraid of me, or being afraid to fight with me,” and, finally, they added “stealing” as a characterization of being a man in youth. In the last stage, adulthood, the characteristics of being a man is represented in “giving them what I have (money),” “not letting my partner go out,” “shouting to my partner,” “working because I have been working extra for a long time and never rest,” and “controlling by giving my partner everything but demanding things from her.” In this regard, it is possible to point out that the constructionist approach is interested in a prominent way in language, establishing it not only with a descriptive function but also with a formative one, that is, language as the creator of the objects and things about which it opines or constructs, or at least about some of their aspects. Constructionism therefore points out that forgetting this formative

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function confuses the properties of the way of speaking about things with the properties of the things themselves (Shotter, 1987; Ibañez, 2001). Therefore, the words that men refer to in their process of reflection are linked to a descriptive process of what it is to “be a man” from childhood to adulthood; the words that are transmitted through language determine evident connotations of what is expected of this man from a descriptive element, evidently forgetting the formative component of the same. The deeper properties of “being tough,” “not fighting,” “being afraid of me,” and others are therefore revalued in the intervention, confronting them as cultural constructions, which are imposed by dispelling their natural character, and resituating them in a specific historical and socio-cultural dimension. 10.3.3 MALE VIOLENCE: FALSE “CHIVALRY,” IMMINENT PHYSICAL VIOLENCE, AND SEXUAL VIOLENCE The forms of expression of male violence detected to a greater extent through men’s discourses after being confronted in the intervention within the group have to do with three elements: covert male gentleness or false “chivalry”; overt and imminent physical violence; and intimate and public sexual violence behaviors. In the first one, men participating in the reflec­ tion group tend to insistently refer to a more psychological form of violence, where at first in the group it is the expression of violence they most easily begin to recognize, being initially disguised under a socially expected behavior of male “gentleness” or “chivalry,” where men express giving attention and good treatment to their partners or to women in general but as behavior regularly linked to an interest in receiving “something in return,” this can be seen in the discourse of one of the male participants: “When am I not kind of respectful with women? When they are ungrateful… yes, that I do something for a woman and she doesn’t say thank you, or how nice this or that. I know that I treat my partner or another woman well but it is because I expect something in return.” Kenneth Gergen (2007) points out that language does not function as an arrangement or collection of sounds, but as a system of symbols; in this case, the symbols that men have received through language, in the representation of what is expected of them, are clear with the reference they give from each stage of life. To be designated as symbols, linguistic entities must imply a domain of referents, in this

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respect masculinity, of being a man. In that sense, there is the reference provided by Gergen (2007), where engaging in the production of language usually involves creating an implicit commitment to domain; depending on the language one employs, another person may admit defeat, profess deep love, and even kill, or in the case of the male participants, rape their partners. Men in the intervention groups must recognize the domain of referents that are embedded in their symbol system, those with which they communicate with their partners and children. Words are therefore active constituents of a world in continuous social exchange (Gergen, 2007). In the element of overt and imminent physical violence, it is the moment of work in the reflection model where men delve into different actions committed that refer to physical violence, where reaching the recognition of it is even a work process that is unraveled throughout the sessions. The number of incidents of physical violence that perpetrators claim to have committed is varied; many of these assaults are not only against their partners but also against their partner’s family, or their children. The following argument can exemplify the seriousness of the situations of imminent physical violence that are detected from the arguments in the groups: “That time I actually locked her in when she was leaving so she didn’t go to work, but you know how things are there, yes, I tied her up, I threatened her, I threw gasoline on her and I was about to throw a match at her, but didn’t. I grabbed her, threw her, I punched her with my elbow, I threw her on the bed and started to strangle her.” Their narratives denote the great difficulty in observing the seriousness of the aggressions; the argument of “one knows how it is there” makes one see a common reality among men’s arguments where they consider that they remain in control of the situation even before imminent violence; however, after the event, there is usually a stage of imbalance or insta­ bility, which is often the occasion to ask for help or physiological care, or in the face of police intervention to access treatment, similar to findings of Flinck and Paaviliainen (2008). In the last element, sexual violence is represented in an intimate context but also in a public context. On one hand, men report assaulting their partners in everyday intimate situations, where the exercise of power is manifested through the control of the women’s body, her reproductive life, or her sexual enjoyment, where the man, for example, takes the decision that it is she who should have the operation so as not to have more children, or to be open to having sex as long as he wants it, otherwise he thinks that she is cheating on him or is

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being unfaithful, as can be seen in the following speech of one of the male participants: “Well, if she doesn’t want to have sex with me, I’ll start to get ideas, that she is already with someone else.” On the other hand, there are sexual assaults in public, in the street, in the neighborhood, where complicity and indifference in front of sexual violent acts makes men reflect on what they would or would not be capable of committing against women; one of the man describes his experience along this lines: “Many years ago in Guadalajara, I used to sell flowers and there was a nice girl there where we used to meet and I saw that another vendor talked to her and she didn’t pay attention but he took her by force and sexually abused her and nobody said anything, I just thought—what a mess.” Research has linked the relationship between male violence and the roles that have been assigned to the male being. In this sense, in Latin culture, male violence is promoted by two primary categories—machismo and Marianism—where machismo is characterized by aspects that are transmitted as positive such as strength, courage, and responsibility and as negative aspects such as aggression, male domination, and infidelity (Torres et al., 2002). Marianism, based on the Virgin Mary, is the polar opposite of the gender role for women and sees them as pure, humble, loyal, self-accredited, faithful, submissive, unassertive, and devoted to the family (Dietrich and Schuett, 2013; Galanti, 2003). Within these two boundaries, it is very easy for male violence (physiological, physical, or sexual in the case of the men in this study) to appear on the scene and among Latino men, machismo and Marianism have often been cited as risk factors due to their strict power-differential roles within relationship (Campbell et al., 1997). As reviewed in the previous section, the constructionist approach is prominently concerned with language, establishing language not only with a descriptive but also with a formative function, this is, language as the creator of the objects and thinks it views or constructs, or at least some aspect of them. Constructionism therefore points out that forgetting this formative function confuses the properties of the way of speaking about things with the properties of the things themselves (Ibañez, 2001; Shotter, 1987). This point can be quite representative of what happens with Mari­ anism and machismo, two words that confuse the ways of talking about themselves and their properties as representative concepts that safeguard a whole normalization category of human relations, where violence in all its representations finds a point of covering and promotion. This is where the concern to denaturalize this social phenomenon is unleashed in the

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model of intervention with male aggressors and is all the more important because the fact that every social phenomenon is intrinsically historical and implies that all phenomenon results from the linguistic standards of the discourse games of the cultural traditions that shape a way of life. The second is to elucidate the nature of the process by which discursive processes have the capacity to conceive, even partially, social objects. From the social constructionist intervention with male perpetrators, the study of discourses also has emancipatory functions, since gaining knowledge about the conventional basis of accepted truth is to eliminate dependence on these conventions and to invite the creative development of alternatives (Gergen, 2007). Hence the approach of new masculinities transformed by this constructionist questioning of traditional masculinity. 10.3.4 FATHERHOOD AS AN ATTRIBUTE OF MASCULINITY: FIRST VIOLENCE FROM THE FATHER, THEN VIOLENCE TOWARD CHILDREN Fatherhood is another element that is worked on in the reflection groups for male aggressors and which resulted from the content analysis as the category of fatherhood as an attribute of masculinity. Soto and Vargas, 2009, they question whether fatherhood will be the ultimate goal of every man as an element of power, and complement this with the argument that in adulthood there is the possibility for men to form a family as well as to act as a father, and they see this as the stage at which masculinity is fully determined. When the intervention model for male offenders gets to the topic of fatherhood, two dimensions emerge for understanding from the participants’ reflections and confrontations: on one hand, the offender’s own relationship with his father, his past history of violence and abuse with him, his life experiences with a father he often complaints about for violence and child abuse, on the other hand, the figure of the male offender as a father, and the way the now replicates an act of violence with his own children. Most human beings begin their encounters with the stories during childhood, through fairy tales, folktales and family stories they receive the first organized accounts of human action. The stories continue to absorb as novels, biographies and histories are read. Long stories are told about childhood, about relationships with family members, about years at school, about first love, about the development of thinking about a given topic, and so on. Stories are also told about last night’s party, this

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morning’s crisis or lunch with a companion (Gergen, 2007). This section rescues the category of stories and narratives linked to the father’s father and the father’s son, a false inheritance of paternity and its relation to male violence. That is to say, this work practice with fatherhood in the reflection groups for men contributes to establishing the narratives that will help to disarticulate the structures considered natural, which are based on men’s life history. 10.3.5 THE FATHER AS TEACHER: FALSE INHERITANCE AND REPLICATED PATTERNS Another category within the analysis of the paternity of the male aggressors participating in the groups is related to the fact that they have developed an apprenticeship with a “teacher,” the one who has taught them in a close way due to this analogy with a teaching professional, a professional who has the technique, the knowledge and the superior strength to show them by example, and from his father’s advice on how to solve couple problems, as can be seen in the following discourse: “I learned from a master in that (violence), my father used to tell me,—no son, when you struggle, you just turn off the tap—(economic violence).” On the other hand, the repetition of the father’s violence toward the mother as the “inheritance” which he could not get rid of and which is experienced with bewilderment, because he was able to modify and “be different” from the father in certain elements, but not in this one; one of the men gives a glimpse in this discourse: “I thought that the best inheritance from my father was not to do what he did with my mother; he drank and I don’t drink, he was irresponsible and I am responsible, but for violence… I don’t know why I am violent.” One of the most sensitive issues in the model of intervention with male offenders is the issue of self-parenting, this is, the acknowledgement of difficulties in the relationship with children. Men report to some extent an effect from their experiences with their fathers to their experiences with their sons and daughters. These repeated patterns cause discomfort and pain to the male perpetrators; the discourse of one of the male perpetrators refers precisely to the way in which his father always promised them things and never fulfilled, and he recounts how this is something he constantly repeats with his sons. One of the dynamics used as part of the model is to “give a voice to other,” “to the one who us hurt, from his chair, from his shoes, that is, to give a voice to his children.” They become them, from their deep voice as

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children, from what they assume their children feel from what they observe, an exercise in the form of an empty chair makes them reflect on the way in which their children look at them with fear, with sadness, with anger for the harm done to their mother, and for the harm done to themselves, they therefore recognize the difficulties in their relationships with their children through this dynamic, where the children (who are themselves possessed by the image of their children) feel sadness for the father they have, for the aggression they exert, and for the suffering of their mothers because of the father’s violence. From constructionism, it is possible to assert that the present identity is the result of a life history, as Bettelheim (1976) has argued, such narrative (life history) creations can be essential in giving life a sense of meaning and direction. On the understanding that in social constructionism, the cognitivist assumption of a narrative basis for personal action is retained, but with a greater sensitivity to the sociocultural basis of such narratives. On the other hand, Bruner’s (1986, 1990) work on narratives falls somewhere close to these two orientations, sticking to a view of universal cognitive functions, while simultaneously placing a strong emphasis on cultural systems of meaning (Polkinghorne, 1988; Carr, 1984; Josselson and Leiblich, 1993). From the reflection groups for men, the topic of fatherhood touches on deep sensitivities of masculinity, by breaking down the construction of an identity as fathers that start from the father himself, the one who as a teacher delivers knowledge but at the same time transcends to broader sociocultural elements that need to be confronted inside and outside of being a man, of being masculine, “among men.” The father therefore represents the “other,” the man who socially teaches how to be a man, that is to say, the cultural system that determines the social representation of what it is to be a man in society, with the figure of a violent man as a constant pattern, at least in the men participating in these reflection groups. This is the figure that is confronted in the group sessions, with the intention of disarticulating the “teaching of the teacher,” the “teaching of the other social man.” 10.3.6 MALE PERPETRATORS’ FEAR: THE ARTICULATOR OF MALE VIOLENCE After analyzing in depth, the discursive elements from the model of intervention with aggressors and trying to recreate an outline of their reality, it is possible to position men’s fear as a primary characteristic in

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the articulation of male violence. Fear, which can be a broad subjective element, is intimately linked to the fear of losing everything, the fear of feeling alone, of losing control, the fear of staying with oneself, the fear of losing, fear of being vulnerable, of being dominated, and of being domi­ nated by one’s own anguish in the face of all these fears rolled into me. However, is the recognition of this fear that also allows him to reformulate the violence, to recognize his responsibility, a responsibility that he had been denying for years and that it is only at this moment of confronting reality in a group that he begins to recognize it as such, as a problem in life. In constructionism, the person and his or her process of knowing deeply rooted in culture, in the conditions of the context and his or her own ideas. Therefore, human knowledge is subjective; it is a matter of interpretation (Laird, 1995). In this sense, fear is interpreted by male perpetrators; their ideas, culture, and context facilitate the position of male fear as seen in the following paragraphs. The fear of men that controls them and that after a long treatment through the intervention model has to reconstruct their reality again from violence exercised and lead them to the understanding of its origin, but mostly of its representation at this moment of their adult life, where it is that same fear that controls and subdues them. From the discourse of one of the participants, it is possible to observe some of these conclusive elements: “I realize now in the group that I acted violently, but the origin of it was that I was afraid that she would leave me, but so that she wouldn’t leave me, I treated her badly and she ended up leaving.” Finally, the confrontations in the reflection group seek to establish the relationship of meanings of that fear from each man’s own history, where during the process of social creation of the intersubjective realities that men share with each other (Gergen, 2007); it will allow them to construct the reality that they have been living and that hindered them from moving away from violence as a way to overcome those masculine fears among other elements mentioned earlier. People recognize themselves in others, in their narratives, and in their conversations. Continuing with this argu­ ment, Maturana (1992) and later Gergen (2007) establish that what is lived is brought to hand and configured in conversation, in conversation reality is constructed with others. The reflection group for male aggressors gener­ ates new conversations that allow for the construction of new realities among men. The fear of losing control of the “other,” in this case, of the partner’s voice and vote, undoubtedly plays a decisive role triggering their aggressions. The intervention model explores the way in which men’s

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reality is confused by the presence of fear, one of its aspects being the fear of loss, of loneliness, but which represents itself in a fear of losing domination of the other, in this case, the partner and the children. Male violence becomes an ally that allows the male aggressor to reestablish a “balance” of the dominance, that is, the security of control over others, this is observed in the argument of one of the men in the group: “My angriest moment was when she defended herself and challenged me head-on— What a little man!” while pointing her finger at me.” “At that moment I thought—if I give her a smack she will control herself—because I thought (I) was right.” Another point in the same of fear of loss of control has to do with the difficulty in specifying one’s own behavior, it is a loss of self-control that cannot be explained, for which the discourse is insufficient to explain the reasons for the violence; in this sense, there is a fear of the loss of selfcontrol, self-control linked to the loss of control of the partner and to the possibility of abandonment of the partner as a result of infidelity. On the other hand, the link between the gaze of the “others” or of the community or society and the loss of control is very close. This gaze of the others further exposes the situation of loss of control of the aggressive man so that in the need to regain it he uses some kind of violence to do so. The following speeches can exemplify these situations: “When I have violated her I don’t even know what I expect from her, everything happens very fast, I yell at her and she tells me—calm down what is happening to you—When I see her talking to a girlfriend and a boyfriend I had the idea she was unfaithful to me, because she was smiling I felt that I had to complain to her because the neighbors were watching and I thought—she doesn’t respect me because they are going to say that she is seeing my face—so I went and complained her, I was there drinking on the other side of the street.”—“At the moment when I got angry, what did I want her to do? Well, I insulted her and shouted at her—why were you talking with that guy—but then I realized that she did give me an explanation but I wanted her to tell me more, I don’t know what was I expecting. It happened again and I also shouted at him but he doesn’t tell me anything anymore; and I don’t know if he is hiding something from me.” Knowledge thus becomes the subject of the meaning given to experience (Laird, 1995). From this perspective, reality is never directly experienced, but is always filtered through the human process of knowing and meaning-making. Moreover, our vision and knowledge of the world cannot be separated from our personal and

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professional stories, that is, texts and our codes (Laird, 1995). Somehow, we force our present experiences and perceptions into our precategories to know, and so we create what it is with what we think we look like and how. History from this perspective is always being made, it is a more or less changing narrative about the same events (Gergen, 2007). In this way, the intersubjectivity of human experience, the construction of meanings about male fear, and the particularity that this takes on for each man, has direct implications for our ideas about intervention and objectivity. 10.4 CONCLUSIONS The interventions with men who experience intimate partner violence seek to reconstruct felt and expressed realities. The result of the present research is consistent with Rogers et al. (2017), Ramírez (2005), Mancera et al. (2017), EMAKUNDE-Basque Institute for Women (2008), Flinck and Paavilainen, (2008), and Gergen (2007) noted throughout the article. Six categories of analysis outline the main findings of this research: 1. The masculine ideal: the male provider and the representation of money; 2. being a man, a construction in three moments of life: childhood, youthb and adulthood; 3. male violence: false “chivalry,” imminent physical violence, and sexual violence; 4. parenthood as an attribute of mascu­ linity: first violence by the fathers, then violence toward children; 5. the father as “teacher”: false inheritance and replicated patterns; and 6. male perpetrators fear: the articulator of male violence. In the first case, the search for a masculine ideal, constructed mainly from the figure of the male economic provider, this traditional model is what EMAKUNDEBasque Women’s Institute (2008) points out in its contributions when it highlights the male abuse hides a series of frustrations and failures for not achieving the established model of traditional masculinity, as do Ramírez (2005), Amuchástegui (2006), Burin and Meler (2000), Tena Guerrero (2010), and Kaufman (1999), who point out the way in which this masculine ideal makes it possible to understand men’s violence, from this unachieved ethical ideal, as Flinck and Paavilainen (2008) also point out, which will later lead him to exercise violence before the failure of this ideal, which is really unattainable. On the other hand, the theoretical category of man is recognized on the basis of the messages of childhood, youth, and adult life about what it is to be masculine, that is, the social

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messages, symbols, and meanings that are given to masculinity. Violence appears totally linked to the construction of hegemonic masculinity in its expression as physical, sexual, and psychological violence. Rogers et al. (2017) and Mancera et al. (2017) highlight masculinity as a set of socially constructed expectations or patterns that are established for male behavior where their violence is rationalized and tactics are used to trivialize and deny their violent behavior. In relation to the categories that include father­ hood from two determining roles in the constitution of man who exercises violence toward his partner: the violence received from the father, as well as the repetition of patterns from his father figure with his own children, is linked to what Flinck and Paavilainen (2008) point out in their results on the work with aggressors, which reflects and confronts the way in which historical traditions and patriarchal structures of the family impact on the construction of male violence and the meanings of masculinity. The family and, in this case, the father of the family who exercises violence promote the naturalization from the construction of masculinity as subjective expe­ riences prior to being a man. Finally, the fear of these men in their lives represents a trigger for violence; the fear of losing the dominance of the other is a fear of ceasing to be someone or to be him from the masculine ideal reflected in the first category. Fear therefore represents the first and last link in the construction of a man who exercises violence toward his partner. This component of the aggressor’s fear also coincides with Flinck and Paavilainen’s (2008) observation that men tried to deny their violent behavior because of their ethical ideals; secondly, men did not interpret acts other than physical ones as violent, and by trying to underestimate and mitigate violence, they justified violence as an act of defense. Thirdly, men used violence when they panicked by overloading themselves, and repressing feelings. It is possible to conclude that working with perpe­ trators is mostly a perspective that considers the historical traditions and patriarchal structures of the family as well as their link to contemporary constructions of masculinity and femininity in the common world they inhabit. Most of his or her knowledge is socially derived through his or her family in the first place, through his or her educational experience, and through significant others. It is what constitutes their social heritage (Gergen, 2007). Keeney (1983) states that reality can be discerned in an infinite number of ways depending on the distinctions or differences one makes. By identifying distinctions from those of others, the most basic act in the knowledge of reality has been performed. This fundamental creative

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act of establishing differences allows us to point out the possibility of multiple different universes before reality (Gergen, 2007). From this point, working with the construction of the male fear involves reconstructing the representation of male loneliness, male dominance, and therefore male violence, as well as paternity, the construction of masculinity in childhood, youth, and adulthood, the masculine ideal and types of male violence. KEYWORDS • • • • •

masculinity narrative social constructionism violence focus groups

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CHAPTER 11

Qualitative Constructionist Evaluation of Social Intervention Projects

LAURA KARINA CASTRO SAUCEDO1, CIRILO GARCÍA CADENA2, ESMERALDA JAQUELINE TAPIA GARCÍA1, and JUAN MARTELL MUÑÓZ3 1Faculty

of Social Work, Universidad Autónoma de Coahuila, Coahuila, México 2Faculty

of Psychology, Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo León, Nuevo León, México 3Faculty

of Psychology, Universidad Autónoma de Zacatecas, Zacatecas, México

ABSTRACT This essay talks about the necessities of planning tools in the construc­ tionist social evaluation, for the social projects and social intervention. The discussion is based on the utility, impact and the progress of evaluation who establish a closer vision to the people life and their experiences, their changes and life history. In the narrative form are visualized like a compo­ nent, this chapter talks about all the different forms and theatrical positions of the evaluations in the social intervention models, with a constructionist design that establish the social project analysis of a reconstruction process in the social reality.

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11.1 INTRODUCTION Social constructionism evaluation has the challenge of assessing social situations in constant evolution and transformation based on the imple­ mentations of emerging innovations in social intervention that breaks with dominant paradigms (Montero, 1994). These dominant paradigms and approaches have also structured their forms of evaluation from deductive, sequential, and reliable paths that validate their precepts but at the same time have established evaluation as a lucrative enterprise with a profile that lacks the required competencies for knowledge (Fernández-Ramírez, 2006). The complexity of an emerging constructionist evaluation is that it must move away from imposing dominant criteria or objectives to proposing evaluation practices based on the participant’s own interests or motivations, listening to what people have to say about their own life situation, to understand relationships and interrelationships. The definition of Evaluation is diverse, with many purposes and prac­ tices to implement or carry out, from its synonyms such as measuring, regulating, qualifying, accrediting, selecting, guiding, and from its diverse functions or roles that go from diagnosis, training, and impact evaluation. However, it is necessary to consider that the evaluation hides a dose of ideologies, which are represented in what is valued in recent years, that is, the social reality determines the position of the social evaluation. The discussion on the meaning of evaluation has focused on its purpose and not so much on the changes in its denominations or in the technique that can be applied (Neus Sanmartí Puig, 2020). Social constructionist evaluation looks at community needs as a development of new outcome measures. In this sense, social constructionist evaluation would respond to an emerging paradigm of traditional evaluation and even of qualitative evalu­ ation in the sense that qualitative studies can be evaluated by critically applying the terminology and concepts used in the evaluation of more traditional (qualitative) research methods. Evaluation conceived in a constructionist manner becomes an essential aspect of social psychology as a function of the evaluation of change and transformation of social reality. This evaluation is inspired by the need to understand it within a dynamic and integral perspective that not only makes possible the transformation of reality but can also resignify it as a group or community; this coincides with the ideas of Alves and Acevedo (2002) but differs with them in the effect that is expected to have with a

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social constructionist evaluation. Dialogues about the social construction of reality now extend across disciplines, professions, and national bound­ aries, many find freedom in constructionist ideas, since for constructionists there are no claims to reality truth to be embraced. In this regard, many find in the constructionist dialogues an energetic invitation to create, while others find in the constructionist dialogue a sign of hope in a world marked by disciplinary conflicts. Starting from Berger and Luckmann’s (1996) The Social Construction of Reality as a historical work and one of the most representative texts of this paradigm, where the authors talked about the way the world is subjectively understood, to the texts of Dragonas, Gergen, McNamee, and Tseliou (2015), they point out three movements for social constructionist research: The first movement can be considered critical, and refers to the growing criticism of ideological saturation, this is to say, saturation of descriptions and explanations of the world, including those coming from the sciences. Thereby, the sciences that claim that their knowledge is value-neutral, for all people, regardless their religion, politics, or ideology, are confronted. Such critique goes back at least to the Frankfurt School (Tarr, 2011), but today is more fully embodied in the work of Foucault (1980), and the movements associated with feminism and LGBT. The second significant movement, the literary/rhetorical, originates in the fields of literary theory. In these domains, scholars demonstrate the extent to which our theories and explanations of the world depend not so much on the world itself as on discursive conventions (see, for example, Goodman, 1978; McCloskey, 1985). The third context of ferment, the social, can be traced back to collec­ tive scholarship in the history of science, the sociology of knowledge, and the social studies of science (Kuhn, 1962; Poovey, 1998). Here, the main focus is on the social processes that give rise to knowledge claims, both scientific as of another type. In this context knowledge claims are traced to groups of people actively trying to make sense of the world, given their particular historical and cultural conditions. These intellectual movements barely emerged in a historical vacuum. In addition, the enormous expan­ sion of communication technologies (e.g., radio, television, cell phones, and later the internet) also brought with it an expanded awareness of the “other” (Gergen, 1994, 2015; Lock and Strong, 2010; Holstein and Gubrium, 2008).

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Gergen (2001) titled these different perspective positions of social constructionist which, combined with generalized global changes, have enormous implications for scholars and practitioners of social assessment. Knowledge as a social construction broadens a range of new possibilities and practices begin to emerge from fundamental knowledge to pragmatic and contextualized knowledge. For constructionists, all knowledge claims come from particular groups, with particular values, at particular times in history. Therefore, the question of what should be taught in our educational systems cannot be answered in terms of universal knowledge, that is, “What human knows with certainty about the world.” Virtually all sciences, for example, are lodged in a historical materialist tradition, and will therefore objectify and valorize the phenomena of the material world. A constructionist evaluation goes from knowledge as representation to knowledge as action, constructionists are very critical of what is called the image theory of language, that is, a view that treats language as a vehicle for achieving precise goals and representing the world. For constructionists, language acquires its value through its usefulness in social affairs, social change can only be measured in what it is capable of doing, in actions, in practice, and this transformation is evaluated for language, from the discourse that has been transformed. The construc­ tionist evaluation would then validate whether change or social transfor­ mation could occur in the recognition of the social issue. On the other hand, for constructionists, all meaning is born within a relational process; therefore, it is necessary to evaluate that relational process and determine its meaning. This shift from the individual to the relational process is of enormous consequence for social constructionist evaluation. How evaluation can become more participatory and collaborative; and explore alternatives for evaluating individuals and there are several. “We are simply teaching dependence on authority, linear thinking, social apathy, passive partici­ pation, and hands-off learning,” says Sirotnik (1983). The emphasis on participatory processes extends also to teacher training and, indeed, to thinking about the wellbeing of all education systems and how they func­ tion to generate meaning and inspire. Stimulating discussion with constructionist circles is Bruner’s view that learning reaches its full potential through active participation in culture. Wenger has continued to extend the latter concept by emphasizing how

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participation gives rise to identity, inspires dedication, and gives meaning to one’s social actions (Wenger et al., 2002; Lev Vygotsky, 1926, 1978; Dewey, 1924). Collaborative learning, and closely related cooperative learning, have redefined the traditional relationship between the profes­ sional and the subject participant and have opened up new methodologies where the subjects actively participate in a group process. At this situation, it is important to note in this context a favoritism traditionally made between constructivism and social constructionism (Steffe and Gale, 1995). Like social constructionists, constructivists— often identified with theorists as Piaget and Inhelder (1969) and Kelly (1955)—emphasize the way people construct their realities. However, for constructivists the site of construction is the individual mind. In effect, constructivism is strongly psychological, and in terms of education, it is child-centered. In contrast, social constructionists see the site of reality as the social process mediated by language. In this sense, constructionism is neither child-centered nor curriculum-centered, but relational. However, the traditions of Dewey and Vygotsky do speak of mental process, but see this process as closely linked to the social environment. One might say, “mind within society.” This orientation is often referred to a social constructivism. The kinds of practice emphasized by social constructivists are very similar, sometimes identical, to those of construc­ tionists. Also emerging within the postmodern arena, have you already raised? Is the narrative movement, the use of narrative essays, in which participants speak in their own language about their experiences, allows them to validate their traditions and identity (Phillion et al., 2005). Others have used the narrative as a learning practice, based on the understanding that there is more engagement and drama in narrative opposed to didactic pedagogy (Clark and Rossiter, 2007). First, constructionist dialogues played an important role in legitimizing research methods. This is partly because more traditional research methods emphasize experimentation and statistics that were ineffective in many spheres of constructionist evaluation. For constructionists there are no foundations or guarantees for such methods; they are simply a collection of practices that lead to certain kinds of descriptions and explanations, leaving out others. In contrast, from qualitative methodology, the approaches are extremely useful, for example, to encourage participant observation, in-depth interviews, and action research.

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Among the forms of research often advocated by constructionists is the narrative enquiry (Casey, 1995; Mertier, 2012), discourse analysis (Rogers, 2004), and action research (Noffke and Stevenson, 1995). Both narrative and discourse studies fall naturally into constructionist concerns, as they emphasize the many ways in which realities are constructed in language. Action-research is favored by many constructionists because it avoids, on the whole, the problem of using research to “tell the truth” about the nature of the world. 11.2 CONSTRUCTIONISM, CONSTRUCTIONIST MODELS OF SOCIAL INTERVENTION AND CONSTRUCTIONIST EVALUATION Within psychology specifically, constructionism deconstructed the empha­ size of research centered on the individual mind; on the other hand, the idea of a cognizable external world and language as a bearer of truth were its premises (Iñiguez, 2007; Bruno et al., 2017). In this way, constructionism led to a change of perspective in social science research, which made possible the explanation of new phenomena due to its construction char­ acteristics, such as new identities, exercises of power, and contributions of feminism were added (Ibañez, 2003), and from this point of the analysis it is argued that the percepts also have an impact on the elaboration of a constructionist evaluation, that is, an evaluation that makes it possible to access this processes of construction and reconstruction meanings, identi­ ties and relationships. Social constructionism approached the linguistic turn of phrase, with the importance given to language as a producer of meaning and social facts and not just as a mere part of communication, so that in the words of Gergen (2005), it is “a theoretical scheme that recognizes the set of conversations that take place in all parts of the world and all of them participate in a process that tends to generalize collective meanings, understandings, knowledge and values” (p. 34). Social constructionism evaluation therefore proposes a participatory evaluation, which generalizes meanings and allows capturing the levels of understanding and knowledge that constructionist strategies have enabled participants to reconstruct as part of the social intervention. In this movement Gergen (1996) and Potter (1998) recognize that no knowledge can free itself from historical, cultural, social, and discur­ sive properties that produce it, knowledge is the result of a collective

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construction, where relationships build our versions of what can be called knowledge (Burr, 1996), and on the other hand, objectivity, which science pronounces so much, is not established by its neutrality toward the facts as a criterion of truth, but by its proximity to narrative constructions (Cabruja et al., 2000) seen as conventions. 11.3 SOCIAL PROJECTS AND SOCIAL CONSTRUCTIONISM Every social program seeks to contribute toward modifying situations of adversity, vulnerability, or inequity in which certain population groups find themselves, and the evaluation must show to what extent the desired change is produced and due to what factors. The social constructionism evaluation will seek to establish the elements, meanings, and symbols that have allowed through the social constructionism intervention the changes and the reconstruction of the narratives as a transforming and active action, being that the transformation of the people, of the human being of his own inner world from the inner world of the others, where his ways of looking at what surrounds him and his ways of linking with others (Nirenberg et al., 2000). 11.4 EVALUATION OF THE SOCIAL REALITY RECONSTRUCTION PROCESS According to Gergen (2005), an essential concept within the epistemo­ logical framework of constructionism is language, which is defined as the indispensable promoter for accessing and constructing social reality. Social constructionism has attracted increasing interest in different fields of science. Social constructionism has emphasized that social problems are independent of the attributes that constitute object being explained, that is, it is assumed that there is nothing intrinsic to the characteristics of the world that compels a one-to-one correspondence with the linguistic and logical terms that man elaborates to account for them. It is appropriate here to refer to Gergen (1996): “There is really nothing that requires any form of sound, mark or movement of the type used by people in acts of representation or communication” (p. 72). That is, any informative system used is more than anything else a cultural, and there­ fore artificial product, which may vary from context to context, depending primarily on the kind of relationships people establish with each other. This

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assumption is well supported by contributions from semiotic analysis, of the textual criticism and De Saussure et al.’s (1983) contributions on the arbitrary linking of signifier and signified (Garcia, 2003). 11.4.1 SOCIAL CONSTRUCTIONIST EVALUATION In the field of evaluation, needs assessment, process evaluation, outcome evaluation, design evaluation, impact evaluation, however, social constructionist evaluation seeks to show the big picture of possible paths leading to the expected change, in the end what is projected is the hope for change and therefore the evaluation of new narratives. In this sense, the review of needs, activities, products, intermediate and final results up to the achievement of the purpose is determined from the initial narrative of the participants and is subsequently projected from a reflective and critical process that seeks to make implicit the preconditions for which the desired change occurs or does not occur; it is therefore a collaborative learning process that involves different actors and allows understanding complex realities. There is no absolute truth about the production of change, but it is built on the reflection and critique of the participants, and cannot be subjected to a definitive recipe. 11.4.2 ASSESSING INTERACTION The evaluation of social reality can only establish evidence of how the interactions between individuals and objects are necessarily culturalhistorical. Therefore, such interrelations can only give rise to socially elaborated explanations of ourselves and the world around us (García, 2003). Constructivist evaluation must therefore present a representation of social interaction and the reconstruction of narratives (Baerveldt and Verheggen, 1999; Bakhtin, 1981; Kantor and Smith, 1975; Shotter, 1988); interaction as a product of the link between what man does and what the world does, as dialectical product. Kantor and Smith (1975) point out in this respect: “An interaction is elaborated through a historical link between the individual and the objects with which he or she interacts. All linguistic, religious, political and customary stimulus functions arise through a kind of social interaction of people with objects” (pp. 20 and 42) (García, 2003).

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The constructionist assessment then determines that language does not reflect reality as a mirror, or a mechanical image of people or the world, but responds to a specialized and complex form of human contact, whose syntax and semantics even depend primarily on the context and the type of human relationship that is occurring at a given time and space. Social constructionism largely coincides with Wittgenstein’s (1953) concept of meaning as an outcome of social use. The narrative that is produced from social interaction embodies how languages does not represent the world or proceed from genetic codes of the individual, but rather exemplifies the type, degree, and extent of the links between people (Michael, 1997). 11.4.3 LANGUAGE IN SOCIAL CONSTRUCTIONIST EVALUATION The practical impossibility of self-evaluation from within a given system of interrelated propositions or beliefs that give meaning to a specific domain (core of intelligibility) makes it understand that the system cannot contradict itself, but it does make possible its critique from other systems; tolerance and dialogical understanding will create an appropriate climate of human development. Thus, we can aspire to what he conceptualizes as the desire for “objectivity,” which “consists […] in the desire to obtain beliefs that are ultimately subject to unforced agreement in the free and open encounter with people who hold other beliefs” (Rorty, 1996, p. 65). It is also indispensable to study, as Focault (1977) emphasized, the mechanisms and processes that shape people. In Cahill’s (1998) terms, it is imperative to study the social constitution of the person or to outline what would be a sociology of the person. It is at this point of analysis that social constructionism evaluation is linked to an evaluation of reality in constant interaction, of an individual narrative that is interpreted from the interaction group from which it intervenes. 11.4.4 CONSTRUCTIONIST EVALUATION AS EVIDENCE OF THE CULTURAL DESTABILIZATION OF SOCIAL INTERVENTION The most common purpose of social constructionist evaluation involves expressing the cultural destabilization of social constructionist interven­ tion. A common aspect of subjunctive theory, phenomenology, and social cognition is cultural stabilization, understood as a binding of structure in the descriptive or explanatory domain of the analyzed phenomena; moreover,

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if any applicable knowledge emerges from these efforts, it is left to others to implement them and put them to social use. An old dualism seems to be in force here: that of the division between the producer and the user of knowledge, or the assumption that some are intellectual workers and others manual workers or, in the worst case, that scientists only analyze or diagnose and are or should be alienated from decision-making on the use of information. In contrast to such perspectives, social constructionism is committed to revealing discursive practices underlying “social consciousness” uncriti­ cally assumed and taken for granted by members of different language communities. In other words, the aim is to deconstruct social construc­ tions through relevant criticism, especially where positions of power or pontificating authoritarianism are assumed. For example, taking a critical stance on why, for whom, and in what sense alcoholism, homosexuality, prostitution, and so on are “social problems” allows us to demystify created ontologies, but presupposed as “natural,” and to review alternative possi­ bilities for their analysis and understanding. It is in this regard that that constructionist evaluation will show the conjunction of efforts between research and social intervention, between the production of knowledge and its practical application between individuals and their interaction. For the social constructionist interventionist, the interaction with the subjects themselves is the most important thing in explaining knowledge, as Gergen (1996) states when she points out that the main focus of interest for the constructionist is the micro-social process. The constructionist rejects the dualistic premises to give rise to problem of mental functioning. Thus, the position that accounts for human action is shifted to the relational sphere. 11.5 A REVIEW OF THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTIONIST EVALUATION OF THE FREEDOM AND CONSCIOUS MODEL In a constructionist evaluation exercise, the systematization and evaluation of the Freedom and Conscience Model of the civil society organization SUPERA, AC was carried out in conjunction with the civil organization ProSociedad, and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) who developed and implemented this model that works with juvenile offenders and allows young people to reflect on their emotions, feelings, and behavior based on their life experiences, through face-to-face

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and virtual sessions. The constructionist evaluation of this model allowed for an in-depth analysis of the connections young people have in the sessions, externalizing and changing their feelings, their environment, their expectations, encouraging further speculation on their future plans. The following sections outline the stages of the constructionist assessment developed from this intervention model. 11.5.1 STEP 1—ASSESS THE EXTERNALIZATION OF CONFLICTS The constructionist evaluation of the Freedom and Conscience Model revealed the conflicts and the recognition of these conflicts by the young participants. In the first stage, conflicts are recognized as being related to loved ones or family members, where conflicts with the mother, older siblings, and friends are recurrent and recognized by the young people, and the connection in their thought processes and perception of what a conflict is lead them to talk about conflicts with close people and family. One of the young participants points out in his narrative: “ I hurt my hand defending a friend, I hit him in the back of the neck, and I fractured the bone, I didn’t think anything of it, I was afraid, because I thought they were going to scold me, but no, they didn’t no, they didn’t scold me, I was happy that they didn’t scold me but at the same time I felt pain in my hand, I had many appointments, and an operation” (Jorge, 19 years old). Another young participant talks about this kind of conflict and shares it with the group: “I have had fights with my older brother because he and his wife get drunk and they have small children, they get drunk and they don’t even pay attention to them, and the children cry because they are hungry,” “they start drinking and taking drugs with my mother’s partner” (Jairo, 16 years old). One of the young men pointed out how the relationship with one of his girlfriends generated conflicts, “no, I just don’t care about them, but I am not comfortable with my boyfriends, with my girlfriends, yes, but not with those guys they gang out with, because I am just quiet, I just don’t talk to them, and I don’t talk to them either, and I didn’t want to go with my girlfriend.” Brandon, another of the young participants, shares one of the daily conflicts with his mother:

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“My mother told me not to go to a party and I came back with a broken bone in my hand, I came back with a broken bone in my hand… my mother told me with the curse starting with a, this is because I was an asshole, that is why that happened to me.” 11.5.1.1 CONFLICTS OVER DRUG USE Young people report drug use in various sessions; this consumption becomes easily reproducible since access to them is relatively simple in the neighborhoods they inhabit, the need to reflect on these consumption patterns, to recognize the emotions and feelings linked to addiction, as well as the negative thoughts and family inheritances that this consump­ tion represents, may be possible to begin to generate changes in this issue. The youngsters commented in their speeches: “I drew well the assaults, and well a problem also is that the kids got very easy the drugs and all that kind of things, and from very early age, like to children 13 and 14 that get crystal and all that, and it is very easy to get it at least in my neighborhood that is why most of those who live here have tried that, and for the same points if little kids go to buy them the police is already aware” (Jorge, 19 years old). Another of the young people pointed out that: “No its normal, I have it in my hand and that’s it, well, the truth is that you have to have self-control, it depends on you, if you learn it or not, I have smoked for a while now, but I never saw it as something bad, I used to see it if I went to school, I would smoke before taking the bus and then I would get to my classes normally, no more quietly” (Javier, 17 years old). “Next to my house there are some people who takes drugs and have problems with the police, but they also have contacts there but they don’t tell them anything, and last time they kidnapped a woman but nobody tells them nothing.” One of the participants pointed out that she has had conflicts with her brother, drug use in the family has been the cause of this fight, it is common for young people to say that these situations are not to their liking when they affect others and mainly the youngest members of the family, as in the case of Fatima’s nephew, who said that the children suffer from neglect due to the lack of attention from their parents when they start using drugs with their mother’s current partner.

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“My mother does call his attention but my brother doesn’t pay atten­ tion and I got into a fight with him, and we stop talking to each other for a week, and now my sister-in-law is mad at me, because Saturday and Sunday they both got really drunk and the children were hungry and they didn’t feed them because they bought beer instead” (Carlos, 18 years old). 11.5.2 STEP 2—EXTERNALIZING THE PROBLEM: TALKING ABOUT THE REASONS FOR DETENTION During session 14 mainly the young people share the various reasons for the detention, with the intention of remembering and resume the event by trying to discover and reconstruct the experience of young people point out the following reasons: “I got caught up because I was cloned, yes I had taken pills, and for being drunk on the public road, and I don’t feel like it. “Yes, they have offered me and I have money but I haven’t wanted to, comrades, they also do it recreationally to calm down and to sleep, they don’t understand, they are comrades.” Another young person points out: “They grabbed me because I was with some comrades and we went to laredas, and we were going to drink a few beers, we were carrying the closed beers but one or two opened some and I told them that I didn’t run because I didn’t have anything with me and they took my money and my friends broke their beers into their feet, they took 300 or 400 pesos from a guy named Leo, they gave me a punch, and one gets down and asked one of the guys his age and if he was 15 they hit him harder, he was answering them and I came walking and they went up, they panicked and went into the bushes, and as soon as they left the police came back” (Ricardo, 15 years old). Another of the young people share: “It was a buddy paleteos and the was bringing “mules” and he bind me

too, he had an arsenal there, they caught us in the subway and checked us but I didn’t say anything, and then they said that I was intoxicated, but at the time they caught me I wasn’t intoxicated (Jorge, 19 years old).” Another youngster pointed out that in his case: “What happened on June 2019, I was calmly in the plaza smoking without hurting anyone, I as alone I was already going to a girl’s house but I got stuck, I was going to talk to her and to eat dinner with her, but I didn’t

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arrive, I was in June 2019 when this happened, yes really ‘pata,’ well that I got caught for that it is really “pata.” The reconstruction of what it was helps them to adapt the experi­ ence from other discourses, other reflections, and the confrontation with their group mates to re-establish the usefulness and learning about the experience. 11.5.2.1 EXTERNALIZING THE CONFLICTS LINKED TO THE PROBLEM During this session, reflection is given to identify negative thoughts, trying to situate the link between thought and behavior, recognizing how negative thoughts put them in risky situations. Richard mentions: “I expressed running away of home, treating your family badly, and getting high and drinking or are bad negative thoughts, I don’t treat her badly, I just expressed it because it came to my head sometimes that I get angry with my mom and think ugly things, tell her things but I don’t do it. Well, the truth is that none of us always fights or gets angry, we are always talking, we fight if he doesn’t let me go somewhere.” There is a constant confusion between what they think and what they act, difficulty is identifying my thoughts. Behavior and action will be what puts them at risk so it is important to separate it from thought, recognizing P= thought, S= feelings, C= behaviors. Mainly during session 8 the young people reflect and confront their main negative thoughts; here are some narratives from different participants: “When you think something that is wrong, for example hitting someone senselessly, thinking about committing suicide, yes, too many times (Justin) has happened to me, I don’t really know, I don’t say that I didn’t enjoy my childhood as much as I wanted to, but I did enjoy it. Everyone was there, the bad thing was that I had it all and then I went crazy and that’s why maybe I got sad when I was older.” “Well, when you think about hurting yourself, like when I was sad you think about getting high or something like that, I used to get high, I was sad, I went out with friends, and I stayed the same, inhalants, glue (Roberto, 17 years old). The problems with my mom and dad made me want to hurt myself, when my dad found out that I was using drugs he told me he was going to annex me and so on, and he told me to stop and I wanted to do it even more.”

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During the sessions the youngsters recognize conflicts and problems with the Mother; however, these conflicts were often based on experiences that expose the safety of the youngsters and where the mothers were against these actions, behaviors, and thoughts of their children. Edgar shares the following experience with his mother: “I hit my brother because he spit on me, but not bad, not bad” “I got angry because I didn’t want to clean, and I am strictly forbidden to touch my brother, because he has autism, I have been to at least 3 courses, I just calmed down and that was it, I felt normal, and the next days was my birthday and I didn’t want to be sad, well the fact is that something stupid happened and I couldn’t explain anything, my brother cries for everything, I couldn’t do anything because when you fight with the boss, she is always right, I could not choose anything, well weird because if I had planned things like you say, maybe I would have been someone else, I didn’t want to go to Linares, they send me there because I was a drug addict, I spend two months studying there and then I came back here (Edgar, 17 years old).” One of the young men said that going out on the street generates conflict with his mother, because she does not want him to go out and he wants to go out: “She disagrees with that when I go out on the streets” “she things I go out to go mad,” “I know what she means, it’s when she tells me where am I going, she knows, well, before I was going out to lose favor and all that stuff, but it’s been a while, and my mom get mad because sometimes she thinks I am going out to go mad,” “I usually try to respect her decision (Jairo, 16 years old).” During session 6 the young men get oriented by means of a map of the community. The young men were asked to draw their community, a map of the neighborhood and one of the youngsters pointed out “I don’t know the neighborhood very well.” Subsequently, the youngsters draw the prob­ lems of their community, what problems exist in their community, and how these problems affect the community, Ernesto is the first to share his experience: “Here there is a park and whenever I pass by there is always a lot of rubbish thrown around, well, also one block from where I live they always have loud music, music is still playing at 3 or 4 am and I find it annoying, and there is a hot spot, where they sell drugs and so, if minors go there, they don’t care, I think this will affect the health of the

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children that go there to buy.” In this sense, problems are also reflected around litter, drug dealing, muggings, and police involved in drug dealing, constant parties and loud music, noisy neighbors and fights, and even the recognition to confinement when talking about inaccessible teacher because of the confinement: “Discomfort because due to the contingency, both the teacher and the student should be accessible but the teacher was not.” Some of the young men added in this session “In the park in front there is a parking lot and in that place there are trash cans, but they are full of garbage and the garbage trucks never go there and it already brought pests, insects, and it is disgusting and nobody does nothing,” “In the street where I live there is a guy who has a problem but he is always looking for problems with any person, and he makes a fuss and looks for fights and they just let him go free every time they take him away.” 11.5.3 STEP 3—EVALUATING NARRATIVE CHANGE: EXPLORING ALTERNATIVES TO DRUGS, VIOLENCE, EMOTIONS OF ANGER, AND FEAR During various sessions, the issue of drug and substance use is present in the intervention with young people, hence the continuous need to constantly establish discursive, thinking and cognitive alternatives to the processes of consumption behavior. Recognition of alternatives is diverse, from concentrating on music rather than drugs, “singing and distracting your mind,” “not thinking that you can’t stop using drugs,” clearly analyzing the situation of use to “get rid of the negative,” even studying and working as a protective factor is recognized and confronted by group members in the virtual sessions, where even having participants who already have children becomes a relevant factor as can be seen in the discourse of the following young man who points out that being a better father has led him to stop using drugs: “I don’t want them to think badly of me, that their father takes drugs and so do they, here in the alliance there was someone like that, first the father and then the son, I felt a lack of respect because he even gave smoke with his son, my little boy is two years old and the girl is two months old, when you are already all stoned or something like that.”

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On the other hand, young people recognize that not going out of their homes helps them in some sense not to consume drugs, as they cannot observe their friends having drugs, so it is interpreted that observing or having friends who consume drugs widely promotes the consumption in young men, one of these young men refers to the following: “Not going out in the street much, because if I were in the street I would see my friends chatting and smoking, and if I were with them I would have be drinking one or two beers.” 11.5.3.1 ASSESSING THE RECONSTRUCTION OF EMOTIONS: FEAR AND ANGER There is great difficulty for young people to situate fear and anger, yet much of the work of intervention leads them to locate, recognize, and reconstruct these emotions. Young people’s fears are situated in a variety of circumstances, but fears involving their parents, or family, or of having an accident, or someone in the family going through an unfavorable circumstance, are the fears mainly shared by young people: “Fear of losing my bosses, I haven’t thought about sadness, but anger makes me outrage when I could have done something and I didn’t do it, I could have avoided doing X action, but I did it and it makes me angry after I reflects on it.” “I’m afraid of having an accident and not being able to anything, and I also owe money for my house and I’m afraid that if something happens to me I won’t be able to do anything.” Anger Recognition: Anger Management During this session the young men describe a moment of great anger with a loved one, with someone in the family or with a situation or problem, how did it start, where did it happen, what did they feel angry about, and what did it end in. Through the Anger Map, on a step map, they talk about an event where they felt a lot of anger, they should recognize that their anger started to rise and probably became a violent behavior. When reflecting on a situation in which you have felt anger, the reflec­ tion of one of the participants on his anger is striking, reflecting a situation full of strong tension in the family: “When from my house someone called the police and took me, well I was comfortable at home when my aunt arrived and started yelling that I

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was a drug addict, and well, she is crazy, she’s sick in the head. She started telling me things, I think I hadn’t tidied my room, but she overexcited, she is not like I told you and leave you alone and you start to do it, she wants to see you doing it, I hadn’t tided my room, she told me fucking useless, she started to provoke me and then she pushed me and I hit her, and she started crying so exaggeratedly and the punch wasn’t like that, I mean I had never hit her before, she plays the victim when they do something to her, she is always doing something to us, she had given me a mobile phone and she took it away from me and she appropriated it, and she kept it for 43 years or I don’t know how long, and that day when she started to call the police I thought to myself, that she was the one provoking me and she plays the victim, so I left and hid, then I came back and got into the patrol car, and then when I left the police department she goes and sues me because she feared for her life, she did a whole show for at the end taking away the claim, they started to summon her because of the lawsuit, so you say that she did it just to piss me off, but as they were also going to summon her, she didn’t want to and she took it away.” With anger for remembering, at that time that what my aunt had were anger and sugar problems, “I am seeing her but she is in another room, but I get to see her, if something bothers me about her what would I do, well d don’t know, yell at her, piss her off, yell to her about nothing.” “There are so many things she has done to me that I don’t even finish, I have brought her the hot stuff and he makes a fuss, just remembering that makes me angry, makes me angry what she wants with me if I don’t talk to her, I don’t look at her, I don’t ask her for money, she is my aunt but she is a cero to the left, she doesn’t have to be imposing on me, it’s not even her house, she doesn’t support me, the ones who feed me and support me and everything are my mother and my grandmother, she wants to feel that she has power, to feel power, she wants to stand up, she wants to boss someone, maybe she was treated badly as a child, and since I was the youngest, so that is why my mother and me are going to move out of the house, because she always bothers my mother and me.” “I was going to tell you a quick one, I was taking a bath, and since I have earrings I took them off to disinfect them, and then she came back home from work, and she started kicking the door and she wanted to come in and she start saying to me: ‘You take such a long time, you are here all day and it occurs to you to take a bath right now, you fucking faggot.’”

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11.5.3.2 WHAT IS TO BE A MAN AND WHAT IS TO BE A WOMAN Within the work of session 7 we worked on male and female identity, from the social construction of being a man and being a woman, the social messages received, the young people were able to recognize from their discourses and experiences the different characterizations, functions, and roles from which they constructed being a man or a woman, it is important to note that most of the groups have a male population, so it is evident that there is greater participation in terms of male identity. Within the reflec­ tions, they recognize masculinity from the challenges imposed on men, from birth itself and their characterization as men in their clothing, or in their expected behavior, for example as children and later as adults what is expected from them, in this sense, it was said that if “more girlfriends, the more man” or if “the more beer you drink, the more man you are.” One of the young men refers to the men’s challenges: “To jump into the pool with clothes on,” who can put out more cigarettes in their hand, turn the cigarette over and blow on it so that the smoke comes out through the filter, I do it and it works but I don’t do that,” getting stoned, who picks up the prettiest girl first and then whoever gets her to have sex with her, knock off the face. Another young man says about Since I was born man “I think that since I was born I was always told that I was a man and that men did these things, and I always felt as one, well that a man should play with cars, that he liked soccer, that he dressed in blue, that a man should like women, that he is the one who should take care of the household when older (Erick),” “I don’t have a father, my mother told me that when I grow up the man is the one who provides for the household, that a man should be given, a man is the one who should work the most.” One of the young men refers about: More beer more man “as if saying that he has already been with several that he has had many girlfriends, to see who plays the coolest beer pong.” On the other hand, one of the participants refers to the social message of being a woman, “To start going out with boys, to hang out with them, to dress up, to put make up on, not to drink or smoke, and to give yourself respect with men or else you have start to have a bad reputation, and when that happens, they feel like a big deal, and women depend on the fact that if they have been with many men you will be treated badly in a certain way, well that is what society thinks, I don’t know how to say it without

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being rude. They look stupid doing that, what do they get from doing that, they look like little men, they are expected to be faithful, to take care of their partner, to be a good mother.” On the other hand, the participants stated that men are expected to “always bring money home, be responsible, work, show love, under­ standing, tenderness and no disrespect, get along well with the family, make a barbecue and know how to light the charcoal, what men do to show that they are men in a couple’s relationship.” 11.5.4 STEP 4—RECOGNIZING NEEDS FOR INSTITUTIONAL AND LEGAL SUPPORT During the various sessions the young people situate daily life experiences related to detention and the legal process they undergo, situations that go from recognizing group treatment as a consequence of detention, and other daily circumstances that refer to a need to be attended to and treated in these cognitive behavior therapy groups. Situations of recognition of drug use in the family, problems in the community or place of residence that go from drug dealing and police involvement, abuse of authority and abuse of police power to defend friends or friends with problematic family members lead them to think about situations of risk to their integrity, such as the suicidal idea that was clearly referred by one of the participants. Justin refers: “To think that someone is against me, I am not doing well what I like, I have thought about committing suicide too many times and I have told my mother, and she tells me that I am wrong, that I am stupid, that she is going to take me to the psychologist, and, well I really need it, I am not happy with my life, it makes me think about suicide, I almost have everything I want and I do not know if I will need more things to be happier or I do not know what I will need to be happier…” “losing my mothers trust, because of drugs, and that’s why I want to stop, not much anymore, I stopped taking drugs, when I was taking drug I thought more about it, the pills, the antidepressants, made me think about suicide since I was in second grade about 3 years ago,” “because I started to get high I saw much, I started to listen to creep music and I saw people taking cough syrup and I looked for codeine but I didn’t find it but found something different, and that’s when my addition to opioids started, if you can call it that” (Justin)

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11.6 CONCLUSIONS AND DISCUSSION Social constructionist evaluation encourages the creation of dialogues of interaction between individuals, which makes it possible to try out new points of view, new ways of solving difficulties. It also gives voice to the interpretations and reinterpretations that people give to their lived experiences. The social constructionist perspective provides an appropriate context for helping people to make discernments that draw distinctions between expressions and interpretation that identify particular moments in life where resilience can be found. According to Michael (1997), narratives are produced by social inter­ action plasma as language does not represent the world or proceeds from genetic codes of the individual, but rather exemplifies the type, degree, and extent of the links between people which can be captured from the social constructionist evaluation of social interventions that stem from an emerging paradigm. From a constructionist perspective, the fact that young people have the possibility of narrating their stories implies the development of an evolved individual perception that strengthens feelings and experiences, allowing them to express themselves spontaneously, distancing themselves from the dominant narratives insofar as both their narratives and their modes of expression are not subject to hegemonic and politically correct formats (Sirotnik, 1983). In this regard, Social Constructionism enables the appropriation of their processes and experiences based on the reflexive internalization of what they have experienced in terms of their own narratives, allowing them to become aware of their being, based on their own use of language and their own categories of symbolic and emotional meaning, with a discourse rich in their own expressions that account for their communal use of language (Wittgenstein, 1953; Gergen, 1996). In this way, social constructionist evaluation allows to show the deconstruction of the socially established vision of “social problems” where young people and their conflicts (both personal and with the law) are labeled, where it seems that criminalization is a normalized practice without reaching a deeper reflection on the social construction of the problems, where there are youth narratives that need to be recognized, made visible and their narratives included beyond the socially established narratives (Kemeny, 1992; Manning, 1985)

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This way of approaching reality, recognizing nondominant narratives, and giving them space of equality with respect to the dominant narratives is a path that intervention from Social Constructionism makes possible for those who work both in research and in Social Intervention, opening up new opportunities of meaning and re-signification of social reality and of the processes involved in the construction of a given social conception (De Saussure et al., 1983), and consequently, of how this can be reconstructed. Finally, social constructionism and social constructionist evaluation also allow us to approach social narratives from a gender perspective and from the perspective of emotional education, by recognizing the social processes that give rise to the normalization of certain visions (Baerveldt and Verheggen, 1999; Bakhtin, 1981; Kantor and Smith, 1975; Shotter, 1988) the condition of the generation of clichés about the conceptions of masculinity and femininity that are embedded in the process of social education and that promote certain behaviors and emotions, privileging certain stereotypes of men and women that are worth questioning. KEYWORDS • • • • •

intervention projects constructionist evaluation qualitative evaluation social intervention social projects

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Burr, V. An Introduction to Social Constructionism. Routledge: Londres, 1996. Cahill, S. Toward a Sociology of the Person. Sociol. Theory 1998, 131–148. Cabruja, T.; Íñiguez, L.; Vázquez, F. Cómo construimos el mundo; relativismo, espacios de relación y narratividad. Análisis 2000, 61–81. Casey, K. The New Narrative Research in Education. Rev. Res. Educ. 1995, 211–223. Clark, M.; Rossiter, C. Narrative & Practice of Adult Education, 2007. Dewey, J. The Middle Works; Southern Illinois University Press: Illinois, 1924. Fernández-Ramírez, B. Evaluation un Spain: Conceptos, Contexts and Networks. J. MultiDiscip. Eval. 2006, 134–152. Foucault, M. The Eye Power: Conversation with J-P Barou and M. Perrot. Power/Knowl. 1980, 146–165. Freire, P. La alfabetización funcional en Chile; UNESCO: Chile, 1968. Freire, P. Educación para el cambio social; Tierra Nueva: Buenos Aires, 1970. Gergen, K. Realidades y relaciones: aproximaciones al Construccionismo social; Paidós: Barcelona, 1996. Gergen, K. Construir la Realidad. El futuro de la psicoterapia; Paidós: Barcelona, 2005. Gergen, K. An Invitation to Social Construction; SAGE Publications, 2015. Gergen, K. J. Realities and Relationships: Soundings in Social Construction; Harvard University Press: Boston, 1994. Gergen, K. J. Psychological Science in a Postmodern Context. Am. Psychol. 2001, 803–813. Goodman, N. Ways of Worldmaking; Hacket: Indianapolis, 1978. Haselbo, G.; Lund, G. Developing Relationships in Schools; Dansk Psykologisk Forlag: Copenhagen, 2014. Holstein, J. A.; Gubrium, J. F. Handbook of Constructionist Research; Guilford: New York, 2008. Ibañez, T. La construcción social del socioconstruccionismo: retrospectiva y perspectivas. Polñitica y Sociedad 2003, 155–160. Iñiguez, L. Nuevos debates, nuevas ideas y nuevas prácticas en la Psicología Social de la era “post-construccionista”. FERMENT 2007, 523–534. Jackson, W. La vida en las aulas; Taurus: Madrid, 1968. Kantor, J.; Smith, N. The Science of Psychology; Principia Press: Chicago, IL, 1975. Kelly, G. The Psychology of Personal Constructs; Norton: New York, 1955. Kemeny, J. Housing and Social Theory; Routledge: Londres, 1992. Kuhn, T. La estructura de las revoluciones científicas; Fondo de cultura económica: México, 1962. Lock, A.; Strong, T. Social Constructionism: Sources and Stirrings in Theory and Practice; Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 2010. Manning, N. Social Problems and Welfare Ideology; Gower: Londres, 1985. McCloskey, D. N. Knowledge and Persuasion in Economics; Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 1985. Michael, M. Individualistic Humans Social Constructionism. Identity and Change. Theory Psychol. 1997, 311–336. Nirenberg, O.; Brawerman, J.; Ruiz, V. Evaluar para la transformación; Paidós: Barcelona, 2000. Noffke, S.; Stevenson, R. Educational Action Research; Teachers College Press, 1995.

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Phillion, J.; Fang, H.; Connely, M. Narrative and Experience in Multicultural Education; Sage Publications: Londres, 2005. Piaget, J.; Inhelder, B. Psicología del Niño; Ediciones Morata: Madrid, 1969. Poovey, M. A History of the Modern Fact: Problems of Knowledge in the Sciences of Wealth and Society; The University of Chicago: Chicago, 1998. Potter, J. La representación de la realidad: Discurso, retórica y construcción social; Paidós: Barcelona, 1998. Puig, S. N. Evaluar y aprender un único proceso; Octaedro: Barcelona, 2020. Rogers, E. La investigación Latinoamericana de la comunicación. Comunicación y Sociedad 2004. Rorty, R. Objetividad relativismo y verdad; Paidós: Barcelona, 1996. De Saussure, F.; Bally, C.; Sechehaye, A.; Riedlinger, A.; Harris, R. Course in General Linguistics; Duckworth: Londres, 1983. Shotter, J. Social Accountability and the Social Construction of ‘You’; Sage Publications: Londres, 1988. Sirotnik, K. A. What You See Is what You Get: Consistency, Persistency, and Mediocrity in Classrooms. Harv. Educ. Rev. 1983, 16–31. Steffe, L. P.; Gale, J. E. Constructivism in Education; Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc., 1995. Vigotsky, L. Metódica de las investigaciones reflexológicas y psicológicas; Moscú, 1926. Vigotsky, L. Pensamiento y lenguaje; La Pleyade: Buenos Aires, 1978.

Index

A Action research (AR), 51

conception, 55

final thoughts, 67–68 globalization and crisis complexification, 58 lessons learned, 59–67 migration studies, 56–57 neutrality, 52–53, 53–56 objectivity, 52–53 action research, 53–56 understanding the practice and

developing the concept of welfare

bricolage (UPWEB), 62–63

B Breast cancer survivors, 71, 193

characteristics, 83

communicational dimension, analyzed,

85

framework National Institute of Statistics and Geography (INEGI), 77–78 oncological survival in Mexico, 76–78 health recovery, 87

adaptation, key elements for, 89–92 female body and identity, changes, 92–95 process, needs felt, 88–90 and identity, critical view, 80

environmental movement, 81

Figueroa, studies, 81

information, analysis, 199 intervention, 87

key elements, 90–92 needs felt, 88–90 key elements female body, 92–95 female identity, 92–95

methodology, 82–83 participants, 83

reflexive-communicative model, 83–84 socio-constructionist, 83–84 need decisions, 203–204 diagnostic, 205

family support, 199–201 psychological support, 204

resignify themselves, 205–206 from themselves, 201–203 opportunity project, 84

reconstructing identity, 95–96 disorientation, 99

knowledge from experience, 96 knowledge gained, 96

new status as survivors, 97–98 recognizing new meanings, 98–100 re-signification, 100 Saltillo, 98–99 survivors, 97–98 theoretical code, 98

reordering, 101–102 reorganize, space, 102–104 re-signification, 86 results, 84–46 social constructionism, 196

instrument, 198

method, 196–197 participants, 197–198 procedure, 198–199 social experience studies and interventions, 78–80 Building intervention models, 23, 34

architecture of, 35 challenges pandemic defiance’s, 27–30 postpandemic defiance’s, 27–30 methodology for construction step, 40–41

274

Index

social constructionism, 32–34 intervention, 30–32 realities, 24–27 social intervention models assumptions, 39–40 constructionist, creation of, 36–38 master’s degree in constructionist, 38–39 methodology , steps for, 40–46

C Cancer Survivors (CESC), 79

Communicative practices, 116

Community researchers (CRs), 62–63 COVID-19, quarantine, 110–112

D Development child abandonment, 141–145 context, 145–147 intervention models, 147–149 in family abandonment adolescents context, 145–147 child abandonment, 141–145 intervention models, 147–149 Digital social networks, 120

E Environmental movement, 81

Erotic amorous relationships of young university students in Saltillo, 109

communicative practices, 112–118 construction of symbolic universes, 112–118 COVID-19, quarantine, 110–112 digital social networks, 120

fieldwork, 133 Goffman’s thesis, 117 Internet in Mexican, 119–120 interviews, 128–129 constraints, 129

informants, 130 instrument, 130–131 semistructured, 129–130 language, 112–118

observation, 131

categorical, 132

guide, 132–133 limitations, 132

nonparticipant, 131

phenomenological, 126

details, 127

focus groups, 125–126 instruments, 127

methodological strategy, 124–125 number of participants, 126 qualitative approximation, 123–124 results, 127–128 selection, 126

sessions, 126–127 social constructionism, 120, 126

details, 127

focus groups, 125–126 instruments, 127

methodological strategy, 124–125 number of participants, 126 qualitative approximation, 123–124 results, 127–128 selection, 126

sessions, 126–127 sociodigital networks, 120

virtual reality, 120

interpretative paradigm, 121–122 youth mediated, 118

F Family abandonment, 139

development

adolescents context, 145–147 child abandonment, 141–145 intervention models, 147–149 intervention methodology

analysis unit, 151

method, 150

project structure, 150–151 social diagnosis identification, 149–150 results, 151–154 Female breast cancer survivors, 193

information, analysis, 199 need decisions, 203–204

Index

275

diagnostic, 205 family support, 199–201 resignify themselves, 205–206

G Goffman’s thesis, 118

H H.A.R.A. model, 217, 218 Health recovery, 87 adaptation, key elements for, 89–92 female body and identity, changes, 92–95 process, needs felt, 88–90

I Information and communication technologies (ICTs), 111–112 omnipresence and ubiquity, 117 Institutional care, refugee families, 161 environment, 178–179 family context, 175–178 NNA families, 173–175 resilience of, 164–166 profile, 170–171 psychosocial risks, 171–173 research methodology, 166–170 Saltillo, stay in, 179–180 vulnerability, concept of, 162–164 Institutionalized adolescents, 139 analysis unit, 151

development

child abandonment, 141–145 context, 145–147 intervention models, 147–149 diagnosis identification, 149–150 intervention methodology

analysis unit, 151

method, 150

project structure, 150–151 social diagnosis identification, 149–150 method, 150 project structure, 150–151 results, 151–154 Interpersonal relationships, 117 Intervention methodology

analysis unit, 151

method, 150

project structure, 150–151 social diagnosis identification, 149–150

L Law on Women’s Access to a Life Free of Violence (LGAMVLLV), 228

M Male narratives, 227 ideal masculine construction of, 234–235 instruments, 232 masculinity, construction of, 228–231 men’s violence, 228–231 participants, 231–232 procedure, 232–233 results, 233 fatherhood, 238–239 ideal masculine, 233–234 perpetrators fear, 240–243 teacher, 239–240 violence, false, 235–238 social construction of adulthood, 233–234 childhood, 233–234 youth, 233–234 Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), 59 Migrant children, resilience built, 161 environment, 178–179 family context, 175–178 NNA families, 173–175 resilience of, 164–166 profile, 170–171 psychosocial risks, 171–173 on research methodology, 166–170 Saltillo, stay in, 179–180 vulnerability, concept of, 162–164

N National Institute of Statistics and Geography (INEGI), 77–78

276

Index

O Office of the Attorney General for Children and Family (PRONNIF), 140

Q Qualitative constructionist evaluation, 249 assess externalization conflicts over drug use, 260–261 constructionism, 254–255 evaluation, reality reconstruction, 255–256 assessing interaction, 256–257 constructionist evaluation, 256 cultural destabilization of social intervention, 257–258 language, 257 externalizing problem conflicts linked to the problem,

262–264 freedom and conscious model, 258–259 assess externalization, 259–260 externalizing problem, 261–262 narrative change, 264–265 recognizing needs for institutional, 268 narrative change reconstruction of emotions, 265–266 what is to be a man and a woman, 267–268 social projects, 255

R Reflective communicational support group in Saltillo, Mexico, 193 decisions, 203–204 diagnostic, 205 family support, 199–201 information, analysis, 199 resignify themselves, 205–206 Refugee families, institutional care, 161 environment, 178–179 family context, 175–178 NNA families, 173–175 resilience of, 164–166 profile, 170–171 psychosocial risks, 171–173

on research methodology, 166–170 Saltillo, stay in, 179–180 vulnerability, concept of, 162–164

S Social constructionism, 1, 120, 196 instrument, 198 male narratives, 227 adulthood, 233–234 childhood, 233–234 construction of, 234–235 fatherhood, 238–239 ideal masculine, 233–234 instruments, 232 masculinity, construction, 228–231 men’s violence, 228–231 participants, 231–232 perpetrators fear, 240–243 procedure, 232–233 results, 233 teacher, 239–240 violence, false, 235–238 youth, 233–234 method, 196–197 participants, 197–198 procedure, 198–199 reflections on intervention, 16–18 theoretical discussion, 3–5 advance knowledge, 10–13 beginnings, 5 construction of reality, 5–7 diversity, 7–9 intervention, challenges, 13–16 proposals, 9–10 truth, 7–9 Social intervention models assumptions, 39–40 constructionist, creation of, 36–38 master’s degree in constructionist, 38–39 methodology , steps for, 40–46 Social reconstruction of women carers, 211 H.A.R.A. model, 217, 218 justification, 213–214 methodology, 216–220 objectives, 216 theoretical frame, 214–216 Sociodigital networks, 120

Index

277

T TROIKA, 59

V

Virtual space, 116, 117

U Understanding the practice and developing the concept of welfare bricolage (UPWEB), 62–63 United Nations Agency for Refugees

(UNHCR), 171 UPWEB project, 62

W Women carers social reconstruction of, 211 H.A.R.A. model, 217, 218 justification, 213–214 methodology, 216–220 objectives, 216

theoretical frame, 214–216