Bartering for Basics: Using Ethnography and Travel Diaries to Understand Transportation Constraints and Social Networks Among Working-Poor Women

• Published in: Urban geography 2010-11, Vol.31 (8), p.1018-1038
• Main Author: Rogalsky, Jennifer
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: America; Bgi / Prodig; East south Central; ethnography; GIS; public transportation; travel diaries; United States of America; welfare reform
• ISSN: 0272-3638; 1938-2847
• DOI: 10.2747/0272-3638.31.8.1018

Working-poor women face many challenges in their quest for economic self-sufficiency. Although welfare reform promises jobs, women do not have equal access to necessary services, including transportation. With the 2010 reauthorization of TANF (Temporary Asssistance for Needy Women), there is a need to develop a methodology that uses qualitative individual-level data to evaluate whether public transportation will serve working-poor single mothers in this quest for self-sufficiency. Using ethnography, travel diaries, and a GIS for a sample of women in the process of leaving welfare in Knoxville, Tennessee, travel behavior is examined both qualitatively and quantitatively in order to understand why they rarely use public transportation. Further research into the ways these women move around in a sprawling, medium-sized city reinforces and seeks to understand the extensive social networks working-poor mothers rely on. These women create communities of spatial necessity, bartering for basic needs to overcome transportation constraints.