Feeling Excluded: Revisiting the Felt Experience of Low-Income Single Mothers Through the Case of Arab-Israeli Women

This study explores the emotional experience of low-income single mothers in their interactions with social workers, a topic researched extensively in various countries. Much of the literature assumes that these emotional experiences result solely from interactions with the welfare system, primarily through frontline service providers, meaning social workers, an assumption that has largely remained unchallenged. Using institutional ethnography, we innovatively unpack this taken-for-granted assumption by revealing that emotional experiences are shaped not only by these interactions, but also by the gap between the mothers’ needs and the actual benefits, support, and interventions they receive. We also explore the institutional dynamics that influence these processes, showing that this experience varies across sub-categories of single mothers: widowed, divorced, and separated. Based on 27 in-depth interviews with low-income Arab single mothers in Israel, our study highlights that, notwithstanding substantial differences between these sub-categories, the overall emotional outcome is a shared experience of exclusion. However, this exclusion is manifested differently in each group. Our findings contribute to feminist social work by emphasizing the need to challenge the systemic barriers that marginalize these women, advocating for policies that ensure equitable access to power, knowledge, and resources, while fostering respectful and supportive client-worker relationships.