TY - JOUR
T1 - Believing in a Positive Future as a Form of Stigma Resistance
T2 - Narratives of Denied Expungement-Seekers
AU - Ispa-Landa, Simone
N1 - Funding Information:
This paper benefited from the feedback of participants in the Northwestern University Ethnography Workshop. I am also grateful to Gary Fine, Heather Schoenfeld, Mesmin Destin, Elizabeth Debraggio, and Jonathan Guryan for constructive feedback and discussion on this paper, and to Charles Loeffler for his input into the original research design and participation in conducting interviews. Eric Brown, Morgan Purrier, Jennifer Lansing, and Claudia Zapata provided able research assistance.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2019, © 2019 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.
PY - 2019/11/2
Y1 - 2019/11/2
N2 - A large body of work documents how people contest and refute stigmatized definitions of themselves. Yet, research that examines the role of emotion displays in stigma resistance remains sparse. To begin to fill this gap, I analyze follow-up interview data with 17 people who, because of their past felony convictions, were deemed ineligible for expungement, a court-ordered destruction of the criminal record history. Overall, participants seized on the interview setting to challenge stigmatizing definitions of themselves. There were two key ways in which this occurred. First, participants offered optimistic accounts of their future well-being. These hopeful narratives suggested that, although they were aware of how people with criminal records are devalued, they did not accept a view of themselves as damaged. Second, participants drew on emotion displays of anger with the criminal justice system to underscore that they were not deserving of the discrimination they faced. Implications for research on the sociology of stigma and emotions are discussed.
AB - A large body of work documents how people contest and refute stigmatized definitions of themselves. Yet, research that examines the role of emotion displays in stigma resistance remains sparse. To begin to fill this gap, I analyze follow-up interview data with 17 people who, because of their past felony convictions, were deemed ineligible for expungement, a court-ordered destruction of the criminal record history. Overall, participants seized on the interview setting to challenge stigmatizing definitions of themselves. There were two key ways in which this occurred. First, participants offered optimistic accounts of their future well-being. These hopeful narratives suggested that, although they were aware of how people with criminal records are devalued, they did not accept a view of themselves as damaged. Second, participants drew on emotion displays of anger with the criminal justice system to underscore that they were not deserving of the discrimination they faced. Implications for research on the sociology of stigma and emotions are discussed.
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U2 - 10.1080/01639625.2019.1596550
DO - 10.1080/01639625.2019.1596550
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85063983062
VL - 40
SP - 1428
EP - 1444
JO - Deviant Behavior
JF - Deviant Behavior
SN - 0163-9625
IS - 11
ER -