Placial Regimes: Examining racial and spatial inequality in human service policy research using concepts of place

• In Event: Beyond Heterogeneity: Methodological Challenges and Opportunities Researching Policy at the Nexus of Race and Place

Abstract

The present study examines the emphasis of place in policy research. In the space of child support research, most quantitative analyses use individual level data and indicators to provide meaningful explanations for variation in child support outcomes. These studies are limited as they fail to consider the economic and social context of the places within which these individuals live. These studies may also suffer from urban bias as their data and the questions that guide their research questions emerge from policies with metropolitan populations in mind. In order to expand our explanations of differences in outcomes across similar situated individuals experiences with human services, I argue that a theoretical examination of place be added to policy studies. I use Gieryn’s (2000) definition of place as an analytical framework to look at how social phenomena like social practices and structures, norms and values, power and inequality, difference and distinction are interpreted within a bounded location. Therefore, an examination of place is not simply controlling for state or county in our models. It is understanding what a place means to the people who live there culturally as well as the economic reality of the place. In understanding the meaning people give a place, the understanding of racial relations of the place, which includes historical legacies of the racism, including exclusion, segregation, and discrimination. In the United States, racial stratification and place are inexplicably intertwined. 

In this methodological paper, I present the findings of two studies that center the intersection of place and race. I offer a placial regime model, drawing on spatial regime work of Curtis et al (2012) and historical racial regimes of Baker (2022), as a methodological intervention to interrogate county-level human services outcomes. Using administrative data from two states in two different regions, the results show that place matters in how Black people experience interactions with human services policies, like child support. These results would not be visible using more conventional individual-level analytical strategies.   

Author

• Maretta Darnell McDonald, Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University
  Presenting Author