The Process of Family Member Marginalization

• In Event: Organizational Communication Research Escalator - Extended Session

Abstract

This study focuses on a communicative group process in a specific type of social collective, the family. This project aims to understand how people come to live at the edge of their familial group as marginalized family members. Research questions include how marginalized family members make sense of their marginalized status, how marginalization occurs over time (e.g., kinds of events), who contributes to this process, and how (e.g., what family members say or do to cause others to feel marginalized). In-depth interviews with 30 marginalized family members were conducted and analyzed using grounded theory (Charmaz, 2006) to identify specific turning points that exacerbate intergroup differences among family members. Relationship change trajectories and the underlying dimensions of marginalization will also be discussed. This research contributes to the growing literature on family as a social collective and organizing form and theoretically to social identification theory.

Author

• Elizabeth Dorrance Hall, Utah State University