IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/crimin/v64y2024i6p1259-1274..html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Construction of Capital Among Family Members of People in Prison

Author

Listed:
  • Janani Umamaheswar

Abstract

Researchers have documented the harms of imprisonment on family life, but much less is known about how family members seek support to cope with the challenges of familial imprisonment. In this article, I draw on 8 months of ethnographic observations of a virtual family support group and in-depth interviews with 27 family members of people in prison to explore participants’ need for, and construction of, communities of support. Drawing on Bourdieu’s concepts of social and cultural capital, I reveal how family members cultivated and leveraged networks of support to develop the social connections, knowledge, skills and resources needed to cope with familial imprisonment. I argue, however, that the persistence of participants’ struggles underscores the intractable nature of the inequality produced by familial imprisonment.

Suggested Citation

  • Janani Umamaheswar, 2024. "The Construction of Capital Among Family Members of People in Prison," The British Journal of Criminology, Centre for Crime and Justice Studies, vol. 64(6), pages 1259-1274.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:crimin:v:64:y:2024:i:6:p:1259-1274.
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/bjc/azae013
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oup:crimin:v:64:y:2024:i:6:p:1259-1274.. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://academic.oup.com/bjc .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.