#I experience poverty – thematization of individual experience of poverty in public

 „I experience poverty“. That is the way in which many users express it in social media, especially Twitter, since the middle of May 2022. Under title, they describe their individual experiences of poverty and what they mean to them. While poverty is usually not very visible to the public and is often hidden by those experiencing it, here people step into the public and describe their experience of poverty.

These public statements seem to be of interest from the perspective of social pedagogic research for a number of reasons: Those writing describe their individual experience of poverty and what it means to them subjectively in their tweets. Spoken from a subject theoretical perspective it can be said that they describe the relation between the social conditions they are living in as well as to themselves as to others in these short contributions. These publications can be seen as a form of participation in a public debate and thus be interpreted in the context of political participation.

We intend to deal with these descriptions and stories from the everyday life of people experiencing poverty scientifically. We are less interested in the quantitative dimension of poverty – which is the focus of the established poverty studies –, but in comprehending the subjective meaning of the experience of poverty explicitly. Therefore, we place the subjective descriptions of the experience of poverty in the center. We are especially interested in the thematization of everyday life poverty experiences as experiences of injustice. How do social medias talk about poverty and how do subjects see themselves under the condition of poverty and their relation to the world? From the perspective of social pedagogics, it is of special interest to look at the thematization of support and to understand how it positions the subject in relation to support (systems).

With our insights, we intend to contribute to the social pedagogic discourse on poverty and subjectivity.

Student research group

• Helen Dambach
• Mats Pachalli

Mentor

• Prof. Dr. Holger Schoneville