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In this article I analyze the intertwining of cultural narratives, identity stereotypes, and the material environment as these factors shape public service negotiations between clients and officials. I emphasize the material deficits, spatial barriers, and bureaucratic procedures that restrict the storylines clients and officials use to make sense of one another. This article is drawn from a two-year ethnographic study with African American young mothers (ages [16][17][18][19][20] under the custody of the child welfare system. I focus here on the experiences of one young mother and explore several scenarios in her struggle to obtain public housing. I argue that service deficits can be explained not by the commonly articulated narratives of client ''shortcomings'' but, rather, by the nature of the organizational and material conditions guiding exchanges between public service gatekeepers and young mothers.I suggest that this work advances narrative approaches to psychological anthropology by attending to the roles of social and material boundaries in framing the stories people can tell each other. [identity, adolescent mothers, public bureaucracy, service negotiation, narrative]Researchers explore how identity mediates access to publicly provided services (Adelson 2008;Cain 1991;Mattingly 2008;Prussing 2008). Clients must present system-sanctioned identities, so that public officials will deem them worthy to receive essential services including housing and medical care. Yet neither scholars nor providers fully understand the nuanced roles of ecological conditions and cultural narratives in shaping such negotiations. Identity interactions between clients and public service gatekeepers provide fruitful terrain for understanding how inequalities and social categories are produced and contested within public offices and social service contexts. Broad trends in the delay and denial of services are related to the nature of these face-to-face interactions. in which sociohistorical categories are molded into contextual and flexible identity forms. This article responds to Wortham's (2006) call as I examine the role of immediate spatial boundaries on identity performances. My approach contributes to psychological anthropology through close attention to spatial and structural contexts while explaining individual and narrative elements to identity performances in social service settings.Gee suggests that identity is constructed through social interaction involving two components: a bid by an individual and recognition of that individual as being a particular ''kind of person '' (2000:99). Cain (1991) emphasizes that identities are never natural. Rather, through social efforts individuals invest emotionally and cognitively in particular ways of being. Because certain identity presentations are valued more or less in given settings identity valuation is based on the interpretive frames that establish settings (Goffman 1974) or as Bruner (2008) suggests, narrative scripts. Narratives, as culturally acquired stories ...

Why does a queer feminist approach to reproductive justice matter? Why might it matter for youth who build their families while navigating the surveillance of a large urban U.S. child welfare system? Why might it matter for queer transracial families like my own and for other “disruptive families”? This autoethnographic account shadows my ethnography with Black adolescent mothers and their children living under surveillance. The works stems from an obligation to shift my gaze to myself, as I follow a long reflexive tradition in feminist anthropology around exploring my vulnerabilities and changing point of view. I argue that queering reproductive justice reveals diverse forms of kinship and care networks to motivate coalition building across families. Queer Black activists and feminists have consistently offered critical insights into how to make the rallying cry of Black Lives Matter more inclusive of Black trans and cis girls and women, as well as for gender‐expansive Black people and families. As a multi‐city and global coalition erupts and demands the liberation of Black lives, the time is ripe for a queer coalition for reproductive justice.

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This article explores the gap between official policies and the realities of social programs. It examines relations among administrators, case managers, and adolescent mothers in a Supervised Independent Living program. It also adds to the traditional analysis of policies an exploration of the use of cultural tools in developing program practices. The work finds that, due to the distribution of the hierarchy of authority, there is social distance between leaders, on the one hand, and workers and clients, on the other. These conditions foster what are termed familiar zones, or program spaces that are not highly regulated. Participants use these zones to foster informal social networks, to hide rule-breaking behaviors, and to maintain the impression of compliance with official policies that are actually unrealistic and impractical. Familiar zones are inadequate substitutes, however, for the public support and organizational integrity needed to promote the well-being of adolescent mothers and their children.