Is poverty a collective trauma? A joint learning process with women living in poverty in the City of Haifa in Israel

This paper describes an exploratory joint learning process with long-term welfare clients aiming to understand their identification of poverty as collective trauma. The joint learning group included twelve women living in poverty. The process included three stages: (i) addressing and thematically analysing aspects of collective trauma in the participants' life stories; (ii) comparing themes emerging from the stories with aspects of collective trauma; this led to the heuristic conceptualisation of poverty as a special type of collective trauma characterised by persistent and never-ending exposure of people living in poverty to traumatic adversities; (iii) analysing repetitive behaviour, thoughts and feelings, which are 'trauma-based behaviour', and exploring possible 'resilience-based behaviours'. Implications of the process for participants and for theory of practice and policy are discussed.