Introduction

Diverse Two-Spirit, lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, queer, and other sexual and gender minority (2SLGBTQ+) populations experience significantly worse health outcomes, relative to heterosexual and cis (non-trans) populations (Bauer & Scheim, 2015; Brennan et al., 2010; Steele et al., 2009). PovertyFootnote 1 is a cause of poor health in marginalized populations (Kinitz et al., 2022), and scholars of 2SLGBTQ+ health note that socioeconomic factors contribute to poor health outcomes for diverse sexual and gender minority people as well (Ross et al., 2016; Robinson et al., 2016; Robinson, 2017). Despite agreement that the relationship between poverty and poor health in 2SLGBTQ+ populations is worth examining, few studies empirically substantiate this link, or reveal how it operates (Thomeer, 2013).

Experiences with social assistance (SocA) have been identified as a possible link between poverty and poor health in marginalized populations (Lightman et al., 2009; Smith-Carrier, 2017). In a study of SocA in Canada, SocA recipients were significantly more likely than non-SocA recipients in all income categories to report high stress, along with 37 out of 39 poor health outcomes (Lightman et al., 2009). The authors suggest that adverse physical and mental health among SocA recipients is due to the stress this population experiences in stigmatizing and under-resourced SocA systems (Lightman et al., 2009). Similarly, Thomas et al. (2020) articulate how the “complexities of engaging the welfare system” (p. 1130) in England, including attending multiple appointments, convincing staff of one’s credibility, and engaging with inaccessible terminology and policies constitute a form of violence that causes adverse impacts on mental health. SocA recipients marginalized because of their sexual orientation, gender, Indigeneity, race, disability, and other differences, may be more likely to experience stigma and discrimination both within and beyond SocA systems and, by extension, to have stress and poor health outcomes (Smith-Carrier, 2017).

Despite associations between poverty and poor health in 2SLGBTQ+ populations (Bauer & Scheim, 2015; Brennan et al., 2010; Steele et al., 2009), and the likely role of stressors associated with accessing SocA (Lightman et al., 2009; Smith-Carrier, 2017), we are not aware of any studies of 2SLGBTQ+ populations’ experiences with SocA. As a result of this research gap, the issues of 2SLGBTQ+ people in poverty, and the concerns of 2SLGBTQ+ SocA recipients, are often not considered at the policy level. Although not all 2SLGBTQ+ people who live in poverty access SocA, this subset of the 2SLGBTQ+ population is of particular concern, given the stressors associated with poverty and access to SocA (Lightman et al., 2009).

The Canadian Coalition Against 2SLGBTQ+ Poverty (CCA2P) is a diverse group of community, academic, and service provider stakeholders who share a commitment to making visible, reducing, and eliminating economic disparities associated with sexual orientation and gender identity and expression in Canada (Ross & Khanna for CCA2P, 2017). Understanding 2SLGBTQ+ peoples’ experiences of accessing SocA is an important priority for CCA2P. To increase this understanding, our team conducted a mixed methods study of 2SLGBTQ+ peoples’ experiences accessing SocA in Ontario, the most populated province in Canada. In this article, we share the findings from the qualitative arm of that study.

Social Assistance in Ontario

In Canada, SocA programs fall under the jurisdiction of provinces and territories. The province of Ontario has two primary SocA programs: Ontario Works (OW) and the Ontario Disability Support Program (ODSP). Implemented in 1996, OW was part of the conservative government’s neoliberal reform of the General Welfare Assistance program and is Canada’s first work-for-welfare program, requiring recipients to engage in employment activity to maintain eligibility (Gabel et al., 2004). Other eligibility criteria for OW include financial need, living in Ontario, being 16 years or older, and having assets within the allowable asset limits. Eligible applicants who are single could receive up to $733 a month (at time of writing) for basic needs and shelter (Ministry of Children, Community and Social Services, 2023). The Ontario Disability Support Program (ODSP) was implemented as part of the same government’s welfare reform efforts in 1998 (Gabel et al., 2004); eligibility criteria include meeting the definition of disability under the ODSP Act, living in Ontario, being 18 years or older, and having assets within the allowable asset limits. Eligible applicants who are single could receive up to $1228 a month (at time of writing) for basic needs and shelter (Ministry of Children, Community and Social Services, 2023).

Social assistance programs in Ontario have been intensely scrutinized because of the global deepening and expansion of neoliberal ideology and economic policy over the past four decades, as has been done internationally (Noël, 2019). The introduction of OW and ODSP was preceded, in 1995, by a decrease in SocA levels by 21.6% for all categories of recipients except those with disabilities and some seniors (Beatty, 1999). In addition, OW rates have been frozen since 2018, with ODSP rates increasing by only 5% since that time (Income Security Advocacy Centre, 2022).Footnote 2 Since the 1990s, austerity measures have resulted in more restrictive eligibility criteria and rules for OW and ODSP, reflecting a policy agenda that is committed to minimal government welfare support and the valorizing of individual self-reliance and self-responsibility (Gill, 2021; Thomas et al., 2020). While governments have come and gone since these drastic reductions, the embracing of neoliberal ideology by subsequent Ontario governments ensured cuts to SocA remained. The poverty line in Ontario for a single person is $19,930; in 2021, the income of an OW single person recipient was 60% below the poverty line and the income of an ODSP single person recipient was 40% below the poverty line (Maytree, 2022). Despite inflation-matching increases made prior to 2018 (Lightman et al., 2009), OW and ODSP recipients continue to be subjected to food insecurity, housing precarity, and other material deprivations caused by living dangerously below the poverty line. Similar austerity measures can be observed in other Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development countries, particularly liberal welfare states similar to Canada, such as Australia and the UK (Noël, 2019).

Previous research has established that beyond material deprivation, SocA recipients in Ontario are subjected to dehumanizing rhetoric in the media, political debate, social discourse, and formalized government policy, that does discursive violence and harm (Morrison, 2021; Thomas et al., 2020). Previous scholars note that poverty shaming and anti-welfare stereotypes and tropes are used strategically by neoliberal governments to normalize and deny their responsibility for poverty, and to rationalize austerity measures like those outlined above (Morrison, 2021; Thomas et al., 2020). Morrison (2021) refers to poverty shaming and anti-welfare rhetoric as “historically hard-wired discourse” (p. 385), implying their embeddedness in systems, such as SocA, as well as their implicit and explicit role in (unequal) power relations within these institutions and systems.

Relational Poverty Through an Intersectional Lens

Our analysis of the SocA system’s role in producing and sustaining 2SLGBTQ+ poverty conceptualizes poverty as an extensive network of relationships that “produces poverty and makes it persist for particular groups” (Feldman, 2019, p. 1706). Our analysis builds on understanding poverty as not simply an outcome of insufficient income and the absence of necessities such as food, clothing, and shelter. Rather, we build on Feldman’s (2019) model, in which poverty is situated in social relations. In this model, poverty comprises material and discursive inequities that are actively produced and sustained in relationships between those who experience oppression at intersections of class, race, Indigeneity, gender, and other dimensions of difference and those in relative positions of power and influence (Feldman, 2019). Dominant neoliberal discourses produce and sustain poverty through material deprivation, capitalist exploitation, dispossession (e.g., land), and exclusion of some groups from power. Individualizing and responsibilizing discourses normalize poverty and pathologize the economically oppressed as lazy and unmotivated (Jacquet et al., 2022). Such stereotypes obscure structural factors underlying poverty as well as the relational positioning of people seeking SocA into false categories of “deserving” or “undeserving” (Feldman, 2019; Gill, 2021; Morrison, 2021).

Highlighting the need for intersectional analyses of SocA encounters, systemically marginalized groups are disproportionately subjected to poverty-producing power relations (Kia et al., 2021). For example, the Canadian 2021 Census of Population (Statistics Canada, 2022) indicates that transgender men and women are more likely to experience poverty than their cisgender counterparts, non-binary people are twice as likely to live in poverty, and Indigenous, racialized, and newcomer communities experience higher rates of poverty compared to the national rate. Similarly, US-based data indicate that 2SLGBTQ+ people experience higher rates of poverty than cisgender heterosexual people, with transgender people and cisgender bisexual women experiencing the highest rates of poverty (Wilson et al., 2020). It stands to reason, then, that these populations are likely to engage with SocA systems. As a theoretical framework, intersectionality (Clark, 2016; Collins, 2009; Combahee River Collective, 1977; Crenshaw, 1989) facilitates analyses that recognize distinct expressions of poverty and SocA encounters across 2SLGBTQ + groups marginalized at intersections of Indigeneity, race, age, and ability, among other dimensions of social location (Kia et al., 2021).

This article’s focus is on the different ways that SocA structures, processes, social relations, and actors create and sustain poverty for diverse 2SLGBTQ+ populations. In keeping with the politicizing intentions of the relational poverty framework to recognize the voice and political agency of the poor (Feldman, 2019), we center our discussion on the lived knowledges of diverse 2SLGBTQ+ people based on their encounters with poverty and the SocA system.

Methods

Principles of community-based participatory research (Wallerstein et al., 2017) and theoretically driven thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2006) informed this qualitative study. Specifically, the topic of the study (2SLGBTQ+ peoples’ experiences with social assistance systems) was identified through a priority setting process that engaged a variety of stakeholders, including people with lived experience of poverty, with a goal of achieving economic justice for 2SLGBTQ+ people. The study was developed and carried out in partnership between academic researchers and three community organizations that support and advocate for 2SLGBTQ+ people and/or people living in poverty: the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty, Queer Ontario, and the Senior Pride Network. Representatives from all three organizations participated as co-investigators on the research team (and thus participated in a decision-making/project co-leadership capacity). Furthermore, 2SLGBTQ + people with lived experiences of poverty, some of whom also had experience accessing social assistance, were hired as research staff. As well, some academic members of the research team have lived experience with poverty and accessing SocA. In this way, 2SLGBTQ + individuals, including those with lived experience of social assistance systems, were involved in identifying the topic as a priority, finalizing the research questions, deciding on study methods, carrying out the research, and analyzing and interpreting the data (although given the process of problem identification through to completion of the study spanned several years, in some cases, different individuals with lived experience were involved in different stages of the project). Ethics approval was received from Health Sciences Research Ethics Board at the University of Toronto.

Participants and Recruitment

Participants were 11 individuals who self-identified as having lived experience of poverty and/or accessing SocA in the Greater Toronto Area. Participants were reached primarily via their involvement in a mixed methods study of 2SLGBTQ+ poverty within which this qualitative study was embedded. Consistent with a participant selection variant of explanatory sequential design, the quantitative strand was designed primarily to identify appropriate participants for the qualitative strand (Creswell & Plano Clark, 2017). The qualitative strand was the priority strand intended to answer the primary research questions: What are the experiences of poverty and accessing SocA for 2SLGBTQ+ populations? What are the impacts of these experiences for 2SLGBTQ+ populations?

Participants for the quantitative survey were recruited through study flyers distributed virtually through online networks and organizations accessed by people experiencing poverty. Eligibility criteria were established via phone or a brief online survey; eligible participants were then provided with a link to the quantitative survey, which assessed demographic characteristics, type and duration of SocA accessed, perceived barriers and facilitators to accessing SocA (data reported elsewhere), and interest in participating in the qualitative portion of the study.

Participants who agreed to participate in the qualitative portion of the study were screened by telephone to confirm the eligibility criteria (experience of poverty, aged 18 years or older, self-identify as 2SLGBTQA+, and living in the Greater Toronto Area). During these screening interviews, participants also provided relevant sociodemographic information (e.g., details related to their gender, sexual identity, racial/ethnic/cultural identity, disability status, and age). In total, seven participants agreed to be contacted, could be reached, met eligibility criteria, and consented to participate in the qualitative strand. Given the relatively narrow age range of participants recruited via the online survey, a second round of recruitment was undertaken through electronic and hard copy flyer distribution to organizations and in areas frequented by people living in poverty. This recruitment yielded five more potential participants; four met eligibility criteria and consented to participate. Characteristics of the full qualitative sample (n = 11) are provided in Table 1.

Table 1 Participants in a qualitative study of social assistance access in the Greater Toronto Area
Full size table

Data Collection

Data were collected using two methods. The majority of participants took part in online semi-structured focus groups of approximately 1.5 h in length, co-facilitated by the principal investigator and another member of the research team (two focus groups of n = 6 and n = 2 for a total of eight participants). Focus groups were the preferred method of data collection to enable consensus and community-building. However, some participants (n = 3) were unable to participate in a virtual focus group for technology, data access, or other reasons. Given that these individuals were all older 2SLGBTQA+ people, a group not well represented among our focus group participants, we included them via telephone-based semi-structured interviews of approximately 1 h in length conducted by the principal investigator (n = 3). Informed consent was attained verbally at the beginning of each focus group/interview. Focus groups and interviews followed the same semi-structured guide, which queried: experiences seeking SocA; barriers and facilitators to accessing SocA; interactions with service providers; disclosure of 2SLGBTQ+ identity in the process of accessing SocA; health impacts of accessing SocA; and recommendations for changes to the SocA system. The guide was applied flexibly to focus questions or topic areas of greatest relevance to participants, and to allow for group discussion/consensus in focus groups as well as more detailed exploration of life course experiences in the individual interviews. Immediately following each interview and focus group, the facilitator(s) recorded an analytic note to document reflections regarding dynamics within the group or between the participant(s) and facilitator(s); key learnings from the interview/focus group; and ideas to be taken into the next focus groups/interviews.

Data Analysis

Focus groups and interviews were audio-recorded and transcribed verbatim using an AI transcription application and verified by a member of the research team prior to analysis. The analytic approach drew on principles of theoretically driven thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2006), adapted for a participatory approach. This entailed iterative and collaborative engagement with the data, in conversation with relevant theoretical approaches (particularly, Feldman’s relational model of poverty, 2019), to identify themes that would enable us to tell the “story” underlying our data.

To begin the analytical process, eight members of the research team (all of whom identify as 2SLGBTQ+ and include members with lived experience of poverty and/or accessing social assistance) read and notated two transcripts (one focus group and one interview) that the interviewer felt reflected key ideas and experiences in the data. During this process, when possible, we matched members of the team to interviewee transcripts based on shared identities and/or lived experiences. For example, a Two-Spirit team member was asked to read and notate the interview transcript of a Two-Spirit participant. These team members met to discuss their analyses and collaboratively developed an initial coding framework. That preliminary framework included eight main themes, (1) systemic factors, (2) interpersonal factors, (3) micro-level factors, (4) identity, (5) resistance, (6) health impacts, (7) good experiences, and (8) recommendations; and two cross-cutting themes, (1) intersectional stigma and discrimination and (2) the underlying ideology of SocA systems. Each transcript was then independently coded by two members of the coding team according to this framework, with discrepancies resolved through discussion and applying the principle of inclusive coding (i.e., unless a code was applied in error, both coders’ analyses were included).

After this round of coding, the coding team met to discuss their analyses and suggested revisions to the coding framework. We particularly discussed the applicability of Feldman’s relational model of poverty (2019) to understanding relationships between systemic, interpersonal, and micro-level themes. To further elucidate this, we undertook a final round of in-depth coding specific to the data originally coded under the theme of “systemic factors.” Following this stage, the coding team met to finalize our overall understanding of the key findings, which is summarized in this article. Throughout the process, NVivo software (version 12) was used to assist in data management.

Results

Our analysis of 2SLGBTQ+ participants’ SocA experiences, and relatedly, poverty narratives led to the identification of three key themes that articulate how their encounters with the SocA system produce and sustain their poverty. Collectively, the themes focus on systemic factors that institutionalize poverty (e.g., policies that provide only low levels of SocA and limited access to discretionary benefits) for 2SLGBTQ + people, underscoring that the SocA system serves the interests of those in power by enacting systemic violence against poor people. The neoliberal ideology that has been identified as structuring the SocA system, values and normalizes individualism, self-responsibility, competition, self-regulation, and self-management (Gill, 2021; Thomas et al., 2020). The SocA system is embedded in oppressive economic and social policy that allows the provision of only minimal (unliveable) SocA, restrictive eligibility criteria and rules (including those for discretionary benefits), and reduced comprehensiveness of services. 2SLGBTQ+ participants in this study unequivocally recounted that SocA rates and related benefits and services are “abysmally inadequate” (Participant 101, trans-woman of color)Footnote 3 and fail to provide required resources and supports—they simply are “not enough to live on” (Participant 101, trans-woman of color), particularly for those in high-cost urban centers:

I know someone who pays, I think 85 percent, 90 percent of her ODSP cheque to rent and only survives through a side job that she's able to do. (FG 1, Speaker 7, white bisexual cisgender man)

On, a monthly basis [I] would be approved for getting like $700 and my rent is over $800. So, it [OW] doesn’t even cover my rent, let alone covering the cost of living and all that stuff. (FG 1, Speaker 3, white bisexual cisgender woman)

ODSP provides an income support that will at least cover rent for most people. So, it’s not necessarily providing a full enough amount to live on, but at least it’s more livable than OW for sure. (FG 2, Speaker 3, white bisexual cisgender woman)

Participants, particularly those deemed ineligible for income support, also described the poverty sustaining impact of restrictive eligibility criteria in their struggle to live on minimum wage earnings (Participant 101, trans-woman of color) as well as grossly inadequate SocA levels and the need for “working under the table” (Participant 101, trans-woman of color) into older adulthood to make ends meet.

2SLGBTQ+ participants’ perspectives on this matter are strongly evidenced in research, theoretical, and gray literature that frame SocA policy impacted by the expansion and deepening of neoliberal ideology as producing and sustaining poverty. Notwithstanding the significance of this finding, the inadequacy of SocA levels is not reported here as a key theme; rather, it is a premise upon which the following key themes are reported: (1) navigating a precarious and nebulous system; (2) encountering the construction of 2SLGBTQ+ identities as “irrelevant” in normative systems; and (3) intersecting systemic, interpersonal, and micro violences.

Navigating a Precarious and Nebulous System

Participants described numerous ways in which systemic practices and attitudes produce the SocA system as risky and murky terrain for 2SLGBTQ+ communities. Notably, participants report that SocA staff withhold SocA policy information, and as a result, participants spend considerable time and effort learning the system, seeking policy clarity, and engaging in self-advocacy, when possible:

I applied to social assistance in the past, a couple of times, and I was made ineligible twice. So, I had to appeal the decision several times by also doing research on what's required to be eligible. And then, also, it was mentioned the other benefits that are provided are not always disclosed to you. And so, you kind of have to do your own research on it. (FG, 1 Speaker 4, mixed race gay man)

When I was out of money and out of work and didn't have a new job yet, I really felt apprehensive because there wasn't enough information about what the different programs were and what they offered and how they worked, etcetera. There was a lot of stress about what happens if I apply, and I don't get accepted into the program. What am I going to live on? (FG 2, Speaker3, white bisexual cisgender woman)

Contributing to participants’ labor of learning the SocA system, some participants described confusion among SocA staff about SocA policies, underscoring that staff should understand and make explicit such policies. In this regard, participants described an uneven SocA landscape with some staff being more knowledgeable, informed, and willing to help than others:

... different people have different workers, different experiences, I’ve had some that have been all right, some that have not. (FG 1, Speaker 7, white bisexual man)

I found that the previous office [where the participant had been a client] had been one of the most helpful in my years of being on ODSP... from my experience [now] being at this [ODSP] office for the last three years in December, [it’s] one of the worst experiences, feeling - even though they’re [also an] ODSP office, I just, I don't even know how to say it, I just [feel] like there's nothing there, like I feel like there’s no support whatsoever. How one office can say ‘this is what we do,’ and ‘this is how it’s going to be’ and set me up that way. And when I went to this other - my now current office, ‘no, this is how it is.’ And I said, ‘I don't understand how you can be whatever, three kilometres apart [and have different policies]’. (Participant 105, Ojibwe Two-Spirit female)

Lack of policy knowledge among staff not only sustains poverty but may worsen poverty for 2SLGBTQ+ participants, putting them in the stressful, and likely impossible, position of paying SocA back:

I went off to university, obviously I stopped [receiving OW] because of going on OSAP [student loan program in Ontario]. And you can only receive one social assistance at a time, so I stopped receiving it for school. But my Ontario Works worker was specifically like, ‘I know that you're going to school and you’re receiving OSAP, but I'm still going to pay you anyways.’ I’m not even kidding you, like, Ontario Works workers were like literally begging me to come into office saying, you know, like, ‘you have to pay for bills, you have to pay for rent, etcetera, etcetera. So, like, you need to come and apply so that way we can help you out. We want to help you out.’ And so, I did, even though I wasn’t going to. And then after I applied and they considered me to be approved, two days later, they called me back into the office and say, ‘we messed up. You’re not eligible now. You owe us money again’. (FG 1, Speaker 3, white bisexual cisgender woman)

Poverty for 2SLGBTQ+ people is also sustained by a SocA system that fails to connect them to other poverty mitigating resources that facilitate a liveable life, “there is no information given about housing, food banks, anything” (Participant 105, Ojibwe Two-Spirit female).

Lack of clarity about SocA eligibility requirements and policies, whether due to 2SLGBTQ+ participants’ difficulty with accessing relevant information or lack of knowledge among staff, poses significant risk to SocA recipients. Indeed, participants described having to speculate on the outcomes of decisions and actions related to their experiences with SocA. This lack of transparency by the system creates much anxiety and distress for people as they fear their income being “cut-off.” For example, one participant who was receiving Canada Pension Plan-Disability benefits noted:

I don’t even want to find a job right now because I’m just like, OK, well, then I’ll probably I don’t .... I don’t know exactly how it works, but I’m pretty sure I’ll get cut off. (FG 2, Speaker 2, non-binary queer person of color)

Similarly, in the context of the precarious and nebulous terrain of the SocA system, in which eligibility requirements are not clearly communicated and appear to be subjectively determined by individual workers, participants described anticipating or experiencing encounters in the system as punitive. They described navigating the risk of staff withholding resources, specifically in relation to their identities as 2SLGBTQ+ people, but also in association with other marginalized and stigmatized identities. The unpredictability and negative implications of staff decisions reflects a considerable power differential between 2SLGBTQ+ SocA recipients and staff, which seemed particularly true for racialized and Indigenous 2SLGBTQ+ people:

If the worker doesn’t like my tone or my body language, they’ll punish me by withholding certain resources, not inform [me] of certain benefits [I am] entitled to, as well as just being pretty abrasive and hostile due to maybe my race or my sexual orientation, it’s really hard to pinpoint it exactly. (FG 1, Speaker 2, Black gay cisgender man)

[My past experiences] made me question how much I wanted to … be open. I have, if you want to say, the ‘privilege’, and I put that in quotations, because I have a child, people make the assumption I'm straight. Because I don't have the stereotypical Indigenous colouring, so I look, I could pass as white … assumption, again. So that kind of thing. But like I said, it's hard enough being in the system, but then to say that you're gay, or Two-Spirited, there’s even - I feel like it could be riskier. (Participant 105, Ojibwe Two-Spirit female)

Qualitatively different SocA-related oppression among queer and trans-participants were described at the intersections of Indigeneity, race, sexual orientation, and gender identity/expression. For example, a trans-woman of color noted how the intersection between a marginalized racial identity and gender identity/expression has particular implications for trans-people of color.

If you’re a trans person of color, there are barriers - like real and tangible barriers to being in that demographic. It's not supposed to be so. But the rules are applied differently to different demographics within the subgroups of trans persons. (Participant 101, trans woman of color)

This older participant, who had not been “out” earlier in their life, struggled to navigate if their sexual orientation was something they should hide due to safely:

Well, you could be dealing with a person that’s homophobic or that’ll put you down the list or, or, you know, I don’t know, it’s like the part of your life that you’re kinda going, do you really want to disclose that to somebody? (Participant 104, white gay male)

In resistance to the precarity and nebulousness of the SocA system, participants described the creation of “small and mutual support networks” where people shared different experiences with the SocA system and staff (FG 1, Speaker 7, white bisexual man). In this context, information sharing and providing material resources among 2SLGBTQ+ communities was a necessary intervention in response to the paucity of available SocA information about poverty mitigating resources, such as housing, food banks, trauma supports, and medical support:

For myself, like coming from a marginalized community, you know, being both queer and Black, whenever I meet with folks with similar intersections, I try to share as much resources as possible ... like, hey, there’s this housing resource, this resource, because unfortunately, the [SocA] worker isn’t always going to share this information with you. (FG 1, Speaker 2, Black gay cisgender man)

Lack of transparency and communication about SocA eligibility policy, inequitable assessment of eligibility, and inconsistencies in resource distribution are expressions of oppressive power relations between SocA staff and diverse 2SLGBTQ+ people in which SocA staff hold the balance of power. Notwithstanding 2SLGBTQ+ community-led resistance strategies, these power relations are implicated in producing and sustaining queer and trans-poverty.

Encountering the Construction of 2SLGBTQ+ Identities as “Irrelevant” in Normative Systems

Participants illustrated the poverty-producing and sustaining effects of the intersection between the SocA system and other systems that are similarly structured by dominant and normative ideologies, including neoliberalism, white supremacy, coloniality, and cisheteronormativity. To begin, the normativity of the SocA system could be characterized by its lack of attention to social identities and social locations during the encounters of diverse 2SLGBTQ+ participants. Participants described feeling invisible, dehumanized, and excluded by the failure of the SocA system to ask “who” they are by, for example, collecting and responding to demographic information. Some participants described their SocA encounters as treating their sexual orientation and gender identity as “none of their business unless you choose to disclose” (FG 2, Speaker 3, white bisexual cisgender woman).

Troubled by missed opportunities for the SocA system to recognize the relationship between marginalized identities and poverty, some participants queried why demographic information is not deemed relevant enough to include in the intake process:

Sexuality is also like never a conversation that’s had, and I don’t know if that’s just because it’s irrelevant to intake or something like that. I don't know, but also like it being part of your identity, you would assume that it does play a role in your everyday life. (FG 1 Speaker 3,

white bisexual cisgender woman)

Concern about the perceived irrelevance of diverse 2SLGBTQ+ identities by the SocA system had specific implications for those experiencing identity reclamation and transition. An Ojibwe participant who described being in the process of reclaiming their Two-Spirit identity (Participant 105, Ojibwe Two-Spirit female) stated:

… especially now that I’m reclaiming like my Two Spiritedness, which is about my Indigenous culture as where I’m learning more, and it just seems to encompass more of who I am. Then they get to know a little more of who I am. (Participant 105, Ojibwe Two-Spirit female)

Lack of systemic recognition, interest, and investment in this participant’s Indigenous (Ojibwe) identity and socioeconomic location reflects and reproduces settler colonial violence through erasure of Indigenous identity and experiences of dispossession, discrimination, and exclusion. This, in turn, erases the relationship between these experiences of identity and the need for SocA. Through lack of recognition, interest, and investment, participants are “processed” through the system as homogenized universal subjects measured by the values, norms, and beliefs of dominant normative ideologies.

While the collection of demographic data may not radically disrupt the normativity of the SocA system, at the very least, it may signal some systemic recognition and inclusion of 2SLGBTQ+-related oppressions. Such acknowledgement may be particularly critical when applicants narrate their stories of poverty and distress as required for disability-related income support, and/or seek information about financial support for gender affirmation and other relevant benefits:

I did mention those things [gender dysphoria diagnosis] just because they weren’t really asked about in any other parts of the application, it was more like, oh ... it talks a lot about physical and mental disability type stuff, but it didn’t talk about oppression or anything. So yeah, I definitely wrote a piece about how gender dysphoria and being non-binary and stuff affected my ability to work. I have no idea how much they took that into account or whether it was more just about the numbers I ticked off, but it ended up getting accepted. So, that’s all I know in the end. (FG 2, Speaker 2, non-binary queer person of color)

Not asking about social identities contributes to the invisibility of poverty and SocA need produced and sustained because of the mental and physical health implications of gender binarism and other forms of structural violence. For trans-people, systemic attention to gender identities may mitigate delays in application processing and accessing SocA by foreseeing and redressing bureaucratic barriers:

There can be delays in your applications if you are also like concurrently working on changing your identity documents, so if you’re changing your name or something like that, that can really slow down the whole process and sometimes you'll have to redo certain stages of it. (FG 1, Speaker 5, white non-binary lesbian)

The normativity of the SocA system is paralleled with participants’ experiences in the employment sector, where normative ideologies limit their access to sustained income in an already precarious labor market. For racialized and non-binary participants, whiteness, sexism and cissexism, binarism, and coercive feminization impact their access to sustained employment and promotions as well as their capacity to withstand the “soul destroying” (FG 2, Speaker 2, non-binary queer person of color) environments in which they worked. A participant who identified as an immigrant and trans-woman of color, described repeated experiences of being passed over for promotions, often being told she was “overqualified,” while she contended with rules and practices informed by white, cis, heterosexual values and norms (Participant 101). This was echoed by another participant:

I think a lot of it has to do with not fitting in and not feeling like you fit in with the standard social and political framework that we all work within. I think a lot of us really don’t identify with the heteronormative work culture. (FG 2, Speaker 3, white bisexual cisgender woman)

The burden of conveying the extensive impacts on mental and physical health of work environments structured by normative ideologies, such as dress codes informed by gender binarism, when applying for income support most often falls on 2SLGBTQ+ people. This responsibility, undoubtedly, compounds distress:

I did have difficulty the first time I applied for disability because I was trying to explain my situation that part of the issues, I was having was not feeling like I fit in at work due to feeling like I’m not straight or cis, like having gender dysphoria and being queer. And there wasn’t ... the first time I applied, like, honestly, that didn’t really seem to be acknowledged as like a valid thing. It was like, if I guess it’s still not like widely accepted everywhere that it would be like a serious form of oppression that would affect your ability to function properly at work, especially if your work is very binary, like even little things like the Christmas party or something that, like we were pretty much expected to go to. Like, if you didn’t, it was kind of like, oh, why wouldn’t you go? But like, they would always have these themes like, oh, ball gown theme, or ... I don’t know. Like, I just knew I wouldn’t fit, and I just remember being kind of pressured to go and then feeling like super uncomfortable about what to wear. And I wasn’t fully out, and it was just like a lot of complexity and feeling like I can’t be myself. (FG2, Speaker 2, non-binary queer person of color)

This participant goes on to describe the difficulty of achieving sustained employment in a workplace structured by normative expectations at the intersection of being non-binary (i.e., gender identity) and neurodivergent (i.e., ability); a point at which they “don’t identify [as well] with social norms or with gender norms.” For other participants, the assumption in the employment sector that everyone can manage full-time employment constitutes a barrier to “finding work that is targeted to your situation” (FG 2, Speaker 3, white bisexual cisgender woman) and means that opportunities to discuss workplace accommodations are not made available:

I mentioned earlier that I’ve had many, many, many, many jobs, and one of the things that I know, [is that] there isn’t support for people like me who go from job to job to job to job to job because the assumption is everybody’s looking for full-time perm. And there’s a bias towards that, but not everybody can work full time. So, asking for accommodation for mental or physical health issues or anxiety surrounding gender dysphoria, etcetera, those things are not considered when people interviewed for a job. (FG 2, Speaker 3, white bisexual cisgender woman).

Participants identified encounters in other systems similarly structured by dominant and normative ideologies, such as housing and other income support programs as well as in social institutions such as the family (i.e., family estrangement), as factors that contribute to their poverty and the necessity of SocA support:

I went to apply for a place and the superintendent … there was a white female. She says, “you want to rent a place here?”, she says, “can you afford it?” I said yes. And she was hesitant to give me an application form. (Participant 101, trans-woman of color)

And, also like reading in the newspapers and reading the information in the newspapers - they discourage collecting [CPP – national retirement pension] at 60 because there’s a penalty for collecting at 60. And, for example, it’s less than if you collected at 65, but if you collect it at 70, then it’s more than at 65. But why should I wait till I’m 75 and I may be dead? It didn't make sense to me. I want the money now while I’m alive. So, whatever they tell in the newspaper, to discourage you from collecting early, well, that didn’t apply to me. Because they assumed everyone is well off. (Participant 101, trans-woman of color)

I was thrown out at the age of 18 and didn’t have a family support system. So, I was kind of unfortunately forced to access on Ontario Works. (FG 1, Speaker 2, Black gay cisgender man)

I had to drop out of university when I was outed to my family and had to leave home. (FG 1, Speaker 6, non-binary queer person of color)

From a relational poverty perspective, cisnormative and heteronormative encounters in the SocA system are one point in a series of points that delimit access to life sustaining resources for 2SLGBTQ+ people across the lifespan. The normativity of the SocA system and other related systems makes the continuity of oppression experienced by diverse 2SLGBTQ+ people invisible, while placing responsibility for economic security on them. This power relation enables 2SLGBTQ+ poverty-producing discrimination to persist.

Intersecting Systemic, Interpersonal, and Micro Violences

Participants talked about experiences of harm at the interpersonal and micro-levels during SocA encounters, while laying out how these harms relate to systemic level harms (e.g., dominant normative ideologies and related practices). The violence of dominant normative ideologies that structure the SocA system is evident in power relations between SocA staff and 2SLGBTQ+ service users that convey a normative imperative for 2SLGBTQ+ people to “pass” or tone down their queerness as well as other identities that may be subject to discrimination. This mixed race gay man with experience of anti-Black racism said:

... there’s times where I have to tone down my queerness, which is an exercise that I’ve been doing with my ethnicity as well to tone down your Blackness or something like that just to come across as a good impression and not as easily judged. (FG 1, Speaker 4)

For some racialized participants, their understanding that the SocA system, like other systems and people within those systems, is imbued with power structured by white supremacist and classist values, norms, and beliefs led them to try to mitigate the risk of racial violence through performance; itself a form of systemically produced violence:

My parents taught me how to talk to white people and people in power. So, like, you have to be super nice, and you have to like, present yourself in certain ways like your clothes have to be like a particular level of cleanliness and like presentableness … it’s all like this respectability politics stuff. And like, that’s always at the forefront, if I’ve ever had to access these kinds of services that if I don’t do this, I'm putting myself at risk. (FG 1, Speaker 6, non-binary queer person of color)

Still, racial stereotypes of Black aggression and “playing” the system and welfare tropes such as the fraudulent welfare recipient are readily weaponized during SocA encounters:

I was living in an apartment building and back then in [city], they would mail the cheques separately, so like housing and basic needs, and my mailbox was secure, and my landlord had stolen my rent portion. So, I had to go down to Ontario Works and petition that and try and get them to reissue a cheque. They end up reissuing a cheque maybe a month or later, but when I went down to the office, the supervisor gave me such a hard time. She’s like, “oh, you went to [the bank], and you signed over the cheque to somebody else”, which was a lie. And I said, “well, you know, let’s go down to [the bank] together with the police and review the footage.” She wouldn’t respond and she was like, “for the record, I didn’t believe you whatsoever. And I’ve heard from other workers that you’re a difficult client,” right? So, it’s just like very inappropriate behaviors and almost like pushing her client into a corner to retaliate so they can get you like, maybe suspended or call the police on the Black aggressor, Black male. (FG 1, Speaker 2, Black gay cisgender man)

Homogenizing discourse in the SocA system is produced by the lack of demographic information or other ways of understanding service users’ unique lived experiences and knowledges based on social identities. Coupled with SocA staffing unpredictability and turnover, homogenizing discourse creates a culture of silence and erasure in which 2SLGBTQ+ people do not discuss their social identities and lived experiences, particularly as they relate to poverty, SocA needs, and the need for other resources. For example, a white gay male participant, described feeling “hesitant” to ask his worker about OW coverage for PrEP, a pre-exposure prophylaxis to reduce the risk of HIV stating, “I think this is my fifth person there, so it seems a little weird because you don’t even sometimes know the person’s name” (Participant 104). As previously discussed, lack of systemic recognition, interest, and investment in the unique narratives of diverse 2SLGBTQ+ people lead to their systemic homogenization and normalization as they are measured (and erased) by the values, norms, and beliefs of dominant normative ideologies. This phenomenon coupled with staff unpredictability and turnover not only has a dehumanizing effect but can deny 2SLGBTQ+ SocA recipients’ access to needed resources. In this regard, the participant above characterizes the violence of erasure as “not atypical,” while minimizing it as a form of “benign neglect” (Participant 104).

Not surprisingly, systemic level and interpersonal level harms express themselves at the individual level with 2SLGBTQ+ participants describing feeling “shame” related to their need for SocA. Undoubtedly, shame is an intended consequence of the neoliberal emphasis on self-responsibility and of the poverty shaming and anti-welfare discourses that leave people feeling undeserving of support (Thomas et al., 2020). From an intersectional perspective, across diverse participant accounts, marginalized identities related to sexuality, addiction, mental health, and body size, for example, interacted with poverty-related shame resulting in “compounded shame and guilt” (Participant 105, Ojibwe Two-Spirit female). An Ojibwe Two-Spirit participant spoke about shame related to her Indigenous identity, pointing to its co-production at the intersection of poverty, colonialism, and anti-Indigenous racism she experienced as she contended with addiction, feelings of not being “a good enough mom” and “trying to walk a healthier path” (Participant 105). Another participant talked about judgement-related shame at the intersection of poverty and body size:

When you’re living in lower income, there are higher rates of obesity. And so, part of that means, you know, there’s another layer of which you get socially judged and lots of stigmatization is there as well. And at least in my experience, it’s kind of affected the way that doctors look at me … it’s like very multi-layered because it’s like my weight is in relation to my income bracket, which is, you know, so it’s not just poor life choices, it’s just kind of life circumstance. (FG 1, Speaker 3, white bisexual cisgender woman)

For some participants, shame was compounded by their need to access “help” from a system or, rather, “perpetrator” that has caused so much harm:

There’s another level of shame which is like these organizations and a lot of ways have caused me a lot of harm. So, admitting that I need help from them is like, I don’t know, kind of like admitting defeat to the perpetrator of harm or something like that, which is just shameful, and I don’t like the feeling of that, and I don't like asking for help from these people that have hurt me, I guess. (FG 1, Speaker 3, white bisexual cisgender woman).

For other participants, the internalization of individualism and self-responsibility, neoliberal values that are valorized by society, create tension and stress with respect to accessing SocA. For example, when asked why he had not accessed SocA earlier in his life when he was struggling to make ends meet, one participant replied:

I think I was worse back then with, I don’t know, pride. I don’t really care if anyone else is on [SocA], I just didn’t really see myself as fitting in that category… (Participant 104, white gay male)

While this participant is just getting back to more stability after a period of extreme poverty, others his age are beginning to think about retirement. He goes on to say, “Sometimes I think when you're on social assistance, you don’t quite know where you fit in with the rest of the world” and described experiencing a “kind of weird discrepancy” between where he finds himself in life and where he thought he would be.

Similarly, participants described that they felt prevented from seeking needed SocA because of poverty-related stigma, “Yeah, unfortunately, the stigma with poverty and seeking social assistance has prevented me from trying to get it or seek it or even just talk about it” (FG 1, Speaker 4, mixed race gay man), while also being marked or stigmatized within 2SLGBTQ+ communities:

I will also say about that is that I think it’s especially true for people who like access mainstream gay men’s communities that, like the stigma [associated with poverty], is huge there because there’s like so much of a focus on like aspiration and like, you know, having the right life and like those kinds of things, I mean, like, who can afford a gym membership if you can't afford food like really? (FG 1, Speaker 6, non-binary queer person of color)

Another manifestation of micro-level impacts described by participants is the emotional and mental health toll of living in poverty, SocA need, and relatedly, “jumping through hoops” in the SocA system. One participant described feeling a “deep seeded anger because of being treated unjustly, for being oppressed for this long” (Participant 101, trans-woman of color). Another participant said:

As someone living with PTSD, like sometimes navigating social services, I just I find my emotions are all over the place. I feel intense anxiety, intense anger, frustration, not knowing who to turn to. And, you know, as a visible minority, just walking into this white office there’s just feeling like so much shame and judgment, you know? (FG 1, Speaker 2, Black gay cisgender man)

In these ways, participants indicated that the consequences of systemic violence live at the interpersonal and micro levels, as they are expressed through encounters with SocA staff (interpersonal) and sense of self (micro), respectively. To mitigate the harms of systemic violence and poverty- and financial dependency-related shame and stigma, participants described building community where “it didn’t seem to make a difference with them … how much money I had or how little money, how much food I had, or how little” (Participant 105, Ojibwe Two-Spirit female). Participants articulated recognition of the high number of queer and trans-people who access SocA as a community-based mitigating force, of sorts, that served to normalize and politicize the need for SocA:

I think for me at least like less so with other queer folks because I think all the people that I know who do access social services are queer or trans and I think ... I don’t know ... it just like feels more normalized and less shameful in those communities. I think it’s usually like discussed in the larger context of like political issues that exist and kind of create these systems. (FG 1, Speaker 5, white non-binary lesbian)

Community-based relationships are integral to 2SLGBTQ+ participants who experienced structural violence and shame at the intersection of multiple marginalized social identities. One participant talked of validation and affirmation through her relationship with an Indigenous community-based organization and “Nish” community. She noted, “it felt more open than any government … ODSP, OW experience that I’ve ever had … hands down” and that she didn’t feel the imperative to “prove myself” by “going in at my worst” (Participant 105, Ojibwe Two-Spirit female). She contrasted her experiences with the Indigenous organization and ODSP describing the interest of ODSP as being limited to income surveillance.

In response to the considerable harms experienced by 2SLGBTQ+ people during their encounters with the SocA system, connections of support found in 2SLGBTQ+ communities and beyond serve as a critical intervention to redress shame, guilt, and stigma as well as lack of information and access to SocA and related resources.

Discussion

The aim of this article is to explore the SocA experiences of 2SLGBTQ+ people through a relational poverty and intersectionality framework to understand how the SocA system is implicated in the production and sustenance of 2SLGBTQ+ poverty in Ontario, Canada. Underpinning this aim is recognition of the SocA system as a possible link between poverty and health in marginalized populations (Lightman et al., 2009; Smith-Carrier, 2017; Thomas et al., 2020). Overall, the findings underscore that for diverse 2SLGBTQ+ participants, power relations in the SocA system and other related systems such as employment and housing intersect to produce and sustain their poverty. The production and sustenance of 2SLGBTQ+ poverty are dynamic and transactional, as restrictive and punitive neoliberal policies, dominant power hierarchies, and normative discursive violence within these systems fuse into material inequities and harmful spaces for diverse 2SLGBTQ+ people. Our findings call for an intersectional and 2SLGBTQ+ affirming SocA system and inter-related systems that have the potential to mitigate 2SLGBTQ+ intersectional discrimination and related poverty producing and sustaining forces. The results of this study are significant for better understanding 2SLGBTQ+ health outcomes as well as application by SocA policy makers, staff, and advocacy groups. Though past syntheses of the scholarship have yielded insight on the role of dominant systems in perpetuating 2SLGBTQ+ poverty (DeFilippis, 2016; Kia et al., 2021), this work is, to our knowledge, the first to explicate the institutional processes which create and sustain conditions of poverty among 2SLGBTQ+ people.

Ill Health and Other Harms of Social Assistance Systems

Beyond the poverty producing and sustaining SocA rates of OW and ODSP, participants narrated stories of harmful SocA encounters that were described as benignly neglectful at best and (re)traumatizing at worst. Marked by nebulousness and precarity; erasure and performances of respectability; and stigma and shame, the violence and harm of SocA encounters described by 2SLGBTQ+ participants reflect existing literature that posits accessing SocA as a determinant of poor mental and physical health (Lightman et al., 2009; Smith-Carrier, 2017; Thomas et al., 2020). Importantly, our research makes explicit the ways that cisheteronormativity, homophobia, biphobia, and transphobia are activated during SocA encounters. To this point, many of the SocA encounters described by 2SLGBTQ+ participants are like those experienced by heterosexual, cisgender SocA recipients. For example, common experiences among SocA recipients include being subjected to the withholding of SocA policy information, staffing unpredictability and resource distribution inconsistencies, and punitive responses from SocA workers (Lightman et al., 2009; Thomas et al., 2020). However, 2SLGBTQ+ people enter the SocA system already marked by cisheteronormativity, homophobia, biphobia, and transphobia and living with discrimination and violence at much higher rates than heterosexual, cisgender people (Jaffray, 2020). Moreover, 2SLGBTQ+ participants pointed to a web of systems that are implicated in their poverty, such as employment and housing because, like the SocA system, these systems are structured by the logic of cisheteronormativity. Thus, 2SLGBTQ+ people face additional vulnerability when accessing poverty mitigating systems and resources such as familial and community supports, affirming workplaces and sustained income, and safe housing.

Of course, the SocA system and inter-related systems are structured by other dominant oppressive ideologies, including colonialism, white supremacy, ableism, and neuronormativity that intersect with cisheteronormativity. These intersecting ideologies govern SocA encounters through restrictive surveillance policies and practices which shape expected behaviors by whiteness, middle-class respectability, and neoliberal values such as hard work, honesty, independence, and self-responsibility. Transgressions beyond expected behaviors are punished through the activation of material power (e.g., subjective assessments for eligibility and other benefits) and discursive power (e.g., racist poverty shaming and anti-welfare tropes). This means that the poverty and health implications emanating from SocA encounters may be further compounded for 2SLGBTQ+ SocA recipients who are racialized, Indigenous, living with disability, and/or marginalized due to other differences. Our research suggests that SocA encounters for diverse 2SLGBTQ+ people may be particularly laden with greater risk of adverse encounters with SocA staff in a system that is purposely designed to be restrictive, under-resourced, and punitive with respect to equitable access to life sustaining information, support, and resources. We note a need for recognition of different SocA experiences within sexual and gender identity categories as these identities intersect with Indigeneity, race, disability, class, and other dimensions of difference. This holds potential to make poverty worse for diverse 2SLGBTQ+ people while amplifying their likelihood of experiencing poor mental and physical health, which in turn, may further their need for SocA.

The Constructed Irrelevancy of 2SLGBTQ+ Identities and Poverty in SocA and Other Systems

Our analysis found that neoliberal ideology which structures the SocA system functions to erase diverse 2SLGBTQ+ identities and their relationships to lived experiences and knowledges of poverty at the intersection of sexuality, gender, Indigeneity, race, ability, and other differences. The systemically constructed irrelevance of 2SLGBTQ+ identities to poverty is consistent with neoliberal notions of individualization and self-responsibility identified by Feldman (2019) and by Elwood et al. (2017), such as the over-arching myth of meritocracy, and with the belief that everybody should be equally able to climb their way up the ladder in a capitalist economy. In this context, epistemic violence is enacted against diverse 2SLGBTQ+ SocA recipients as their lived knowledges of how 2SLGBTQ+ identities are inherently connected to poverty (e.g., anti-2SLGBTQ+ bias and discrimination in employment and housing) and the need for SocA are subverted by neoliberal ideology and related SocA practices. Undoubtedly, 2SLGBTQ+ people who simultaneously experience multiple oppressions are further subjected to epistemic violence as their lived experiences and knowledges of poverty based on racism, anti-Indigenous racism, ableism, and other forms of discrimination are deemed irrelevant to the normalizing priorities of white supremacy, settler colonialism, and ableism. Collectively, our data dispute this neoliberal notion that 2SLGBTQ+ identities are irrelevant; rather, drawing on a relational poverty framework (Feldman, 2019), we illustrate the specific relevance of sexual orientation and gender identity in structuring the relations of power that underlie poverty.

One manifestation of the irrelevance of 2SLGBTQ+ identities is dehumanizing encounters with SocA staff. 2SLGBTQ+ participants indicated few opportunities to make authentic connections during SocA encounters, noting high staff turnover and an overreliance on less personal forms of communication (i.e., email). For 2SLGBTQ+ people, relationships are important for disclosing sexual and/or gender minority identities given the high rates of anti-2SLGBTQ+ discrimination and violence to which they are subjected. In the absence of relationships, unequal power relations between SocA staff and 2SLGBTQ+ recipients are amplified and characterized by poverty sustaining forces including discursive violence (e.g., the weaponizing of race-based poverty shaming and anti-welfare stereotypes) and material inequity (e.g., lack of access to policy information and inequitable assessments of eligibility and distribution of resources and supports).

Mitigating SocA-Related Harms Through Community

In the context of adversity experienced during encounters with the SocA system, participants described strategies of both personal and community agency and mobilization to resist poverty-related stigma and shame, as well as SocA-related violence and harms. Thomas et al. (2020) describe the creation of community-based support networks as a strategy for resisting neoliberal individualizing and self-responsibility, distancing SocA recipients from systems-level judgement, and enhancing control over identities and actions. This resistance, however, should not be taken up as an “honorable” response (or solution) to the inequitable, discriminatory, and harmful nature of the SocA system. Rather, in the absence of meaningful structural change, resistance can be understood as an expression of “giving up” on the system and need for transformative change rather than reform. That is, resistance in the form of personal and community agency and mobilization is a sort of resignation that systems, like SocA, are designed to cause harm. In response to this resignation, diverse 2SLGBTQ+ people turn to each other and turn to communities for support and care.

Limitations

While our study offers important expansions to our understanding of the role of SocA systems in producing poverty for 2SLGBTQ+ people, some important limitations should be noted. As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, our initial recruitment efforts and all data collection were required to be carried out virtually. This made our research inaccessible to many 2SLGBTQ+ people living in poverty, particularly those lacking access to the technology required to participate. Also missing from this study are the perspectives of asexual and intersex people; although we attempted to reach both groups in our recruitment efforts, none ultimately participated in the qualitative phase of our research. Finally, our study was focused in the Greater Toronto Area, the largest urban center in Canada. Given that 2SLGBTQ+ people living in rural and remote regions experience particular barriers to service access (Henriquez & Ahmad, 2021), additional research is required to understand how geography intersects with 2SLGBTQ + identities to determine experiences with SocA.

Conclusions and Implications

The findings reported in this article indicate that many of the actions required to mitigate the harms of SocA for 2SLGBTQ+ people will also benefit others living in poverty. These actions include increasing SocA rates to the actual cost of living, adequately staffing SocA offices to ensure more consistent levels of service and opportunity for authentic relationships, and enhancing food and housing security by broadening the scope of available information and resources provided by SocA. While not specific to sexual orientation and gender identity, these actions would significantly impact 2SLGBTQ+ people, given the disproportionate need for SocA produced by economic inequities and high rates of disability within 2SLGBTQ+ communities.

We build on these recommendations by also considering what is needed to alleviate the poverty-producing and sustaining capacity of the SocA system for 2SLGBTQ+ people through an intersectional 2SLGBTQ+ lens. That is, our data point to additional actions that attend to the experiences of 2SLGBTQ+ people, alongside (and in intersections with) those who experience systemic discrimination on the bases of Indigeneity, race, ability, and other axes of oppression. As an upstream consideration, implementation and enforcement of equity-related employment standards could support 2SLGBTQ+ people in securing safe(r) employment and thus address the employment discrimination and barriers that lead many 2SLGBTQ+ people to require SocA. More downstream, the culture of punishment that currently permeates the SocA system produces an environment where bias on the part of workers can have profound implications for service users. Improved transparency in the system to ensure that all those eligible for benefits receive them (and in turn, to remove power from individual workers to arbitrarily withhold benefits) would help to mitigate this. From anti-surveillance and relational poverty perspectives, the inter-relations between SocA and carceral systems particularly require interrogation, for 2SLGBTQ+, Black, Indigenous, and other communities that have been (and continue to be) the targets of police violence and criminalization.

Finally, SocA policy-makers must recognize and attend to the specific SocA-related harms experienced by 2SLGBTQ+ people. This means that the differential dynamics of harmful SocA experiences between 2SLGBTQ+ people and their cisgender heterosexual counterparts need to be recognized—counter to neoliberal ideologies—as they produce qualitatively different SocA encounters and related impacts on poverty. Change strategies in this domain might include working to transform relations of power that shape 2SLGBTQ+ SocA encounters through 2SLGBTQ+ education and training opportunities for SocA staff. They may also involve organizational initiatives to address the ways in which normative ideologically driven practices function to shame and stigmatize poor 2SLGBTQ+ people and serve to obscure the specific poverty producing forces they experience during encounters with inter-related systems (e.g., anti-2SLGBTQ+ discrimination, cisnormativity, gender binarism, and heteronormativity in employment and housing systems). A first step in this direction is to make 2SLGBTQ+ poverty and SocA recipients more visible through the collection of SocA recipient demographics. Critically, however, SocA staff must be supported to understand how to engage this demographic information in a meaningful way by using these data to privilege 2SLGBTQ+ lived knowledges of not only poverty, but also the harmful effects of encountering the SocA system. Given the relationship between poverty, encounters with the SocA system, and health outcomes, we conceptualize these recommendations as interventions to “right” SocA in ways that will benefit 2SLGBTQ+ people, and ultimately work towards economic justice for these communities.