The proposed study takes another step toward understanding how residential contexts contribute to the persistence of poverty by examining pathways toward successful child and youth development in the context of a rural mobile home park --a setting that bears a strong structural resemblance to the urban ghetto. Working within an ecological systems framework, the study addresses the following specific aims 1) to determine individual attributes and family processes associated with specific developmental pathways experiences by children and youth within the context of a rural mobile home park, 2) to identify social resources, opportunities, and risks with the potential to positively or negatively affect the developmental trajectories of children and youth in a rural trailer park, and 3) to examine how individual attributes, family processes and community characteristics shape the capacity of rural trailer park children and youth to construct a developmental pathway leading toward broader life chances. Employing the traditional anthropological methods of participant observation and in-depth interviews, the study design moves through three phases including a community background study, door-to-door interviews with a 15% randomly selected sample of trailer park households, and a year-long intensive study of a cross-sectional sample of children (n=20) and youth (n=20) middle childhood (ages 8-10 years) and middle adolescence (ages 15-16 years), developmental epochs during which neighborhood and community are increasingly important. Analysis and interpretation take a grounded theory approach to identify processes and factors most salient to the construction of developmental pathways that support a trajectory toward social mobility among poor, largely white, European-American rural children and youth. Findings from the study will chart the course for establishing a broader base of research intended to inform policy and programs aimed at stemming the emergence of a potentially pernicious ghetto community form in the countryside.
