How To Make Connections To Ehrenreich's Nickel And Dimed

While reading MacLeod’s “Ain’t No Making It,” I was able to make connections to Ehrenreich’s Nickel and Dimed, even though Ehrenriech and MacLeod conducted their research in different ways. In “Ain’t No Getting By,” MacLeod works at a camp program in a low income neighborhood housing project, where he studies two groups of boys, the Brothers and Hallway Hangers through interviews with them mainly about their aspirations or expectations for the future. While reading MacLeod’s study, I wondered how motivation and aspirations might have tied into the low-wage work that Barbara Ehrenreich encountered in Nickel and Dimed. I wondered this because I feel that many of those workers felt stuck in their situations. for instance, I wonder what sort of aspirations Gail from the Hearthside may have had early in life, because she seemed especially stuck in her situation. …show more content…
While workers shared much of their lives with Barbara, I believe that her results may have differed if her co-workers knew she was studying them for an investigative journalism piece. Similarly, I wondered how MacLeod’s results may have differed if he had gone undercover as one of the Brothers or Hallway Hangers, rather than being upfront about his study.
MacLeod’s study investigates achievement theory in the housing project, or the anything is possible and American dream attitude that our society prides itself on, in addition to also studying social reproduction. The Hallway Hangers and The Brothers are both groups of teenage boys who grew up in the Clarendon Heights housing project. The differences between the groups are their race, their aspirations and expectations for the future, as well as the way they view their