Workfare and resistance in the US: the quietude and ineffectiveness of progressive welfare politics post 1996

Abstract

This paper focuses on the implementation of workfare in the US, with the aim of understanding the passive response of the unions and other progressive groups to the restructuring and retrenchment of the American welfare system. In particular, it considers the disparate efforts to organise welfare recipients and low-wage workers around the restructuring of social benefits towards work in the District of Columbia. Although the convergence of welfare recipients and low-wage workers through 'work-first' initiatives has the potential to spur political mobilisation and protest against the reform of welfare, it is found that at the local level campaigns against workfare are diverse and changeable, producing very little -it could be argued -in terms of long-term resistance. Identifying forms of dissidence in Washington DC as constitutive of the broader liberal regime of governance and re-regulation, this paper probes the forms, possibilities and problems of organising workfare subjects. This allows for consideration of the extent to which workfare programmes are being re-inscribed within emerging patterns of political-economic development and the potential for future action.

Everyday Resistance to Workfare: Welfare Beneficiary Advocacy in Auckland, New Zealand

“…Protests like this have been a consistent response to the ascendancy and consolidation of work-focused welfare policies – commonly known as workfare – across the world (cf. Weitz-Shapiro, 2006; Reese, 2011; MacLeavy, 2015). As sporadic, confrontational, and highly visible displays, protests are one of the more spectacular ways by which organisations and members of the public have sought to resist successive work-focused transformations to welfare systems since the 1990s.…”

Actitudes hacia la renta de garantía de ingresos: solidaridad, culpabilización individual y preferencia nacional

“…Una reforma que ha sido ampliamente criticada tanto por sus contenidos normativos (Shaver, 2002;Waddan, 2003) como por los propios resultados (Macleavy, 2015). Casi nueve de cada diez personas (86,5 %) son partidarias de eliminar las prestaciones a las personas que rechacen un trabajo o no asistan a los cursos de formación.…”