Welfare Reform and the Subject of the Working Mother: "Get a Job, a Better Job, Then a Career"

• Published in: Theory and society Vol. 32; no. 4; pp. 445 - 480
• Main Author: Korteweg, Anna C.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Dordrecht Kluwer 01.08.2003; Springer; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Althusser, Louis; Child care; Children; Citizens; Citizenship; Clubs; Deployment; Employment; Family law; Female labour; Feminism; Job clubs; Job hunting; Job Search; Job searching; Job Training; Legislation; Low income; Low income groups; Low income single mothers; Marriage; Marriage law; Masculinity; Motherhood; Mothers; One-parent families; Parenting skills; Parents & parenting; Participant observation; Poverty; Poverty alleviation; Public assistance programs; Responsibility; Single Mothers; Single parents; Skills; Social problems and social policy. Social work; Sociology; Subjectivity; Time use; Trainers; Training devices; U.S.A; United States of America; USA; Welfare benefits; Welfare Recipients; Welfare Reform; Welfare services; Welfare state; Women; Women workers; Work skills; Workers; Workfare; Working Mothers; Working women; Workshops; Workshops (Courses); United States Of America; Poverty; Socioeconomic status; Employment; Unwed mother; Social welfare; Woman's condition; Reform; Social Policy; Marriage; Hard labor
• ISSN: 0304-2421; 1573-7853
• DOI: 10.1023/A:1025525509540

Until 1996, poor single mothers in the United States could claim welfare benefits for themselves and their children under the Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) program if they had no other source of income. With the 1996 passage of the Personal Responsibility Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA), paid work and work-related activities became a mandatory condition for receiving aid. At the same time, the law promotes marriage as a route out of poverty. Using a feminist reinterpretation of Althusser's concept of interpellation, I turn to Job Clubs, mandatory week-long workshops that teach job search skills, to analyze the citizen-subject generated by front-line representatives of the state in the context of this new legislation. Based on participant-observation, I conclude that while PRWORA ostensibly promotes both marriage and paid employment, Job Club trainers enforced a masculine worker-citizen subject through the deployment of three discursive strategies. These discursive strategies 1) promoted paid work over welfare-receipt as both a pragmatic and moral choice, 2) posited an individual-psychological account of women's welfare receipt, and 3) portrayed parenting skills as marketable skills. In the conclusion, I speculate that current welfare reform efforts require the generation of a self-reproducing worker-citizen and that workshops like Job Club become a site in which the existence of this autonomous citizen is affirmed.