Low-income mothers in an Israeli welfare-to-work program: Symbolic violence and its limitations (original) (raw)
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This paper examines the impact of dominant discourses on welfare on the lives of women caught up within the American welfare system, focusing primarily on community differences in levels of stigma and the possibility for resistance to the dominant practices. Based upon interviews with 36 women conducted in 1997, one year after the passage of the Welfare Reform Act of 1996, the paper compares women living in concentrated poverty in the inner cities with those living in rural and suburban communities. The levels of stigma vary dramatically between the two areas, with women in mixed class communities experiencing much more negative treatment and internalizing the punitive welfare discourse to a far greater extent. Women experiencing lower levels of welfare stigma are able to enact more resistive practices to counter the effects of the dominant discourse.
British Journal of Social Work, 2020
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Literature on global care work deals with biopolitical tensions between care markets and exclusionary migration regimes leading to the formation of transnational families. Nevertheless, it disregards how these tensions produce " illegal " families within countries of destination, catalyzing the mobilization of moral claims over their recognition in the local civil society. To fill this lacuna, this article looks at the interface between migration policies controlling the reproductive lives of migrant care workers and the mobilization of ethical claims and moral constructions of care from below (i.e., movements and organizations advocating for care workers). Based on fieldwork in Israeli advocacy NGOs and the 2009 anti-deportation campaign, we suggest that the sociolegal position of migrant care workers' families in destination countries is shaped not only by state policies and market dynamics but also by the types of social mobilizations, ethical evaluations, and pragmatic strategizing they spur in civil society. Findings show that while anti-deportation networks and NGO's advocacy succeeded in achieving public recognition of the reproductive needs and lives of care workers, their forms of moral reasoning and strategizing reinforced definitions of care workers as primarily workers and of their children as humanitarian exceptions to the non-immigration regime. We conclude by arguing that the transformative power of the politics of ethical claims from below in stringent ethnonational regimes like the Israeli may be contingent on its not disrupting the tensions between wanted workers and unwanted families but rendering them manageable. As such, civil society's social and moral agency broadens the range of actors and dynamics shaping the globalization of care as well as its contradictions. K E Y W O R D
The neoliberal mom: how a discursive coalition shapes low-income mothers' labor market participation
Research has elucidated the conflict low-income mothers face when trying to comply with the imperatives of the neoliberalism and mothering discourses. Feminist scholars have argued that low-income mothers' alternative conceptions of morality and behavior constitute an act of resistance to inferiorizing definitions embedded in these discourses. Drawing on this literature, I offer a new conceptualization of the seemingly contradictory discourses. Based on interviews with 48 low-income Israeli mothers, I suggest that the neoliberal ideology is not limited to the neoliberal discourse, which primarily measures the individual's commitment to the labor market, but rather has diffused into the mothering discourse, which sets the standards for good mothering. This diffusion constructs a discursive coalition of 'neoliberal moms', wherein the current hegemonic notion of good mothering and the neoliberal call for personal responsibility intersect and shape mothers' perceptions and decision-making processes. Moreover, the neoliberal mom constructs an alternative morality: moral motherhood. Accordingly, the moral component of good mothering means taking personal responsibility to act in ways that promote one's children's future inclusion. I argue that the discursive coalition framework helps us to better understand mothers' labor force entries and exits, and how these constitute a way of negotiating paths to social inclusion. La recherche a résolu le problème que les mères aux ressources limitées affrontent pour satisfaire à la fois les exigences du néolibéralisme et les débats sur la maternité. Les universitaires et les chercheurs en sciences sociales féministes ont soutenu que les conceptions alternatives de la moralité et du comportement des mères aux ressources limitées constituent un acte de résistance aux définitions qui leur donnent un statut inférieur dans ces débats. En me référant à cette littérature, je propose une nouvelle conception de ces débats apparemment contradictoires. Sur la base des interviews de 48 mères israéliennes aux ressources limitées, je suggère que l'idéologie néolibérale n'est pas limitée au discours néolibéral qui se préoccupe essentiellement du comportement des personnes sur le marché du travail, mais qu'elle est apparue dans les débats sur la maternité, qui imposent les normes de ce qu'est une bonne mère. Cette diffusion crée une coalition discursive de 'mères néolibérales', dans laquelle la notion hégémonique actuelle d'une bonne mère et l'exigence néolibérale de la responsabilité personnelle des femmes se rejoignent et déterminent les perceptions des mères et les processus de prises de
2016
Literature on global care work deals with biopolitical tensions between care markets and exclusionary migration regimes leading to the formation of transnational families. Nevertheless, it disregards how these tensions produce "illegal" families within countries of destination, catalyzing the mobilization of moral claims over their recognition in the local civil society. To fill this lacuna, this article looks at the interface between migration policies controlling the reproductive lives of migrant care workers and the mobilization of ethical claims and moral constructions of care from below (i.e., movements and organizations advocating for care workers). Based on fieldwork in Israeli advocacy NGOs and the 2009 anti-deportation campaign, we suggest that the sociolegal position of migrant care workers' families in destination countries is shaped not only by state policies and market dynamics but also by the types of social mobilizations, ethical evaluations, and pragmatic strategizing they spur in civil society. Findings show that while anti-deportation networks and NGO's advocacy succeeded in achieving public recognition of the reproductive needs and lives of care workers, their forms of moral reasoning and strategizing reinforced definitions of care workers as primarily workers and of their children as humanitarian exceptions to the non-immigration regime. We conclude by arguing that the transformative power of the politics of ethical claims from below in stringent ethnonational regimes like the Israeli may be contingent on its not disrupting the tensions between wanted workers and unwanted families but rendering them manageable. As such, civil society's social and moral agency broadens the range of actors and dynamics shaping the globalization of care as well as its contradictions. K E Y W O R D S : global care work; reproduction; biopolitics; ethical politics of care; illegal families. The authors wish to thank the NGO's members and activists that participated in this study for their openness and insights, and to the editors and the anonymous reviewers for their invaluable comments and suggestions. Direct correspondence to:
Mothers, Mizrahi, and Poor: Contentious Media Framings of Mothers’ Movements
Research in Social Movements, Conflicts and Change, 2014
Taking an intersectional approach, the paper makes a theoretical and empirical contribution to the study of mothers’ movements in the context of social welfare cutbacks in Israel. I argue that the political use of the maternal identity provides an important cultural resource to women’s social movements, yet all women cannot access this advantage equally. By adding an intersectional perspective to the literature on women’s movements and media debates, this empirical study shows that the ability of different groups of women to politically mobilize their maternal identity in the news is impacted by their class and racial backgrounds. I focus on Israel as an ambiguous case that reflects both the political relevance of maternal identity as mobilized by different political actors, as well as the intersectional dynamics of marginalization of women’s movements within contentious media debates about austerity policies. Using critical discourse analysis, I analyzed 268 newspaper articles that discuss the Israeli Single Mothers’ Movement, a welfare rights movement of low-income women of color (Mizrahi). I find two competing frames converging across the newspapers analyzed: the first draws on a nationalist discourse of the “mother of the nation” to present a positive image of a heroic “mothers’ movement”; the second draws on racist and sexist images to negatively frame activists as a “Mizrahi movement” of undeserving poor mothers. I show how the contested construction of the Single Mothers’ Movement in the news media is directly connected to hegemonic Israeli discourse on motherhood and ethnicity, and demonstrate how this shapes the movement’s public image and its political and feminist value.
Mothers, Mizrahi and Poor: The Contentious Media Framing of Mothers’ Movements
Research in Social Movements, Conflicts and Change, 2014
Taking an intersectional approach, the paper makes a theoretical and empirical contribution to the study of mothers’ movements in the context of social welfare cutbacks in Israel. I argue that the political use of the maternal identity provides an important cultural resource to women’s social movements, yet all women cannot access this advantage equally. By adding an intersectional perspective to the literature on women’s movements and media debates, this empirical study shows that the ability of different groups of women to politically mobilize their maternal identity in the news is impacted by their class and racial backgrounds. I focus on Israel as an ambiguous case that reflects both the political relevance of maternal identity as mobilized by different political actors, as well as the intersectional dynamics of marginalization of women’s movements within contentious media debates about austerity policies. Using critical discourse analysis, I analyzed 268 newspaper articles that discuss the Israeli Single Mothers’ Movement, a welfare rights movement of low-income women of color (Mizrahi). I find two competing frames converging across the newspapers analyzed: the first draws on a nationalist discourse of the “mother of the nation” to present a positive image of a heroic “mothers’ movement”; the second draws on racist and sexist images to negatively frame activists as a “Mizrahi movement” of undeserving poor mothers. I show how the contested construction of the Single Mothers’ Movement in the news media is directly connected to hegemonic Israeli discourse on motherhood and ethnicity, and demonstrate how this shapes the movement’s public image and its political and feminist value.