Introduction
This essay will examine the technique of workfare as a way of governing the poor. Workfare is a widely contested area which evokes many conflicting opinions at both the political and the public level. The following quote comes from Dan Hodges, a British commentator writing for The Daily Telegraph, and gives an interesting insight in one of the discussions workfare poses. Hodges writes about the way several proponents of workfare (including David Cameron, the British PM in 2012), who are quite successful themselves with their careers, condemn unemployed citizens to do anything but pleasant jobs without getting a reasonable compensation:
‘What rule says workfare must be the same old hardy staples: stack a shelf, clean a floor? If we want to really open people's eyes to the opportunities of work, why rely on Tesco and Sainsbury? We should be co-opting the Apples and the Microsofts, the BAs and the Virgins, the Jaguars and the BMWs. And instead of boycotting firms that provide the placements, we should be making business participation mandatory. David Cameron says the opponents of workfare are "snobs". Fine. Then it's time we saw someone on a workfare placement getting into the back of his Land Rover and carrying a couple of those red boxes for him. Similarly, if Sir Stuart Rose is really concerned about the "lack of backbone" from firms pulling out of the scheme, he can set an example by appointing another personal assistant for a couple of months’ (Hodges, 2012).
This essay will cover an analysis of arguments from both proponents and opponents of workfare. In addition, there will be looked at the emphasis supporters of workfare place on the notion of ‘work ethic’. First, the concept of ‘workfare’ will be unpacked. ...
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Hodges, D. (2012, March 1). ‘The attacks on workfare just don't stack up; The scheme should be mandatory - for our top companies as well as the unemployed. The Daily Telegraph, page 22.
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There was a growing sense that the poor did not deserve assistance and so in 1834 the ‘Poor Law Amendment Act’ was introduced. This was designed to make conditions more severe and to even further force self-improvement amongst the poor. ‘The central objective…was to withdraw poor relief from men judged ‘able-bodied’ in Poor Law terminology’. (Thane: 1978: 29) Alternatives such as the work-house were introduced. The notion that you should only ask for help if you desperately needed it as a last resource loomed. The Charity Organisation Society was ‘a body w...
Why should we be the ones to pay for someone to sit around at home? The answer is one simple word, welfare. There are many reasons why people mooch on welfare, rather than going out and working. The only jobs these people are qualified for are minimum wage jobs. As Barbara Ehrenreich, author of Nickel and Dimed, worked at minimum wage paying jobs and reported the hardships that people had to go through on a day-to-day basis. A critic responded by saying, “This is simply the case of an academic who is forced to get a real job…” Ehrenriech’s reasoning for joining the working-class is to report why people who mite be on welfare, continue to stay on welfare. Her reports show there are many hardships that go along with minimum waged jobs, in the areas of drug abuse, fatigue, the idea of invisibility, education and the American Dream.
In the Pulitzer prize-winning novel Evicted, sociologist Matthew Desmond follows eight families as he exposes how the lack of affordable housing perpetuates a state of poverty. He even goes so far as to assert that it is eviction that is a cause of poverty, not the other way around (Desmond 229). While this latter argument is as engrossing and it is striking, analyzing it with justice is simply not possible within the scope of this paper. Nevertheless, it is these two factors—inescapable poverty and eviction—that engender an unrelenting condition of financial, emotional, and communal instability, effectively hindering any chance of upward mobility.
Shapiro, David. Banking on Bondage: Private Prisons and Mass Incarceration. Rep. New York: American Civil Liberties Union, 2011. Print.
“Workers Make Appeal to Taxpayers,” also follows Andrew Olson, a McDonald 's worker who makes $8.60 an hour, and his fiance who makes minimum wage in their experience under the poverty line. “Their salaries are so meager [...] that they rely on food stamps and Medicaid to get by,” says Kelly about Olson’s current living status, a lifestyle most Americans involuntarily live. Aside from the benefits wreaked by business owners and taxpayers, the workers living on poor salaries prove as the most positively and heavily affected; the three point nine percent of working citizens treated unfairly by big businesses. “Workers Make Appeal to Taxpayers” concludes with a quote from Olson, “Just because I work in fast food, does that mean I should have to just scrape by in
Some people feel that the majority of individuals receiving welfare benefits are simply lazy and do not intend to work to earn money for themselves and their families. While it is true that there are deceptive people amongst us within our society, it would be unfair to punish the honest along with them by enforcing a work requirement. Although it...
Zuberi, Dan. Differences that Matter: Social Policy and the Working Poor in the United. New York: Cornell University Press, 2006.
The concept of the "working poor" has gained prominence in the post-welfare reform era. As welfare rolls shrunk, the focus shifted from the dependent poor to the working poor. It was obvious that without substantial outside support, even families with full-time low-wage workers were still earning less than the official poverty line. And while American society purports that anyone can prosper if they work hard enough, it became apparent that with inadequate opportunity or bad luck, a growing number of families could not attain the American dream, or even break the cycle of poverty. The new challenge for American social policy is to help the working poor lift themselves out of poverty. That's why progressives who supported ending welfare as we know it have set a new goal -- the government should "make work pay" so that no one who works full time is poor.
The morality of social welfare systems, or the morality of crafting laws to aid American citizens in poverty, is a subject that (like myriad ethical issues) is hotly debated to say the least. For example, some opponents of social welfare institutions maintain the view that such programs "increase the reward or reduce the penalties" of poverty; thereby ostensibly making an impoverished state appealing even to people who might initially have been motivated to earn a living by conventional means. In other words, welfare programs (according to opponents) encourage otherwise productive individuals to embrace laziness, for basic human needs would be met by such institutions, eliminating the need to work at all. Those opposed to social welfare plans have also been known to claim that an "unfair burden is placed upon workers who must pay for the system." When one considers the above opposing views, it would then stand to reason that proponents of social welfare programs might maintain that it is the moral responsibility of working citizens to provide assistance and funding for programs such as Aid to Families with Dependent Children, the Food Stamp program, or the like. This supposition is confirmed upon examination of the notion that, when basic human needs such as "food, housing, and medical care" are not met, one is consequently rendered unable to uphold any level of social freedom. Given the above information, one can safely deduce that modern supporters of social welfare organizations are under the impression that such programs provide the impoverished masses with the means by which to obtain the level of general well-being vital to acquiring work in the first place.
Albelda, Randy. “Fallacies of Welfare-to-Work Policies”. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. Vol. 577, JSTOR Sept. 2001. 66-78.
...Even with the pitfalls in Ehrenreich's research, she managed to shine a light on the everyday plight of the low wage worker. She achieved employment at several different low wage service jobs and she also achieved friendliness with the coworkers there. Unfortunately, she could not achieve her goal of making enough money to pay the following month's rent at her accommodations, as she dictated to be her sign of success at the beginning of the project. Without this success, she can truly say that the plight of the low wage worker and the women leaving welfare is an extremely difficult one with great hardship and lack of fulfillment as these participants of the lower class work day to day to keep their chins up and make do with what, even if little, they have.
Wall, Katherine. "The end of the welfare state? How globalization is affecting state sovereignty." global policy. N.p., 17 Aug. 2012. Web. 20 Apr. 2014. .
Shelden, R. G. (1999). The Prison Industrial Complex. Retrieved November 16, 2013, from www.populist.com: http://www.populist.com/99.11.prison.html
In When Work Disappears, William Julius Wilson builds upon many of the insights he introduced in The Truly Disadvantaged, such as the rampant joblessness, social isolation, and lack of marriageable males that characterized many urban ghetto neighborhoods. In the class discussion, Professor Wilson argues that it is necessary to disassociate unemployment with joblessness, as the former only measures those still s...
McMurty, John. "Caging the Poor: The Case Against the Prison System." The Case For Penal Abolition. Ed. W. Gordon West and Ruth Morris. Toronto, Canada: Canadian Scholars' Press, 2000. 167-186.