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Inspired by the political and philosophical interventions of feminist women of color and Foucauldian social theory, Anna Marie Smith explores the scope and structure of the child support enforcement, family cap, marriage promotion, and abstinence education measures that are embedded within contemporary United States welfare policy. Presenting original legal research and drawing from historical sources, social theory, and normative frameworks, the author argues that these measures violate the rights of poor mothers.The author shows that welfare policy has consistently constructed the sexual conduct of the racialized poor mother as one of its primary disciplinary targets. The book concludes with a vigorous and detailed critique of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's support for welfare reform law and an outline of a progressive feminist approach to poverty policy. ... Read more

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Examines the consequences of welfare reform for Black women fleeing domestic violence. ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (2)

Nothing New Under the Stars and Stripes
Dr. Rockman's subtitle is an accurate disclosure; this is indeed a "brief history", a mere 28-page introduction to a selection of 25 documents. That brevity is all to Dr. Rockman's credit! His introduction is succinct and lucid. In it, he summarizes, with concise impartiality, the diverse thoughts about poverty and welfare expressedin the early years of the USA, beginning with the climate of opinion in England and its colonies in the century prior to the American Revolution. Many readers, I suppose, will be surprised that "welfare" and welfare reform were even under discussion in the early Republic, but the main lesson of Dr. Rockman's research is that neither the needs of the poor nor the means of assistance have changed much in the 220-some years of constitutional government. The documents that Dr. Rockman has selected, with a few modernizations of syntax, would serve just as well to express the platforms of both political parties today. A few of them would serve, indeed, to express the more radical positions advocated by ardent liberals and fervid reactionaries.

Rockman's introduction is so 'fair and balanced' that it could serve as a primer for all Americans interested in welfare reform. I'd love to see it printed as a broadside and distributed at rallies for and against President Obama's proposals. The documents, I'm afraid, make rather dry reading unless the reader is actively investigating their subject, either as a historian or as an advocate of reform.

Here are a few tidbits from Dr. Rockman's intro:

"Poverty was also a very real problem [in the Federalist era] for public officials, political thinkers, and beleaguered taxpayers... In Salem, Massachusetts, for example, expenditures on the poor accounted for neary 50 percent of the town's 1816 budget."

"In 1830, two thousand New Yorkers spent time in the city's almshouse, while another three thousand families received outdoor relief. Roughly ten percent of the city's population tapped into the public welfare system." ['Outdoor' relief refers to welfare assistance outside any institution such as the almshouses of that era, or the homeless shelters of today. The demographics of poverty in New York in 1830 were astonishingly similar to the present; most recipients were truly needy - the infirm of body or mind, orphans and the aged, mothers and children without male support, and immigrants, especially Irish, unable to find a niche in the economy that paid well enough to sustain them. Just like today, African-Americans were disproportionately poor, and in the same vicious circle, their poverty was stigmatized as the sign of their inferiority. As Billie Holliday sang, "Them that's got shall get; them that's not shall lose."]

"The rhetoric of moral reform offered one explanation: The poor were themselves to blame. Decrying the sinfulness of American society, moral reformers created a powerful stereotype of the typical relief recipient. ... It also became easier for prosperous urban residents to criticize the poor because they were increasingly strangers to one another. Whereas the rich and poor rubbed elbows in the mixed neighborhoods of colonial-era cities, the early republic witnessed the emergence of working-class districts like the infamous New York slum, Five Points. Residential segregation made it easier to depict the poor as different and defective. [Oh boy, does that sound familiar!] As moral reformers circulated tehir reports of urban vice throughout the country, rural Americans were confirmed in their antipathy towards cities and their inhabitants."

" ... local and state governments administered a network of relief services that ultimately kept most poverty-stricken Americans from perishing in the streets. Itw ould be a mistake to imagine some moment in the national past when the private efforts of kin, clergy, and charities alone fulfilled the needs of impoverished Americans."!!!!!

"In many regards, early republic welfare reform marked an effort to reconcile the political inheritance of the American Revolution with the new social realities of capitalism." [Now there's some unfinished business!]

Ultimately, the impact of Dr. Rockman's essay is disheartening. Nothing has changed in the terms of debate, no consensus has been approached, the gap between the beneficiaries of those 'new realities of capitalism' and the victims of it has opened ever wider, and the poor are still with us.]

read the original source documents
Yes, Rockman just presents a brief history text. But the original source documents are the main attraction. They let the modern reader grasp some of the issues of welfare, as they were then perceived, for better or worse, by various contemporary reformers.

A common theme is the idea that able-bodied people be expected to perform some labour, in return for welfare charity. Conversely, it was also acknowledged that those physically unable to work should be cared for, albeit in typically a very minimal fashion. By the standards of those times and ours. ... Read more

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2002 marks the fifth anniversary of federal welfare reform in the US, and politicians and human rights advocates will soon be debating the reauthorization of new requirements for poor women and families receiving aid. This anthology analyzes welfare in the context of broad political shifts, and posits more effective means for ending poverty. ... Read more

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Lost Ground: Welfare Reform, Poverty, and Beyond
Compilation of many writers' summations of America's welfare policies and attitudes over the years, and how the Welfare Reform Act of 1996 adversely affected the poorest in our country. Very informative, but bogs down in the middle as several narratives are rather redundant. Be sure to read the last chapter!

A very wide area of controversial issues
Collaboratively compiled and edited by Randy Albelda (Economics, University of Massachusetts) and Ann Withorn (Social Policy, University of Massachusetts), Lost Ground: Welfare Reform, Poverty, And Beyond is a scholarly selection of impressive essays by a variety of learned authors on topics relating to American welfare policy. From the effects of globalization on the current system, to fallacies of welfare-to-work policies, to issues of the rights of women and people of color, Lost Ground covers a very wide area of controversial issues often conveniently ignored by today's too-eager politics. Lost Ground is a welcome and strongly recommended addition to academic reference collections and reading lists in the area of American social policy in general, and welfare reform in particular.

Another great book from AK Press
The downside of welfare reforn is well documented in this new anthology. Moreover, welfare issues are analyzed in the context of broad political shifts, including globalization, the end of the family wage, the sexual revolution, and rise of black liberation, feminism, and multiculturalism. ... Read more

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The ability to obtain health care is fundamental to the security, stability, and well-being of poor families. Government-sponsored programs provide temporary support, but as families leave welfare for work, they find themselves without access to coverage or care. The low-wage jobs that individuals in transition are typically able to secure provide few benefits yet often disqualify employees from receiving federal aid. Drawing upon statistical data and in-depth interviews with over five hundred families in Oregon, Karen Seccombe and Kim Hoffman assess the ways in which welfare reform affects the well-being of adults and children who leave the program for work. We hear of asthmatic children whose uninsured but working mothers cannot obtain the preventive medicines to keep them well, and stories of pregnant women receiving little or no prenatal care who end up in emergency rooms with life-threatening conditions.

Representative of poor communities nationwide, the vivid stories recounted here illuminate the critical relationship between health insurance coverage and the ability to transition from welfare to work. ... Read more

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The Brookings Institution's Welfare Reform and Beyond Initiative was created to inform the critical policy debates surrounding the upcoming congressional reauthorization of the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) programme and a number of related programmes that were created or dramatically altered by the landmark 1996 welfare reform legislation. The goal of the project has been to take the large volume of existing and forthcoming research studies and shape them into a more coherent and policy-orientated whole. This collection gathers 20 essays, published between January 2001 and February 2002, that assess the record of welfare reform. They focus on issues likely to be debated before the TANF reauthorization, as well as a broader set of policy options for low-income families. ... Read more

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The welfare reform legislation enacted in 1996 was applauded by many for the successes it had in dramatically reducing the number of people receiving public assistance, most of whom were women with children. Today, however, more than a decade later, these successes seem far less spectacular. Although the total number of welfare recipients has dropped by more than fifty percent nationwide, evidence shows that poverty has actually deepened. Many hardworking women are no better off for having returned to the workplace.In Doing Without, Jane Henrici brings together nine contributions to tell the story of welfare reform from inside the lives of the women who live with it. Cases from Chicago and Boston are combined with a focus on San Antonio from one of the largest multi-city investigations on welfare reform ever undertaken. The contributors argue that the employment opportunities available to poorer women, particularly single mothers and ethnic minorities, are insufficient to lift their families out of poverty. Typically marked by variable hours, inadequate wages, and short-term assignments, both employment and training programs fail to provide stability or the kinds of benefits—such as health insurance, sick days, and childcare options—that are necessary to sustain both work and family life. The chapters also examine the challenges that the women who seek assistance, and those who work in public and private agencies to provide it, together must face as they navigate ever-changing requirements and regulations, decipher alterations in Medicaid, and apply for training and education. Contributors urge that the nation should repair the social safety net for women in transition and offer genuine access to jobs with wages that actually meet the cost of living. ... Read more

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Countries of the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe are entering the second decade of political transformation and economic reform. The new policy challenges center on the nature of the social contract between citizens and their governments. The essays in this volume focus on two interrelated issues: the making of fiscal policy and the provision of citizens' welfare, particularly regarding pensions and health care. The essays emphasize that there is no single model of a market economy; rather, governments and publics face a range of options for restructuring the socialist welfare state. ... Read more

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Work, Welfare and Politics sheds much needed light on the ideology and impacts of the 1996 welfare reform legislation. Led by Frances Fox Piven, activist, professor and author fromCity University of New York, notable scholars, advocates and policymakers explore the timely issues facing legislators in 2002. From politics and social control to families and childcare, this volume, which is a collection of papers originally presented at a 2000 conference, is comprehensive in scope and offers concrete suggestions for authenticwelfare reform. ... Read more

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Two decades of federal and state-level demonstration projects and experiments concerning cash welfare in the United States culminated with the passage of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996, better known as welfare reform. Ten years after reform there remain a host of unanswered questions on the well-being of low-income families. In Welfare Reform and Its Long Term Consequences for America's Poor, many of the nation's leading poverty experts address these and related outcomes to assess the longer-term effects of welfare reform. A diverse array of survey and administrative data are brought to bear to examine the effects of welfare reform and the concomitant expansions of the Earned Income Tax Credit on the level and distribution of income, the composition of consumption, employment, public versus private health insurance coverage, health and education outcomes of children, marriage, and social service delivery. ... Read more

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Work over Welfare tells the inside story of the legislation that ended "welfare as we know it." As a key staffer on the House Ways and Means Committee, author Ron Haskins was one of the architects of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act of 1996. In this landmark book, he vividly portrays the political battles that produced the most dramatic overhaul of the welfare system since its creation as part of the New Deal.

Haskins starts his story in the early 1990s, as a small group of Republicans lays the groundwork for welfare reform by developing innovative policies to encourage work and fight illegitimacy. These ideas, which included such controversial provisions as mandatory work requirements and time limits for welfare recipients, later became part of the Republicans' Contract with America and were ultimately passed into law.But their success was hardly foreordained. Haskins brings to life the often bitter House and Senate debates the Republican proposals provoked, as well as the backroom negotiations that kept welfare reform alive through two presidential vetoes. In the process, he illuminates both the personalities and the processes that were crucial to the ultimate passage of the 1996 bill. He also analyzes the changes it has wrought on the social and political landscape over the past decade.

In Work over Welfare, Haskins has provided the most authoritative account of welfare reform to date. Anyone with an interest in social welfare or politics in general will learn a great deal from this insightful and revealing book.

Customer Reviews (1)

Detailed, well-written blow-by-blow account of law's passage
This book is an extremely detailed history of how the Republicans in the House of Representatives first developed their ideas on welfare reform, prior to the 1994 election, and then enacted them into law, in 1996, after they took over Congress.During this time, Haskins was a senior Congressional staffer for the Republicans on the House Ways and Means Committee.He thus has very detailed knowledge of the cut and thrust in the House, fairly detailed knowledge of the Senate machinations and only an outsider's view of Bill Clinton's role in the whole drama.

This book is not for everyone.It is all about the process of how the law was passed.You get a very detailed description of each version of the law, and there were alot of them.You get a very detailed description of the various interest groups who were pushing for different versions of reform, from the state governors who wanted the feds to give them lots of money with no strings attached, to the radical right who wanted the bill to combat family breakdown by cutting off welfare payments to single mothers, to the Bob Dole 1996 presidenital campaign, who wanted Congress to not pass the bill a third time (after two Clinton vetos) so that he could make a campaign issue out of Clinton not signing welfare reform.

I think the book is particularly useful for the insight it gives into how laws are actually made.Haskins is that oddity, a trained social scientist with conservative convictions and extensive practical political experience.He is thus able to discuss intelligently both the social science on the issue, and the politics of the isssue.It is a very complicated story, and he tells it well.This book will be indispensable for future historians of the 1990s and welfare reform. ... Read more

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Applying Intersectional Analysis
It has been twelve years since "the end of welfare as we know it," as then- President Bill Clinton named it in 1996; and critical analysis of this policy change has slowly trickled forth. In Mothers without Citizenship: Asian Immigrant Families and the Consequences of Welfare Reform, author Lynn Fujiwara sets out to examine the particular case of how Asian immigrant women, children, and families have been fairing under welfare reform. This book situates the important connection between citizenship status and domestic policy, a topic which often falls through the cracks at the intersection of ethnic studies, women/gender studies, and policy analysis.

Lynn Fujiwara reminds us that it was not until the enactment of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) in 1996 that citizenship became a criteria for receiving benefits. This shift in policy differentiated Asians, and other immigrant communities, in ways that had not been previously established. The central research question that her book poses is how this policy shift affected Asian Americans receiving benefits, and benefit access for potential recipients. She argues that without a specific research focus on these communities, the differential access based upon citizenship divisions will remain unexamined and continue the marginalization of immigrant communities. Fujiwara quotes the census in stating that 68 percent of the Asian American population is foreign born; and that the impact of PRWORA was felt by about 1-2 million immigrants of all ethnicities (p. xv). Fujiwara places this policy change in the context of historic and contemporary immigration legislation that restricted entry of particular ethnic populations, tightened refugee status criteria, and constructed the status of the "noncitizen" as undeserving of social services. By contextualizing and humanizing globalization, migration, and refugee processes, Fujiwara demonstrates how these large-scale structures and policies impact Asian immigrant communities.

Lynn Fujiwara based her research upon ethnographic fieldwork and "theoretical discussions of citizenship, gender, race, and nation" (p. xx). The author conducted her participatory research, which consisted of volunteering with community organizations, in the Bay Area of Northern California from 1996 until 1998 (p. xxiii). Fujiwara taught citizenship classes to Asian and Latino immigrants, engaged with related social movements, shadowed individual immigrants through the citizenship process, and conducted thirty interviews with employees of community organizations.

The chapters of Mothers without Citizenship are organized in the following fashion: The Introduction "Sanctioning Immigrants: `Ending Welfare as We Know It'" places the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) in a socio-legal context of increasingly restrictive policies towards immigrants; Fujiwara also outlines her methodology and the following six chapters. The first chapter, "New Nativism and Welfare Reform: Asian Immigrants as Racialized Foreigners," traces historical immigration policies that were often restrictive or completely exclusionary towards Asians (Chinese in particular); additionally, the current xenophobic climate has increasingly justified anti-immigrant policies, such as Proposition 187 in California. The second chapter, "Welfare Reform and the Politics of Citizenship," examines the impact of the new immigrant welfare policy on the Asian American population. In the third chapter "Refugees Betrayed," Fujiwara give particular focus to Southeast Asian refugees; she argues that refugees should not be lumped within general immigration policies; instead, their particular situation and past trauma should provide them more individualized consideration. In the fourth chapter, "The Rush for Citizenship: Naturalization as a Technocratic Apparatus of Exclusion," Fujiwara examines citizenship "as a state technology to differentiate rights, liberties, entitlement, and exclusion" (p. 94).In the fifth chapter, "On Not Making Ends Meet: Mothers without Citizenship," Fujiwara discusses Asian immigrant women's labor and the ways in which it is regulated by the state. The sixth chapter, "The Devaluation of Immigrant Families," and the conclusion, "The Continuing Significance of Racialized Citizenship," both draw out the implications and impacts of policy that requires citizenship for benefits.

Mothers without Citizenship focuses "on the way citizenship was instrumental in shaping immigrant provisions in welfare policy, and on the traumatic impact these political maneuvers had on Asian immigrant communities" (p. xvi). The theoretical advancement that the book offers is in its ability to implement an intersectional research design which provides a challenge to dichotomous racial constructions, seeing "the inseparable and complex relationships" of the social context, and providing "a more comprehensive interweaving of social citizenship and legal citizenship" (p. xix). By focusing on Asian Americans in particular, Fujiwara is not arguing that they are more affected by PRWORA than black, Latino, and white families; but that they are affected differentially. Fujiwara does not segregate Asian Americans along ethnic lines in her analysis, but along lines of differential citizenship and refugee status, which can cut across all ethnicities; one household can have mixed-citizenship status. Fujiwara also examines gender differences between communities and the ways which these could be addressed structurally: i.e., officials working with refugee communities should have sensitized training that can assisted with traumatized communities, including sexual violence. The author also mentioned that Hmong and Laotian soldiers who fought for the U.S. were denied veteran status, and thus, assistance, because they "did not fit the national masculinist and racialized idea of the American soldier" (p. 80). Ultimately, this citizenship requirement of PRWORA did increase the numbers of people filing for naturalization, "producing a two-year waiting list within months of the law's passage (p. 93). Fujiwara specific focus on Asian immigrant communities and access to PRWORA provides important information about the lives of immigrants in the U.S. Through this ethnographic research, Fujiwara is able to pinpoint particular systematic improvements that could benefit these communities including: culturally and linguistically competent services, recognizing the particular issues faced by refugees, and attending to the complexities of mixed-citizenship households. Mothers without Citizenship is a very useful text and contributes to the intersecting fields of policy studies, women's studies, and ethnic studies.

A strongly worded and much-needed counterbalance to consider in the wake of rising anti-immigrant sentiment.
Lynn Fujiwara (assistant professor in the Department of Sociology, University of Oregon) presents Mothers Without Citizenship: Asian Immigrant Families and the Consequences of Welfare Reform, a scholarly, extensively researched, and highly critical account of the American government's increasingly hostile attitude toward immigrants in general and Asian immigrants particular, especially female Asian immigrants and their children. Taking to task policy changes in the 1990's to the present day, which enacted draconian cuts in public assistance to poor immigrant families among other stigmatizations, Mothers Without Citizenship questions the nationalist assumptions that poverty is the fault of the poor, or the racist assumption that Asian immigrants are a "model minority" that does not need the health care, food stamps, or other public services provided as a safety net against the ravages of utter destitution. The overall climate for immigrants in general has only become worse in the wake of the September 11th attacks. "Within Asian Pacific Islander communities, the drastic increase of deportations among Cambodians and Filipinos has alarmed communities as families are separated, and as people are deported back to a country they do not know and/or where they will face persecution. Thus, even though new voting blocs have emerged and reshaped local politics with high immigrant constituencies, the pervasive "terrorist" threat has subjugated political consciousness of immigrant rights." A strongly worded and much-needed counterbalance to consider in the wake of rising anti-immigrant sentiment.

Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch
... Read more

Product Description
This study examines how welfare reform has affected African Americans, particularly women. It analyzes the discourse of marginalization within the 1988 Title II-Job Opportunities for Basic Skills (JOBS) legislation and its impact on African American women.An Afrocentric feminist epistemology is used to explore major issues surrounding the JOBS program within the context of the history of welfare reform laws and the experiences of African Americans with the welfare system. The author discusses how the experiences and viewpoints of welfare recipients, educators, welfare workers, and administrators reflect the inequities of the welfare system and the welfare reform movement. This study of the design and implementation of the JOBS plan reveals that welfare reform that does not provide equitable wages and education will not change the lives of these women.
(Ph.D. dissertation, University of Northern Illinois, 1992; revised with new preface, foreword, afterword) ... Read more