Disrupted journeys: Women, welfare and workfare.
Item
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Title
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Disrupted journeys: Women, welfare and workfare.
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Identifier
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AAI9808022
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identifier
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9808022
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Creator
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Wong, Loongmun.
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Contributor
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Adviser: Michelle Fine
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Date
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1997
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Psychology, Social | Sociology, Public and Social Welfare | Women's Studies | Sociology, Individual and Family Studies
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Abstract
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This dissertation uses multiple methods such as interviews, focus groups and participant observations to document how poor women struggle within welfare bureaucracies and their communities. Through the narratives of twenty-five women, across race, it aims to illuminate and examine three points. First, it examines how women are actually constructing their lives despite the pervasive surveillance by the welfare offices. Against this backdrop, it dissects and dismantles some of the strategies of the state by entering the institutional spaces where the bureaucratic encounters with agents are enacted. Second, it shows how women use techniques to negotiate in workfare classes and the welfare waiting rooms to manipulate events and subvert disciplinary measures into "opportunities" and resources that will serve their own ends and their children. Third, this dissertation also shows how women struggle to raise children amidst dangerous surroundings and it interrogates the working lives of poor women as they juggle maternal responsibilities, GED class and for some, paid labor.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
