Selling Welfare Reform: Work-First and the New Common Sense of Employment

by Frank Ridzi

Overview

The 1996 Welfare Reform Act promised to end welfare as we knew it. In Selling Welfare Reform, Frank Ridzi uses rich ethnographic detail to examine how new welfare-to-work policies, time limits, and citizenship documentation radically changed welfare, revealing what really goes on at the front lines of the reformed welfare system. Selling Welfare Reform chronicles how entrepreneurial efforts ranging from front-line caseworkers to high-level administrators set the pace for restructuring a resistant bureaucracy. At the heart of this remarkable institutional transformation is a market-centered approach to human services that re-framed the definition of success to include diversion from the present system, de-emphasis of legal protections and behavioral conditioning of poor parents to accommodate employers. Ridzi draws a compelling portrait of how welfare staff and their clients negotiate the complexities of the low wage labor market in an age of global competition, exposing the realities of how the new "common sense" of poverty is affecting the lives of poor and vulnerable Americans.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780814775943
Publisher:	New York University Press
Publication date:	04/01/2009
Pages:	344
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Frank Ridzi is Associate Professor of Sociology, Kauffman Entrepreneurship Professor, and founding Director of the Center for Urban and Regional Applied Research at Le Moyne College in Syracuse New York.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments ix

1 "Selling Work-First": Introduction 1

2 "You're All Doing the Wrong Thing": Innovation and Common Sense 32

3 "A New Way of Doing Business": Performance Measures, Rights, and Common Sense 67

4 New Technology and New Customers 101

5 "We Are a Thorn in the Side of Those Who Won't Change": Buying into Work-First 136

6 "Not Everybody Fits into Their Box": Work-First, Gender, Race, and Families 170

7 "Don't Blame Me, It Wasn't Up to Me!": Policy Recommendations from Everyday Experience 205

8 Conclusion: Envisioning "A New Common Sense" 247

Appendix 269

Notes 273

Bibliography 291

Index 315

About the Author 319

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

The strength of Selling Welfare Reform is its focus on the perspectives of caseworkers. Thirty years ago, Michael Lipsky published Street-level Bureaucracy: Dilemmas of the Individual in Public Services, a call for scholars to heed the power of those responsible for implementing policy. Lipsky's advice is especially relevant to welfare, given the local discretion embedded in reform, and Ridzi provides an insightful glimpse into how welfare caseworkers have responded to their new role." -Political Science Quarterly,

&9220;In this fascinating study, Ridzi deftly explores how 'work-first' came to dominate welfare policy and how this neoliberal ideology contours the interactions between welfare staff and their clients. Selling Welfare Reform is a must-read for all those interested in contemporary welfare reform.&8221;
-Nancy Naples,co-editor of The Sexuality of Migration

&8220;Ridzi provides a deeply grounded and richly detailed view of the many activities that have produced a new U.S. welfare regime. His focus on implementation gives fresh insight into the complex interplay of local and extra-local forces.&8221;
-Marjorie DeVault,editor of People at Work

“Using institutional ethnography, Ridzi critically examines welfare reform at a country work-first program. The considerable benefits of this book derive from the author's interviews with clients and with caseworkers who struggle to reconcile the circumstances of welfare recipients with a rigorous job-placement strategy.”
-CHOICE

Editorial Reviews

"&9220;In this fascinating study, Ridzi deftly explores how ‘work-first’ came to dominate welfare policy and how this neoliberal ideology contours the interactions between welfare staff and their clients. Selling Welfare Reform is a must-read for all those interested in contemporary welfare reform."

Nancy Naples

"“Ridzi provides a deeply grounded and richly detailed view of the many activities that have produced a new U.S. welfare regime. His focus on implementation gives fresh insight into the complex interplay of local and extra-local forces."

Marjorie DeVault

Ridzi provides a deeply grounded and richly detailed view of the many activities that have produced a new U.S. welfare regime. His focus on implementation gives fresh insight into the complex interplay of local and extra-local forces.”
-Marjorie DeVault,editor of People at Work

&9220;In this fascinating study, Ridzi deftly explores how ‘work-first’ came to dominate welfare policy and how this neoliberal ideology contours the interactions between welfare staff and their clients. Selling Welfare Reform is a must-read for all those interested in contemporary welfare reform.”
-Nancy Naples,co-editor of The Sexuality of Migration

From the Publisher