Ineligible: Single Mothers Under Welfare Surveillance

by Krys Maki

Overview

While the poor have always been monitored and surveilled by the state when seeking financial support, the methods, techniques, and capacity for surveillance within and across government jurisdictions has profoundly altered how recipients navigate social assistance. Welfare surveillance has exacerbated social inequality, especially among low income, Indigenous, and racialized single mothers. Krys Maki unpacks in-depth interviews with Ontario Works caseworkers, anti-poverty activists, and single mothers on assistance in Kingston, Peterborough, and Toronto, and employs intersectional feminist political economy and critical surveillance theory to contextualize the ways neoliberal welfare reforms have subjected low-income single mothers to intensive state surveillance. Maki centres their experiences to examine how their status as lone parents prompted fraud investigations and invasive questioning about their relationship status, and triggered investigations by other governing bodies such as child welfare agencies. This book also examines the moral and political implications of administering inadequate benefits alongside punitive surveillance measures. Despite significant restraints, anti-poverty activists, caseworkers, and recipients have discovered individual and collective ways to resist the neoliberal agenda.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781773634944
Publisher:	Fernwood Publishing
Publication date:	11/10/2021
Sold by:	De Marque
Format:	eBook
Pages:	231
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

Krys Maki is an activist scholar specializing in mixed-methods community-based participatory research. They currently work as the research and policy manager at Women’s Shelters Canada, a national network of violence against women shelters based in Ottawa, Ontario.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements vii

Acronyms x

Introduction: Welfare Surveillance, Regulation, and Mothering on the Margins 1

The Feminization of Poverty, a "No-Win" Situation 4

Key Concepts and Terms 9

Methods 16

Summary of Book 18

Note 20

1 A Brief History of Welfare Surveillance in Ontario 21

Surveillance Stitched into the Fabric of the Emerging Social Safety Net 22

Conclusion 49

Notes 51

2 Mapping the Welfare Surveillance Apparatus 52

Surveillance and Discrimination 54

Technological Surveillance and Regulation 56

Moral Surveillance and Regulation 60

Conclusion 71

Notes 72

3 Caught in a Web of Surveillance: Life under the Watchful Eye of Ontario Works 73

Interviews with Single Mothers on Social Assistance 73

Experiencing Welfare Surveillance 75

Relationships with Welfare Caseworkers 93

Conclusion 103

Notes 105

4 Expanding the Welfare Surveillance Apparatus: The Family Responsibility Office and Child Welfare 106

The Family Responsibility Office and Ontario Works 107

The Children's Aid Society 114

Indigenous Mothers, Surveillance, and Child Welfare 120

Conclusion 125

5 Social Workers, Financial Advisors, or Authoritarian Overseers?: Caseworkers' Reflections on Welfare Surveillance 128

Interviewing Frontline Caseworkers 130

New Public Management and Workplace Surveillance 135

How Caseworkers Understand Welfare Surveillance 143

Job Satisfaction and Workplace Health and Safety 157

Conclusion 163

6 Counternarratives: Individual and Collective Resistance to Neoliberal Welfare Reforms, Cutbacks, and Surveillance 165

Building Dialogues of Resistance: Counternarratives, Disruptions, and Subversions 166

Notes 189

References 190

Index 210

Editorial Reviews

By uncovering how state regulation manifests in the daily lives of Ontarian single mothers, Maki expertly demonstrates how detrimental welfare surveillance and moral regulation are to their individual experiences.

Surveillance & Society 20(1) - Kate Duffy