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Class, Care, and Welfare Reform: Reading Meanings, Talking Feelings

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  • Chris Haylett

    (School of Geography and Environmental Sciences, University of Birmingham, Edgbaston, Birmingham B15 2TT, England)

Abstract

This paper presents a way of looking at welfare as a realm of affective well-being, which challenges dominant liberal and rationalist views of welfare as unemployment compensation or support on the route back to ‘work’. With reference to welfare-to-work reform in Britain and, the United States, I examine liberal feminist and neoliberal policy discourses on women, work, and welfare. The rationale underlying these discourses is argued to effect an erasure of meaning and feeling from conceptions of care, with serious consequences for the caring choices of poor working-class mothers. The potential of a nonreductive feminist ethics of care, to oppose the work-centric notion of welfare promoted in prevailing approaches to reform, is considered. Ethical thinking is shown to promote an expanded concept of welfare based on caring interrelations and interdependencies, and a way of seeing the emotional geographies of welfare reform. I conclude by arguing the need for labour politics to engage with the emotional geographies of welfare reform.

Suggested Citation

  • Chris Haylett, 2003. "Class, Care, and Welfare Reform: Reading Meanings, Talking Feelings," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 35(5), pages 799-814, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:envira:v:35:y:2003:i:5:p:799-814
    DOI: 10.1068/a35120
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. David T. Ellwood, 1999. "The Impact of the Earned Income Tax Credit and Social Policy Reforms on Work, Marriage, and Living Arrangements," JCPR Working Papers 124, Northwestern University/University of Chicago Joint Center for Poverty Research.
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