The Welfare Contract And Critical Case Management

Drawing on three years of ethnographic research on the decision making processes of welfare case managers in urban Kentucky, we focus here on a group of case managers who subvert the demands placed on them by neoliberal welfare policy. These women refer to their own experiences as low-income, single parents to reconceptualize notions of the "un/deserving" poor, the welfare contract, and what it means to be "self-sufficient." Case manager resistance and moral constructs are instructional, making explicit the dehumanizing aspects of the system and valuing a rights-based discourse which recognizes the state's obligation to ensure the welfare of all citizens.