Welfare fraud, citizenship, and resistance : Israeli women's attitudes towards workfare ideology
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- This article exposes the political dimensions of welfare fraud by investigating--in the context of the Israeli post welfare reform of 2003--how 49 Israeli women who live on welfare justify welfare fraud. I find that women's justifications cannot be fully explained by traditional non-compliance theories that view welfare fraud as an individual, private, criminal activity that solely reflects on the fraudster's moral character or desperate need. Instead, women's justifications for welfare fraud are better understood as a socio-political struggle for inclusion and deservedness--as a clash between poor women's and the state's competing conceptions of citizenship along the lines of women's unpaid care work. My main finding points to the fact that women differentiate welfare fraud from other forms of illegal acts, which they condemn, based on their sense that they are morally entitled to receive state support. Hence, it reveals that women's justifications for welfare fraud contain a collective political claim. In addition to a collective ideology, the women's fraudulent acts are also maintained through a "culture of resistance". Hence, I show that unlike the traditional view of welfare fraud, women's fraudulent behavior bears social and political meaning and significance. Nevertheless, I also demonstrate that such form of resistance is inevitably limited in its ability to promote structural change due to the power dynamics it is embedded in.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Form | electronic; electronic resource; remote |
| Extent | 1 online resource. |
| Copyright date | 2012 |
| Publication date | 2011, c2012; 2011 |
| Issuance | monographic |
| Language | English |
Creators/Contributors
| Associated with | Regev-Messalem, Shiri |
|---|---|
| Associated with | Stanford University, School of Law. |
| Primary advisor | Hensler, Deborah R, 1942- |
| Thesis advisor | Hensler, Deborah R, 1942- |
| Thesis advisor | England, Paula |
| Thesis advisor | Marshall, Lawrence C, 1959- |
| Thesis advisor | Rhode, Deborah L |
| Advisor | England, Paula |
| Advisor | Marshall, Lawrence C, 1959- |
| Advisor | Rhode, Deborah L |
Subjects
| Genre | Theses |
|---|
Bibliographic information
| Statement of responsibility | Shiri Regev-Messalem. |
|---|---|
| Note | Submitted to the School of Law. |
| Thesis | J.S.D. Stanford University 2012 |
| Location | electronic resource |
Access conditions
- Copyright
- © 2012 by Shiri Regev-Messalem
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).
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