Sanctions as Everyday Resistance to Welfare Reform

|HE PASSAGE BY CONGRESS OF THE PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY AND WORK Op? portunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) in 1996 signaled the triumph of -X. individual over collective responsibility for the nation's poorest families. In supporting welfare reform, a coalition of liberal and conservative advocates for abolishing the long-standing entitlement program for the poor, Aid to Families with Dependent Children, capitalized on and fostered racist and sexist stereotypes of black and brown "welfare queens" living off of the hard work of the white working and middle classes. Moreover, as O'Connor (2001) argues, the writing of prominent social scientists, both liberal and conservative (Ellwood, 1988; Murray, 1984), legitimized PRWORA's emphasis on individual behavioral change, rather than poverty alleviation, as the solution to welfare dependency that was bred, in their view, by decades of safety-net entitlements. After passage of PRWORA, the Temporary Aid to Needy Families (TANF) program was established in 1997 to implement welfare reform. Under TANF, work requirements, lifetime limits on the receipt of aid, and punishments for noncompliance, along with short-term childcare, transportation assistance, and services to overcome personal barriers to work, became the tools to instill the ethic of individual responsibility needed to leave welfare and become self-sufficient. Sanctions are a centerpiece of PRWORA's tough-love approach to welfare