Hard Times on 125th Street: Harlem's Poor Confront Welfare Reform

Abstract

Drawing on fieldwork in Harlem at the onset of welfare reform, I argue in this article for both a social structural and a cultural approach to the study of poor families facing the consequences of this historic policy change. Ethnographic understanding of household organization, kinship networks, reciprocal dependencies, intergenerational relations, migration, and gender must be brought to bear if we are to chart the responses of the poor to welfare reform. Meaning and perceived intentions must be central if we are to grasp how the targets of policy change understand the new economic and bureaucratic circumstances of their lives. These themes are illustrated by drawing on accounts of several households in Harlem—African American and Latino—in order to explore how both structural and cultural forces may shape responses to welfare reform, [welfare reform, poverty, household organization, working poor]

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