Neoliberalism and Poverty Management in Canada

CRM 515: Gendering Justice

• Criminalizing Poverty: This lecture explores the criminalization of poverty within the context of neoliberalism.
• Neoliberalism and Criminalization: The shift from collective risk management to individualized responsibility is a key element of contemporary liberal capitalist societies.
• Welfare Liberalism: This framework emphasized socialized risk and responsibility through welfare programs and economic partnerships between capital and state. Keynesian economics played a significant role.
• Advanced Liberalism/Neoliberalism: This approach focused increasingly on individual responsibility and risk mitigation, often criminalizing those perceived as problematic. State actors and private entities have contributed to this shift.
• Dynamics of Neoliberalism: Neoliberalism fortifies market capitalism through explicit and implied criminalization of non-market activities. It disguises structural vulnerabilities (racism, patriarchy) as individual failings.
• The "Undeserving" Poor: Poor people are often constructed as morally deficient, reinforcing market-driven ideas of responsibility. Racialized and gendered imagery perpetuates this.
• Racialization and Criminalization of Poverty: Punitive measures targeting immigration and welfare are linked to criminalizing the poor and racial minorities. Reduced benefits, increased surveillance, and disciplinary systems are common strategies.
• Rolling Back State Support: Current policies emphasize work ethics and personal responsibility, shifting blame to individuals rather than addressing structural issues.
• Law and Order Policies: Policing has become a key element of neoliberal strategies in Canada's cities, responding to perceived resistance to the new market economy.
• Locating the Emergence of Law-and-Order Policing: Zero-tolerance policing and aggressive policing practices emerged in the 1970s and 80s in response to economic hardship.
• Policing and Resistance to the New Labour Market: Law and order policing is a direct response to working-class resistance against the new labour market, focusing on issues of vagrancy and panhandling.
• From Welfare Fraud to Welfare as Fraud: Government attacks on welfare policies have disproportionately affected poor women.
• Double Taxonomy of Moral Regulation: Hall's work highlight the complexities of moral regulation, emphasizing both constraint and freedom/leniency. "Self-regulation" as inextricably linked to public regulation.
• Reforming Welfare in the 1990s: Reforms illustrate the shift from welfare fraud to welfare as fraud in Ontario focusing on case studies and statistical data.
• Moral Regulation Revisited: The entry of women into the workforce altered prevalent norms about women's roles, altering the perception of "deserving" vs. "undeserving" women.
• Women, Welfare, and the "Never Deserving" Poor: Welfare reforms disproportionately affected women, often creating conditions where these women faced increased vulnerability.
• "A Bad Time to Be Poor": Neo-liberal economic and political shifts intensify poverty for recipients, particularly single mothers. Changes to the definition of spouse highlight new social standards.
• Regulating, Punishing, and Excluding Single Mothers on Social Assistance: These policies disproportionately affect single mothers through regulations, restrictions, and sanctions.
• Current Application of the Man-in-the-House Rule: The application and enforcement of anti-fraud regulations often target single mothers, particularly immigrant women.
• Mothers' Allowance: The Genesis of the Penis Police: Historical development of welfare policies reveals moral judgments towards women in poverty.
• Unmarried Mothers and the Hierarchy of Motherhood: The hierarchy of mother- hood was constructed to differentiate "deserving" and "undeserving" mothers.
• The Family Benefits Act: The Act formalized rules that made it more difficult for single mothers receiving welfare assistance to have access to the program.
• A Class Analysis of the Man-in-the-House Rule: The rule perpetuates class inequalities and criminalizes the poor, especially single mothers.
• Women, Fear of Crime, and the Criminalization of Poverty in Toronto: Women's fear of crime is used to justify criminalizing those in poverty.
• The Ontario Safe Streets Act, 2000: The act criminalized behaviors often associated with urban poverty.
• Protective Men and Victimized Women: Men's Concerns for Female Safety: Gendered representations of poverty and safety are used to justify criminalizing behaviors of the poor, framing women as victims.