Coping Strategies of Urban and Rural Welfare Organisations and the Regulation of the Poor

Abstract

With a comparative case study of the social welfare systems of an urban and a rural county in the United States, I explore variation in local welfare implementation by examining organisational strategies. Service provision in the rural county is less diverse and less effective than in the urban county due to place-based factors; however, in the urban county more financial resources and capacity translates into more regulation of the clientele as well as resistance to neoliberal practices. Organisations whose existence depends upon benevolent elites adapt to their funding requirements by regulating clients of social services, including tactics of surveillance, elaborate verification, and restriction. The enforcement of low-wage work that is bracketed by national policy is highly constraining, but can be challenged through a welfare organisation when the right conditions are present for an empowered grassroots approach. These findings are situated within the more general literature on the changing governance of welfare.