Contesting the Status of Relief Workers during the New Deal

Abstract

Drawing on feminist and historical institutionalist studies of the welfare state as well as the concept of classification struggles developed by French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, this article examines how the creation of the Works Progress Administration (WPA) influenced the subsequent political mobilization of the unemployed in the United States. The WPA combined features of both the liberal, nationally administered social insurance tier and the nonliberal, state-administered public assistance tier of the U.S. welfare state. By positioning its workers in contradictory ways that resembled both public employment and public assistance, the WPA gave rise to a struggle over their status and rights, manifested in part by the activities and claims of the Workers Alliance of America. A careful examination of this struggle suggests that although the constitution of relief recipients as a clearly demarcated pariah class may facilitate social control, attempts by the state to regulate ill-defined subjects encourage political contention over how those subjects will be constituted.