Move(ments) Beyond Rights: Welfare Rights in an Era of Personal Responsibility

Abstract

This article examines the persistence of a “rights” movement in a political environment rife with the language of personal responsibility. Through an analysis of interviews of welfare rights activists in three states, this article explores the frequency and type of both “rights” and “needs” discourse frameworks. Neither rights nor needs language is employed frequently in the interviews. Activists do not view the language of rights and needs as necessarily conflictual. Furthermore, race appears to play some role in discourse choices between rights and needs. African American women utilize both rights and needs rhetoric, while White women prefer needs language. The results offer evidence of the centrality of race in understanding discourse choices among those struggling to gain recognition of basic human needs and rights.