Working Expectations: Frame Diagnosis and the Welfare Rights Movement

Abstract

This paper examines frame resonance dynamics internal to the contemporary US welfare rights movement. Frames diagnosing the problems of welfare as rooted in conceptions of caregiving and wage work were popular a generation ago among welfare rights activists. Today, this frame is favored among allies of the movement. Is it favored among grassroots activists? Forty-three interviews with welfare rights parent/activists in eight states around the USA reveal that activists have prioritized the immediate needs of welfare families. In examining the mechanisms underlying this disjuncture in frame resonance, I find that a caring labor frame ultimately lacks both credibility and salience among activists. Moreover, these established conceptions of resonance tend to minimize the intertwined role of power and identity in the perception of framing choices available to activists. This tendency of framing literature to present identity categories such as race, class and gender as ultimately interchangeable masks the critical role of the political and social power associated with each unique identity category. In the case of carework frames, I argue that activists organizing in political environments with both large white populations and relatively low income inequality may find such frames that center on the value of motherhood attractive; these frames may be less strategically appealing in states with both higher income inequality and where welfare parents may be associated with racially stigmatized groups. I argue that examining dynamics specific to privileged identity categories along lines of race, class and gender should be a prerequisite to understanding the established terms of frame resonance in social movement scholarship.