Dis-integrated policy: welfare-to-work participants' experiences of integrating paid work and unpaid family work

Abstract

Using a critical feminist theoretical lens, we followed 17 families for one year – as they attempted to make the transition from welfare to work – eliciting narrative accounts of their day-to-day lives. We used an institutional–ethnographic methodology to analyse the data. Our study shows that the juncture at which unpaid caring work and paid employment meet may be more difficult to negotiate for low-income lone-parent families than for coupled, middle-class employed families. Findings reveal that the unpaid work that happened on the edges of a paid work day, what we refer to as ‘the work outside the work’, took considerable time and energy for participants, making it difficult for them to procure and/or sustain employment. This was due to a number of factors including their limited access to economic and non-economic resources, and the complex nature of their lives, including struggles with day-to-day functioning and childcare arrangements. These challenges, combined with the realities of the low-income labour market made it difficult, if not impossible, for most participants to effectively integrate work and family. These findings suggest that the dis-integrated nature of welfare-to-work policies, which overlooks the actualities of low-income parents’ lives, limits families’ ability to become self-sufficient.

Nous avons fait le suivi, dans l'optique de la critique féministe, de 17 familles qui tentaient de faire la transition d'un statut d'assisté social à celui de travailleur, en sollicitant une narration de leur vie quotidienne. Nous avons utilisé une méthodologie à la fois institutionnelle et ethnographique pour analyser les données. Notre étude indique que l’équilibre entre le travail non rémunéré de la maison et l'emploi rémunéré est peut-être plus difficile à négocier pour les familles monoparentales à faible revenu que pour les familles en couples ayant un emploi et appartenant à la classe moyenne. Nous avons constaté que le travail non rémunéré effectué hors des heures de travail rémunéré, ce que nous appelons «le travail hors du travail» prenait un temps et une énergie considérable aux participants, ce qui leur rendait difficile de se procurer et/ou de garder un emploi. Cet état de choses est causé par un certain nombre de facteurs dont l'accès limité aux ressources économiques et non économiques et à la nature complexe de leur vie dont la lutte constante avec les exigences du quotidien et de la charge des enfants. Ces défis, combinés aux réalités du marché du travail offrant un revenu peu élevé rendent difficiles sinon impossibles aux participants d'intégrer efficacement le monde du travail tout en gérant les exigences familiales. Ces résultats suggèrent que les politiques de retour au travail sont de nature à non intégrer du fait qu'elles ignorent la réalité de la vie des parents ayant un revenu peu élevé et limitent la capacité de ces familles à devenir auto suffisantes.

Keywords:

• work–family integration
• Canadian social policy
• low income
• childcare

Mots–clés:

• intégration des assistés sociaux dans le monde du travail
• politique sociale canadienne
• revenu peu élevé
• la charge des enfants

Notes

1. This discussion focuses on the economic conditions at the time that this study was conducted, 2000–2001.

2. In Canada, the minimum wage is set by the provinces.

3. All monetary amounts listed in this paper are in Canadian dollars.

4. Although not an official poverty line, the before-tax low-income cut-offs (LICOs) have commonly been used to measure poverty rates in Canada. The LICOs are determined by calculating the average percentage of before-tax income spent by Canadian families on food, clothing, and shelter, and then adding 20%. On average, Canadian families spend 35% of their income on food, clothing, and shelter. Thus, when families spend 55% or more of their income on food, clothing, and shelter, they are living below the LICOs (Statistics Canada, 2004b).

5. Although children received health benefits during this time, their parents did not. In 2002, the Alberta government began providing additional health benefits for low-income parents making the transition from welfare to work.

6. Current maximum rates for the CCTB and the NCBS are $3200 for the first child, $2975 for the second child, and $2980 for each additional child (Government of Canada, 2007).

7. The term ‘parent’ is used here to include the one lone father who participated in this study.

8. Vosko (1999) suggests that one of the underlying goals of employability programs is to teach welfare recipients to accept the precarious nature of the labour market.

9. All of the names of participants listed here are pseudonyms.

10. This term was originally used by C.B. MacPherson (1964).