The Welfare Assembly Line
eBook - ePub

The Welfare Assembly Line

Public Servants in the Suffering City

  1. English
  2. ePUB (mobile friendly)
  3. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - ePub

The Welfare Assembly Line

Public Servants in the Suffering City

About this book

Despite claims that we live in a "post-welfare society," welfare offices remain vital not only for those who depend on them for benefits but also for those who depend on them for a paycheck. This book, a theory-driven case study of the Los Angeles County Department of Public Social Services, examines how welfare work has transformed to allow a department of just 14,000 to serve more than a third of the county.

Josh Seim argues that frontline workers at this agency—who are mostly Black and Brown women—have become increasingly proletarianized. Their work is defined less by their discretion and more by a lack of control over the productive process. This is enabled by a "welfare assembly line," where a high division of labor and heavy use of machinery resemble production regimes in factories and fast-food restaurants. With implications beyond the welfare office, The Welfare Assembly Line is a crucial addition to the broader national conversation about work, social policy, and poverty governance.
 

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Information

Year
2026
Edition
1
eBook ISBN
9780520404175

Table of contents

  1. Title
  2. Copyright
  3. Dedication
  4. Contents
  5. List of Tables
  6. Author’s Note
  7. Acknowledgments
  8. Glossary of Key Terms and Acronyms
  9. Introduction
  10. 1. The Policy Factory
  11. 2. The Good County Job
  12. 3. Seeing Customers
  13. 4. Making Participants
  14. 5. Disciplining the Line
  15. 6. Dis/Connected
  16. Conclusion
  17. Appendix: Notes on Data and Method
  18. Notes
  19. References
  20. Index

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Yes, you can access The Welfare Assembly Line by Josh Seim in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Social Sciences & Social Policy. We have over 1.5 million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.