The focus on “active citizenship” in income assistance policy reform has increasingly attempted to cleave the “able” from the “not able” through multiple regulatory axes. One of the potential implications is an increasingly fragmented milieu for resistance. This session is intended to explore the gendered implications for resistance and agency in the new neoliberal era, given that social reproduction is being delegitimized in mainstream policy discourses which focus on work. For example, if non-economic values are increasingly delegitimized and marginalized, what is the experience of those who care for others in the so called “private” sphere? Are the new axes of social inclusion, based, ironically, not on engagement with work but with the performance of engagement? Further, if work, is the new metric, then are time and leisure markers of personal privilege, not only for the middle class, but for those who struggle to attain socially defined inclusion? And, if resistance occurs outside of legitimized time, does the delegitimization of leisure preserve resistance for the non-marginalized or create new social locations of resistance? While the organizers are interested in the intersection of poverty, gender and neoliberal policies, papers are encouraged which focus on resistance and neoliberal reforms.
Session Organizer: Silvia Vilches, Simon Fraser University, svilches@shaw.ca
Session Co-organizer: Jane Pulkingham, Simon Fraser University, pulkingh@sfu.ca
Session Code: GS8
Schedule, location, and presentations
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