Shut Out: Low Income Mothers and Higher Education in Post-Welfare America (review)

Combining a rigorous critique of the viciously anti-feminist, anti-poor, White supremacist, and "anti-family value" welfare reforms of the mid-1990s (notably the 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act—PRWORA) with examples of resistance and recommendations for policy changes, Shut Out is a timely reminder of the importance of praxis-oriented, community-based ethnographic work and feminist policy analysis.

Using the expertise of low-income women in poverty to critique the policies and institutions that attempt to shape their lives, chapters capture the consequences of PRWORA across different states, in particular the punitive "work-first, education-later" reforms that confine women to low-wage employment and deny access to meaningful post-secondary educational resources. Shut Out also documents the intertwined barriers low-income mothers face: absence of high-quality childcare, inflexibility of policies, punitive financial-aid programs, limitations of job training programs, naturalization of everyday violences of racism and sexual harassment, and more.

The activist/scholars who edit and contribute to this anthology foreground the experiences of women such as Latesha (Chapter 2) whose knowledge of the PRWORA and related federal and local educational policies ("educational denials") leaves her justifiably depressed and frustrated.

Here it is, my rent is not being paid. Why is my rent not being paid? Because I did not participate in the program. Why did I not participate in the program? Because I was in school and I did not want to stop going to school. Why was I going to school? Because I wanted to get a job, I wanted to get off public assistance so I wouldn't need them to pay my rent. It is a big circle. It's like around and around and around and it's really aggravating and it's really stressful.

(52)

While effectively illustrating the stupidity (often rather humorously) and the devastating impact (not so humorously) of this "post-welfare" era, Shut Out also represents women as active agents who work to flourish and to effect change within systems that are intent on denying them survival. At the structural and/or policy level, Shut Out offers examples and recommendations of innovative strategies/reforms that (could or do) enable access to higher education; for example, the Boston, Massachusetts, college access/leadership development program for low-income women (Chapter 9), the policy changes hard won by the activist Kentucky Welfare Rights Coalition (Chapter 8), and the recommendations to California's financial aid programs that would ensure wider access to post-secondary education (Chapter 7). In addition, resistance is in the voices of women (in particular Chapters 2 and 3) whose daily experiences testify to the hollowness of the "welfare queen" trope that circulates in mainstream media and remains embedded in the assumptions that undergird social assistance policies in the United States.

Far from "lazy" or "deficient," these women, as the chapters demonstrate, possess perseverance, skills, and energy required to navigate post-secondary institutions. For example, when Lisa is informed that because of Work First requirements she will not be able to pursue her academic goal of teacher certification but rather will be shunted to a vocational program, the twenty-three-year-old White mother of one convinces her caseworker of the unreasonableness of the policy.

I told him this was ridiculous and I'd just be on welfare forever. "I am just going to be part of the working poor who isn't poor enough to be on welfare but not rich enough to own their own charge card, you know."

(81)

Lisa is able to negotiate support for her academic goals and is not moved to the program, yet her ongoing struggle is intense. Or Tina, twenty-five-year-old African American, who is a successful working parent of two young children and pursuing a degree in criminal justice, is actively committed...