Patients of the State: The Politics of Waiting in Argentina

4. The Welfare Office

four | The Welfare O≈ce According to o≈cial documents of the city government of Buenos Aires (Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires 2008), there are twelve di√erent programs administered at the central welfare o≈ce. However, most of the people we observed and interviewed there were waiting for a decision or a payment on one of the following three cash transfer programs: the Nuestras Familias, the Ticket Social, and the housing subsidy. The o≈ce serves Argentine nationals and documented foreigners , who are most often recent migrants from Bolivia, Paraguay, and Peru. There are no citizenship restrictions to access any of these plans, provided recipients can show proof of residence in the city of Buenos Aires. The welfare waiting room is much like the daily life of many poor neighborhoods in the city; that is, it is a universe where Argentines and migrants from neighboring countries come together in what Erving Go√man (1961) would call a ‘‘focused gathering’’ (a set of individuals involved in a common flow of action, and who relate to each other in terms of that flow). Above all, however, the waiting room is a world of women and children who are seeking urgent help, and who live in ‘‘a state of emergency’’ (Ehrenreich 2001). Many of the women are raising their children alone or with the help of family members other than the children’s fathers. In fact, the father’s desertion was cited by many as the main reason why they ‘‘ended up’’ asking for one or more welfare benefits, while another frequently cited reason was personal illness or that of partners. Predictably, those seeking a housing subsidy come to the welfare office 93 the welfare o≈ce after an eviction. As I have already described, many of these individuals were informed by state personnel about the housing subsidy during their evictions, either from illegally occupied houses or from rental properties they couldn’t a√ord. Similar to the welfare rooms examined by Sharon Hays in Flat Broke with Children, the central o≈ce of Buenos Aires is characterized by the ‘‘ubiquity of children.’’ Also much like Hays describes, the landscape is dominated by ‘‘the cries of hungry or frustrated or sad or disgruntled children, the laughter and chatter of playing children, the ‘inconvenience’ of children whom you trip over, children who are seeking amusement, and children who demand a space in your lap’’ (2003: 85). Children run or crawl around on the dirty floor, and babies are fed and changed in public because there are no private places for those activities (see figs. 4 and 5). One of our early fieldnotes captures the human landscape of the waiting room, as follows: The majority of people come with someone, some even come with the entire family, like the family of five that was sitting in the back of the room. Father, mother, and older daughter (about seven years old) drank mate with cookies . The youngest of all the kids, a baby girl of two years, sat and stood up constantly, but her mother didn’t let her go much. The middle son played in the corner in the back, throwing a small circle of cardboard. Each time the disk crashed against a surface the kid shouted ‘‘goal!’’ as if that were always the first, although he never played with a fixed goal . . . The kids shout, walk fast, run, crawl, roll around in the trash on the ground: they play. A boy of about nine years who has come with his father jumps around giving imaginary flying kicks and punches, with a ‘‘pyew’’ each time that he reaches his imaginary enemies with his force. The little girl to my side, when she isn’t stopped, handles the trash on the ground and puts it curiously in her mouth . . . A little boy of about five years was happily playing on the exterior patio with other girls a little older than him—girls with uniforms who came directly from school—until his father brought him inside. The boy broke out in tears when his father was called to the counter. Another boy laughed out loud while his father was carrying him on his shoulders, playing with him. 4 Waiting at the welfare room. Courtesy of Agustín Burbano de Lara. 5 A baby crawling around the trash at the welfare room. Courtesy of Nadia Finck. the welfare office 95 Megan Comfort’s...