The Return to the Family: Welfare, State, and Politics of the Family in Turkey

This article examines the transformation of the Turkish state’s social work policy to engage recent debates in anthropology about welfare restructuring and neoliberalism. Building on ethnographic research from top to bottom, I trace welfare policy through the discourse of politicians and bureaucrats into everyday bureaucratic practice. Drawing attention to the stark contrast between the discursive image of the nurturing three generational extended family put at the center of the AKP (Justice and Development Party) government’s political rhetoric and policy-making and the experience of urban poor women who pass through the welfare orbit, I argue that for poor women and children, the globally influenced transformation in welfare corresponds to the reinforcement of socioeconomic vulnerabilities, all of which constrain their already precarious lives.