The socio-economic and structural inequalities in the U.S. between the white majority and racialized minorities have steadily increased, resulting in severe racial disparities in wealth, income, housing, health, education, and almost every other aspect of life. The once progressive prospect of a welfare state under the Roosevelt administration that sought to provide securities to alleviate poverty has been severely circumvented by perceptions of race, racialization processes, and systemic racism since its inception. Even though the working class altogether has been hit hard by deindustrialization, austerity, mass unemployment, wage stagnation, or more recently the Covid-19 crisis, gendered and racialized perceptions of poverty determine who is worthy of access to benefits and who is not. The neoliberal turn initiated by the Reagan administration created an increasingly neoliberal welfare regime that was built on the free market and self-reliance. The ensuing retrenchment of the welfare state, however, gave rise to a novel kind of penal-welfare regime and a carceral state that in turn builds increasingly on punitive policies, thereby exacerbating pre-existing racial disparities and social inequalities.
As part of our BMBF-funded research project, we are organizing this symposium to initiate a broader discussion of how race and gender intersect, structure, and shape the U.S. welfare state. Building on the premises of Critical Race Studies, we focus on race not as a variable, but as a social construct that is a fundamental organizing principle that hierarchizes U.S. society and its institutions.
For our symposium, we invite papers that examine the intersections of race, gender, and capitalism in the U.S. at different historical moments or in specific localities, as well as the outcomes and social, political, and economic effects on both Whites and racialized minorities.
Possible paper topics can include, but are not limited to the following themes and topics:
- Racial capitalism
- Intersectionality of race, gender, class, nationality with welfare
- Intersectionality of race, gender, class with inequality and poverty
- Welfare capitalism
- Public, media, and political discourses relating to welfare and/or poverty
- Historical and contemporary accounts of how race and gender have been structuring and operating within the U.S. welfare state
- Making un/equality – un/equal laws or dis-equaling practices?
- Neoliberal turn
- Welfare (state) and incarceration / carceral state
- Social inequalities and social / racial justice
- Solidarity
Please send abstracts of about 300 words and a short bio statement as one PDF-file by November 10, 2023 to Grigoleit-Richter.Grit@uni-passau.de.
Notification will be sent out by the end of November.