'It matters how they see you': 'Maternal Activation' as a strategy to navigate contradictory discourses of motherhood and neoliberal activism in the Welsh homelessness system

England, Edith and Henley, Josie 2024. 'It matters how they see you': 'Maternal Activation' as a strategy to navigate contradictory discourses of motherhood and neoliberal activism in the Welsh homelessness system. Social Policy and Society 10.1017/S1474746424000046

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Abstract

Despite increasing attention to the importance of gender as an analytic to understanding neoliberal welfare reform, little attention has been paid to how motherhood operates to structure experiences. We propose the term ‘maternal activation’ to describe how homeless mothers as a group are subject to, and yet repurpose and resist, specific forms of social control characterising neoliberal paternalistic welfare structures. Drawing on a Critical Discourse Analysis of semi-structured interviews with fifty-four frontline homelessness workers, and eighteen homeless mothers, within the newly conditionalised Welsh homelessness system, we argue that homeless mothers have distinct experiences of neoliberal welfare governance. They navigate contradictory demands of attentive caregiving and economically engaged citizenship, amid devaluation of care created by a neoliberal emphasis on entrepreneurialism. However, performing intense motherhood offers strategic advantage for homeless mothers by enabling them to be read as ‘legible’. This highlights the utility of motherhood as a framework to understand welfare citizenship.

Item Type:	Article
Date Type:	Published Online
Status:	In Press
Schools:	Social Sciences (Includes Criminology and Education)
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
ISSN:	1474-7464
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	29 February 2024
Date of Acceptance:	4 December 2023
Last Modified:	01 Mar 2024 15:45
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/166681

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