Feminising neoliberal failure: problematisation, individualism, and resistance

The neoliberal turn within welfare systems internationally has responsibilised individuals for their own poverty, homelessness and economic precarity. This shifts the focus away from the gendered inequalities inherent in a flawed, inequitable system (Miller and Rose, Reference Miller and Rose2008; Lemke, Reference Lemke2010; Schram et al., Reference Schram, Soss, Houser and Fording2010; Stonehouse et al., Reference Stonehouse, Threlkeld and Farmer2015). The cornerstone of this approach is the process of ‘activation’, wherein citizens recognise, embrace, and internalise their responsibility to become ‘economic-rational actors’ (Stonehouse et al., Reference Stonehouse, Threlkeld and Farmer2015: 395): to seek out and manage opportunities to move away from state dependence, and do so proactively, and in a way in which the risk to the state is minimised (Peck and Tickell, Reference Peck and Tickell2002; McKee, Reference McKee2009; Joseph, Reference Joseph2013; Hickman et al., Reference Hickman, Kemp, Reeve and Wilson2017).

Women as a group, and mothers especially, are likely to be reliant upon state resources, reflecting, in part, their greater difficulties in operating as independent economic actors (Hall et al., Reference Hall, McIntosh, Neitzert, Pottinger, Sandhu, Stephenson, Reed and Taylor2017). Yet this relies upon meeting gendered, classed, and racialised standards of legibility of need (Meyers, Reference Meyers2011), which centres passivity, submission, and disempowerment (Schippers, Reference Schippers2007). Dunn (Reference Dunn2010) argues that women are subject to complex, contradictory narratives of deservedness, which structure the legibility of their needs and shape their interactions with public services. To be overly passive risks loss of sympathy, meaning that a woman may then be blamed for failing to avert negative outcomes. Yet if she is too assertive she risks being read as not requiring help, or even as deliberately mendacious and deceptive (see also Meyers, Reference Meyers2011; Sweet, Reference Sweet2019). There is also some evidence that neoliberal welfare activation operates in a gendered manner. Writing of domestic abuse interventions, Sweet (Reference Sweet2019) has shown that programs of ‘empowerment’ and ‘resilience’ responsibilise individual women for resolving structural issues (poverty, poor housing, discrimination), notably by teaching them to perform acceptance of an individualised narrative of these structural issues. This rests upon an implicit, structural understanding of female deservedness in terms of passivity and willingness to accept lack of agency, and understands vulnerability and helplessness as personal properties, rather than a product of structural inequalities (Meyers, Reference Meyers2011; Reppond and Bullock, Reference Reppond and Bullock2020; Sweet, Reference Sweet2021).

Disciplinary, top-down discourse is not simply restrictive; it also produces resistance through the process of reproduction to produce location and temporally specific enactments of discourse tailored to the specific situation. This can be seen in the ways in which marginalised women have responded to the narratives deployed against them. They are especially likely to be seen in terms of pariah femininity (Skeggs, Reference Skeggs2004), reflected in repeated moral panic discourse in which poor women are proposed to be the primary undoers of modern society (Cruikshank, Reference Cruikshank1999; Skeggs, Reference Skeggs2004). Feminist scholars have considered how poor women strategically shape their performances of societal alignment to secure help from multiple, often oppositional, sources amid competing discourses. Kamran (Reference Kamran2021) proposes the term ‘patchwork femininities’ to understand the skilled strategic deployment of different performances of femininity characterising marginalised womanhood. This approach is temporarily and spatially contingent, with women moving between different performances of femininity – submissive, docile, and passive, or activated and assertive, according to the different conventions of the setting – to secure context-dependent ‘femininity premium’ in terms of social capital (Reay, Reference Reay, Adkins and Skeggs2004; Ispa-Landa and Oliver, Reference Ispa-Landa and Oliver2020).

Mothering while homeless: stigma, fear and othering

Hays (Reference Hays1996) argues that modern motherhood is characterised by a single-minded focus upon the current and future needs of the idealised, heteronormative child, through normalisation of ‘child centred, expert-guided, emotionally exhausting, labor intensive and financially expensive’ practices of mothering (Hays, Reference Hays1996: 122, see also Edelman, Reference Edelman2004).

Motherhood operates at a nexus of classed, gendered and racialised ideologies. Recognisable ‘ideal’ or intensive, mothering requires a performance of inexhaustible patience, apparently instinctive self-sacrifice, rendering women consumed by children’s physical, intellectual, and emotional needs; a ‘good mother’ has no significant identity aside from motherhood (Hays, Reference Hays1996; Douglas and Michaels, Reference Douglas and Michaels2005; Henderson et al., Reference Henderson, Harmon and Houser2010; Christopher, Reference Christopher2012; Rich, Reference Rich2021). Legible ideal mothering can be strategically important, offering status which affords women some authority in their interactions with authorities (Lo, Reference Lo2016; Mayock et al., Reference Mayock, Bretherton and Baptista2016; Evans, Reference Evans2022; England, Reference England2023b). In contrast to ideal motherhood, abject mothers – those seen as overly focused on their own needs to the detriment of their children – are othered, and the source of social disgust (Tyler, Reference Tyler2020). Mothers who are in receipt of state support, and who therefore occupy a liminal, contradictory position incorporating both a maternal and a welfare-recipient identity, have been targeted for systematic devaluation over the last few decades (Allen et al., Reference Allen, Tyler and De Benedictis2014; Jensen and Tyler, Reference Jensen and Tyler2015; Evans, Reference Evans2022). Childbearing itself among poor women has been consistently reframed not as a maternal, sacrificial act but as a cynical and calculated attempt to increase their claim upon scarce resources, as seen in repeated moral panics over poor women’s access to housing support (Cruikshank, Reference Cruikshank1999; Davis, Reference Davis, Harrison and Davis2001). Jensen (Reference Jensen2018) suggests that because neoliberalism both individualises and centralises mothering, making it a critical vector for children’s success, it opens up a space for the maternal behaviour of ‘maternal abjects’ to become legible according to middle class values. In demanding that their children, just as middle-class children, benefit from ‘maternal time’, they assert their identity as mothers, replacing a narrative of them as failed economic citizens with one of successful motherhood (see also Allen et al., Reference Allen, Tyler and De Benedictis2014). Allen et al., (Reference Allen, Tyler and De Benedictis2014) have shown, in their exploration of the cultural production of ‘maternal abjects’ through ‘poverty porn’ television, that maternal poverty invokes two incompatible narratives of their maternal value. Their lack of paid economic activity, unwillingness to prioritise productivity, and apparent disinterest in delayed gratification render their mothering a potential vector of state dependency for their children. Yet they can also be understood as idealised mothers engaging in the intensely heteronormative act of caring for their children and wider community.

The home is well-established as a locale of critical importance to the social value replicatory function of heteronormative, idealised motherhood, with good mothering reliant upon a safe, private, secure, and stable base (Cramer, Reference Cramer2005; Bimpson et al., Reference Bimpson, Parr and Reeve2020). To be without a home therefore produces immediate social anxiety over mothering (Cramer, Reference Cramer2005; Bimpson et al., Reference Bimpson, Parr and Reeve2020). Becoming homeless brings poor families, especially those headed by a lone female, into the full view of the state, and renders their once-private activities public and subject to scrutiny (Cruikshank, Reference Cruikshank1999; Henderson et al., Reference Henderson, Harmon and Houser2010; Bimpson et al., Reference Bimpson, Parr and Reeve2020). Homelessness is also a location where forms of power enabled by maternal identity can manifest.

Yet there is also growing evidence that mothers facing social marginalisation adopt complex and resistive strategies to protect themselves and their children. Women deploy strategic performances of femininity and motherhood to navigate stigma, for instance by portraying themselves as receptive and engaged applicants willing to modify their behaviour in line with the requirements placed upon them by frontline workers (Silver, Reference Silver2010; Sweet, Reference Sweet2019). Cruikshank (Reference Cruikshank1999) observes that women are often highly receptive to understanding what is required of them to succeed within welfare systems, since this affords them the opportunity for autonomy. Evans (Reference Evans2022) work adds to literature which demonstrates that women themselves deploy complex and nuanced psychological strategies to reframe the stigma of claiming benefits in order to valorised unpaid maternal care, affording sustaining strategies to help them and their children survive poverty and economic exclusion (see also Reppond and Bullock, Reference Reppond and Bullock2020).

Data and methods

Maternal time: exhaustion and activation

Capitalist systems demand physical dedication from citizens, with psychological submission achieved through exclusive, exhaustive use of human bodies and devaluing activities deemed irrelevant to economic citizenship, such as care (Foucault, Reference Foucault1979; Tronto, Reference Tronto2017). This double problematisation faced by working class and poor women requires navigating contradictory discourses of passivity and activation (Skeggs, Reference Skeggs2004; Dunn, Reference Dunn2010). This section argues that homeless mothers must navigate contradictory demand of being an attentive caregiver but also an economically engaged citizen.

Mothers’ performative commitment to activation is essential to being read a ‘good mother’. However, activation demands time and resources and compromises their ability to provide the quality and extent of maternal labour that their children need. One woman articulated a sense that she could never fully commit to being present with her children because she had to remain alert to opportunities. The week previously she had cancelled an anticipated, needed family trip to respond to an agent.

This disappointment negatively impacted their emotional wellbeing significantly ‘We needed a bit of space…I had them scrapping, whinging, I’m banging my head on a brick wall, crawling up them walls I am.’ Her friend, a young mother with a toddlerFootnote ¹ , echoed her sense that the precarity of homeless mothering rendered their family time less important than neoliberal activation. She articulated a sense that being homeless undermined her ability to provide the stable, secure base that she associated with family life, but also her own mental and emotional peace.

Mothers felt that hostels dismissed the long-term disruption to motherhood bonds caused by the imperative to seek accommodation. They felt that their maternal labour was regarded as substitutable, with little importance placed upon their specific bonds with their own children, or the work that went into creating and sustaining them. For instance, the anxiety they felt over depriving their children of maternal time was dismissed as resolvable through use of hostel childcare support. But, as discussed, this ignored their sense that homelessness meant that their children had an amplified need for mothering, which meant that simply providing physical safety, and distraction, was not a satisfactory alternative to maternal time. One mother explained how she felt encouraged to frame her instinct that mothering intensively to compensate for the trauma of homelessness was a personal choice – satisfying her naïve, and potentially selfish, desire for connection with her children, but irrelevant to them.

Responding to their children’s urgent emotional and psychological needs arising from homelessness was widely felt to be a natural and logical priority by homeless mothers, reflecting an intense mothering prioritisation. Intense, child-focused mothering was seen as an essential protective mechanism to avoid, or at least minimise, trauma. In this, they often drew upon their own early experiences: a high proportion mentioned having experienced homelessness or other forms of housing insecurity in their early lives. One young homeless mother articulated how her children’s experience of homelessness – which she found distressing and saw as evidencing her own maternal failure – made proactive, protective, time-intense mothering – as she put it ‘being a 110 per cent mum’ essential if long term trauma was to be avoided.

Decision making around maternal time then brought into relief the impossibility of neoliberal activation for those engaged in caring responsibilities, reflecting Allen et al.’s (Reference Allen, Tyler and De Benedictis2014) observation that poor women must defend their children’s rights to their time against the demand that, as poor women, their priority should be to maximise their economic productivity. In the next section the failure to recognise or validate maternal care is explored further by considering how maternal care was understood by workers responsible for processing applicants through the system.

Maternal failure: interpreting caring as disengagement

Reflecting the broader devaluation of care and affective labour within neoliberalism (Tronto, Reference Tronto2017) maternal care itself was poorly anticipated within homelessness services, and often implied to be frivolous or even an obstacle to resolving housing issues. This section argues that the neoliberal emphasis on entrepreneurial problem-solving devalues the importance of maternal care. A positioning of mothering labour as an indulgent, irresponsible, distraction was summed up by one worker as “sitting around all day in pyjamas watching Teletubbies while the landlord is knocking the door down.” These staff were frustrated by a sense that mothers were inclined to focus upon their children’s current, immediate, needs, and to prioritise time with them. Poor mothers were seen as having an especial responsibility to overcome their homelessness to enable their children to have a home, to the extent that they equated good motherhood with indefatigably seeking somewhere to live. While acknowledging that women faced hardships and difficulties in seeking private rented accommodation, this was seen as an obstacle which a good mother needed to overcome. To be unwilling to assert oneself to the detriment of their children – for instance, by failing to engage proactively with the process of looking for housing – was explicitly conceptualised by some workers as a form of parental neglect. “If you can’t be bothered to look for housing and you’ve got kids, that’s not taking good care of them, is it? How’s that right?” Workers pointed out that homelessness legislation was supplemented by additional protection for children from homelessness and that parental failure to secure or maintain a safe home could be grounds to increase state surveillance of parenting.

Neoliberal activation extends beyond simply performing a series of prescribed actions, but rather demands that individuals operate entrepreneurially, taking responsibility for solving problems creatively and flexibly. Considerable frustration was articulated by workers toward applicants, particularly mothers, who were seen as failing to take ownership of the process of looking for housing. They were characterised as ‘doing the bare minimum’ or ‘going through the motions.’ This was surprising because these women were, on the face of it, highly compliant, appearing to be willing to engage, and yet, in practice, they did not seem to make progress with finding accommodation. Workers attributed this to a reluctance to take responsibility for decisions, and operate independently and without close instruction, as self-centred and selfish, undermining their commitment to their children.

Motherhood therefore created an expectation among caseworkers that applicants should be motivated to become activated, with searching for forms of accommodation which were specifically difficult for homeless mothers to access reframed as a necessary part of good mothering. As accounts from mothers themselves demonstrated, however, the behaviour read as passivity in fact often arose from their own commitment to the principles of good mothering, and especially from a desire to protect time with their children, and resources they needed to continue to mother their children to their own satisfaction.

Maternal submission: Securing legible deservedness

In this section we show that performing intense motherhood could offer a route to strategic advantage for homeless mothers by enabling them to be read as ‘legible’. Extending Lo’s (Reference Lo2016) observation that idealised motherhood can operate as a form of social currency in its own right, with value across different settings enabling poor women to access authority and power that would otherwise be denied them, mothers curated performances to highlight their own alignment with good motherhood. This was evident in descriptions of direct confrontation, where mothers described using their maternal status to justify assertiveness. One mother described how a careful production of maternal supplication centred her motherhood rather than her homelessness, enabling her to frame her demands as an understandable desire to protect her children. Amid a careful cultivation of idealised middle-class motherhood, she was also strategically assertive. This involved directly challenging the authority structure of the homelessness office, requesting that her case was dealt with by a more senior staff member, but contextualised this within her concern for her children.

A few mothers did also use mothering narratives to demand access to maternal time, drawing on awareness of risk of trauma and the moral imperative to protect their children’s innocence (Hays, Reference Hays1996) to assert their children’s need for additional mothering time, asserting their role as protectors. One young mother described how she framed her anger at being told that the help available to her family was limited as an insult to her children’s needs – “I’m not fussy for myself but for them two, there’s a minimum I’m prepared to accept, and I don’t think that’s unreasonable.” She had initially been told, by a frontline worker, that help would not be forthcoming, to the extent that they were not offered supported accommodation and were to be left sleeping on her mother’s sofaFootnote ² . Couching her anger within a rejection of the idea that her children’s homelessness should compromise their right to safety and security offered her a route to threaten involvement of external authorities in her case. Stating that her aim was to be “just the best mum I can be to these kids”, she drew on her awareness that although her motherhood was stigmatised within the local authority homelessness office, it also afforded her some symbolic capital, power, and authority in the wider world, which she could use judiciously to protect her children (Lo, Reference Lo2016) by, as she put it, “just going up to the next level”. This relied upon an awareness that her performance of motherhood offered her legibility which potentially enabled her to transcend bureaucratic rules (Silver, Reference Silver2010). This approach was successful, and the family was offered a space in a hostel where they had access to support.

Invoking maternal identity was, however, risky. As observed above, frontline workers were extremely wary of women profiting from their motherhood status. Lo (Reference Lo2016) has observed that where mothers cannot relate their requests back to advancing their children’s needs, they are more likely to be unsuccessful, and to attract approbation. Homeless mothers who were assertive about their children’s needs risked being read as mendacious and manipulative, as shown above.

At the same time, workers were surprisingly receptive to aggressive, angry behaviour from mothers. If it was contextualised within frustration at an inability to address their children’s homelessness, shouting, crying, and even threats could become legible to workers as evidence that a mother was ‘at that point, at the end of her rope’ and so could, paradoxically, communicate exhaustion to the extent that workers recognised women as good mothers ‘a young mum trying her hardest, I can sympathise.’ While workers stressed that these encounters were sometimes unpleasant, and upsetting, they seldom blamed the women themselves. Rather, these cases produced empathy, often in the form of a generalised frustration with systemic obstacles. As one worker put it, “Having to tell a young mum there’s still nothing [no housing]…I’ve had them crying and shouting….it’s the worst situation… so sad.”

This section has provided further evidence that performances of good mothering could offer a strategic advantage in securing legible deservedness and so access to scarce homelessness resources. This had to be carefully managed by women, demanding strategic, translational work to relate their difficulties back to their mothering. It demanded an acquiescence to and with restrictive narratives of maternal worth, and a willingness to perform, to an extent, ‘passive victimhood’. Yet it demonstrates the complexity of the subject position of homeless mothers: highly aware of, and skilled at strategically redeploying, narratives, some power could be exerted through strategic willingness to conform to apparently problematising stereotypes (Cruikshank, Reference Cruikshank1999). Welfare workers were also shown to valorise the motherhood of homeless women especially in moments when they were most demanding, provided that this was clearly related to their mothering activities. In these moments, ‘motherhood’ becomes legible within a wider context of child welfare. When viewed as a mechanism through which the wellbeing of children can be achieved, homeless motherhood becomes valued, and mothers are able to access maternal capital. Yet, as Lo (Reference Lo2016) observes, in this situation women’s value is entirely contingent upon their maternal behaviour, to the extent that, if their behaviour is read as ‘non-maternal’, they were at risk of being viewed highly critically.