The Florida Project

 

Richard C. Fording (University of Kentucky)

Sanford F. Schram (Bryn Mawr College)

Joe Soss (University of Minnesota)

 

 

Project Description

This project is a collaborative, multi-method study of the neoliberal-paternalist system of poverty governance that has been emerging in the United States over the last two decades. We seek to understand how some of the defining features of the neoliberal-paternalist system, including second order (state-to-local) devolution, privatization and performance measurement, affect contemporary welfare administration and the well-being of welfare families. Specifically, our goals are to analyze (a) variation in sanction policies and processes across regions of the state, (b) variation in the ways sanction policies are understood and applied on the frontlines of welfare-to-work offices, and (c) the effects of organizational, client-level, and local-contextual factors on TANF sanction rates in the state of Florida.

 

Our analyses of Florida’s system are based on four related data sources: administrative data on all Florida TANF cases from January 2000 through May 2004, documentary data regarding policy variation across the state’s 24 Regional Workforce Boards, a survey administered to all of the state’s approximately 250 TANF case managers (with an embedded experiment), and field research consisting of observation and interviews in purposively selected street-level offices known as “one-stop centers.”

 

Publications and Working Papers

 

Soss, Joe, Richard C. Fording and Sanford F. Schram. Disciplining the Poor: Neoliberal Paternalism and the Persistent Power of Race (Book manuscript under contract with University of Chicago Press).

 

Soss, Joe, Richard C. Fording and Sanford F. Schram.  "Governing the Poor: The Rise of the Neoliberal Paternalist State.” Presented at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, September 4, 2009, Toronto, CA.

 

Schram, Sanford F., Linda Houser, Joe Soss, Richard C. Fording, Paul Rosenstein, and Tatiana Winterbottom.“The Recovery Model Comes to Welfare: Oblates, Advanced Marginalization, and Neoliberal Paternalism.” Presented at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, September 3, 2009, Toronto, CA.

 

Fording, Richard C., Joe Soss, and Sanford F. Schram. “Distributing Discipline: Race, Politics, and Punishment at the Frontlines of Welfare Reform.” Invited to revise and resubmit at American Journal of Sociology.

 

Soss, Joe, Richard C. Fording and Sanford F. Schram. “The Organization of Discipline: From Performance Management to Perversity

and Punishment.”  Forthcoming at Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory.

 

Schram, Sanford F., Joe Soss, Richard C. Fording and Linda Houser. 2009. “Deciding to Discipline: A Multi-Method Study of Race, Choice, and Punishment at the Frontlines of Welfare Reform .” American Sociological Review, 74(3), 398-422.

 

Soss, Joe, Richard C. Fording, and Sanford F. Schram. 2008. “The Color of Devolution: Race, Federalism, and the Politics of Social Control.”  American Journal of Political Science 52, 3 (July): 536-553.

 

Schram, Sanford F., Richard C. Fording and Joe Soss.  2008. “Neoliberal Poverty Governance: Race, Place and the Punitive Turn in

U.S. Welfare Policy.” Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society 1, 1 (April): 17-36.

 

Fording, Richard C., Joe Soss, and Sanford F. Schram. 2007. “Devolution, Discretion and the Impact of Local Political Values on TANF Sanctioning.” Social Service Review 81(2):285-316.

 

Presentations

 

“Sanctions as a Policy Tool in the Transformed System of Welfare-to-Work.” Presented at the 11th Annual Welfare Research and

Evaluation Conference, Administration for Children and Families, May 28-30, 2008, Washington, D.C.

 

“The Implementation of Sanctions in Florida’s Welfare Transition (WT) Program.” Presentation for Workforce Florida, Inc., and the

Florida Department of Children and Families, Tallahassee, Florida, September 19, 2006.

 

Reports

 

“Devolution, Discretion and the Impact of Local Political Values on TANF Sanctioning.” Published in Insights on Southern

Poverty, the newsletter of the University of Kentucky Center for Poverty Research, Vol. 4 (1), Spring 2006.

 

“Experimental  Evidence of the Influence of Race and Ethnicity on TANF Sanctioning.” Published in Insights on Southern

Poverty, the newsletter of the University of Kentucky Center for Poverty Research, Vol. 6 (2), Spring 2009.

 

Funding Sources

 University of Kentucky Center for Poverty Research

Annie E. Casey Foundation

Institute for Research on Poverty at the University of Wisconsin

Center on Ethnicities, Communities and Social Policy at Bryn Mawr College