Alternative economic strategies in low-income rural communities: TANF, labor migration, and the case of the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation.

摘要

The premise of current welfare policies is that recipients are avoiding work and that requiring work will end welfare dependency. Unemployment is equated with labour market inexperience and economic inactivity. The Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, a poor rural community with high unemployment, contradicts these assumptions in the USA. Many Lakota individuals have off-reservation wage work experience; there simply are not enough local jobs to absorb their human capital. Lakota households, however, areinvolved in a complex combination of socially embedded economic activities outside wage work. Imposing the premises of Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) on Pine Ridge results in indirect pressures toward urban migration and cultural assimilation. Furthermore, by imposing rigid notions of work, TANF runs the risk of destroying the economic flexibility that makes survival possible for poor households in Pine Ridge. Welfare and development policies need to reflect the real economies of rural American Indian reservations rather than those of superficially assimilated and economically imagined communities.