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APHA Scientific Session and Event Listing

Luann Good Gingrich, PhD, Atkinson Faculty of Liberal and Professional Studies, School of Social Work, York University, 1017 Kinsmen Building, 4700 Keele St., Toronto, ON M3J 1P3, Canada, 416-736-2100 x20028, luanngg@yorku.ca

Through the pervasive public ethos of unquestioning faith in monetarism and the free-play of market forces, social problems – managed through policy responses comprised of market mechanisms – dissolve into private troubles. This is the fused market-state, and its increasingly popular manifestation is the commodification of human rights and citizenship entitlements through welfare residualism. Paid work is central in the delivery of residualized social services, as a ‘citizen' is redefined as a self-sufficient consumer – and therefore a waged individual. Social services are designed with the express purpose of supplying educated, healthy, and emotionally stable workers for the highly competitive labour force. Managerialism – a core characteristic of the fused market-state – has given rise to complex systems of determining need and justifying service, and ultimately the discriminatory protection of human rights. Through a qualitative study of the experiences of Low German-speaking migrant farm labourers in southern Ontario, this paper examines the specific ways in which the reorganization of the public realm in market terms works to intensify and perpetuate social exclusion in all its forms – economic, spatial, socio-political. Tools of the market have come to figure front and centre at every stage of human service systems – design, access, delivery, and enforcement – and result in the unequal access to and distribution of food, education, health care, meaningful work, and economic, social, and cultural development. The marketization of each of these will be discussed, along with its impact on access to public goods and services, particularly for linguistic and cultural minority groups.

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