Claiming Citizenship: The Political Dimension of Welfare Fraud

Abstract

This article exposes the political dimension of welfare fraud by investigating—in the context of the Israeli welfare reform of 2003—how forty‐nine Israeli women who live on welfare justify welfare fraud. I find that women's justifications cannot be fully explained by traditional noncompliance theories that view welfare fraud as an individual, private, criminal activity that solely reflects on the fraudster's moral character or desperate need. Instead, women's justifications for welfare fraud are better understood as a sociopolitical struggle for inclusion and deservedness—as a political act that reflects an alternative concept of citizenship with respect to women's unpaid care work.

Competing ethical regimes in a diverse society: Israeli military refusers

“…On the other hand, Mizrahim also frequently express antistate and antimilitary sentiments, including harsh criticism of government policy (Lavie ). For example, welfare fraud among lower‐class Mizrahi single mothers can be understood as a political act of resistance against state exclusion and maltreatment (Regev‐Messalem ). Similarly, male Mizrahi soldiers do not base their gender or national identity in the military; rather, they cultivate what Orna Sasson‐Levy calls a “home‐based masculinity” (2003, 319) that privileges the family over the military and the state.…”