“It's embarrassing to come here”: Welfare‐to‐work, emotion rules, and emotional capital

Abstract

Neoliberal discourse about achievement impacts our cultural expectations for how people on welfare “should” feel regarding work, motivation, and shame. In this paper, we build on the literature on emotions, work, and inequality by examining the embeddedness of feeling rules in welfare‐to‐work programs. We analyze interviews with Ohio Works First cash assistance program managers in Ohio counties (n = 69) to understand how managers emphasize emotional displays that make clients more desirable to employers. We argue that welfare‐to‐work county managers value emotional capital based in the neoliberal and paternal ideologies of the State. We find that welfare managers use emotion rules to (1) emphasize pride and the role of emotional capital in workplace success and (2) invoke shame to discourage workplace failure. By emphasizing emotional capital as a pathway to success, Ohio Works First managers underplay structural factors contributing to poverty and social mobility.