Working for Inclusion? Conditional Cash Transfers, Rural Women, and the Reproduction of Inequality

Abstract

Throughout the global South, conditional cash transfer programmes (CCTs) are used to promote socially inclusive development. CCTs are widely evaluated for their capacity to build children's human capital. In contrast, this paper aims to hold "social inclusion" to account by elucidating the impacts of Peru's CCT "Juntos" on the poor, rural mothers who are expected to meet programme conditions. Grounded in extensive ethnographic research in households, clinics, schools, and village halls, the paper interrogates the work of social inclusion in spaces where uneven development manifests itself in privation. Considered in light of critical feminist theories of performativity and social reproduction, the findings shed light on a far less optimistic reality for the work of social inclusion. This paper contributes a rich empirical account to critical literature on cash transfers and the discourses that drive them, and suggests that the circumstances under which women are required to fulfil programme conditions challenge the substance of contemporary "inclusive" development.

Conditional cash transfers for primary education: Which children are left out?

“…Another possible way to increase participation is to relax conditionality in the program. Relaxing conditionality can increase participation by reducing the burden of complying with conditions (Cookson, 2016, Ma et al, 2017). For example, relaxing conditionality may incentivize children to attend school at least some of the time.…”

Strategies of conditional cash transfers and the tactics of resistance

“…While the urban poor may be gaining better access to citizenship rights (Lo Vuolo, 2013;Rego and Pinzani, 2013;Sugiyama, 2013), the rural poor confront different landscapes and thus cannot be lumped uncritically with their urban counterparts (e.g., Cookson, 2016).…”

“…Yet as researchers have observed elsewhere (Ballard, 2013;Standing, 2011), such regulations are by no means unique to Brazil: they are common to Conditional Cash Transfer programs (CCTs) like PBF, where social welfare for the poor comes with strings attached. On the one hand comes desperately needed income assistance, while on the other comes a host of obligations that must be fulfilled by program recipients (Cookson, 2016;Sener, 2015). Sam Hickey notes that although poverty reduction schemes like CCTs are crucial to reducing hunger, they also seek to induce specific and desired behaviors within poor populations through program conditionalities (2010).…”

“…Using tactics, PBF beneficiaries push back against obligations laid upon them by the state, and even make use of conditionalities to voice demands for improved public services. In addition to shedding much needed light on the tactics of CCT recipients, this article also explores important spatial differences between urban and rural contexts (Cookson, 2016;Parsons, 2015). To better understand how CCT conditionalities operate on the ground -particularly for those who live outside of major urban areas -more focus is needed on the ways poor people make do, balancing daily household needs with the requirements, protocol, and obligations of the state.…”

Political Crisis and Institutional Resilience: Conditional Cash Transfers under Scrutiny in Brazil and Philippines

“…A formidable body of research from fieldwork through longstanding relations in non-metropolitan communities has shown that CCTs, in the nominal interest of women's development, add hours of unpaid labour, increase burdens and responsibilities without access to the stipulated benefits, and reincorporate women within existing or traditional paradigms of patriarchal power (see e.g. Molyneaux 2006;Cookson 2016). Sarah Bradshaw (2008a) argues the links between the negative impacts of SAPs and the 'social adjustment' impositions of CCTs on beneficiaries by which the poor are adversely incorporated into asymmetrical relations regarding their input to the economy: the IFI's SPP thus acts as a foil for a reinvigorated economic growth platform.…”