“For People Like You”: Exploring Deservingness and Entitlement in Middle‐Class Responses to the Canadian Emergency Response Benefit During the COVID ‐19 Pandemic

Abstract

In March 2020, the COVID‐19 pandemic first reached Ottawa, Ontario, dramatically shaping policy and the lives of residents in the years that followed. From the loss of jobs to the loss of loved ones, many experienced an intense period of fear, loneliness, and uncertainty in those first few months. This article explores how the introduction of the Canadian Emergency Response Benefit (CERB), a social program that targeted un‐ and underemployed people, renewed public discourse about the purpose of welfare. It begins by tracing how the state incited residents to adopt certain attitudes about financial aid and how some residents took up this framing when identifying deserving recipients of aid. It then explores how some young middle‐class residents evaluated their eligibility for CERB in relation to their middle classness amid increasing precarity. Ultimately, this article exhibits the ambivalences some residents felt regarding whether they were entitled to or deserving of financial aid and contrasts the ethical and experienced differences between these two conceptions of welfare. This study is based on fieldwork conducted during the first waves of COVID‐19, combining participant observation, interviews, and online observation.