Sibling Rivalry

This chapter highlights practices of welfare workers in Fargo and compares them to practices of refugee resettlement workers in order to better understand how these institutions have shaped citizenship as well as local race, class, and gender formations in similar and different ways by framing them as siblings in the kinship of neoliberalism. The chapter specifically talks about the Cass County Social Services and the New American Services. Like siblings, workers in both sectors have competed and cooperated as they have worked with New Americans in the city. These institutions and their locations in the public/private borderlands are important loci for understanding varying approaches to citizenship, immigration, race, labor and class, and gender. The chapter also talks about the 1966 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity and Reconciliation Act (PRWORA), or simply “welfare reform”.