Premium
Alternative Economic Strategies in Low‐Income Rural Communities: TANF, Labor Migration, and the Case of the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation *
Author(s) -
Pickering Kathleen
Publication year - 2000
Publication title -
rural sociology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.083
H-Index - 65
eISSN - 1549-0831
pISSN - 0036-0112
DOI - 10.1111/j.1549-0831.2000.tb00347.x
Subject(s) - reservation wage , unemployment , welfare , reservation , labour economics , economics , wage , human capital , work (physics) , economic growth , development economics , market economy , political science , mechanical engineering , engineering , law
The premise of current welfare policies is that recipients are avoiding work and that requiring work will end welfare dependency. Unemployment is equated with labor market inexperience and economic inactivity. The Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, a poor rural community with high unemployment, contradicts these assumptions. Many Lakota individuals have off‐reservation wage work experience; there simply are not enough local jobs to absorb their human capital. Lakota households, however, are involved in a complex combination of socially embedded economic activities outside wage work. Imposing the premises of TANF on Pine Ridge results in indirect pressures toward urban migration and cultural assimilation. Furthermore, by imposing rigid notions of work, TANF runs the risk of destroying the economic flexibility that makes survival possible for poor households in Pine Ridge. Welfare and development policies need to reflect the real economies of rural American Indian reservations rather than those of superficially assimilated and economically imagined communities.