Governing Through Less Governance: Women’s Shelters and the Creation of the “Shelter-Citizen”

• In Event: 4124 - Section on Race, Gender, and Class Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (100 min): Table 8. Identities/Subjectivity

Abstract

This paper theorizes the rules and programming deployed in Ontario women’s shelters as forms of neoliberal governance intended to transform clients into self-sufficient subject-citizens. While many researchers have explored and theorized the transitions to neoliberal governance within women’s shelters in recent decades, there is little scholarship on how shelter clients respond to such governance. Through interviews with shelter clients and staff, I illuminate how “shelter-citizens” internalize neoliberal ideals of independence, as they aspire to goals such as employment and home ownership. I also analyze 30 Ontario women’s shelters websites, focusing on the importance they place on clients attaining independence. I additionally contend that the governance strategies discussed may be less effective for women who differ from the White “shelter-citizen” ideal that is implied within shelter programming.

Author

• Natalie Julia Adamyk, University of Toronto