Ernie Lightman

Learning achievement, social adjustment, and family conflict among Bedouin-Arab children from polygamous and monogamous families.

Abstract A sample of 146 Bedouin-Arab pupils from polygamous and monogamous families participated in this study, which was conducted in a Bedouin-Arab village in the Negev, Israel. The authors compared learning achievement, social adjustment, and family conflict. Data revealed differences between the two groups: The children from monogamous families had higher levels of learning achievement than did the children from polygamous families; in addition, those from monogamous families adjusted to the school framework better than did those from polygamous families. The mean conflict rating of children from polygamous families was higher than that of their counterparts from monogamous families. The fathers level of education tended to be inversely correlated with family size in terms of both number of children and number of wives.

Barriers to Employment Among Women With Complex Episodic Disabilities

The expansion of the global economy, characterized by shifts in the organization of labor markets, has increased demands for flexible employment. Changes from standard, permanent employment relationships to nonstandard or “precarious” work arrangements have become the normative template in many work settings. Although significant scholarship explores precarious employment among the nondisabled, little work examines precarious work among persons with disabilities, especially women. Drawing on a secondary analysis of a series of longitudinal, semistructured interviews, this article explores the personal and structural barriers to employment that five women with complex episodic disabilities identify as welfare recipients within the context of precarious employment. Implications for practice relationships and policy that consider an alternative understanding of (dis)ability and employability as a contingent, fluid embodiment are considered.

Exploring the Local Implementation of Ontario Works

Similarly, Ernie Lightman, Dean Herd, and Andrew Mitchell argue that the role of the federal government has been redefined rather than removed from welfare policy. While the decentralization of the Canada Health and Social Transfer resulted in the Ontario governments further downloading of responsibilities to the municipalities, the policy framework is still established by the federal government.

Precarious Lives: Work, Health and Hunger among Current and Former Welfare Recipients in Toronto

ABSTRACT This article explores the impact of welfare reform in Ontario, Canada, by reporting on three rounds of annual, in-dept qualitative interviews with a longitudinal panel of current and former welfare recipients in Toronto. Two years after they were first interviewed, participants continued to live precarious lives, both on welfare and off. Whether “welfare poor” or “working poor,” most respondents reported compromised hunger status, fear of, as well as actual hunger and monotonous diets lacking necessary nutrition. These findings provide valuable insight into longer-term impacts on labor market restructuring and welfare reform on health and hunger among the vulnerable and marginalized and offer direction to policymakers in response.

Cycling Off and On Welfare in Canada

Internationally, traditional approaches to social assistance (welfare) have increasingly been replaced with ‘active’ labour market policies. Alongside other industrialised countries, Canada embraced this shift, with its emphasis on the ‘shortest route’ to paid employment. There has been little research on the outcomes of these dramatic changes in Canada, especially longer term. This article explores the post-welfare labour market experiences of people who were on social assistance in Canada in 1996. It uses the longitudinal micro-data files of the Survey of Labour and Income Dynamics (SLID) from Statistics Canada, which tracks a panel of recipients over five years. We examine the mixing of work and welfare, the transition from welfare to work, and selected labour market indicators – primarily hours of work and wages – that those in receipt of social assistance face in assuming paid work. Those leaving welfare for work face precarious employment opportunities. Leavers earn lower wages, work fewer hours and consequently have lower annual earnings than non-recipients. Over time the gap narrows but remains significant, even after six years. Returns to welfare are frequent. Overall, even after six years most social assistance recipients remained marginalised in the periphery of the labour market.

‘Work First’ and Immigrants in Toronto

This paper examines the experiences of immigrants in Toronto as they pass through, and leave, Ontario Works (OW), a ‘Work First’ approach to social assistance that prioritizes rapid labour force attachment. We examine the Ontario Works activities of immigrants, compared to native born Canadians, and their respective post-OW job characteristics. We find that immigrants experience a significant relative wage disadvantage after participation, and substantially less wage growth when moving to the second post-welfare job. We conclude that Ontario Works, like most ‘work first’ employment programs, is ill-suited to addressing earnings disadvantage among immigrants. We suggest that programs ‘beyond work first’, though not targeted specifically towards immigrants, might nevertheless offer more assistance. The recurring wage disadvantage, however, would remain unaddressed and might require more direct intervention.

Searching for Local Solutions: Making Welfare Policy on the Ground in Ontario

Over recent decades welfare dependency has played a powerful role in defining the welfare “problem” and in passing appropriate “solutions.” One result has been the proliferation of short-term, low-cost employment programs and training programs that have emerged as critical sites for challenging and reforming the attitudes and behaviors of welfare recipients. By exploring work-readiness programs in four communities in Ontario, Canada, we provide insight into how these programs relate to the lived realities of those compelled to attend them. The research shows how dependency discourse informs program rules and content, raising expectations about both the benefits and the immediacy of work. This focus risks individualizing blame and ignoring the structural realities of labor markets and the systemic forces that create poverty and unemployment. Although the particular empirical focus is on Ontario, the approaches used and their outcomes resonate with strategies that are evident wherever neoliberalism has made its mark.

Fostering Resistance, Cultivating Decolonization: The Intersection of Canadian Colonial History and Contemporary Arts Programming With Inuit Youth

Using a case study of a social circus program developed for Inuit youth in Northern Quebec, this research analyzes how social service programs developed for indigenous youth must be understood and designed in relation to colonial history. Focusing on the program’s contradictory and complex role in assimilation, acculturation, and cultural preservation, we analyze how colonial dynamics can be recapitulated despite best intentions. Youths’ acts of resistance to the program are analyzed as microinteractional efforts toward decolonization rather than instances of “maladaptive” behavior. We discuss how such programs can foster decolonization and the implications of such an approach for program evaluation.

Mediating Communities and Cultures: A Case Study of Informal Helpers in an Old Order Mennonite Community

This paper reports on a qualitative case study exploring the significance of informal helpers in a closed, traditional ethno-religious Old Order Mennonite community in rural Ontario. Three key points are discussed. First, respondents expressed that a persons ability, wisdom, and usefulness to the community must be earned rather than assumed on the basis of credentials or professional status. Second, the role of informal helpers is honored by community members, regardless of whether it is recognized by the world around them. And finally, the function of informal helpers as cultural brokers is vital to the preservation of the community. When outside professional intervention is considered necessary, respect for established traditions requires primary engagement and negotiation with informal helpers.

Restructuring Canada's Welfare State

This paper highlights the development of the welfare state in Canada to its peak in the mid-1960s, and then traces the retreat from that height. While federalism and the complex relations between Ottawa and the provinces clearly represent a complicating factor, the paper argues that the fiscal crisis of the state has been the primary influence in the decline. As a major trading economy, Canada could not be immune from the onset of worldwide monetarism, though its effects were felt relatively late. Canadian monetarism has been marked by high taxes, an unwillingness/inability to cut government spending, and a singular absence of the anti-welfare state rhetoric of Reaganomics or Thatcherism. Neo-liberal outcomes are still likely to emerge, however, though they will be couched in market language and the need to be competitive internationally, particularly after the 1988 Free Trade Agreement with the United States.