The colonization of (M)others in welfare-to-work education

This article argues that welfare reform policies colonize poor mothers. Using ethnographic data of a welfare-to-work educational program, the article analyzes how colonizing public and governmental discourses about welfare mothers infiltrate the program's educational policy and everyday practices. Using postcolonial theory that establishes an epistemological foundation of colonization, it is demonstrated that poor mothers are defined in public discourse and in the classroom as irreconcilable others whom colonizers have a moral obligation to colonize through efficient administration. As a form of welfare administration, welfare-to-work education neither fully colonizes nor fully educates, but rather produces a resistant student.