Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

Scholars have documented the economic decline of rural America over the past thirty years, citing the dwindling of agricultural, extractive, and manufacturing industries in rural communities, the rise of low-wage service employment, and limited human capital (Slack 2010; Lichter and Schafft 2016.). Popular discourse frames rural economic decline as detrimental to rural whites, but in fact data make clear that racial and ethnic minorities overwhelmingly bear the burden of stalled rural economic growth. Blacks, Latinos, and Native Americans in rural areas experience higher rates of poverty than rural whites. In 2016, nearly 33 percent of rural Blacks, 32 percent of rural Native Americans, and 26 percent of rural Latinos were in poverty, compared to only 14 percent of rural whites.

Rural sociologists attribute these disparities to the historical legacy of racial discrimination and insular social networks reinforce racial inequality (Duncan 1996; Duncan and Coles 1999). Rural ethnographies suggest that these characteristics of rural communities have deep significance for the marginalized (Sherman 2006; 2009; 2017; Duncan 1999; 2015) but we know surprisingly little about how public welfare agencies reinforce racial inequality in the rural South. Most studies of welfare offices examine agencies in suburban or urban communities (Hays, 2003; Watkins-Hayes 2009; Soss et al., 2011). Research has not yet examined how “small-town” norms, values, hierarchies, and politics make their way into the day-to-day life of welfare offices to affect poverty and obstruct or promote social mobility among the racially marginalized in the very places where poverty among these groups most predominates.

Through a community and organizational ethnography of three North Carolina counties begins to answer this question by examining how the economic constraints of a rural community shape the workforce of rural welfare offices. Findings from interviews (n=120) and participant observations suggest that caseworkers in rural communities emerge as an elite group of “haves” because they have steady employment, income, and the prospect of retirement—in communities that lack viable job prospects. Entrée into these elite positions depends on “who you know,” an individual’s social and family connections. This deference to social standing and family reputation in hiring agency workers results in a workforce that lacked skills, experience, and the professional motivation to deliver high-quality services. Further, it exacerbates the social and economic divide between clients and bureaucrats.