Trapped in Resistance: Collective Struggle through Welfare Fraud in Israel

• Published date: 01 December 2014
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/lasr.12110
• Date: 01 December 2014

Trapped in Resistance: Collective Struggle through

Welfare Fraud in Israel

Shiri Regev-Messalem

This paper offers a qualitative empirical examination of the noncompliance

of Israeli female welfare recipients with welfare laws and authorities. The

paper demonstrates that their behavior, defined as “welfare fraud” by the law,

is a limited form of collective resistance to the Israeli welfare state. Although

the acts of welfare fraud that the women in my study engaged in entail a

political claim against the state, the relationship between these acts and notions

of collectivity is very constricted in form. The women’s collectivity is shown to

be constrained by the welfare authorities’ invasive and pervasive investigation

practices and methods. Due to fear of disclosure to the authorities, the women

emerged as deliberately isolating themselves from their immediate environ-

ment and potential members of their like-situated collective. This weakens the

connection between the women’s acts of resistance and their collectivity, and

prevents their acts of resistance from driving social change, trapping them in

their harsh conditions and existence.

I’ll work under the table all my life, even if I know I’ll be a

millionaire. I’ll keep collecting welfare my whole life . . . I’ll do it

because of the anger inside of me . . . due to the injustice, their

stupid rules, for making us slaves to their criteria. (Nitza, Israeli

female welfare recipient)

Nitza, a single mother,is 33 years old with three young children.

She has been living on welfare for several years, since the birth of

her first child. Before becoming a mother, she had worked consis-

tently. The father of her children comes and goes. Although he has

tried to help with child support, his financial situation has deterio-

rated over time, and he too is on welfare. Nitza takes any work she

can get, but never reports her income to the National Insurance

Institute (NII)1even though she knows she is required to do so. She

did not also notify the authorities when the father of her children

Please direct all correspondence to Shiri Regev-Messalem, Law School, Bar Ilan Uni-

versity, Ramat-Gan, Israel; e-mail: shiri.regev@gmail.com.

1The National Insurance Institute of Israel is the state agency that administers all

social benefits programs in Israel.

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Law & Society Review, Volume 48, Number 4 (2014)

© 2014 Law and Society Association. All rights reserved.

came back to live with her in the apartment she was renting because

she knew it would disentitle her to welfare benefits. After failing to

pay her rent for a few months, Nitza left the flat and squatted with

her children in a public housing apartment, from which she was

eventually forcefully evicted by the police.

In this paper, I draw on 49 in-depth interviews with Israeli

female welfare recipients, like Nitza, to investigate whether their

seemingly unrelated individual acts of noncompliance with welfare

laws are connected. I have shown that although the fraudulent

behavior of these women encompasses a political claim against

the Israeli welfare state—and constitutes acts of individual

resistance—it has an extremely weak connection to any coherent

ideological perspective or collective practices of social support. The

women’s system of social support is severely restricted due to the

Israeli welfare state’s fraud investigation tactics of home visits and

obtaining information on recipients through informants, which

shape and fragmentize the women’s collective practices. As a result,

the women are trapped in individual resistance, and the potential

of their acts to generate any social change seems quite slim.

Since the late 1950s, historical, sociological, and socio-legal

studies have been documenting fraudulent acts and cheating

engaged in by the poor during the nineteenth and twentieth centu-

ries in various contexts, including across England (Thompson 1980)

and Italy (Hobsbawm 1959), in the slums of Mumbai, India (Boo

2013), in rural Malaysia (Scott 1985, 1990), in urban U.S. cities

(DeParle 2004; Edin and Lein 1997; Ewick and Silbey 1998; Gilliom

2001; Sarat 1990; White 1990), and in the context of black slavery in

South America (Buckmaster 1959; Genovese 1976). At the same

time, rich debate has arisen over the essence of these types of acts,

specifically whether they constitute individualistic, opportunistic

acts, or a form of protest and resistance. Some scholars, in their

descriptions of fraudulent acts by the poor, portray them as oppor-

tunistic, individual acts of survival, devoid of any political dimension

(Boo 2013; DeParle 2004; Edin and Lein 1997). In line with this

perception, traditional literature on welfare fraud views this behav-

ior as an individual criminal activity (e.g., Evason and Woods 1995;

Loveland 1989; MacDonald 1994; McKeever 1999; Martin 1992;

Rowlingson et al. 1997; Sainsbury 2003; Seccombe 2011). In con-

trast, other scholars treat such acts as political in nature. Initially,

these scholars examined the possible consistency and diver-

gences between acts conducted by the poor and social movements

and collective struggles (e.g., Buckmaster 1959; Genovese 1976;

Hobsbawm 1959; Piven 1979; Scott 1985; Thompson 1980). The

study of the actions of peasants, bandits, slaves, and the urban poor

through the prism of social movement struggles was based on the

conviction that collective forms of struggles are vital for altering the

742 Trapped in Resistance

existing structures of social power. This premise is grounded on

the notion that collective action derives its power from a coherent

ideological claim and some form of organization that enables coor-

dination of economic and political resources, allows strategic use of

these resources, and ensures the continuity of lower class political

mobilization over time (Piven 1979).

Scholars differ as to the potential of these resistant practices to

initiate structural change. Although most do agree that a coherent

ideological claim and system of organization are crucial for effective

resistance, they vary as to whether these features are observable

in concrete historical instances of resistance. Scott (1985), for

example, analyzed acts of passive noncompliance, evasion, and

deception in a Malaysian village as forms of class struggle with real

potential to escalate and transform the power structure, since they

represent a conscious claim against the rich and are fairly coordi-

nated and organized. However, studying the rural “social bandit”

and the “city mob,” Hobsbawm (1959) argued that these pheno-

mena constitute a primitive and archaic form of resistance, as

they present a simplistic ideological claim—of the poor against

the rich—and a very limited form of organization. Nonetheless—

whether historically present or not—both of these scholars seem to

agree that for such acts of “protest from below” to be effective, a

coherent ideological claim and collective practices supporting coor-

dination and organization of resources are imperative.

Since the mid-1980s, a vast body of scholarly work has contin-

ued to develop the conception of resistance (Abu-Lughod 1990;

Comaroff 1985; Dean and Melrose 1996, 1997; Ewick and Silbey

1992, 1998, 2003; Jordan 1993; Gilliom 2001; Sarat 1990; White

1990; Yngvesson 1993; Ziv 2004). Similar to the earlier writings on

resistance, this later literature emphasizes the power dynamics at

play in the struggles of the poor. By highlighting their individual

struggles and subversions, it sheds new light on the poor—and,

more specifically, welfare recipients—and shatters the image of the

helpless, simple, passive, unsophisticated person who surrenders to

a hegemonic ideology. This form of individual resistance was cel-

ebrated and lauded by scholars (Gilliom 2001; Sarat 1990; White

1990; Ziv 2004) for exposing “the inherent instability of seemingly

hegemonic structures, that power is diffused throughout society,

and that there are multiple possibilities for resistance by oppressed

people” (Handler 1992: 697–698). Thus, in contrast to the earlier

protest-from-below research, a central focus of the later studies was

the power of individuals. Consequently, they abandoned the theoreti-

cal approach connecting individual acts of noncompliance with

collective struggles. As McCann and March noted, “[t]he resistances

they [the later scholars] celebrate are not directly or extensively

connected to battles over the manifestation of racism, poverty,

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