Abstract

In this article, I interrogate the participation of grassroot associations within contemporary welfare regimes. Drawing on my fieldwork in New York, I focus on the parent advocacy practices promoted by mothers who were involved in a case with the Administration of Children Services (ACS). While their focus on empowerment addresses a need for parents’ redemption and visibility within a system that criminalizes and marginalizes them, advocates find themselves constantly having to negotiate the fine line between co-optation and contestation to continue to exist as a political subject. The article contextualizes this tension within the broader debate on the fragmentation and privatization of welfare services, arguing that an ethnographic gaze reveals how new political subjects exceeding the dichotomy between institutions and civil society emerged.