Working-Class Women, Claims for Benefits, and the Politics of Deservingness under the Puerto Rican Populist State Available to Purchase

This chapter focuses on the social transformations that resulted from the creation of social welfare programs in Puerto Rico under the Popular Democratic Party, which ushered in populist reforms in the archipelago. It centers on the experiences of working-class women care workers who became clients of social welfare programs in the 1940s and 1950s. It examines how social welfare programs that at first sought to provide support for caregivers and those providing reproductive labor were increasingly focused on means-testing and regulatory measures. It emphasizes how struggles over defining “deservingness” for benefits were waged between social workers and became the subject of debates between social workers and social scientists over the twentieth century.