Latino immigrants encounter an entanglement of rights and policies after occupational injury or illness. In collaboration with an immigrant worker center, ethnographic research and a survey are used to analyze injured workers’ experiences. The center uses survey results to identify common threads and systematic problems, and to explore potential direct action. Through interviews with workers and medical and legal professionals, I investigate the barriers Latino immigrants face following occupational injury or illness, how their lived experiences relate to the greater medicolegal frameworks that demarcate most formal processes of compensation and treatment, and the experiences of professionals who mediate these structures. Research results confirm that immigrant workers lack information about their labor rights and the workers’ compensation system, which prevents them from filing claims, and contributes to the underreporting of workplace injuries. However, this research project also documents how workers who do file claims and report injuries are systematically barred access to redress due to a confluence of factors including unresponsive and fraudulent employers, biases in the medical system, discourses of deservingness, insufficient protections from retaliation, and the effects of a market-based medical system. I argue that future work-related injury prevention efforts should go beyond rights education, and include reforms to the compensation system.

This dissertation consists of three empirical studies that address questions regarding state welfare policy making in the post-welfare reform era. The first empirical study pays close attention to the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) as a federal block grant program, which is a big departure from most previous TANF studies, to ask why American states differ in their decisions to allocate federal block grants across specific programs. Drawing on research on fiscal federalism and state and cross-national welfare politics, the study uses cross-sectional time-series data covering 50 states over the fiscal years 2004-2016 to examine factors that have an impact on state child care spending under the TANF block grant. The results show that several political factors and one socio-economic factor impact states’ TANF child care spending in the hypothesized direction. Most importantly, the study finds that a specific state government’s TANF policy designed to encourage work matters in an interesting way. States’ emphasis on work of TANF recipients, measured by the existence of the TANF job-search rule, exerts a positive, independent effect on the percentage of state TANF child care spending, but the positive marginal effect of implementing the job-search rule becomes negative as the percentage of female state legislators passes 28%. The study shed lights on our general understanding of the factors that influence state allocations of federal block grants for an understudied but increasingly important policy program in the American states—child care. The second empirical study examines whether the selection of indicators of welfare policy commitment makes any difference for the findings in studies of the determinants of state welfare policy. If so, what difference does it make? While scholars of state welfare politics have long been making efforts to find better explanations for variation in welfare policy across American states, the literature as a whole has paid little attention to how differently scholars operationalize state welfare policy even though they examine a variety of welfare policy measures. To address these questions, I estimate a series of different panel data models with different measures of state welfare commitment for the period after the welfare reform of 1996. Comparing the results across these models shows that the choice of dependent variable measures affects the estimation results, thereby suggesting that empirical findings are dependent upon the measure we use. This finding not only shows that scholars need to be cautious in interpreting their results but also opens up a new puzzle as to why a factor affects a particular welfare measure but not others. The last empirical study addresses the question: do the effects of party politics differ across welfare policies? In answering this question, the study draws on the literature on deservingness and social construction of target populations and hypothesizes that party politics would play a differential role in explaining the generosity of different welfare policies depending on the perceived deservingness of target populations. To test this hypothesis, I estimate three models each for TANF, Supplemental Security Income-State Supplements (SSI-S), and Medicaid generosity covering the period after the welfare reform. I find that party politics still remains as an important predictor of state welfare generosity, especially where welfare policy for the deserving poor and mixed population in terms of its deservingness is concerned. Also, there are differential effects of party politics across the welfare policies examined, but sometimes in an unexpected direction. This study provides a valuable addition to the literature in that it updates and enriches our understanding of welfare politics.

Submitted by Kirla Ferreira (kirlacardoso@outlook.com) on 2018-03-27T13:51:09Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertacao Final.pdf: 1734762 bytes, checksum: 58702523e1dfcfd8be1d38bc6cab44aa (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Debora Nunes Ferreira (debora.nunes@fgv.br) on 2018-03-28T15:55:07Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertacao Final.pdf: 1734762 bytes, checksum: 58702523e1dfcfd8be1d38bc6cab44aa (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Suzane Guimarães (suzane.guimaraes@fgv.br) on 2018-03-28T16:08:18Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertacao Final.pdf: 1734762 bytes, checksum: 58702523e1dfcfd8be1d38bc6cab44aa (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2018-03-28T16:08:18Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertacao Final.pdf: 1734762 bytes, checksum: 58702523e1dfcfd8be1d38bc6cab44aa (MD5) / Envy has become popular as a marketing tool, and marketers are not only trying to evoke envy but also trying to convince consumers to use their products and brands to provoke envy in other consumers, so brands are strengthened. However, I demonstrate that malicious envy leads consumers to be more likely to choose a competing brand (analysis 2), and while benign envy increases consumers’ attitude toward a brand, malicious envy decreases their attitude toward a brand (analysis 3). Moreover, analysis 1 demonstrates that the effects of deservingness on malicious envy has a moderator factor (type of relationship) that affects how undeservingness is perceived, in terms of luck and deceit. The objective is to investigate the influence of deservingness and type of relationship (like or dislike a person) on benign and malicious envy, and the role of such envy subtypes on brand choice and brand attitude. The findings introduce a more nuanced view of the undeservingness effects and type of relationship, and contribute to the literature on brands and emotions, showing that each envy subtype brings different consequences for brands. / A inveja tornou-se popular como uma ferramenta de marketing, e os profissionais de marketing não somente tentam evocar inveja como também tentam convencer os consumidores a usar seus produtos e marcas para provocar inveja em outros consumidores, de modo que as marcas sejam fortalecidas. No entanto, eu demonstro que a inveja maligna leva os consumidores a serem mais propensos a escolher uma marca concorrente (análise 2), e enquanto a inveja benigna aumenta a atitude dos consumidores em relação a uma marca, a inveja maligna diminui a atitude em relação a marca (análise 3). Além disso, a análise 1 demonstra que os efeitos do merecimento na inveja maligna têm um fator moderador (tipo de relacionamento), que afeta como o merecimento é percebido, em termos de sorte e engano. O objetivo é investigar a influência do merecimento e do tipo de relacionamento (gostar ou não de uma pessoa) sobre a inveja benigna e maligna, e o papel dos subtipos de inveja na escolha de marca e na atitude de marca. Os resultados introduzem uma visão mais detalhada dos efeitos do merecimento e tipo de relacionamento, e contribuem para a literatura sobre marcas e emoções, mostrando que cada subtipo da inveja do consumidor traz diferentes conseqüências para as marcas.

Ce mémoire vise à comprendre la détermination des droits et des obligations relatifs aux individus seuls aptes à l’emploi bénéficiant de l’aide sociale allemande entre 1990 et 2012. Tout d’abord, il passe en revue les principaux mécanismes formels de fixation et d’actualisation des droits monétaires présents dans la plupart des pays de l’OCDE et montre par quels moyens l’Allemagne détermine la générosité des revenus de l’aide sociale. Soulevant le caractère plutôt arbitraire de ces mécanismes, il poursuit en soutenant que la générosité relative des droits et des obligations des individus seuls aptes à l’emploi peut principalement s’expliquer en des termes de conditionnalité et de mérite. Par le biais d’une revue de la littérature sur le sujet, le mémoire illustre comment les dynamiques catégorielles et la construction des programmes de dernier recours allemands en viennent à refléter une hiérarchie implicite du mérite expliquant à la fois la générosité plus faible des droits monétaires et la plus grande conditionnalité des droits sociaux visant les bénéficiaires seuls aptes à l’emploi. Finalement, il soutient que la construction du régime concernant les individus aptes à l’emploi en Allemagne doit se comprendre selon l’utilisation des droits et des obligations en tant que levier de régulation de l’individu et du marché du travail. Dans cette optique, le mémoire montre que les réformes Hartz du marché du travail ont non seulement formalisé le tournant pris vers l’activation du sans-emploi en Allemagne, mais que la construction particulière du nouveau régime de droits et d’obligations visant les individus aptes reflète ultimement l’objectif de diminution du chômage via la création d’emplois dans le secteur des bas salaires. / This thesis aims to understand the determination of rights and obligations related to single unemployed able-bodied individuals benefiting from the German social assistance between 1990 and 2012. To do so, the thesis reviews the main formal benchmark and actualization mechanisms of monetary rights present in most OECD countries and shows how Germany determines the generosity of social assistance benefits. Raising the somewhat arbitrary nature of these mechanisms, it goes on to argue that the relative generosity of the rights and obligations of unemployed able-bodied individuals can be explained mainly in terms of conditionality and deservingness. Through a literature review on the topic, the thesis illustrates how the categorical differentiation and the particular construction of last resort programs in Germany come to reflect an implicit hierarchy based on deservingness, explaining both the lowest generosity of monetary rights and the greater conditionality attached to social rights concerning single able-bodied individuals. Finally, it argues that the construction of the rights and obligations for these citizens must be understood as a control lever allowing the regulation of both the individual and the labour market. From this perspective, the thesis shows that the Hartz reforms have not only formalized the activation paradigm regulating unemployment in Germany, but that the particular construction of the new scheme for able- bodied individuals ultimately reflects the objective of reducing unemployment by creating jobs in the low-wage sector.

The EU is faced with problems related to the unrestricted access to national welfare states of mobile EU workers. These problems are mainly framed by the growing opposition to the free movement of workers. The strongest contributing factor to these negative attitudes has commonly said to be actor-based, i.e. the media or political elites. However, more recent research has been shifting the focus to institutions as explanatory factor. I raise the question of to what extent individuals’ attitudes towards the free movement of workers are associated with their exposure to different welfare state institutional contexts. More specifically I explore the role of “earnings-relatedness” in specific social insurances for the attitudes of potential benefit claimants. Analyzing 12 EU/EFTA countries who are net receivers of mobile EU workers I find that in welfare state contexts with a high degree of earnings-relatedness the opposition to free movement is significantly lower than otherwise among the unemployed. Furthermore, I discover that these observations seem to vary depending on what part of the social insurance system one is analyzing.

No description available.