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Browsing by Author "DSilva, Tara P."

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    At the Limits of Welfare: Waiting, Stigma, and the Quiet Labor of Care

    (2025-04-28) DSilva, Tara P.; Gigerenzer, Thalia

    This thesis is based on six weeks of ethnographic research conducted with an NGO in Tamil Nadu, India during the summer of 2024. During my fieldwork, I conducted semi-structured interviews with beneficiaries and participant-observation with NGO staffers to learn more about how the NGO was facilitating health access. Drawing from this material, I question why welfare services are still not reaching marginalized communities despite the abundance of welfare schemes in Tamil Nadu. I point to narratives of deservingness stemming from dominant political imaginaries that construct beneficiaries as lazy and stigmatize welfare. I highlight how these narratives, the hidden costs of accessing welfare, and historical dehumanization serve as barriers to availing of free schemes. I then examine waiting as an obstacle to care. Finally, I look at the role of care and affective labor within the NGO in facilitating access by addressing feelings of misrecognition and maintaining initiatives in the face of scarcity.