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Latin American Research Review, Vol. 46, No. 1. 2011 by the Latin American Studies Association.

PAT I E N T S O F T H E S T AT EAn Ethnographic Account o Poor Peoples Waiting

Javier AuyeroUniversity o Texas at Austin

Abstract: Drawing on six months o ethnographic feldwork in the main welare o-fce o the city o Buenos Aires, this article dissects poor peoples lived experiences owaiting. The article examines the welare ofce as a site o intense sociability amidst

pervasive uncertainty. Poor peoples waiting experiences persuade the destitute othe need to be patient, thus conveying the implicit state request to be compliant cli-ents. An analysis o the sociocultural dynamics o waiting helps us understand how(and why) welare clients become not citizens but patients o the state.

INTRODUCTION

Waiting, writes Pierre Bourdieu (2000) in Pascalian Meditations, is one othe ways o experiencing the eects o power. Making people wait . . . de-laying without destroying hope . . . adjourning without totally disappoint-

ing are, according to Bourdieu (2000, 228), integral parts o the workingo domination. Although the social sciences have thoroughly examinedlinks between power and time, waiting (as both temporal region and anactivity with intricate relationships with the constitution and reproduc-tion o submission) remains, with the exceptions noted herein, hardlymapped and badly documented (Schweizer 2008, 1). Understandably so:attention to waiting and its (apparent) related inaction goes against thesocial sciences preerred ocus on individual and collective action, onthe event as that historical act that leaves a unique and singular trace,one that marks history by its particular and inimitable consequences

(Dumoulins, qtd. in Tarrow 1996, 587).Writing precisely about this absence, Bourdieu (2000, 228) asserts that

we need to catalogue, and analyze, all the behaviors associated with the

Special thanks to Shila Vilker, Nadia Finck, and Agustn Burbano de Lara, who workedas research assistants or this project. Many thanks also to Matthew Desmond, MeganComort, Rodrigo Hobert, Loc Wacquant, Lauren Joseph, and Christine Williams or theircritical comments on dierent versions o this article. Previous versions o this article werepresented at the Lozano Long Conerence at the University o Texas at Austin and at theInstituto Gino Germani (University o Buenos Aires). The National Science Foundation,

Award SES-0739217, and the Teresa Lozano Long Institute o Latin American Studies at theUniversity o Texas at Austin provided unding or this project.


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6 Latin American Research Review

exercise o power over other peoples time both on the side o the pow-erul (adjourning, deerring, delaying, raising alse hopes, or conversely,

rushing, taking by surprise) and on the side o the patient as they say inthe medical universe, one o the sites par excellence o anxious, powerlesswaiting. Drawing on six months o ethnographic feldwork in a welareofce, this article makes a frst step toward the construction o such a cata-log ocusing on poor peoples waiting experiences.

The article begins with a brie survey o the scarce sociological work onthe experiences o waiting and extracts rom it a ew broad analytical les-sons. Ater a general description o the methods that served in gatheringour empirical data and o the physical site where ethnographic feldworkwas carried out, I present the story o one exemplary waiter, a sort o Od-

ysseys Penelope o the welare ofce, which summarizes as a really exist-ing ideal type the many acets o the shared experiences o waiting. Themain three sections o the article examine the welare ofce as a site o in-tense sociability amid pervasive uncertainty. The article shows that, dur-ing the long hours they spend in the welare ofce in search o a solutionto their urgent needs, poor people experience uncertainty, conusion, andarbitrariness. Taken together, I argue, these waiting experiences persuadethe destitute o the need to be patient, thus conveying the implicit state re-quest to be compliant clients. An analysis o the sociocultural dynamics o

waiting thus helps us understand how (and why) welare clients becomenot citizens but patients o the state.

TIME, POWER, ANDTHE (SCANT) SOCIOLOGYOFWAITING

The maniold ways in which human beings in their lieworlds thinkand eel about (and act on) timehave been the subject o much scholarlywork in the social sciencesrom general treatments(Sorokin and Merton1937; Hall 1959; Schutz 1964; Durkheim 1965; Giddens 1986; Munn 1992;Levine 1997; Flaherty 1999) to more empirically inormed ones, many o

them based on ethnographic work (Roth 1963; Mann 1969; Geertz 1973;Zerubavel 1979; Young 2004; Flaherty, Freidin, and Sautu 2005).The re-lationships between the workings o power and the experiences o timehave also been the object o many a social scientifc analysis. Time, or ex-ample, has been examined as a crucial dimension in the workings o gitexchanges (Bourdieu 1977) and in the operation o patronage networks(Scott and Kerkvliet 1977; Auyero 2001). In both those cases, the objectivetruth o the (usually unequal) exchanges needs to be misrecognized sothat the exchanges can unction smoothly (Bourdieu 1998; Ortner 2006).Time, these analyses demonstrate, is responsible or the veiling.

Temporality, historical and ethnographic works illustrate, is manipu-lable. It can be the object o an incessant process o bargaining, as Roth(1963) shows in his insightul ethnography o the ways patients and doc-


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PATIENTSOFTHESTATE 7

tors jointly structure the passage o time in a tuberculosis hospital; it canbe the object o rantic marking, as Cohen and Taylor (1972) examine in

their phenomenology o the security wing o an English prison. Time canalso be the target o a constant onslaught, as Willis (1977) illustrates inhis dissection o the lads rejections o the schools arduously constructedtimetable, or the medium through which discipline is imposed and ne-gotiated, as Thompson (1994) demonstrates in his classic analysis o thechanges in the inward notations o time at the early stages o industrialcapitalism. Collective time senses are deeply intertwined with the work-ings o (and resistance to) social domination. Time, these works expose, isthe locus o conict but also, and as important, o acquiescence (see alsoHochschild 2001; Jacobs and Gerson 2004).

Waiting, as a particular experience o time, has not received the samescholarly attention. Highlighting the ubiquity o this experience, the es-sayist Edna OBrien (1995, 177) writes: Everyone I know is waiting. Hint-ing at the sense o powerlessness that comes with waiting, she continuesand almost everyone I know would like to rebut it, since it is slightlydemeaning, reeks o helplessness, and show we are not ully in commando ourselves (OBrien 1995, 177). Pace OBrien, waiting does not aect ev-erybody in the same waynor does everybody experience it in a similarashion. The sociologist Barry Schwartz (1974, 1975) has probably done the

most to show that waiting is stratifed, that there are variations in waitingtime that are socially patterned and that respond to power dierentials.The unequal distribution o waiting time tends to correspond with thato power. As Schwartz (1974, 847) puts it in his classic study o queuesas social systems: Typical relationships obtain between the individualsposition within a social system and the extent to which he waits or andis waited or by other members o the system. In general, the more pow-erul and important a person is, the more others access to him must beregulated.

To be kept waiting, he continues, especially to be kept waiting an un-

usually long time, is to be the subject o an assertion that ones own time(and thereore, ones social worth) is less valuable than the time and wortho the one who imposes the wait (Schwartz 1974, 856; on the demean-ing eects o waiting, see Comort 2008). Schwartz established the basiccontours o a sociology o waiting. Since then, however, the dierentialexperiences o that (unequally distributed) waiting time (and the activitiesthat, appearances to the contrary, go with it) have received little empiricalattention and no systematic treatment.

Extensive waiting periods, the scant research on the subject shows,weary people (Fox Piven and Cloward 1971, 160) and/or act as ob-stacles to access particular programs (Redko, Rapp, and Carlson 2006).I requent contact with long queues molds peoples subjectivities (Com-ort 2008), how is that, to quote Bourdieu (2000, 228), the interested aim-


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ing at something greatly durablythat is to say or the whole durationo the expectancymodifes the behavior o the person who hangs, as

we say, on the awaited decision? I delays are not only suered but alsointerpreted (Schwartz 1975), what meanings do those who are routinelyorced to wait attribute to the waiting? And i waiting makes the waitereel dependent and subordinate (Schwartz 1975, 856), how does waitingproduce the subjective eects o dependency and subordination? In otherwords, how does objective waiting become subjective submission? Theseare the general questions that guided this projects ethnographic researchin the waiting area o the main welare ofce (Ministerio de DesarrolloSocial) in the city o Buenos Aires.

A Note on Methods

Between August 2008 and January 2009, the project team conductedteam ethnographic feldwork at this site. For the frst two months, three tofve hours and our times a week, we sat alongside current and prospec-tive welare recipients in the waiting room and observed their interactions(among them and between them and welare agents). The starting pointor the feldwork was quite simple: what happens while people hang outin the welare ofce with apparently nothing else to do other than wait

or their beneft? We paid particular attention to whether they were aloneor in groups, to the way they managed to keep their children entertained,and to everything they did while waiting or a welare agent to call them.We also observed and took note o clients interactions with agents, ocus-ing on speech and body language.

Ater we amiliarized ourselves with the setting and its inhabitants,we began the interviews. We conducted sixty-nine interviews (orty-three with noncitizens, and twenty-six with citizens; 87 percent o inter-viewees were women), which lasted between thirty and ninety minutes.We stopped interviewing when we ound no urther variation along the

dimensions that interested us. Interviews typically began with a gen-eral inquiry about the welare clients reasons to be applying or a spe-cifc beneft. This enabled us to reconstruct the clients trajectory into theworld o welare. We then ocused on the ollowing nine dimensions:(1) general evaluations o the working o the welare ofce and things at-tendants think are working well and things they believe should be im-proved; (2) perceptions o requirements to access welare and inorma-tion about paydays; (3) reasons they have been given to explain lack opayments or cancellation o a program; (4) times they have been asked tocome back or the same claim and reasons they have been given or sucha request; (5) comparison between the time they have to wait at the ofcewith waiting times at other public institutions (they came up with theirown comparison); (6) views o others who are waiting alongside them;


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(7) views o the welare agents; (8) whether they come alone or in groups;and (9) ways to fnd out about the particular program they are trying to

access. We also asked about the times they had come to the ofce beore(and or what reason) and about whether, at the time o the interview, theyknew i and/or when they would receive the beneft and/or payment. Thislatter question served as a rough indicator o the uncertainty regardingthe workings o each program. Interviews were carried out in Spanishand then translated by the author. We did not tape-record them but tran-scribed verbatim as soon as the interview was over. Interviewees werenot compensated or their time. At the beginning o each interview, weinormed participants that we were part o a team o university studentsand aculty conducting a study on the workings o the welare ofce.

Pulled together, observations and interviews allowed us to reconstructas completely as possible the shared experience o waiting. We ound that,or most o our interviewees, waiting is a modal experience: they have towait or almost everything (e.g., housing, health services, employment).But the waiting at the welare ofce has some particular eatures to whichI now turn attention.

THE (PHYSICAL) SITE

According to ofcial documents (Ciudad Autnoma de Buenos Aires2008) there are twelve dierent programs administered at the central wel-are ofce o the city o Buenos Aires. However, most o the people we ob-served and interviewed were waiting or a decision or a payment on oneo the ollowing three cash-transer programs: Nuestras Familias (NF),the Ticket Social (TS), and/or a housing subsidy (HS). The ofce servesArgentine nationals and documented oreigners (most o them recent mi-grants rom Bolivia, Paraguay, Uruguay, and Brazil). There are no citizen-ship restrictions on accessing any o these plans, provided that recipientscan show proo o residence in the city o Buenos Aires.

The welare waiting room is, then, a universe where, much like in thedaily lie o many poor neighborhoods in the city, Argentines and mi-grants rom neighboring countries come together in what Goman (1961)would call a ocused gatheringthat is, a set o individuals involved ina common ow o action and relating to one another in terms o that ow.But above all, the waiting room is a world o women and children whoare seeking urgent help; they live in what Ehrenreich (2001) has reerredto as a state o emergency. Many o the women were raising their childrenalone or with the help o amily members other than the childrens athers.In act, many cited the athers desertion as the main reason they endedup asking or one or more welare beneftsanother requently cited rea-son was (personal or partners) illness. Those claiming an HS, predictably,come to the welare ofce ater an eviction. During the eviction (either


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Figure 1 Waiting in line (by Agustn Burbano de Lara).

rom illegally occupied houses or rom rental properties they couldnt a-ord to pay), state personnel inormed them about the HS distributed atthe welare ofce.

As with the welare rooms that Hays (2003, 85) examined in Flat Brokewith Children, this one was characterized by the ubiquity o children, andmuch like in Hayss cases, the cries o hungry or rustrated or sad or dis-gruntled children, the laughter and chatter o playing children, the incon-venience o children whom you trip over, children who are seeking amuse-ment, and children who demand a space in your lap (85) dominate much

o the rooms landscape. Babies are ed and changed in public (there are nochanging stations). Children run or crawl around the usually dirty oor.

Comorts (2008) insightul ethnographic account o the agonizinglylong and uncertain (50) waiting in the Tube at San Quentin State Prisonthe site where, our days a week, inmates wives, girlriends, mothers, andrelatives wait or permission to visit their loved onescan be reproduced,almost word by word, to describe the general disposition o the bodiesinside the waiting room o the welare agency:

Seated or standing, adults . . . pace, fdget, and rock, while their children squirm,

holler, whine, and cry. Pregnant women perch awkwardly on the narrow benches,supporting their bellies with their hands because they cannot recline ar enoughto relieve their backs o the weight o their wombs. . . . Mothers o inants clumsily


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Figure 2 Baby crawling in waiting room (picture by Nadia Finck).

assemble eeding bottles and apply resh diapers in the absence o clean water,sanitary suraces, or changing tables. . . . [The rooms] acoustics ampliy and echoevery outburst, squeal, tantrum, and reprimand, and visitors brace themselvesagainst this cacophony while shivering with cold, slumping with atigue. (45)

Comorts description also directs attention to the general conditionsin which the waiting takes place. The waiting room at the welare ofcehas only fty-our plastic seats or a welare population that ar exceedsthat number. As a result, on numerous occasions (especially in the morn-ing hours), the hundreds o (current and potential) clients who pass daily

through the ofce must wait or hours standing and/or leaning againstthe walls and/or sitting on the oor. High windows prevent much naturallight rom entering the roomwhite uorescent tubes provide most o thelight. The room lacks a good ventilation system, a running heating sys-tem, and air-conditioning (o the six existing ceiling ans, two were work-ing); it is extremely cold in the morning hours during the winter monthsand unbearably hot by noon during the summer months.

By the time the ofce closes its doors (usually around 4 p.m.), remainso ood, bottles, used napkins, spilled sodas, even used cotton swabs,have piled up on the oors o the waiting room. Every now and then, wealso ound vomit and dirty disposable diapers, but no cleaning personnelshowed up during the hours we were there. Ater a ew hours o opera-


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Figure 3 Waiting grounds (picture by Nadia Finck).

tion, the bathrooms have also become dirty (we never ound soap or toiletpaper in them).1

MILAGROSSTRIAL

In the back o the welare ofce waiting room, twenty-seven-year-old Milagros plays with two little children; one is her two-year-old son

Joaqun. Milagros is Peruvian, and she has been in this thing (the wayshe reers to the paperwork at the welare ofce) or a year and a hal.She is a benefciary o two programs (NF and Subsidio Habitacional, anHS program). The HS is late, she tells us, because theres no paydayscheduled or oreigners. She has been told that with a national ID cardeverything would go aster, but without it, theres not much they cando. She has theprecarialiterally, precariousresident status. She be-gan the paperwork to obtain a national ID card our months ago, but shehas to wait or a resolution at least one more year.

1. Together with the uncertain and arbitrary delays described herein, these minor indig-nities amount to what Piven and Cloward (1971) reer to as ritual degradation o a pariahclass.


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She otentimes walks to the welare ofce; its a mile and a hal walk,but it saves her much-needed cash. Since giving birth, she cant carry much

weight on her, so the days Joaquns grandmother cant babysit, Milagrostakes the bus with him. The bus are, which is expensive or her, is notthe only reason she avoids coming with him. Waiting, she says, is boringand tiring or her and her son. Waiting, she adds, is costlyreerring tothe expenses she incurs every time her son demands something to drinkor to eat rom the little stand located in the back o the welare area. Inher nickel-and-dimed lie, a one-dollar treat and a thirty-cent bus ride areluxuries she cannot aord. In this and many other respects, Milagrossis not an isolated story. During one o our frst observations, a motherscolded her daughter, saying: You are making me spend a ortune. Thats

it. Ill buy you a chocolate milk in the aternoon. Dozens o intervieweestold us similar stories.

Milagros learned about welare benefts rom a social worker at thehospital where she gave birth. When she frst attempted to apply, shecame to the welare ofce at dawn. At 4 a.m., they were giving thirtyslots, and I was number thirty-two. I thought they were going to attend[to] me, but they didnt. The next day, she came earlier . . . at 11 p.m.[o the night beore]. I waited outside all night long, but there was somesort o problem, and they didnt open the ofce that day. That was a long

wait. She then waited three more months. One day, she came back atnoon and was told to come earlier in the morning. She did the paperworkand received the housing subsidy or one month. Because the owner othe apartment she was renting did not have everything in order, hersubsidy was abruptly terminated. She had to start the paperwork allover again to receive two more installments, ater which she ceased to beeligible.

Milagros makes US$9 per day taking care o an elderly couple, and shecant aord to miss a day o work. When she comes to the welare ofce,she meets with riends, and they talk about how agents give them the

runaround. You eel despondent here [te desanimas], she tells us, be-cause [welare agents] tell you to come on day X. You ask or permissionat work and then you fnd out that they have not deposited the money. Ilose one day at work. . . . I think the aid is a good thing but . . . well, I dontthink its air that they make you wait so long and that sometimes theymake you come here or nothing [te hacen venir al pedo]. . . . They tell youto come on Monday, and then Wednesday, and then Friday . . . and thoseare working days.

Milagros does not know whether she will receive the subsidy today.The last time she came to this ofce, she let with nothing. She elt im-potent and cried a lot at home, she tells us, but she says, Here I didntsay anything. She desperately needs the city government monies to paythe rent and to eed her son.


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Milagross story contains several patterns detected in the waiting ex-periences o other welare recipients. Contrary to our initial visual im-

pressions regarding the isolation o those who wait, waiting is doublyrelational. First, people like Milagros learn about available welare ben-efts rom trusted others (riends and relatives) and/or rom social work-ers. Second, clients and potential clients awaiting a decision on their casesor a payment are usually not alone in the waiting rooms. They create ormobilize a set o relations or networks that allow or them to spend longhours there. While there, they oten meet with riends and relatives whohelp them tolerate and make sense o those boring and tiring hours.

Waiting, Milagross story also teaches us, is a process, not a one-shotevent. The overwhelming majority o those we interviewed in the wait-

ing room had gone through some version o what, with Kakas JoseK. in mind (The Trial, 1946/1998), we could call the trial o welare. AsMilagross story o endless hassles illustrates, this process is, much likeKakas, pervaded by uncertainty and arbitrariness (and resultant rustra-tion). Other cases show that it is also a process dominated by persistentconusions and misunderstandings.

Finally, Milagross one-line statement regarding what she did (or didnot do) when orced to wait suspended in uncertainty (here I didnt sayanything) and her eelings at the time (impotent) point to what is prob-

ably the most difcult, challenging aspect to be dissected about the expe-rience o waiting (and the reason I believe it should be studied in the frstplace): why do most o the poor people we observed and talked to, most othe time, put up with the uncertain, conusing, and arbitrary waiting? Thewhy o their compliance is in the how. How do they spend that dead time?How do they make sense o, think and eel about, the long hours o wait?

Milagros carved out the work or us. In what ollows, I examine poorpeoples waiting as a relational process characterized by uncertainty, con-usion, and arbitrariness. I also explore the ways lived waiting producescertain symbolic eects on the requent visitors o this simultaneously

spatial and temporal region. Everything in the experience o waiting con-spires to teach welare clients like Milagros a lessonkeep waiting, bepatient, theres nothing you can do about the endless queues. Welareclients learn, in practice, to be patients o the state.

THE (TEMPORAL) SITE: SOCIABILITYAMIDUNCERTAINTY

In the now-classic piece Banana Time, B. Roy (1959, 158) describes agroup o workers who develop a series o games (times and themes)to deal with the ormidable beast o monotony prevalent in the actory.Welare clients conront a similar beast. In almost every single one o ourinterviews and our innumerable inormal conversations (with us andoverheard), clients (current and prospective) reerred to the tedious wait-


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ing time in rustrating terms. The ollowing brie feld note excerpt romOctober 1 summarizes this shared nuisance:

Mother yells to her 4-year-old who is running around: Diana, please, stop, wehave to wait. Her number is called. She comes back, in loud voice she tells no onein particular: Oh, no, it cant be, it cant be. . . . What are we going to do or somany hours here?!

As noted earlier, many current or prospective clients come to the wel-are ofce with their children. They also come together with their neigh-bors and/or develop inormal interactions in the waiting room. Clientsbring and share ood during breakast and lunchinnumerable times weobserved (mostly) women having their meals together and sharing the

care o the little ones. In a space dominated by countless urgencies regard-ing access to ood and housing and, as we will see here, by conusion anduncertainty about the actual workings o the welare programs, inormalinteractions also serve to exchange inormation about existing soup kitch-ens, the availability and prices o housing in the city, required paperworkor a specifc welare plan (and the difculties o obtaining this or thatdocument), and other welare programs o the city and/or ederal govern-ment (e.g., which one has been, usually abruptly, canceled, or which one isaccepting applicants). Although these interactions do not take the regular

orm that B. Roy (1959) describes (i.e., we did not identiy anything akin toa banana time, a peach time, or a Coke time), they help clients avoid thetedium (and atigue, tediums twin brother, according to Roy). They alsoinormally diuse inormation about ormal state requirements.

While they wait, welare clients keep themselves busy. They play withtheir children, they eed the little ones and change their diapers, theywalk around, they leave the building or a smoke break, they buy snacksrom the stand and negotiate with their children about prices and por-tions, they play games on their cellular phones, and occasionally they readthe newspaper (we twice saw clients reading paid newspaper editions;

or the most part, they read the ree newspapers available throughout thecity in subways and kiosks). In other words, their waiting is active andrelational.

Together with the inormal interactions that characterize this space, afrst-time visitor can easily sense the disorganization o the waiting roomand the sudden changes that await those who venture there. Lets dothis, screams a welare agent rom behind the counter: Two lines! Ev-erybody against the wall, another one commands. Our feld notes areflled with expressions like the ollowing, again coming rom behind thecounter: Guys . . . all o those with numbers . . . please have a seat (at thetime we recorded this, there were no seats available). Well call you buttake a seat. Please be quiet!! All those waiting or the NF, here. Every-body against the wall, please!


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Field note October 1: A woman comes out rom behind the counter and scream-ing, in a teacher-like voice, says: Lets get some order. Those who are or the NF,here. The rest, against the wall. They will call you by name. As a result a long lineis ormed in the middle o the room. Thirty minutes later, the line is dissolved.Everything is chaotic today.

The waiting room is disorganized and puzzling or frst-time visitorsand or recurrent ones.

Field note September 11. Two ticket number counters are working today. One ison number 52, the other one signals number 47. A man rom the counter is callingnumber 92. Theres a waiting line in ront o the door (and the security guards)that separates the waiting room rom the ofces. Plus, theres another line at thevery entrance o the building. There are fve dierent but unmarked waiting

zones within the same room.Field note October 2. A woman asks me i I think Monday will be a holiday. Theytold her to come back on Monday (October 12 is a holiday in Argentina). I tell herthat i they instructed her to come back on Monday, it is because it will not be aholiday. I assume they dont give appointments or impossible days. The womancorrects me and tells me that the last time they gave her a Sunday appointment.As I later fnd out, she was right. They have given her an appointment or a wrongdayMonday is a holiday.

This objective disorganization fnds its subjective correlates in the ex-

periences o uncertainty, arbitrariness, and conusion. Writing about thenineteenth-century English proletariat, Friedrich Engels (1973, 139) de-scribes a class that knows no security in lie, a class that is a play-ballto a thousand chances. Those waiting in the welare ofce ft this de-scription well. As we described previously, their lives are constantly onthe edge o disaster or in the midst o itthey have recently been evictedor they are about to be, they have just lost their jobs, they are seriouslysick, their spouses recently let them with three or our or more smallchildren to be cared or and no source o household income, and/or anycombination o the oregoing. Once they come into the welare waiting

room, the insecurity does not stop.Many o our subjects describe their waiting in ways that echo Engelss

depiction o lives ar away in time and place: They kick us around likeballs (nos pelotean). The simple statement encapsulates the pervasive un-certainty and arbitrariness o the lived experience o waiting. The over-whelming majority o our subjects know when to come (the earlier thebetter) to the ofce; most o them, however, dont know when they willleave. As Noem laments while sitting in one o the ew unoccupied chairs:I told my husband: Im going to the welare ofce . . . dont know whenIm coming back.

The uncertainty about the time they will spend there comes togetherwith the uncertainty regarding the outcome. More than hal (59 percent)


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o our interviewees do not know i and/or when they will receive thebeneft they came to ask or. This uncertainty does not vary by program

(whether they are asking or a housing subsidy or ood assistance) or bycitizenship status o the claimantthe not knowing is equally distributedamong Argentine citizens and oreigners. In other words, noncitizens arenot overrepresented among those who dont know i and/or when theywill become benefciaries. The specifc rules, regulations, and benefts oeach welare program do not seem to aect the level o knowledge peopledemonstrate about their claims. This straightorward fgure does not saymuch about what is a much more interesting sociological phenomenon:namely the protracted process poor claimants have to traverse everytime they need urgent aid, a process and a web that remind us, again, o

Jose K.s pilgrimage. The ollowing conversation takes place as Sofa andHilda are awaiting a decision on two dierent welare programs. Theirdoubts, their eelings, and the actual outcome o their petition vividly il-lustrate what I would call, ollowing Bourdieu (2000), an instituted disor-der. As we will see in the ollowing section, this disorder is presented tothe client as an order rom the arbitrary dicta o a computer machine:

Field note December 11, 2008. Soa is in her early 30s and she moved to Argentinarom Paraguay in 1999. She frst came to the welare ofce when she was evictedrom her rental apartment. Hilda is 28 and moved rom Paraguay in 1998. When

her husband let her, she quickly ran out o money to pay or the rentshe wasabout to be evicted when a neighborhood social worker told her to come to theofce. With two small kids, she is having trouble fnding a place to livehotelswont take you with children, she tells me echoing what we heard repeatedlyrom poor mothers who are raising their kids alone.

They have been at the welare ofce or 40 minutes already when I meet them.Soa addresses the issue o the long waiting right rom the start: But you can behere or three or our hours. Why? I ask. Thats exactly what wed like to know:why do we have to wait that long? Aterward, they tell you theres no money andthat you have to come back some other day. Soa began her paperwork or theNF 5 months ago. She received her frst check this week but she was expecting

a sum three times higher: They suspended my payments three times already.Supposedly, Ill get paid today. She is also a benefciary o the HS but Im notbeing paid. I dont know whats going on. Someone at the counter calls Soa. Sheleaves. Like Soa, Hilda does not know i and when she will receive her check:Last year, I didnt get paid. They told me We cant do anything about it. . . . [Theysay] it is what it is.

Soa comes back and tells me that her payment was suspended again. They toldme to come back on December 30. Ive been waiting since July. I dont know whatwere going to do. Thats what pisses me o.

We then talk about the required paperwork and they agree that it is too difcult:

They always give you an excuse. . . . They ask you or some document, then theyask or it again and again, and you have to come back at 5 a.m. . . . Now they areattending quickly, but theres no money. Damn.


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Both o them have come to this ofce many times beore. And many times theyhave been re-scheduled (term used by state agents and benefciaries alike todescribe the delay in the payments). It is now Hildas turn. She goes to the counterand quickly comes back. She is also re-scheduled. They told me that there isonly one payment let. Originally, there [were] our, but now its only one. I dontknow why. Thats what the computer says (emphasis added).

The welare recipients described by Hays (2003, 7) mostly complainabout the hassles to obtain welare and, much like some o the benefciarieswe encounter, point to the huge number o ridiculous regulations thatmake their already-miserable lie even more wretched. Hays describes auniverse (that o welare reorm in the United States) in which conusions,misunderstandings, and rustrations over the rules, requirements, proce-

dures, and sanctions fnds parallels in the world o Buenos Aires welare.However, or people like Soa, Hilda, and many others, the main issuesare not so much the paperwork or requirements but the unpredictabilityo the process. Some o them complain about the difcult paperwork,but what really bothers most o them is the long waiting period with aninsecure result. As twenty-three-year-old Isabelwho migrated romPeru two years ago and who is waiting or NF paymentssuccinctly said:You dont know when you are going to be paid.

More than hal o interviewees bring up the issue o waiting in a public

hospital to compare with waiting at the welare ofce. Although they allagree that waiting in the hospital is terrible and awul, and they re-mark that they always have to wait there, they also know, as Isabel com-ments, that in a hospital they will attend to you no matter what. Bothwaiting lines, they all concur, are long (you can spend the entire day at thehospital); both waiting times demand their endurance and serenity (weall know how it is, or there is not much you can do about it). The hospitalline is, to most, more dramatic (because they usually attend the hospitalwhen they are seriously sick or when their children need immediate as-sistance). By contrast, here [in the welare ofce] the waiting is indecisive

[indecisa]. As Isabel says, capturing well the randomness o the entire pro-cess, I think Ill be paid . . . at Christmas which is when miracles occur.

As stated previously, noncitizens do not have a monopoly on uncer-tainty, nor is it restricted to the admission stage; it aects the operationo the programs as a whole. Noem, age fty-fve, is an Argentine citizen.According to her, she was in the ofce because o an administrative er-ror; they delayed my payment or a week . . . plus the three or our hourso waiting here. Apparently, mistakes are not the only source o intermit-tence in the welare payments. In Noems experience (as in that o mostbenefciaries we interviewed), haphazardness is a built-in characteristico city welare programs. Once clients are admitted, in other words, theirpayments can be suspended or delayed or reasons unknown to most oour interviewees: I the hotel owners were not merciul, they would kick


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us out because . . . well, nobody tells you when you are going to be paid.They [welare agents] tell you its going to be on the fth and they pay

you on the ourteenth. Noem is also the benefciary o another welareprogram (a cash-transer program) that is equally unpredictable: Everymonth they put money in your account or you to spend. Well, its a wayo putting it. Sometimes it is every orty days. Do you know how shameulyou eel when you go to the supermarket, you buy all this stu, and thenyou have to leave it there with the cashier because your [welare] card hasno unds!

They tell you one thing, and then another, says orty-fve-year-oldRosa angrily (she is a Peruvian national petitioning or a housing subsidy),summarizing what goes on in the welare ofce. Rosa ended our hour-

long conversation crying: Im a grown-up person, and they tell me [come]tomorrow, [come] tomorrow, [come] tomorrow. Probably the best, morestraightorward examples o this lived uncertainty are the innumerabletimes we heard clients ask each other, Do you know i they are paying to-day? Thus, much like in the TB sanatoria that Roth (1963) examined, lacko accurate inormation regarding programs and paydays characterizesthe welare room. As we oten heard, Nobody knows anything here.

The Fetishism o the Beneft

The ollowing dialogue (recorded as we were seeking permission toconduct our feldwork) describes a typical interaction between a stateagent and a claimant. The interaction was typical in that the agent wascordial but the outcome uncertain. It is also typical in the extreme deper-sonalization: the computer system is presented as responsible or schedul-ing the payments. No human actor is deemed responsible or delays andsuspensions. Despite the ofcials polite handling o the case, the reasonsor rescheduling payment always remain obscure. Because the only onewho really knows when the payment will be made is the computer, com-

plaints and/or negotiations are precluded. Rescheduling is automatic andnot open to appeal.

Field note September 18. State agent (SA) [reerring to the program NF]: Did youever get paid?Benefciary (B): No, because I had my baby and couldnt come because he was toolittle . . .SA [interrupting]: You are Gutierrez, arent you?B nods, afrmatively.SA: You never got paid. . . . The system re-programs the installments by itsel. Youhave to come back on October 2. You will then have two installments ready to be

paid. For the time being, everything is suspended but come anyways . . .I would not be paying much attention to this seemingly trivial interac-

tion i not or the act that the payment postponements, which are routine


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occurrences in the welare ofce we observed, were continuously justi-fed in terms o the computers pronouncements. The payments are re-

programmed, and so are the welare benefciaries: Youve been repro-grammed, state agents tell clients. Ive been reprogrammed, subjectsechoed. In this way, the mystical veil (Marx 1887, 84) o the computerprogram disguises the politics o welare. The actual administration obenefts remains a secret, hidden under the apparent uctuations (Marx1887, 77) o a sotware program. The social and political relations betweenmen and women, between citizens and the state, at the basis o welare,assumes, in everybodys eyes, the antastic orm o relation betweena check and a computer. As the ollowing interaction illustrates, the e-tishism o the beneft remains suspended in doubt and creates conusion

throughout the time the client is eligible or welare:Field note September 18. Looking at the computer screen, talking to (but not acing)the welare client: Your next payday is October 9. You were paid [in] September.August is delayed and it has to be reprogrammed. In order to be reprogrammed,come on the 9. You will be paid October and we will reprogram you then. Clientnods and leaves.

In many other feld notes, we also recorded welare agents statementsto clients along the ollowing lines: Everything is delayed; you have tocome back next week to see i there is news; No, no. Its all suspended,

you have to come back next week and fnd out. These discursive interac-tions (in act, pronouncements) depict not only welare distribution as amysterious thing (akin to Marxs commodity) but also, crystal clear, thedemands o the state on claimants. Keep coming, the agents implicitlyor explicitly tell benefciaries. We dont know, nor do you, when you willreceive actual payment, but you have to keep coming. The state, throughits authorized spokespeople, tells the poor that, i they want to resolvetheir claim, they must wait. For how long? They are never told. Two moreexamples, heard countless times by us and by clients, sufce to depict theconstant deerrals and delays, the veritable exercising o power over poorpeoples time, to which welare clients are routinely exposed: Everythingis late today, you have to come back next week to see i there is any news,and Your next payday is November 25. You should not miss that day be-cause you are going to be paid or September. Well then see.

SITDOWNANDWAIT: FEMALEPATIENTSOFTHESTATE

Jessica is nineteen years old, born and raised in Argentina. She cameto renew her housing subsidy. She has been waiting or our hours and,as most o the people we talked to, she does not know whether or whenshe will receive the beneft: You come here and you dont know at whattime youll leave. As we are talking with her, a state agent tells her, rom


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the counter and in a very teacherlike style, Stay seated. She turns to usand says: I they are in a good mood, they treat you well.

Jessica shares with many other recipients not only the long wait anduncertain outcome. As did many others, she frst heard about the housingsubsidy rom a state ofcial who was present when other state ofcialswere evicting her and fteen other amilies with children (we were allwomen, with children in tow) rom her room o wood and metal shin-gles in a squatter settlement. She thinks the welare beneft is an aid,because with the scavenging, I cant pay or a room. These days, it costs atleast $450 a month [US$150] and with the scavenging I collect or the dayto day, [but] I cant pay the rent with it.

Echoing what we heard countless o times, Jessica says that obtaining

the beneft takes a long time. . . . You never know when they will payyou. And as do many others, she conceives o the waiting time as an in-dicator o clients perseverance and thus o their real need. I you reallyneed, she and many others believe, you will wait or a long time, youwill keep coming, and you will show state agents you are worthy o aid.This is how she puts it: You have to wait, wait, and wait. . . . They willnot give it to you until you come here three, our, fve, ten times, to check,to talk, to ask, with this one or with the other one.

As many others, Jessica compares this long and uncertain wait with

that o the public hospital. In a statement that captures the way poor peo-ple relate to the state, she adds: Here and in the hospital, they tell you thesame thing, Sit down and wait . . . and (what do you do?), you sit downand wait. And i you have some money, you buy a soda and a sandwich.

Poor people like Jessica come to this same welare room to ask aboutthe same welare program or about the same overdue installments sev-eral times during the course o one month. An overwhelming majorityo those we talked to said they had come to this ofce on more than oneoccasion to claim the same beneft or to see whether the same cash in-stallment was (fnally) ready. Welare clients, in other words, requently

visit the waiting room. Thus, the welare ofce is not simply a people-processing institution (Haseneld 1972); given clients recurrent exposureto it and their experiences there, it also is a people-changing operation,that is, a patterned set o interactions with concrete subjective eects (seeComort 2008).

Dierent rom other places where disinormation and uncertainty givebirth to a bargaining process between those who know and those who donot (Goman 1961; Roth 1963), the waiting room is an area o compliance,a universe in which you sit down and wait instead o attempting to ne-gotiate with (or complain against) welare authorities.

When asked, a third o our interviewees had negative comments aboutwelare agents. Most o them, like Jessica, grumbled about occasional mis-


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treatments. However, in the regular course o waiting, these complaintswere muted. Only three times, during our six months o daily observa-

tions, did we witness clients addressing state agents and complainingout loud. Given the presentation o delays and rescheduling, this is notsurprising. Occasionally, blame or the delays is directed toward slobagents who take too many breaks, who dont care, who dont want toworkto quote the most common expressions. Other times, the blamingpoints not to lazy state agents but to those who do not deserve welarebenefts, those who, to quote an oten-heard assertion, do not need be-cause they have a business, or a job. These undeserving clients, accord-ing to many, overburden the welare rolls and make everyone wait longer.As every act o blaming, this one invokes some standard o justice (Tilly

2007). Lets listen to Milagros again: Theres people here who dont need.Thats not air. They have their own business. The statement is relevantnot because it describes well the welare population we studied (we do nothave evidence to back up claims by Milagros and some others that thereare many people with stable incomes among the clients) but because itpoints to the sel-understanding o the welare population and to a sym-bolic boundary that organizes the experience o waiting. Most people wetalked to and observed consider themselves a population in need. Theycome to the welare ofce not because they have a right (in hundreds o

pages o feld notes and interviews, the word right does not appear once)but because they are in need. Those who do not need but who apply andobtain welare benefts (those who take advantage) are perceived as thecause o the long waiting lines.

Its an aid, we heard repeatedly. That is how welare clients in needunderstand their beneftsagain, not as rights but as aid or help. Andsometimes they help you and sometimes they dont, they requently say.Those in need come to the welare ofce and, aced with the general dis-organization and disinormation described here, with the endless delaysbut also with the sudden rushing o surprise paydays, quickly learn that

this is a space to be a complying (ply comes rom the Latin plicare, tobend) welare client. They learn that, i they want the beneft, they mustyield to the (arbitrary, uncertain) wishes or dictates o state agents and/ormachines. They know that they have to remain in expectation and complywith the random, arbitrary operations o the welare ofce. As Ramirotold us while he waited three long hours leaning against the wall: Youcant complain here; i you do, they send you back home. . . . So, you haveto stay calm here. Or as many others summarized the experience or us:Here you have to be patient. . . . You have to arm yoursel with patience(we should also be reminded that the Latin root opatience ispati, whichmeans to suer, to endure). Milagros, in the opening story, said it well:here I didnt say anything, meaning that she did not voice her discon-tent. The recurrent comparison that welare clients make between their


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waiting time at public hospitals and that at the welare ofce thus takesits ull meaning: in both places they have to (silently) endure; they have

to act not as citizens with rightul claims but as patients o the state. Thedaily operations o this ofce and the seemingly ordinary assertions andactions o state agents and clients jointly (but hardly cooperatively) defnewhat we could call, ollowing Bourdieu (1998), the doxa o welare(or the most part, uncontested and) basic compliance with the undamen-tal presuppositions o welare distribution: show patience, wait, and youmight obtain a beneft rom the state.

Although the genderless language o the Ministerio de DesarrolloSocial (as articulated in its ofcial publications2) speaks o its attempt toinclude . . . excluded citizens, o assisting and socially promoting

the most vulnerable amilies and individuals, the target populationo its ocalized programs is overwhelmingly emale. As we noted earlier,most o the women and children with whom we waited were expectingresolutions or payments rom the ollowing programs: TS, NF, and HS.The TS (a cash-transer program that provides a monthly check o US$25or benefciaries to purchase ood and cleaning products) is restricted towomen only. Although ormally open to everybody, the HS and the NFalso ocus (mainly) on women. Among the objectives o the HS is to pro-vide assistance to amilies in situacin de calle (or, to use a less euphemistic

term, homeless) by strengthening the amily income devoted to payingor shelter.3 Although the target population o the beneft is the amily,the frst requirement points to the household compositionwith specialconsideration given to emale-headed amilies. Although not explicitlyarticulated in ofcial documents, a similar gender bias aects the NF.Among its objectives is to strengthen amily groups in vulnerable situ-ations or at risk o not being able to satisy their basic needs. In practice,however, women are (again) the main target. As an ofcial o the welareagency told us: It is difcult or men to obtain benefts. Because theresthe idea that i a man is o working age, he has to work. More benefts are

given to mothers. This gendered conception is urther reinorced (andconcretized) by the ministrys policies toward men. In the section describ-ing the strategic objectives or 2010, we read that the agency seeks to dothe ollowing: 1. Increase social inclusion and strengthen equal oppor-tunities or the most vulnerable groups; 2. Increase employment amongvulnerable athers. Under No. 1, the ministrys policies will pay specialattention to the issue o violence against women, with lectures, work-

2. See, e.g., Gua de Servicios Sociales2009, http://estatico.buenosaires.gov.ar/areas/des_

social/ortal_soc_civil/guia_version_web.pd.3. All quotes come rom descriptions in the social services guide published by the Minis-

terio de Desarrollo Social (http://estatico.buenosaires.gov.ar/areas/des_social/ortal_soc_civil/guia_version_web.pd).


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shops, treatment, and seminars. Under No. 2, it will double the amounto job training ellowships or vulnerable athers.

Thus, as we detected in the waiting room and see articulated in ofcialdocuments, welare is structured around women: or them, the state pro-vides (limited and random) welare benefts (or shelter, ood, and protec-tion against violence); or men, it seeks to provide access to ull employ-ment. In my mind, this represents a gender pattern that reproduces thebiurcation between male independent workers and emale dependentnonworkers that scholarship on the welare state has repeatedly noted(Pateman 1988; Fraser 1989; Gordon 1990; Orlo 1993; Haney 1996). Menare conceived o as subjects who rely on the labor market; women areconstructed as submissive clients o the state. Once we get down to the

level o state practice, the state is doing more than simply reproducing aparticular kind o relationship with the poor; structured around genderdierences, the daily work o the state structures gender hierarchy itsel(see Mink 1990; Nelson 1990).

CONCLUSIONSANDTASKSAHEAD

The complex relationship between subordinated groups and the statehas been the subject o much scrutiny in historical and ethnographic re-

search (see, e.g., D. Roy 1994; Bayat 1997; Wedeen 1999; Chatterjee 2006;Goldberg 2007), but or the most part, it has drawn the attention o em-pirical investigation when it has broken down, when it has erupted inepisodes o massive contention or explosive insurgency (or a classic state-ment on the subject, see Joseph and Nugent 1994). There is much to beunderstood and explained about the cultural dynamics o daily, routine,engagement o the dominated, in this case the urban poor, with the state,and specifcally about the everyday orms in which relations o subjectionare constructed.

This article has provided an ethnographic outline o one type o rela-

tionship between the urban poor and the state. Taken together, the (notvery varied) ways poor people experience their waiting at the welare o-fce point to one way in which they relate to the state (and the state tothem): what I call the patient model. To be an actual or potential welarerecipient is to be subordinated to the will o others. This subordination iscreated and re-created through innumerable acts o waiting (the obverseis equally true; domination is generated anew by making others wait). Inthose recurring encounters at the welare ofce, poor people learn that,despite endless delays and random changes, they must comply with therequirements o agents and their machines.

Welare agents do not place much emphasis in the customs, habits,ways o acting and thinking (Foucault 2000, 209) o those in need. Wedid not notice the attention to (and attempt to control over) the minutest


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aspects o poor peoples behaviors, on governing their bodies and souls,on molding the habits, behavior, or dispositions on which the rehabili-

tative unction o welare in the United States historically placed muchemphasis (Goldberg 2007, 3), which Hays (2003) detected operating at theground level in the welare ofces she so careully studied.

The welare bureaucracy we studied introduces economy and order(i.e., government, in Foucaults sense) by manipulating poor peoples time.It is through this practice, through this governing technique, that thestate seems to be aiming or the creation o a docile body o welare clients(Foucault 1979, 198). The patient model could thus be considered a par-ticular, historically situated illustration o the productive nature o power.Interpreted in this light, the mundane statements by minor administra-

tors acquire a dierent (more relevant, more consequential) sociopoliti-cal signifcance (Rabinow 1984, 15).

This model should not be read as a demonstration o the (presumablyperennial) passivity o poor welare clients (this ethnography and otherqualitative research detected nothing o that sort; see Edin and Lein 1997;Hays 2003; Korteweg 2006). Nor should my emphasis on the subordina-tion created in repeated encounters with the welare ofce be read as anargument against state provision o welare to the destitute. The state is thevexed institution (Scott 1999, 7) that is the ground o both poor peoples

domination and their possibilities o survival. One could thus paraphraseHayss detailed analysis o welare mothers in the age o welare reorm asollows: i the state really wants to include benefciaries as active citizens, asull edged participants in society, it does not make much sense to makethem wait in this zone o uncertainty. I, however, the state is actually creat-ing subordinate subjects who do not raise their voice, who know (becausethey learn in practice) that they have to be patient, then the uncertaintyand arbitrariness o the welare ofce is a very eective route or doing so.

The act that most o the welare clients we encounter at the ofce arepoor women is hardly incidental. As other research has shown (Hays

2003; Korteweg 2006), ace-to-ace interactions between representatives othe state and welare-reliant women reproduce gender hierarchies outsidethe welare ofce. Given the empirical analogies we ound between thiswelare ofce and those others have studied, the gendered dimension othe patient model should be urther scrutinized, because it points to thedaily ways in which durable inequality is being reproduced.

I the analysis presented herein is correct, then what remains to be seenis the dominance o the patient model o relations between poor citizensand state. Is it restricted to poor people on welare, or is it applicable toother categories (and experiences) in the universe o the destitute? To whatextent is the experience o being poor defned as one o waiting, o alwayswaiting or, borrowing rom Becketts (1952) amous play, a Godot who(seldom) comes? To what extent, in what specifc social universes, does


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being a poor citizen in an underdeveloped state resemble that o Jose K.strial in Franz Kakas fction? The welare ofce is certainly not the only

arena in which the state orces the poor to wait; the experience o waitingtranscends the time and space o the waiting room. Recent ethnographicwork in a polluted shantytown on the outskirts o Buenos Aires showsthat waiting (in that case, or relocation) can also characterize the lie oan entire community (Auyero and Swistun 2009). Current ethnographicwork on the streets and in waiting lines o the Registro Nacional de lasPersonas (National Registry o Persons) hints at interesting similaritiesbetween the waiting experiences o the urban poor and those o the un-documented: uncertainty and arbitrariness plague both.

All this suggests that, i we are to ollow Bourdieus advice regarding

the need to catalog and analyze all the experiences o powerless waiting,the theoretical agenda to be developed and the empirical ground to becovered are vast and challenging. Much work lies ahead.

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