Administrative Challenges Facing Nonprofit Worksites Providing Work or Work-like Experiences for Welfare Recipients

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

Over the last decade, neoliberal welfare policies expanded nonprofit organizations' role in the welfare state. This change resulted in the organizational emergence of numerous “welfare internships” (i.e., situations where welfare recipients engage in work experiences to fulfill work requirements for little or no pay), whose existence and impacts have been understudied. Using qualitative interviews with nonprofit directors, this article explores the bureaucratic face of neoliberal welfare policies through detailing how two types of welfare internships (“intermediary internships” and “client internships”) develop, the motivations behind them, and the problems they present. This article examines the relevance of these impacts for the welfare-to-work and nonstandard employment literatures and describes potential implications for policymakers.