Citation

Agrawal S. Polit. Policy 2008; 36(4): 636-675.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2008, Policy Studies Organization (USA), Publisher John Wiley and Sons)

DOI

10.1111/j.1747-1346.2008.00124.x

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Congress passed the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) in August 1996. This major welfare reform bill explicitly barred legal immigrant eligibility for most federal means-tested public benefits. This article applies a Foucauldian method of analysis to congressional discourse surrounding legal immigrant exclusion from welfare. Such an approach examines how political issues are constructed to reveal the use of power and discursive rules in the production of socially and politically acceptable truths. I argue that legislators used specific discursive constructions to frame immigrant exclusion provisions. These discursive approaches, often at odds with empirical data, reinforced existing ideology and governed the employable concepts that held power in the debate. The analysis also demonstrates that political discourse implicitly revolved around the “immigrant bargain.” Elements of this bargain included the ideal type of immigrant desired by the United States and the proper relationship of the nation to such immigrants.