Getting By: Neoliberal Governmentality and the Lack of Success in Instilling Financial Self-Reliance

Abstract

Abstract The Short-To-Medium-Term Assistance (SMTA) is a state programme in Singapore providing financial, employment and other assistance to individuals in financial need. SMTA frames the resources that it provides as a temporary form of support that applicants should use to regain their financial self-reliance through employment. Drawing on eleven months of ethnographic fieldwork, this article identifies two forms of self-reliance which differ from the objective of the programme. First, informants worked to receive assistance by convincing Social Service Office (SSO) officers of their financial need; they further approached their Members of Parliament (MPs) to enhance the approval of their assistance. Second, informants worked to find jobs on their own rather than accept job recommendations from SSO officers and career consultants. The different forms of self-reliance illustrate the agency of informants to get by, which contrasts with the agency resource embedded in the neoliberal governmentality of SMTA. These ethnographic insights indicate that SMTA was unsuccessful in directing informants to work and achieve financial self-reliance.