Governing Citizenship: Social Assistance and State-Society Relations in Uganda

• In Event: Political Economy in Africa

Abstract

Since 2011, the Government of Uganda has expanded and consolidated social assistance through the extension of the Vulnerable Family Grant and the Senior Citizen Grant to vulnerable citizens nationwide with a recent focus on expanding protection for older persons. The paper extends research conducted in Kenya and Tanzania to the context of Northern Uganda to test the theory that cash transfers are most likely to have transformative impacts on citizenship in contexts where citizens have been previously marginalized from the central state. The paper draws on ongoing research in Northern Uganda in districts that have experienced high levels of political violence and marginalization from the central state, including interviews conducted with policy elites, and focus group discussions conducted with both beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries of the Senior Citizens Grant (SCG) in Northern Uganda. The paper highlights that perceptions and practices of citizenship are historically constructed and dynamic. Citizens’ interactions with and understandings of the state are constructed both through the formal institutions of the state that structure citizens’ everyday access to the structures and resources of the state, and the informal institutions that shape citizens’ expectations of the state and their understandings of their roles as citizens. The paper demonstrates that the implementation of cash transfers expands the reach of the state in marginalized areas and increases beneficiaries’ access to information and resources, which in turn expands their access to the formal structures of the state. It also shows that the implementation of cash transfer programs can challenge dominant narratives about the state’s roles and responsibilities in the everyday lives of marginalized citizens. In making these arguments, the paper examines important questions about the extension of the state through social assistance, the interactions between the central state and local authorities, and the extent to which social assistance programs can (re-)configure both everyday narratives and practices of citizenship at the local level.

Author

• Alesha Porisky, Northern Illinois University