Poverty and human capital in Chile: The processes of subjectivation in conditional cash transfer programs

Utilizing Foucault’s insights on neoliberalism, his notion of governmentality in relation to the State, and his insights on the processes of subjectivity (2007; 2006) the following article seeks to critically examine Chile’s Ethical Family Income (IEF), a conditional cash transfer program that was implemented in the country from 2011 to 2016. Utilizing interview excerpts with women who participated in the program, the article analyzes the manner in which the program operated as a contemporary form of governmentality by installing a particular production of subjectivity in which meritorious recipients of state aid are shaped as productive, responsible, independent citizens who actively invest in accumulating human capital in order to transform themselves and their children into entrepreneurial individuals. The article concludes discussing possibilities of resistance to neoliberal rationality processes of subjectivation in poverty eradication policies and programs.