Kiran Mirchandani

OISE

Kiran Mirchandani is associate professor in the Department of Adult Education and Counselling Psychology at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education. Her research focuses on home-based work, telework, contingent work,entrepreneurship, transnational service work and self-employment.

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  • Criminalizing Race, Criminalizing Poverty

    Welfare Fraud Enforcement in Canada

    By Wendy Chan and Kiran Mirchandani     January 2007

    The criminalization and penalization of poverty through increased surveillance and control of welfare recipients in recent years has led many poverty advocates to claim that “a war against the poor” is currently in progress. The authors argue that people of colour are most often the casualties in the governments’ desire to roll back the welfare state. Relying on myths and stereotypes about racial difference, the enforcement and policing of welfare fraud policies constructs people of colour as potential “cheaters” and “abusers” of the system. This has allowed for the stigmatizing and discriminatory treatment of people of colour to persist unchallenged within the welfare system.

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