Paper short abstract:

In this paper I compare how promoters, national development officials and transnational economists, in considering “mothers” to be efficient administrators of Oportunidades (Mexico) and Asignación Universal por Hijo (Argentina) CCT money, project different notions of ideal households.

Paper long abstract:

At three different levels of Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) implementation (trans-national, national and local) transfer money acquires diverse, if not contradictory, meanings. In this paper I compare how promoters, national development officials and transnational economists, in considering "mothers" to be efficient administrators of Oportunidades (Mexico) and Asignación Universal por Hijo (Argentina) CCT money, project different notions of ideal households. In a suburban area of Paraná, Argentina, I find, many women recipients consider AUH to be a token of "normalcy" for their households while in an indigenous village in Yucatán, México, promoters present the Oportunidades program's money as a "harmonizing" and "evening" device, not only for households' livelihoods but for women's bodies as well. At a more public level, national development officials represent the Mexican program's transfers using a particular rhetoric of "co-responsibilities", "compromises" and other contractual tropes (see Agudo Sanchíz 2015, for other similar examples). In Paraná, however, government officials describe AUH with a language of "rights", "family allowances" and entitlements as they project a labor-based household. At a trans-national development level, the discourse of behavioral economics (Deeming 2013) of "incentives" more broadly represents the household as a small, nuclear but very plastic unit, regardless of local contexts.