4 - Steinbeck’s Migrants: Families on the Move and the Politics of Resource Management

Summary

As perhaps the most widely read account of poverty and migration in the US, John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath has exerted a powerful influence over the discourse of migration politics since its publication in 1939. Much has been written on the specific aspect of domestic migration that Steinbeck portrays – the Okies fleeing both the Dust Bowl and the farm-tenancy system – to advocate for the expansion of the social-welfare net. That Steinbeck's novel had such an influence on welfare governance is unsurprising. Indeed, numerous critics have brought to light the extent to which literature during this period considered and repackaged emerging political platforms on behalf of the American public at large. For Michael Szalay, The Grapes of Wrath is an archetypal case of popular sources participating in the ‘reinvention of modern governance’ in the wake of the New Deal (3). Though the reception of the novel among the political left continues to shift, reviews at the time of publication likewise identified the policy-oriented focus of the book. The proximity of Steinbeck's novel to the legislation of its day indicates not only the sweeping relevance of the text but also the broadly ambitious scale of New Deal governance in general. In addition to stimulating the economy, the policies enacted in the 1930s following the Great Depression did more than respond to financial crisis: champions of the New Deal both in and outside of government saw these reforms as crucial to transforming the social fabric of the US. To this end, the welfare codes crafted during this period enabled the state not only to provide for its neediest citizens but also to define the standards by which citizens were deemed worthy of support in the first place. Literary sources like The Grapes of Wrath played a central role in actualising the state's social policies by assisting in this project of scrutinising different segments of the population.

Steinbeck's novel also initiates a turn in the type of political activism embedded in vagrant narratives as practised by, for example, Jack London and George Orwell. Unlike the vagrancy sources explored in previous chapters of this book, Steinbeck's work depicts vagrants who embrace the domestic sphere: rather than picaresque tramps or hobos, he concerns himself in The Grapes of Wrath with families – men, women and children – who involuntarily find themselves on the margins of society.