High unemployment rates, humiliating relief policy, and the spectre of eviction characterized the experiences of many Ontario families in the Great Depression. Respectable Citizens is an examination of the material difficulties and survival strategies of families facing poverty and unemployment, and an analysis of how collective action and protest redefined the meanings of welfare and citizenship in the 1930s.

Lara Campbell draws on diverse sources including newspapers, family and juvenile court records, premiers' papers, memoirs, and oral histories to uncover the ways in which the material workings of the family and the discursive category of 'respectable' citizenship were invested with gendered obligations and Anglo-British identity. Respectable Citizens demonstrates how women and men represented themselves as entitled to make specific claims on the state, shedding new light on the cooperative and conflicting relationships between men and women, parents and children, and citizen and state in 1930s Canada.

"‘Respectable Citizens offers a vivid analysis of a unique period in Canadian history that has been rarely studied through a gendered lens… a thought-provoking read, offering rich glimpses of the past as well as striking parallels to the present day.’" - Canadian Journal of Sociology; vol35:04:2010

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‘Respectable Citizens is an invaluable resource to those who study the Great Depression in Canada precisely because its many observations lead to many opportunities for further exploration.’