Changing Social Organization of Care and its Implications for Social Politics
Europe is experiencing a revival of paid domestic and care work in private homes in the areas of child care, elderly care and household maintenance. Theory and research point to the combination of socio-economic, demographic and welfare causes as characteristics of post industrial societies, which give rise to the care deficit. These characteristics are: changes in demographic structure of population; changes in family structures and dynamics, individualization and instability of life and family courses; feminization of labour force and masculinization of women’s employment patterns; intensification, flexibilization and precarization of working conditions in paid employment; global and local economic inequalities that foster female migration and employment in insecure work, and persisting gender inequality in sharing domestic and care work. Policy responses to these developments are slow: they are either absent (lack of increase in provision of public care services; deregulation, privatization and refamilization of care; lack of integration policies) or inadequate (cash for care allowances, insufficient work/life balance arrangements, introduction of quotas on migrant care workers), which forces (mainly) women to seek for individual solutions in the grey economy of insecure care services. The purpose of the conference is to provide an international and cross-disciplinary space to explore the following issues:
- Theoretization of care, social organization of care and (global) political economy of care
- Care from perspectives of social justice, social equality and social inclusion
- Social inequalities, poverty and “local” care chains
- Migration and global care chains
- Intersections of class, race/ethnicity and gender in formal and informal care sector
- Work ethic and care ethic
- Citizenship and care
- Demographic decline and care deficit
- Changing family patterns and care deficit
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- Fiona Williams: Recognition, rights and the redistribution of care in Europe: Political tensions and spaces
- Elin Peterson: Beyond the ‘women (un)friendly’ welfare state: Framing gender inequality as a policy problem in European care politics
- Majda Hrženjak: Gender, ethnicity and class in informal paid care work in Slovenia: differences between child care, elder care and cleaning
- Veronika V. Eberharter: Occupational segregation and wage penalties in the health and care sector – the European perspective
- Monique Lanoix: Assembly-line care: Ancillary care work in post-Fordist economies
- August Österle: Long-term care policies and the grey economy of care services
- Vera Galindabaeva: Nanny’s work: balancing the regime of mothering and the regime of labour relations
- Öncel Naldemirci: Nursing with the family: the Refakatçi system in Turkey
- Loïc Trabut: From the shadowy existence to professional caregiver: getting paid to take care of your parents in France
- Nevenka Černigoj Sadar, Aleksandra Kanjuo Mrčela: Can organisations contribute to parents’ care work?
- Marta Verginella, Irena Selišnik: Domestic work between private problems and public solutions: experiences from past times and today in Slovenia
- Elin Kvist: Policy reforms encouraging paid domestic work – a challenge or necessity for gender equality
- Vesna Leskošek: Women between minimum wage, unemployment and care work
- Tatsiana Chulitskaya: Concepts and practices of social justice: Belarusian and Lithuanian cases
- Catharina Calleman: Constructions of au pair in four Nordic countries
- Lise Lotte Hansen: Global domestic workers on the Danish labour market – labour market regulation, interest representation & solidarity strategies
- Karin Carlsson: The sphere of care. From private to public and back again.Domestic work on the political agenda in the 1940s and in the 21th century Sweden
- Minna Zechner: Global care and national social policies
- Sanja Cukut Krilić: Caring from a distance – theorising and analysing “care for those left behind”
- Tanja Bastia: Women migrant workers and elderly care in Europe: exploring global care chains and attachment
- Josiane Le Gall, Ana Gherghel: Caring at distance in migrant families. Azorean transnational families in Quebec (Canada)
- Alissa V. Tolstokorova: Pains and gains of “care chains”: care migration from Ukraine. Problems, perspectives and policy options
- Margareta Kreimer: Developments in long-term family care in Austria – analysis and critique from a critical/feminist economic perspective
- Ann Elise Widding Isaksen, Helle Stenum: The politics of recognition: from “cultural exchange” to “domestic work”
- Hana Hašková, Zuzana Uhde, Kateřina Pulkrábková: The path of Czech women’s groups to non-reformist reforms of care?
- Silke Chorus: Paid Care-Workers Organizing in the US – Europe’s future?
Project execution
Results
Funders:
- Slovenian Research Agency
- East East: Partnership Beyond Borders Program