A Southern Trajectory for the Work-Care Arrangements, Family and Care Policies

In our contribution, we first revisit the 1990s discussion concerning a southern welfare State model. What could be the main lessons of the 2008 financial crisis for this discussion? Then we propose to focus on one of the characteristics of Southern configuration underlined in the nineties: the central role of the family as a source of protection against risks and vulnerability, or a social bumper. The question nowadays is not only the transfer of responsibility for social problems from the state, or even local authorities, to the family in a shedding process but the careful investigation of, first, the transformation of the family itself in the meantime and also of the emergence of new social risks which are challenging caring capacities of our societies. Families have transformed substantially in all European countries, particularly due to the increasing number of women in the labor market, but also as Luis Moreno and Pau Mari-Klose (2013) argue, due to the succession of generations which radically transform social expectations and practices. This revolution of the gender division of labor hugely modifies the question of care, caring task, care workers, respective roles of formal and informal carers, etc. This variable plays a crucial role in understanding simultaneously the process of change and the capacity of resilience of welfare systems in the South but also in many other nations and in particular in France, which can be also considered as a southern European country.