5th ISA Forum of Sociology (6-11 July 2025)

Questions of care have become central to national and global policy agendas that promote decent work, healthy families, and sustainable communities. Yet, the needs, rights, and concerns of domestic workers continue to be sidelined in discussions about the social provision of care. This session will discuss the importance of centering domestic work and domestic workers in public and scholarly debates about the “right to care” in our post-pandemic world. How has the growing demand for care among diverse groups, including children, older adults, persons with disabilities, and sick persons, affected the working conditions and labor and social protections of paid domestic workers, who constitute approximately 25% of the global care workforce? How are the individual care needs of domestic workers themselves, many of whom are poor women and (im)migrants from indigenous, racialised, and socially oppressed communities, addressed in policies and programs designed to meet the care needs of a rapidly aging population? How has domestic worker organization and mobilization advanced understanding of the centrality of care and care work in the broader politics of organized labor? We also invite papers that discuss the significance of skill, training, employment rights, gender rights, and human rights in debates about workforce development and care economies, more generally.