XIX ISA World Congress of Sociology (July 15-21, 2018)

JS-53

Global Perspectives on Care and Care Work I: Marketization, Migration and Gender

RC02 Economy and Society (host committee)
RC32 Women in Society

Language: English

Research shows that care regimes are strongly interrelated with gender and migration regimes. This is most obvious in domestic work and care, but also in professional care provision by the private sector, the state and the third sector, drawing on a largely female migrant workforce and shaping new divisions of labor between men and women and among women. Although commodification of care and care work is embedded in and interlinked with supra- and international politics regulating the interrelations between care provision, migration and gender, the transnational and national care regimes and working conditions significantly differ within and between the Global North and South, West and East. The session invites papers on recent developments in this field and to focus on the following questions: How can we conceptualize a political economy of care, gender and migration enabling us to understand the status and development of care work in contemporary capitalisms? What significance do power, violence and injustice have in the field of care, making care workers a class of denizens serving the citizens of the middle and upper classes around the world? In what ways do changing demographics, institutional policies and cultural practices affect who provides care across national borders? How are care workers challenging new forms of commodified care? What examples of decent care work have emerged, and under what conditions? The session seeks to understand and discuss the interrelations between the societal organization of care and care work, migration and gender on the national, trans-, inter- and supranational levels.