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

JS-61

Global Perspectives on Care and Care Work II: Marketization, New Forms of Governance and Gender

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

Language: English

Care work is undergoing a dramatic change worldwide. Countries in the Global North experience a ´care crisis´ resulting from neoliberal deregulation of welfare provision. In these countries marketization implies that those who can afford it outsource care. The majority of migrant care givers come from countries in the Global South. However, there are important differences. In Europe millions of care givers come from post-socialist countries which struggle with the fact that their inclusion in the global system resulted in the deregulation or elimination of state run care infrastructure now replaced by private institutions. As a result, markets become the main actors of care provision. The low level or even absence of welfare state provision in many countries has always implied a situation where wealthy families employed care givers from ethnic minorities or poorer strata of the population, but here, too, the situation is changing. In some middle income-countries of the Global South care work is a social issue moving up on the political and state’s agenda, and care provision in part involves populations previously excluded or ignored. Furthermore, the global economic crisis lays off ‘surplus workers’ and often results in extensive migrations, but migrants’ provision of care in faraway countries generate care gaps in their home countries. We invite papers dealing with the connection of marketization and new forms of governance and the following question: How does the change of provision, institutionalization and regulation of care work affect social differences and inequalities of gender, race and class?