ISA FORUM SESSIONS ON CARE

23 – 28 February 2021
Brazil Time

Wednesday, 24 February 2021: 09:00-10:30

Varieties of Care Work Under Persistent Gender Inequalities: Exploring National Differences

RC02 Economy and Society

Care work, a form of unpaid and paid labor performed primarily by women, is a major site of job growth across both the developing and developed world. The study of care has moved to the center of contemporary debates about the stakes of social, political, and economic transformations taking place in the world today. New research on care work reveals the centrality of the phenomenon and the international diversity of its forms. This session explores convergences and diversities observed between countries in the global North and South, to highlight the dynamic processes that influence the social organization of care and new forms of care work.  Delineating different types of care and its institutional and geographic location matters in explaining the current complexities of care.

Organizers: Heidi Gottfried and Nadya Araujo Guimaraes

Wednesday, 24 February 2021: 16:00-17:30

Elderly Care: The Global and Local Shifts from Family and State to Community and Market

RC19 Sociology of Poverty, Social Welfare and Social Policy

Worldwide demographic and socio-economic changes challenge the mode of elderly care provision and policy schemes. Depending on country- and region-specific circumstances, large variations can be found around the world, in particular with regard to care responsibilities between family, state, market, civil society organizations including international NGOs. With the starting-point of western-oriented high-income countries in the Global North since the 1980s and followed by middle-income countries in Asia long-term care policies have been established or restructured embedded in far reaching paradigm shifts in the welfare state in general. The policy schemes are often constructed on a middle level of public support leaving considerable care needs to families or individuals; this can be partly explained by dominating ideas of social investment policies, which are ambivalent in the case of aging. In low-income countries in Global South competition between welfare areas and a strong familialism impede policy schemes, which result in unmet care needs or   high burdens for kin and may increase the relevance of local policies, (international) NGOs or the private sector. The session strives to discuss global, but nevertheless local shifts in elderly care from care provision by the family/kin and state to market and community-based care in declining and emerging welfare states. We welcome theoretical concepts, empirical analyses of single countries, and cross-country comparisons which contribute to better understanding of the governance, changes in paid, unpaid and volunteer work, the division of labor and access to care going along with the shift from family and state to community and market.

Session Organizers: Brigitte Aulenbacher and Hildegard Theobald

Saturday, 27 February, 09:00-10:30

New Care Markets, Labor and Care Disputes: The Global Brokering of Domestic Care

RC 30 Sociology of Work

Post-1989, in the new phase of globalization, and forced since the late 1990s domestic care provision is underlying deep going and far-reaching changes. The international sociology of care, labor and welfare studies diagnose interwoven tendencies: changing gender/intergenerational arrangements in family/kin; the forced commodification, marketization, corporatization of care; new forms of governance and the paradigm shift in the (declining and emerging) welfare states from welfare to workfare going along with new concepts of aging; the transnationalization of labor, policies and politics. Under these auspices brokers flourish on arising and increasing care markets. On the one hand, this goes along with contradictory and ambivalent effects concerning the legalization, formalization, and professionalization of domestic care and the transnational marketization and exploitation of cheap labor by recruiting (mostly) female migrant care workers. On the other hand, in Global South earlier than in Global North, labor and care disputes indicate that domestic care has become a contested terrain in which new forms of organizing and struggles emerge. The session invites scholars who investigate global or local brokering of domestic care to contribute to the following topics: How is care brokered? How does this concern the meaning and organization of care? How are the inequalities between and in countries concerned? Which labor and care disputes do emerge and how are they organized? Which methological perspectives allow to investigate the sensitive field of domestic care? Which theoretical perspectives are useful to understand the brokering and organization of and the struggles around domestic care?

Session Organizers: Brigitte Aulenbacher and Helma Lutz

Sunday, 28 February 2021: 10:45-12:15

Care Policies and Gender Equality

RC46 Clinical Sociology (host committee)

RC02 Economy and Society
Care has become a focus of increased public concern, political debate and academic research. The aging process and the increasing women labor market participation are bringing about new demands affecting traditional care models. A wide array of care policies are being implemented worldwide. Shifting the provision of care to the market, ensuring the provision of care by the state, through public policies, implementing flexible work, expanding maternity, paternity and parental leave and informal care work are some of the policies we seek to discuss. This session aims at bringing together papers from different parts of the world, South and North, that analyze institutions, organizations and policies, their material and symbolic impact, on reducing or exacerbating class, gender, race/ethnicity and nationality-based inequalities.

Session Organizers: Bila Sorj and Karina Batthyany