Home Care for Sale
The Transnational Brokering of Senior Care in Europe
Helma Lutz editor Ewa Palenga-Möllenbeck editor Brigitte Aulenbacher editor Karin Schwiter editor
Format:Hardback
Publisher:Sage Publications Ltd
Published:21st Feb '24
Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back
The world of senior care provision and care work is changing rapidly. Across Europe, brokering agencies for live-in care workers have become powerful players in reshaping welfare systems, transnational care chains and working conditions. This volume draws together the latest research on live-in home care for seniors in Europe, exploring processes of commodification and marketisation, the transnationalisation of care work, the private household as a workplace, and workers’ contestation of the live-in care arrangement. Together, they depict far-reaching challenges in care provision and care work.
"A must-read for anyone wishing to understand the changes in the political economy of care in the 21st century. A compelling exploration of the emergence of care brokerage and agency intermediation in Europe with a variety of examples from different countries and care settings."
- Professor Sabrina Marchetti, Ca’ Foscari University of Venice
"Essential reading. Rich empirical and conceptual work provides an exhaustive account of the commodification, marketisation, transnationalisation and exploitation in the care industry, all in the context of global and local inequalities. This is a group of amazing critical analysts who dare to confront some of the key contradictions of our current painful social transformation in European terrains."
- Professor Attila Melegh, Corvinus University Budapest
"An encyclopaedic account of the commodification and marketisation of transnationally-brokered senior home care provision across Europe. It pays close attention to the economic and social inequalities, as well as state policies, that underlie this new migration industry, and the collective efforts to contest and improve conditions of work and care. Home Care for Sale documents the geography of care chains within a divided Europe - a geography that both complements and disrupts conventional understandings of international care chains between the Global North and South. A must-read for those interested in senior home care, social reproduction, migration, border studies and the workings and repercussions of neoliberal state policies."
- Professor Géraldine Pratt, University of British Columbia
This book is a must-read for anyone wishing to understand the changes in the political economy of care in the XXI century. It offers a compelling combination of classic and cutting-edge approaches that sheds light on the emergence of brokerage and agency intermediation in Europe and provides an excellent variety of examples from different countries and care settings.
-- Sabrina MarchettiWhen within a capitalist institutional framework accelerating ageing leads to the crisis of social care and to further transnational marketization of household services ′Home Care for Sale′ is an essential reading. The rich empirical and conceptual work points toward an almost encyclopedic outcome, where commodification, marketization, transnationalization, exploitation in care industry is explained in a complex manner within the context of global and local inequalities. This work is performed by a group of amazing critical analysts, who dare to confront some of the key contradictions of our current painful social transformation in European terrains.
-- Attila Melegh‘Home Care for Sale’ provides an encyclopedic account of the commodification and marketization of transnationally-brokered senior home care provision across Europe, including the UK. It pays close attention to the economic and social inequalities, as well as state policies, that underlie this new migration industry, as well as collective efforts to contest and improve conditions of work and care. ‘Home Care for Sale’ documents the geography of care chains within a divided Europe. This is a geography that both complements and disrupts conventional understandings of international care chains between global north and south. Theoretically and empirically rich, this is a must-read collection for those interested in senior home care, social reproduction, migration, border studies, and the workings and repercussions of neo-liberal state policies.
-- Géraldine PrattRelatedly, the global appeal of the book lies in its focus on current developments in the proliferation of transnational brokering agencies and its contribution to unfolding debates on the commodification and marketisation of care. This temporal focus is well-rooted, however, in several decades of state disinvestment from or restructuring of the care sector and the unevenness of European integration fuelling the transnational organisation of care. Another aspect of the impressive scope of this collection lies in its ability to capture the conflicting interests of brokering agencies, employing and managing households, care recipients, migrant live-in carers, and community and workers’ organisations operating at the interface of state regulations and labour, care and migration regimes. -- Ania Plomien
Home Care for Sale offers a vital insight into the contemporary live-in care market in Europe, with a particular focus on the role of brokerage agencies and other intermediaries in negotiating and managing care work [...] Home Care for Sale will prove useful for academics and policy makers examining care work, the marketisation and commercialisation of care, European social policy, and intra-European migration. -- Ella Monkcom
Within and beyond the European context, students, scholars, policymakers, but also civil society organizations seeking to bring about change will find in this book a valuable resource of information about live-in care brokerage, its limitations and pitfalls, along with proposals for how to move beyond the entrenched exploitation and devaluation of care and reproductive labor in a globalized economy. -- Emma Dow
ISBN: 9781529680140
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: 670g
352 pages