Thematic Panel 18

Transforming care work: Impact on working conditions and job quality

Conveners and Discussants:

Ricardo Rodrigues, European Centre for Social Welfare Policy and Research, Austria and Marta Szebehely, Stockholm University, Sweden

Social services for children, disabled and older people are undergoing a series of sector-specific transformations. These transformations reflect changing priorities in long-term care, including greater reliance on the market, re-organization of work spurred by cost containment or introduction of new providers (for and non-profit) and changing training and qualification standards in response to changing needs. These sector specific transformations take place against a wider context of changes in employment and work across the developed world such as, increased de-regulation and growing relevance of new forms of employment (from posting of workers to precarious work), falling unionization rates, increased cross-border movement of workers, among others. The potential for these transformation to impact working conditions, or even fundamentally change the nature of care work, is thus substantial.
This thematic panel  welcomes papers that explore the relationship between any of the above-mentioned transformations or changing priorities in public care policies – the main theme of the conference – and the working conditions in care or/and the quality of jobs and care work. In particular, we welcome papers that have a comparative focus to care work across different sectors (care for children, disabled or older persons), different settings (home care versus institutional care, public versus private), between countries, as well as across different groups (exploring differences in gender, ethnicity, qualifications, etc.)