The Transforming Care Conferences Symposia are parallel sessions focussing on a particular and topical theme.

Each Symposium is organized by a Symposium Chair and includes up to four identified paper authors who will present their papers during the session. One or more Discussants will comment on the papers.

Papers must be uploaded by 1st June, details to follow.

2023 Symposia:

1. The political economy of care for children and older adults in times of crisis
2. Breaking boundaries: international accounts from innovative ‘centres of excellence’ in social care
3. Possibilities for care convoys: imaginative and diverse conversations
4. Negotiating care in the context of multiple commitments: Combining paid work and informal care across the life span
5. Socio-economic inequality in long term care and wellbeing: an overview of the findings of the IN-CARE project
6. Young people’s gendered caring: crossing boundaries, shaping futures
7. Blurring the boundaries of care: community-based public policies, social economy and commoning care practices. Insights from the Spanish case
8. Gender Equality and Unpaid Care in the Pandemic: Opportunities for Transformation
9. Crisis of the Later Life Care: Cases from Nordic Welfare States
10. Institutional Boundaries and Wages in Care Employment
11. Transnational families in Europe: caring during the time of ‘crisis’ of the Covid-19 pandemic and beyond

Meet the Author Session

Family Care of Older Persons in Southern Africa: ‘Care Crisis’ or ‘Care in contexts of crises’?
Associate Professor Elena Moore, Department of Sociology, University of Cape Town, South Africa

Convenor: Associate Professor Elena Moore, Department of Sociology, University of Cape Town, South Africa

The context for long term care of older persons across countries in Southern Africa includes many overlapping and reoccuring crises including poverty, HIV-AIDs (and now Covid-19), food insecurity and several natural disasters. Despite the overwhelming contexts of ongoing crises, much of the policy and some scholarly attention has focused attention on the role of families, attempting to talk about a care crisis in terms of the weakening of traditional family support rather than the entrenched structural inequities in care provision. This symposium draws attention to the familialist policies in the region that focus on normative expectations that people are supported by their families and ignore the contexts of crisis in which care takes place. We call for more complex and nuanced understandings of the ways in which families care in contexts of deepening economic, political and health crises where rising acute illness amongst the elderly and post-independent economic and social policies have increased the demands on carers and families.

Convenors:

Dr Rosa Mas Giralt (Deputy Programme Manager BA Professional Studies, Lifelong Learning Centre, Visiting Research Associate, School of Geography, University of Leeds)

Prof Virginie Baby-Collin (Professor of Geography, INSPÉ, member of the joint research unit TELEMMe, University of Aix-Marseille)

Discussant: Dr Erika Kispeter (London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine)

Paying heed to the ‘Boundaries, Transitions and Crisis Contexts’ theme of the conference, this symposium will focus on the time of ‘crisis’ of the COVID-19 pandemic and how this has impacted ‘proximate’ and ‘distant’ caring responsibilities between younger, middle and older generations in transnational families in Europe. It will draw from the ongoing interdisciplinary and comparative research project Transnational Families in Europe: Care, Inequalities and Wellbeing taking place in France, Spain, Sweden and the UK. The project has adopted a multi-sited, family-focused, ethnographic and participatory action methodology. Each national team is working with third-sector partner organisations and community peer researchers to collect data from a diverse sample (i.e. different cultural backgrounds and legal statuses) of transnational families with care needs, including family members in countries of origin/other settlement countries (approx. 100 families overall plus 25 in-depth ethnographic family case studies). In addition, interviews with policymakers and practitioners working with migrants in health and social care, education, language learning, voluntary and community sector are also taking place across the four project countries (approx.65). 

The four paper presentations will consider the project’s emerging findings on the reconfiguration of care practices and arrangements in transnational families during, and, in the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic in each project country. They will explore the challenges that younger, adult or older migrants or family members faced to continue to provide care locally or cross-borders, access temporary support schemes (e.g. furlough) and health and social services, or secure or maintain the legal status of different family members (e.g. IT or language barriers). Taking account of the boundary factors that mediate care provisions in different (trans)national contexts (i.e. migration regimes/migrants’ social rights) and intersecting inequalities within families (i.e. gender, age, disability, etc.), the symposium will illuminate temporary or more permanent changes in the intergenerational caring responsibilities and mobility strategies of transnational families in Europe in the (post)Covid-19 era.

Paper Authors

UK: Rosa Mas Giralt and Amrita Limbu (University of Leeds); Ruth Evans, Grady Walker, Sally Lloyd-Evans, and Tony Capstick (University of Reading); and James Simpson (Hong Kong University of Science & Technology). 

France: Polina Palash and Virginie Baby-Collin (University of Aix-Marseille). 

Spain: Raquel Martínez Buján, María Paloma Moré Corral, Laura Oso, Andrea Souto García, Laura Suárez Grimalt (University of Coruña, UDC) 

Sweden: Brigitte Suter, Katarina Mozetic (Malmö University). 

Convenors: Franziska Dorn, University of Göttingen, Germany and Nancy Folbre, University of Massachusetts Amherst, US

A growing literature documents a clear “care penalty” on the wages of both women and men employed in care industries and occupations, controlling for individual characteristics. and other factors. Because women are highly concentrated in care jobs, their average earnings are significantly affected.  Other institutional factors also appear relevant, such as national policies, unionization, immigration status, and employment in public sector or a non-profit enterprises relative to for-profit businesses.  

This session will bring together international researchers who are exploring these issues in order to promote greater communication, interaction and collaboration. It includes participants from the U.S., U.K., Canada, and Germany who will consider implications for other countries. Brief presentations will be followed by panel discussion. 

Presentations: 

Torsten Müller, (European Trade Union Institute, Germany) “Trade Union Strategies to Tackle Low Pay in the Care Sector”

Naomi Lightman, University of Calgary, Canada, “Comparing Care Regimes: Worker Characteristics and Wage Penalties in the Global Care Chain” 

Damian Grimshaw (King’s College, London, UK), Mathew Johnson, Eva Herman, Jill Rubery (University of Manchester, UK), “Challenges and Contradictions Implementing a Real Living Wage in the UK Care Sector.”

Hussein, Shereen (London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, UK ) “Employment Inequalities among British Minority Ethnic Workers in Health and Social Care at the time of COVID-19,”

Leila Gautham, (University of Leeds, UK), Kristin Smith (Dartmouth University, US), and Nancy Folbre (University of Massachusetts Amherst, US), “The Cost of Doing Good: The Relative Wages of Human Service Workers in the U.S.” 

Convenor: Alexandra Jønsson, Roskilde University

Despite being internationally known as affluent welfare states with well-functioning health and social services, Nordic countries face a crisis of care. This care-crisis is due to a rising number of elderly citizens in need of care and failure in recruitment in contexts marked by decades of austerity politics. This session explores the various strategies, practices and dilemmas related to the care-crisis. Taking onset in cases from Nordic Welfare States, the panel aims for a broader discussion applicable to various national and cultural settings. Nordic Welfare States, however, serve as a great example, because here governments have launched several strategies intended to re-organize and improve later-life care, focusing on issues such as better conditions for care workers, de-bureaucratization, digitalization of care, and sustainability. The panel investigate empirically the ‘problematizations’ of current conceptions of aging, care, care work and the organization of care embedded in the new policies and strategies, to discuss how the intention to solve the current crisis may constitute new problems and dilemmas: 

(1)“Care Crises: Problems & solutions” uses the case of an intervention to better health and care among and for migrants to discuss the problematization of migratory aging, and the failure to adapt local health intervention solutions to aging migrants. 

(2)“Attractive workplaces – a strategy to curb the recruitment crises” analyses attempts to introduce new care ideals, and reorganize care work that opposes principles of NPM in order to overcome the crisis of recruiting and retaining care workers. 

(3)“Datafication for care in later life?” identify the forms of care that are made to matter in processes of digitalization and data generation and the forms of care that escapes datafication and discuss how such practices relates to dominant notions to what is considered as ‘accountable care’. 

(4) “Sustainability for care in later life?” attends to medicalization and overuse in a sustainability perspective to discuss the drain of scarce care resources and the allocation of professional care for older people in the years to come. 

Presenters: 

Care Crises: Problems & solutions: Associate Professor Anne Leonora Blåkilde & Professor Karen Christensen

Attractive workplaces – a strategy to curb the recruitment crises: PhD candidate Maria Hjortsø Pedersen, Associate Professor Agnete Meldsgaard Hansen & Prof. Annette Kamp

Datafication for care in later life?: PhD candidate Mie Winther Christensen & Professor, Nete Schwennesen

Sustainability of later life care: Associate Professor, Alexandra Brandt Ryborg Jønsson 

Discussant: TBA

Convenor: Dr Michele Hilton Boon, Centre for Economic Justice, Glasgow Caledonian University

This symposium will present new research on unpaid care and inequalities in the context of the unprecedented increase in demand for such care during the pandemic. The topic relates to the conference theme of the transformation of care in a crisis context by considering how the gendered division of household care labour changed during the pandemic, and how people’s experiences were shaped by social class, ethnicity, and place. Understanding these changes has significant implications for current policy and the response to future crises

Dr Michele Hilton Boon (Ailsa McKay Postdoctoral Fellow, Glasgow Caledonian University, UK) will present findings from a mixed-methods synthesis and meta-analysis on the impacts of Covid lockdowns on the gender gap in unpaid care in 16 countries. This paper will show that, while the time men spent on unpaid caring increased, women’s did as well, leaving the pre-existing gender gap in time and satisfaction largely intact. However, redefining of family roles did occur, challenging and contradicting persistent gender ideologies. 

İtibar Aydemir-Uslu (PhD researcher, Università degli Studi di Urbino Carlo Bo, Italy) will present how women’s unpaid care work has been shaped by the cultural, legal and socio-economic structure and policy interventions in Turkey and Italy and its implications for future policy. The comparative case study method will provide an understanding of the role of these factors and how inadequate resource allocation of governments to social welfare, including care, exacerbates women’s care burden in different contexts.

Katy Gillespie (PhD researcher, Wise Centre for Economic Justice, Glasgow Caledonian University, UK) will present findings from qualitative interviews with heterosexual couples in Scotland, exploring how potential pandemic-induced shifts have influenced the intrahousehold divisions of unpaid care roles and domestic labour tasks. During the pandemic, some men have increased their share of this work. However, these changes may be temporary and reversible. Capturing both sexes’ lived experiences of these alterations will support changes in the gendered organisation of work and family life.

Dr Nina Teasdale (Research Fellow, Glasgow Caledonian University, UK) will present on the policy implications stemming from research into gender and unpaid care. During the Covid-19 crisis, care work (child, adult and elderly) intensified and had to be reconciled simultaneously with paid employment, providing an opportunity for potential shifts in gender roles. This paper considers how policy might be harnessed to facilitate ‘deeper’ shifts in attitudes and social norms to support longer-term changes in the gendered organisation of care work.

Discussants:

Professor Sara Cantillon, Centre for Economic Justice, Glasgow Caledonian University

Associate Professor Elena Moore, Department of Sociology, University of Cape Town

Convenors: Magdalena Díaz Gorfinkiel, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid and Raquel Martínez-Buján. Universidade da Coruña.

The care model in Spain has been built around the unpaid work of women in families, the limited role of public services and the commodification of care through the employment of domestic workers. This approach has posed serious problems for the sustainability of life and the Covid-19 health crisis brought to light the need to design alternatives that will minimize inequalities related to gender, social class and race created by this type of provision. The most critical feminist approaches call for a careful consideration of how to design a democratic care model that will lead to the more socially equitable redistribution of these activities. This approach holds that one of the keys to this new design would be to encourage the promotion of care transfers between the different fields of provision (State, family, market and community), thus facilitating inter- communication.

From this standpoint, the purpose of this Symposium is to launch a discussion on the challenges and possibilities posed by the deconstruction of the boundaries between the different areas dealing with the social organisation of care. To this end, we have included four papers which, based on demonstrated research results, explore innovative experiences developed to improve the connection between all of the agents involved in care. Thus, the analysis focuses on family strategies, commercial initiatives, community-based public programs and the social practices of commoning care which were developed during the pandemic and have contributed to the partial transformation of the current boundaries between gender and generation as well as other barriers between the public, private and community sectors. We believe that, in the European context, Spain is a paradigmatic case in this field in that it has developed a number of different of social movements, citizen groups and local political programs that challenge the prevailing hegemony dominating the commodification and re-familiarization of care. Although this panel includes contributions that analyse the specificities of the Spanish case, all the papers submitted critically engage with how the research findings relate to broader theoretical and empirical questions in the field. In addition, the submissions explore the outcomes emerging from social innovation programmes that can also be inferred from the research and interventions carried out in other contexts.

PAPER AUTHORS
1.- Title: ‘I don’t want my father to be in the nursing home, but he has to be’: tensions on the border between family care and residential care in Spain. Authors: Sílvia Bofill-Poch, Montserrat Soronellas Masdeu, Dolors Comas d’Argemir (Universidad Rovira i Virgili, Spain).
2.- Title: Collectivising care in segregated spaces: women’s resistance in the neighbourhood of Almanjáyar and the village of Almócita. Authors: Paula Pérez Sanz, Samuel Rubio Coronado, Carmen Gregorio Gil (Universidad de Granada)
3.- Title: Community long-term care initiatives promoted by local government in Gipuzkoa.
Opportunities and challenges. Authors: Matxalen Legarreta-Iza, Elena Martínez-Tola
(Universidad País Vasco)
4.- Brokering agencies and home care worker cooperatives: collective resistance to the private management of care work in Barcelona. Authors: Raquel Martínez-Buján, Paloma Moré Corral and Antía Eijo Mejuto (Universidade da Coruña)

DISCUSSANT: Magdalena Díaz Gorfinkiel.

Convenor: Dr. Geraldine Boyle, Senior Lecturer, Open University. 

Discussant: Dr. Eugenia Caracciolo di Torella, University of Leicester

This symposium will examine the gendered expectations and experiences that characterise young people’s caring. The contributors are members of the International research network on young people’s gendered caring, led by the Open University. We will consider how young people and related services respond to familial, socio-cultural, policy and legal boundaries. 

Adopting an intersectional lens, the papers will consider how gendered caring in early life intersects with other dimensions of identity to  shape young people’s futures.

Title, presenter & synopsis of each paper: 

1. Dr. Başak Akkan, Istanbul Bilgi University, Turkey

Gendered unpaid care work in Turkey: intersectional inequalities of gender, class and age 

In Turkey, NEET women and girls who are neither engaged in employment nor enrolled in education are heavily occupied with unpaid work (domestic and care). This care work needs public recognition to understand the social inequalities concerning being a NEET in highly gendered and familialist contexts like Turkey. This paper explores care as an inequality-enhancing phenomenon incorporating the multiple inequalities of gender, class, and age.

1. Dr. Geraldine Boyle, Open University, UK: 

Caring as young adults, creating new futures? 

This paper draws on qualitative studies undertaken in England with young adult carers and the services that support them. How young people become involved in caring and what scope they have to choose different futures as adults will be discussed. An intersectional lens will be used to explore how social inequalities influence the likelihood of becoming a young adult carer, but also their choice over continuing caring in adulthood. The role of governmental policy in promoting or constraining young people’s agency will be discussed. 

1. Elena Guggiari, Kalaidos University, Switzerland: 

Young Carers in Switzerland: Awareness and support increase but young males remain hard to reach. 

In Switzerland, 8% of children between 9 and 15 years old are young carers (YC). Switzerland finds itself on a preliminary level of awareness and policy responses to YCs (Leu et al, 2022). Awareness has been increasing and some national and regional support offers have been developed. Although almost half of young carers in Switzerland are young men, some support offers primarily reach female YCs. A study consisting of interviews with male YCs and experts aims to understand why. 

1. Dr. Trudi Cameron, University of Nottingham, UK: 

Becoming young carers of stroke survivors

This paper explores the lived experience of children becoming young carers of stroke survivors. A survey of stroke survivors support identified that most of the young carers were female, reflecting that caring is a gendered phenomenon. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with young carers. None of them had been formally identified as young carers and they were not in receipt of any formal support. However, they were all working in a bi-directional relationship with the well parent to shape a new way of being to accommodate the changes wrought by stroke.

Convenor: Marjolein Broese van Groenou, professor of Informal Care, dept of Sociology, Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, the Netherlands

The IN-CARE project (2019-2022) studied to what degree changes in long term care (LTC) policy exacerbate socio-economic status (SES) inequality in care and wellbeing. Central in the project is Saraceno’s typology of (de)familization of care and the assumption that LTC policy changes reflect either familization, de-familization by providing publicly paid services, or de-familization by services available on the market. The overall aim was to empirically assess the link between macro level policies and individual level care. Four work packages distinguished between care use and caregiving, and between a cross-national comparison and a country specific design. The UK team led by Karen Glaser, studied inequalities in care and wellbeing from a user perspective in a cross-national and longitudinal design using SHARE data. The German team led by Martina Brandt studied the same question from the caregiver perspective in a cross-national longitudinal design using SHARE data. The UK team (led by Mauricio Avendano and Ludovico Carrino) used a quasi-experimental design on ELSA data to study how changes in eligibility impacted inequality in care use in the UK between 2002-2019. Finally, the Dutch team led by Marjolein Broese van Groenou studied the impact of 30 years of LTC policies on care use in the Netherlands, using the LASA data. In this symposium the team leaders will present an overview of the main findings in four presentations, to be followed by a short discussion of the scientific and societal implications of our findings. Main conclusions are that i) a reduction of publicly provided services (familization) increases (pro-poor) SES inequality in informal and formal care use and has negative consequences for informal caregiver well-being, and ii) the association between care and wellbeing does not differ by SES, but there is evidence of gender differences in the link between caregiving and wellbeing. We conclude that the empirical interaction between LTC policies and SES proved useful, but needs more empirical foundation. In particular further work k is needed to assess whether and why (changes in) LTC policies  impact the wellbeing of care users and caregivers directly. 

Karen Glaser 

Socio-economic inequality in care use and well-being in a cross-national and longitudinal perspective

Martina Brandt

Socio-economic inequality in caregiving and wellbeing in a cross-national perspective

Ludovico Carrino, Ginevra Floridi, and Mauricio Avendano

Cuts to social expenditure and inequalities in home care in England

Marjolein Broese van Groenou

Socio-economic inequality in care use and wellbeing in the Netherlands 1992-2018

Discussion by Marjolein Broese van Groenou of the scientific and societal impact of the findings of the IN-CARE project

Presenters: Fiona Alpass (Convenor and Discussant), Mary Breheny, Rosie Gibson, Shanika Koreshi & Kate O’Loughlin (Discussant)

Many governments are focused on policies that reduce the need for residential care, such as ageing in place and community care policies for people with disabilities. Such policies reduce the expense of funding formal care. However, this brings an increased expectation that care will be provided informally. Informal family-based care has become an essential part of the health care system providing many benefits including improved patient outcomes, reduced re-hospitalisations and delayed residential care placements. Many people prefer to be supported informally and carers value the ability to care for people they are close to. Caring roles can extend across the life span.  Thus, many informal carers must combine care with work or study, and these experiences may differ depending on when in the life course they occur. The reconciliation of paid work and informal care is complex for many carers and can impact on their health, wellbeing and financial security.  

This proposed symposium includes contributions from major research studies from New Zealand and Australia.  The first paper (Alpass) analyses factors that enable older informal carers in New Zealand to return to or remain in paid employment. Using multiple waves of data from the longitudinal New Zealand Health, Work and Retirement (HWR) study we highlight predictors of 2-year employment outcomes among unemployed and employed carers in later life. The second paper (Breheny) presents findings from a longitudinal qualitative study which interviewed informal carers who were also employed about their experiences of negotiating work and care. The advantages and disadvantages of flexible work arrangements for supporting care are highlighted. The third paper (Koreshi) utilises HWR longitudinal data to examine how work status preferences of older adults among different age groups (55-59, 60-64 and 65+) influence the decision to take up caregiving responsibilities. Participants aged 55-59 years in involuntary part-time work were more likely to take up care at follow-up. The final paper (Gibson) examines the impact of combining caring with study or work on the sleep of young informal carers. Participants described how their sleep was often compromised due to competing responsibilities. They struggled to support family members as well as maintain school or work commitments.

Papers in this session contribute to the conference themes of boundaries and transitions. They focus on the limits and constraints of the work environment for carers navigating the work-care nexus at different life course stages and highlight the limitations of flexibility for genuinely enabling the integration of multiple roles. The discussants will contextualise the presentations within the broader context of work and care reconciliation and encourage discussion and debate. 

Fiona Alpass is a Professor of Psychology at Massey University, New Zealand. She co-leads the Health and Ageing Research team and is also co-PI of the longitudinal Health, Work and Retirement study, a population-level study which aims to identify the health, economic, and social factors underpinning successful ageing in New Zealand’s community-dwelling population. Mary Breheny is an Associate Professor in Health Psychology at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. Mary’s research focuses on how inequalities over the life course accumulate and shape opportunities and experiences in later life. Rosie Gibson is a Senior Lecturer in Psychology at Massey University. Rosie’s research focuses on sleep across the lifespan with a particular focus on the sleep and wellbeing of family carers. Shanika Koreshi is a 3rd year doctoral student at the School of Psychology, Massey University. Her current research is focused on reconciling work and caregiving.