Thematic Panel 8

Childcare, equality and wellbeing for all: Is it possible?

Convenor and Discussant:

Ingela Naumann PhD., Senior Lecturer in Social Policy, School of Social and Political Science University of Edinburgh, United Kingdom

Childcare policy has been a political priority across OECD countries for some years now, heralding the promise to deliver multiple positive outcomes: combined with early education it can contribute to children’s equal opportunities; it can reduce socio-economic inequalities, support parental employment and gender equality; and buffer aging societies against economic pressures.  There is much research evidence and scholarly debate supporting such policy orientations. And yet, not everyone seems to benefit equally from the existing childcare and early education (ECEC) policies: high quality ECEC is not equally available to all children, and not all children thrive in the childcare arrangements they find themselves in; parents often struggle with logistical challenges around work and family reconciliation, frequently suffering from health and financial strains, as do carers in the formal and informal childcare sector due to work conditions and constraints. These issues are not unique to countries with less developed ECEC systems, but can be found everywhere, with varying intensity. With other words, expanding ECEC policy also carries the risk of deepening socio-economic cleavages – between groups of children, groups of women, different types of families and so on. 

This panel invites papers to critically discuss current ECEC policies in their international and national contexts and with respect to the potentially unequal outcomes for different groups and members of society:  who benefits from what kind of ECEC policy, and who doesn’t? Do current ECEC policies intentionally prioritise certain groups in society? What are the potential trade-offs and conflicts in different types of childcare arrangements with respect to the well-being and equality of the protagonists of the ‘childcare drama’; for example between children and parents, or between parents and other carers?  What could childcare arrangements look like that support the wellbeing of all involved, while also furthering social equality?

Thematic Panel 9

Care as a labour market: Care occupations and professions between quality and contractual arrangements

Conveners and Discussants:

Emmanuele Pavolini, Professor of University of Macerata, Italy, and Margarita León, Professor of Universitat Autònoma Barcelona, Spain

Most studies on social care have traditionally focused on its impact on users (e.g. service provision, access, costs, etc.). Less attention has been given to the characteristics of the “supply side”: the workers who provide care (either to elderly people or people with disabilities or to children). So far, the attention on the supply side of social care has mainly focused on migrant care workers and in respect to this specific segment of the care labour force there is an increasing literature. However, many other workers employed in social care services have received quite less attention, especially in a comparative perspective: teachers and educators in nurseries and kindergartens, workers in formal services in home and residential care (from nursing homes personnel to home care assistants to doctors working mostly with frail elderly people, to social workers).

The quality of social care depends deeply by the professional qualification of these workers and the jobs’ conditions that are offered to them. Therefore, studying more the quality and quantity of the “supply side” of social care is a way to enrich substantially our understating of how social care works and how effective it can be in sustaining users and their families.

The thematic panel welcomes papers that focus on these workers employed in social care services (in child care or elderly care), and of course migrant care ones, in several ways: labour conditions (contracts, etc.), contents of tasks performed, quantitative variations in different type of workers’ profiles and their impacts (e.g. has the increase availability of migrant care workers in several countries “crowded out” other types of occupations and professions in social care?) and how these characteristics change over time.

The panel is related to two main themes of the conference: Institutional setting of care systems and care policies and Formal and informal care work

Papers can focus on single countries or adopt a comparative perspective. The stream is also open to scholars adopting a sociology of professions’ approach, a (sociological and economics) labour market studies’ approach and/or paying attention to the politics of regulation of the conditions of workers employed in social care services.

Thematic Panel 10

After Austerity Policies: Trends for Care and Gender Equality

Conveners:

Carmen Castro-García, Consultant. Chair in Feminist Economics. University of Valencia, Spain, and Antía Pérez-Caramés, Senior Lecturer, Department of Sociology and Communication Sciences. Faculty of Sociology, University of A Coruna, Spain

Discussant:

Antía Pérez-Caramés, Senior Lecturer, Department of Sociology and Communication Sciences. Faculty of Sociology, University of A Coruna, Spain

The aftermath of the crisis as well as its response in the form of austerity measures has left many unanswered questions regarding the direction and transformation of care regimes and policies for gender equality, particularly in Southern European countries. With a priority set on following budgetary rules and reducing national debt, all countries within the Mediterranean welfare regime have witnessed an overall shrinking of their social provision (Saraceno, 2017), especially relevant in its direct and indirect consequences for the working and living conditions of women (Gálvez & Rodríguez-Modroño, 2016). Some authors claim that a reinvigorated wave of refamiliarization has swept away previous achievements in care and gender equality policies in certain Southern European countries (León & Pavolini, 2014). However, the extents of this process and its specific characteristics in different Welfare States have still not been the subject of thorough analysis.

In this thematic panel we would like to address the impact of austerity policies on public and private provision for care in European countries, as well as to analyse the emerging post-austerity trends that can be observed in policies for care and gender equality. The panel is open for contributions on either child care, long-term care and/or care for people with disabilities. We encourage papers tackling with issues such as: Which are the main changes in the different care regimes (convergence, difference, temporalities…)? How have the different structures and actors involved in care provision rearranged in this post-austerity scenario? Which care arrangements can be envisioned for a new social deal in European countries? Proposals of papers with a strong comparative focus will be particularly welcome.

Thematic Panel 11

Challenges to ageing in place: Potential risks of isolation and abandonment for frail older people living at home  

Conveners:

Marco Arlotti, Department of Architecture and Urban studies, Polytechnic of Milan, Mirko Di Rosa, Laboratory of Geriatric Pharmacoepidemiology, National Institute of Health and Science on Aging and Flavia Martinelli, Department of Architecture and Territory, Mediterranea University of Reggio Calabria, Italy

Discussants:

Mirko Di Rosa, Laboratory of Geriatric Pharmacoepidemiology, National Institute of Health and Science on Aging (IRCCS INRCA) and Flavia Martinelli, Department of Architecture and Territory (DArTe), Mediterranea University of Reggio Calabria, Italy

Over the last decades, one crucial priority defined by policy makers in order to deal with the mounting care pressure has been ‘ageing in place’, which means supporting older people to remain autonomous within their own homes as long as possible, thus guaranteeing them – in addition to a reduction of more expensive solutions, like residential care – a better quality of life. Ageing in place requires, however, some specific pre-conditions such as, for instance, an active formal and informal support network and an adequate housing context. Otherwise, substantial risks of social and spatial isolation for frail older people may arise.

Against this background, this panel invites contributions to discuss the risks potentially associated with ageing in place at the European and international level, adopting different research strategies and disciplinary perspectives. Relevant research questions that may be addressed include:

1. What housing contexts favour/hamper ‘ageing in place’, by affecting care arrangement strategies, the quality of life of frail older people and, therefore, their chance of remaining at home? Housing contexts should be considered in a “triple” dimension: the conditions of the dwelling, the characteristics of the building, and the surrounding environment in which older people live.

2. What are the main risks associated with ‘ageing in place’? Special attention should be paid to isolation and abandonment, in psychological, social, and material care terms.

3. What role does public policy play in supporting ageing-in-place practices? What innovations could help reduce the risk of isolation? Reference here is to social innovations, technological innovations and policy innovations, also in terms of regulation, and of the interplay between housing, urban and territorial settings, and care and health policies.

Thematic Panel 12

Priorities for quality of care and user-centred care – implications for formal and informal care workers

Convenor:

Katarina Andersson, PhD and associate professor in social work, Department of social work, Umeå University, Sweden

Discussants:

Katarina Andersson, PhD and associate professor in social work, Department of social work, Umeå University.

In times of retrenchment, the distribution of care for vulnerable groups as elderly people, are facing new challenges. In policy making a renewal interest of person-centred care has been highlighted on national and local levels in several countries. Often, person-centred care or user-centred care is claimed to be a win-win situation for all, including for economics, professionals and users. Differently articulated, user-centred care equals quality of care in many settings. Further, despite the ability to improve quality of care, it will also help users to get care when needed by strengthening their voices and empower them to raise their own concerns for care and to be more active. User-centred care seem to have social and policy innovative solutions. Taken together, user-centeredness are supposed to reduce pressure on social care. This vague but strong philosophy of user-centeredness raises several critical questions that needs to be explored further.

The formal care work, specifically within elderly care has low status and is often low paid. The last decade, research shows less interest for care work amongst carers while the increasing number of ageing people will put high pressure on elderly care. Simultaneously the burden for formal and informal care workers have increased. Further, the number of informal care workers have increased with less support from formal care.

How do different nations articulate priorities of user-centeredness and how is it itself articulated and in relation to quality of care? Dignity and respect as well as enhancing meaningfulness and social rights for the elderly could be some including concepts within this frame. What are the prioritizing dilemmas, solutions and consequences for distribution of care as user-centred and how do these impact on the distribution of care and conditions for formal and informal care workers?

Thematic Panel 13

Changing Cultural Ideas and Care Policies across Welfare States and Policy Levels

Conveners and Discussants:

Birgit Pfau-Effinger and Ralf Och, University of Hamburg, Germany

Since the 1970s, welfare state policies towards childcare and long-term care (LTC) for older people in need of care (in brief: care policies) have experienced fundamental reforms in many countries. Many scholars have shown that there are substantial differences between welfare states regarding the processes and results of such reforms. In this stream, we want to focus on the role of cultural ideas for the explanation of change and cross-national differences in care policies. Cultural ideas are, for example, related to the ‘ideal’ forms of care and the ideal type of caregiver; the responsibilities of market, state and family in the provision of care; the distribution of responsibility for care policies between different levels of government; deservingness and justice in relation to care, etc.; they are potentially fragmented, contested, contradictory and changeable (Pfau-Effinger 2005). Political actors at all levels of government have to deal with changing and/or conflicting ideas within in order to make sense of social reality and to legitimize political solutions (Béland 2009; Heclo 1975).

In this stream, we aim to discuss different aspects of the relationship between cultural ideas and care policies.

–          Which is the role of cultural ideas for the explanation of change in care policies?

–          How do ideas related to care policies travel between and within different nations?

–          How do political actors deal with conflicting cultural ideas in the field of care policies?

–          What is the role of cultural ideas for the implementation of national care policies at the local level?

–          What methods are suitable to analyse cultural ideas about care, and their changing role in care policies?

Contributions are welcome from social scientists from any discipline relevant to these questions. Abstracts of no more than 300 words shall be sent to transformingcare@vive.dk no later than January 31st, 2019. We will inform you about the result of the evaluation of the abstracts by February 28^th, 2019.

References

Béland, D. (2009) Ideas, institutions, and policy change. Journal of European Public Policy 16(5), pp. 701–718.

Heclo, H. (1974) Modern Social Politics in Britain and Sweden: From Relief to Income Maintenance, New Haven: Yale University Press.

Pfau-Effinger, B. (2005): Welfare State Policies and the development of care arrangements. European Societies 7(2), 321-347.

Thematic Panel 14

Care regimes and task division – comparative evidence    

Conveners:

Maša Filipovič Hrast, PhD, Associate Professor, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Ljubljana and Andrej Srakar, PhD Associate Professor, Institute for Economic Research, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia

Discussants:

Andrea E. Schmidt,  PhD, Researcher, Research Affiliate, European Centre for Social Welfare Policy and Research, Vienna, Austria and Valentina Hlebec, PhD, Professor, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia

Demographic ageing has increased the pressure on public long-term care (LTC) systems and informal carers to deliver care to dependent older people. In European countries, we can expect a big increase in the need for care and a smaller number of potential informal carers. Consequently, care has become one of the important focal points of the organisation and restructuring of the welfare state.

In the proposed thematic panel, we would like to address the topic of comparative studies in LTC systems, focusing on the comparison of care regimes and/or comparison of countries within care regimes, looking in particular into what effect specific care regimes have for the task division between formal and informal carers. A large body of literature describes different models of task division between formal and informal caregivers but has mostly done so in the context of single country studies and there is little information how task division between formal and informal carers varies across countries and care regimes.

Apart from the needs and individual characteristics of older people, the social context of care determines the use of different types of care for older people. European countries differ considerably regarding the societal characteristics of care as well as in the proportions of people who receive various types of care.

In contrast with the case of health care, distributional fairness of LTC services in Europe has received limited attention. Given the increased relevance of LTC in the social policy agenda it is timely to evaluate the evidence on inequality and horizontal inequity in the use of LTC and specific forms of task division in this regard.

In our panel we will address the above issues in terms of comparison of European countries. In particular, articles relying on the analysis, based on data from SHARE (Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe) survey, are welcome, but also all other submissions will be warmly desired.

Thematic Panel 15

Men, work and care in contemporary families

Convenor and Discussant:

Teresa Martín-García, Center for Human and Social Sciences, Spanish National Research Council, Spain 

In recent decades, the new social role of women, female educational advancement, and the gradual weakening of men in the labor market, exacerbated by the recent financial and economic crisis, have strongly affected men’s identities and roles and their educational, labor, conjugal and reproductive trajectories. As a matter of fact, men have gone from being mere economic providers and protectors to adopting a larger and more significant role as caregivers in contemporary families. Caring is a competence that is acquired through dedication and practice, but learning to care is not offered equally to women and men in different social and public policy contexts. For instance, maternity and paternity leave often consider mothers and fathers differently and, therefore, do not take advantage of the human and care capital of both parents to enhance children’s wellbeing and gender equality. Consequently, women are absent longer from their jobs when children are born, which generally constitutes a penalty in their work trajectories. An increasing number of studies show, however, that men’s use of parental leave alone is associated with a greater long-term involvement in domestic and care tasks. In addition, men’s involvement may not only differ in terms of total time investments but also with regard to the dimensions of care in which women and men engage. The empirical evidence suggests that it is not so much the amount of time per se that matters for a father-child relationship but, rather, the extent to which men are transforming their identities and practices as fathers.

This panel aims to analyze the role of men in family dynamics, with special emphasis on care. We will study the changes in men’s attitudes, values and behavior concerning both their breadwinner and nurturing role over time. Special attention will be paid to comparative studies, those that investigate the new role of men as partners, parents and care providers from a longitudinal approach, and those that deal in a novel way with theoretical, methodological or political issues about nurturing and practical care. Studies that address the importance of men being involved in the care of children and/or dependants, as well as the potential of public policies and normative changes in workplaces for the encouragement of shared caring responsibilities and the promotion of family life-work balance for both women and men will also be appreciated.

Thematic Panel 16

Comparative perspectives on live-in care migration 

Conveners and Discussants:

Simone Leiber, University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany
August Österle, Vienna University of Economics and Business, Austria 

With societal change and varying political priorities, care arrangements and practices organised through formal and/or informal channels are transforming across the world. In this context, the phenomenon of long-term care provided by migrant workers in a live-in setting (i.e. care workers live in the household of an elderly person in need for care), has become an increasingly common response to arising care gaps. Live-in migrant care work is an important source of care provision in many Asian countries, has become widespread in Conservative and Southern European welfare states, and is also used in many other parts of the world. Usually, such live-in care arrangements developed bottom-up, often as a grey economy of care. At some point, many countries’ care, migration or employment policies started to react with some effort of regularisation of stay, work or recruitment, or just with a tacit acceptance of irregular arrangements. But live-in migrant care work is rarely addressed in a more comprehensive way, it often remains a source of care provision detached from the overall care policy priorities.

This thematic panel particularly seeks to enhance the comparative perspective on studying live-in migrant care work. We invite studies from different regional contexts across the world (using either single country case studies that allow for implicit comparison to other presenters, or explicitly comparative designs) to enhance our knowledge on, e.g.

• the measurement of the phenomenon in quantitative terms, and methodological problems related to that,
• the working and living conditions of migrant care workers,
• effects of live-in care work in the societies of the home countries, as well as the destination countries
• the role of agencies as intermediaries in this field, or
• the relationship between welfare systems and welfare reform (e.g. retrenchment) and the development of live-in migrant care work.

Thematic Panel 17

Social and Health Care Policies for Elderly Migrants in Europe

Conveners:

Murat Şentürk, Associate Professor, and Yusuf Adıgüzel, Professor, Istanbul University Department of Sociology, Turkey

Discussants:

Ulaş Sunata, Associate Professor, Bahçeşehir University, Istanbul, Turkey & Yvonne Schikhof, M.A., Rotterdam University of Applied Sciences, School of Health care Studies & Research Centre Innovations in Care, Netherlands

The population of elderly migrants in Europe has been increasing and is an important applied research area. This social fact is a dynamic subject at the intersection of aging and immigration sociology. This research area also has the capacity to generate more comprehensive and stronger scientific data through international comparisons. The fact that this particular elderly group is a heterogeneous group in cultural and economic perspectives is well known. This heterogeneity puts an additional challenge on evaluating elderly migrants’ care needs over a more efficient base. The understanding of formal and informal care can be reshaped by migrants’ cultural backgrounds in addition to how caregiver is defined. The conceptualization of care also highly depends on migrants’ life choices. The circumstances of practical, realistic, and functional institutional care for migrants are another prominent study area. All in all, crisis-proof social policies must be included in European countries’ agendas. More information is needed in order to understand the local- and country-level needs. This session invites papers that focus on both the social- and health-care needs of elderly migrants; of particular interest are papers that examine the various angles of care. Transnational care practices are considered to be a significant and unique study area. Lastly, migration policies and the status of migrants in various countries also affect the healthcare procedures of elderly migrants.

Keywords: Elderly migrants, Social care, Health care, Transnational care practices, Institutional care, Formal care, Informal care, Social rights.