Mara A. Yerkes, Utrecht University

Jana Javornik, University of Leeds and Institute of Contemporary History

Care is structured at multiple levels across multiple social systems, including health care, social policy and the welfare state, the economy and labour markets, the political landscape, and cultural norms and expectations. Navigating these multiple, entangled and complex systems is increasingly difficult for people receiving care and their caregivers. This requires, for example, that caregivers understand and manage various eligibilities (e.g., time off work, access to adjustments at work

and/or flexible work, financial support and their implications) as well as economic autonomy. Caregivers must simultaneously navigate systems such as healthcare and social security, that are often unfamiliar to them. The adjustments needed demand clarity, often allowing no space for the messiness that comes from variable care needs and related intersectionalities. Such complexity, often with no room for accommodating uncertainties (e.g., of diagnoses or long-term and variable health care issues) can foster persistent socio-economic inequality, significantly shaping access to social rights as well as creating fragility, vulnerability, and stigma.

Recognition of and research on the complexities of social systems and/or how care receivers and caregivers navigate these systemic entanglements is growing. In this panel, we place these systems at the core of the analysis. We will explore institutional complexities, compare them across countries and localities, considering the conceptualisation of social justice and how institutional interplays shape social citizenship and the social rights of care receivers and caregivers. We welcome a range of conceptual frameworks and methodologies that study institutional interplays (e.g., between health care systems and social policy systems) or the navigation of them by care receivers or caregivers, focusing primarily on parents or informal carers attempting to navigate work-care structures while caring for someone with (complex) care needs. Papers developing innovative conceptualisations and/or methods to better understand realities in relation to social rights are particularly welcome.