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.

Convenors: Jayanthi Lingham Centre for Care, University of Sheffield
and Chloe Alexander Centre for Care, University of Birmingham

This symposium will develop and provoke enquiries on care convoys. Existing literature defines a care convoy as “the evolving collection of individuals who may or may not have close personal connections to the recipient or to one another, but who provide care… including help with daily living and instrumental activities of daily living, socio-emotional care, skilled health care, monitoring, and advocacy” (Kemp et al 2013: 18). This extends Kahn and Antonucci’s (1980) ‘convoy models of social relations’, which posits that individuals are embedded in dynamic networks of close personal relationships (convoys) that serve as “vehicles through which social support is distributed or exchanged” (Antonucci 1985: 96). The approach understands care as relational, recognises care recipients as active agents within their own care and support and reflects the complex and dynamic nature through the life course of both care needs and networks. In addition to the temporal dimension, social, political and economic contexts – such as shifting gender roles and welfare state retrenchment – can also transform the structure of care convoys. Against this backdrop, there is much scope to further develop the framework. This symposium brings scholars together to do so, in the context of transitions wrought by contemporary shifts in boundaries and enduring global crises. The contributing papers will provoke both broad and specific conversations. How do we apply and extend the care convoys model? How to constructively problematise the framework and address gaps in empirical research? What role do digital technologies play in shaping care convoys? What are the policy implications of understanding care relations and change through the care convoys framework? The discussant(s) will offer insights on the care convoys model and its relevance for how we understand practices of care. Together, these papers and the discussion will situate the care convoys model in the context of urgent debates about the sustainability of, equity within, and possibilities for care.

Paper 1: Changes in care networks due to the COVID-19 pandemic: application of the care convoys model Authors: Deborah Lambotte, Nico De Witte & Benedicte De Koker (University College Ghent/HOGENT). Symposium presenter: Deborah Lambotte Outline: As the care convoy model indicates, care networks are evolutive. Events may cause care networks to change, and changes can be inherent to the structure, function, and adequacy of one’s care network. In the paper, we explore this theory in depth, using findings from a quantitative survey we conducted in 2020 in Belgium, regarding informal carers’ experiences of the lockdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Paper 2: Exploring migrants’ experiences of care through a transnational convoy of care lens Authors and symposium presenters: Kelly Hall (University of Birmingham) and Majella Kilkey (University of Sheffield) Outline: In this paper, we explore the lives of two different groups of migrants as they age in place: retired British migrants in Spain and post-war Caribbean, Irish and Polish migrants in Britain. We draw on and combine two theoretical frameworks to understand the intersection of migration and care: ‘transnational ageing’ and ‘convoys of care’. We suggest that older migrants are embedded in a ‘transnational convoy of care’; a concept that can enable us to understand migrant care experiences more effectively.

Paper 3: Digitising the care convoy: technology and the social relations of care Authors and symposium presenters: Kate Hamblin and Grace Whitfield (Centre for Care, University of Sheffield) Outline: This paper will explore the role of digital technologies in care convoys – how they are used and how they may alter care by facilitating certain tasks, connections and ‘sociality’ (Austin, 2020) but also create new responsibilities, tensions and risks. In doing so, we will draw on literatures only examining transnational care convoys and technology (Fuller et al., 2020), and related concepts such as ‘digital kinning’ (Baldassar & Wilding, 2020), ‘techno-emotional mediation’ (Alinejad, 2021) and silence and ‘communication voids’ (Sampaio, 2020), as well as literature from Science and Technology Studies which engages with issues of power (Akrich and Latour, 1992).

Paper 4: The (im)possibilities of care convoys Authors and symposium presenters: Chloe Alexander (University of Birmingham) and Jayanthi Lingham (University of Sheffield)
Outline: The care convoys model challenges us to conceptualise exchanges of support through time and to grapple with understanding the changes these caring relationships undergo. The paper presents four critiques that question in turn the discursive, conceptual, experiential and methodological components of the care convoys model. We discuss whether these indicate a restricted potential of the model or rather, signal a need to broaden participants and subjects in the debate about the content, relevance and policy implications of care convoys.

Discussant(s) will be 1-2 people who will offer comments and insights on the papers based on their research expertise in care, practices of care and social and global networks of care. 

Convenors: Dr Obert Tawodzera and Dr Maria Teresa Ferazzoli, IMPACT

Due to the Covid-19 pandemic and financial crises, long-term/ social care has reached a new critical point worldwide. This session brings together contributions from three European ‘excellence Centres’ designed to address the present challenges facing long-term/ social care by joining research, lived experiences, and best practice. The first paper will introduce the international long-term/ social care crisis context and how this has provoked the creation of these innovative Centres. In this paper, the authors (Dr Tawodzera and Dr Ferazzoli) will provide a definition of ‘Centres of excellence’ in long-term/ social care and the main challenges that these institutions are trying to tackle across Europe. The following papers will discuss the international experiences of NKa the Swedish national centre of excellence in the field of informal care; Vilans, a National centre for expertise for long term care in the Netherlands; and IMPACT, the new UK centre for evidence implementation. The aim of the presenters is to illustrate what can be learned on the international level from their experiences. More specifically, in the second paper Professor Hanson will discuss the successful experience of the Swedish Family Care Competence Centre in collaboration with the Malardalen University to develop a national knowledge based support for parents and informal caregivers of people with severe disabilities in Sweden using blended learning. The third paper will present the work of Vilans on the development of national long-term care policy and care services in the Netherlands (Professor Minkman). The last paper will present the work of IMPACT (Improving Adult Care Together) and Professor Glasby will illustrate IMPACT delivery models and their functions in translating evidence into practice. 

Convenors: Prof Eva Lloyd, UEL and Dr Amy Horton, UCL

In this symposium four speakers interrogate the impact of Covid-19 on both adult social care and early care and education in England, in Europe and beyond, and explore options for the future. Dr Sara Farris (Goldsmith College, University of London) examines how racialised female care workers have been exploited during the pandemic. Dr Amy  Horton (University College London) presents data from a new study on the impact of different forms of care home ownership on care services and the employment conditions of care workers. Ivana La Valle (University of East London) reports on a 2022 study of the pandemic’s impact on children’s development, on their access to early care and education, and on mothers’ employment and mental health. Professor Eva Lloyd (University of East London) highlights how Covid-19 exacerbated sustainability risks within the rapidly growing corporate childcare sector, while discussant, Dr Kate Hardy (University of Leeds) critiques the presentations’ suggestions for transforming care and their applicability beyond Britain. 

Paper 1 Corporate care and racialised workers in times of crisis.  Dr Sara Farris (Goldsmith)

This paper discusses the results of a project on the growing presence of large corporations in elderly care and child-care. Drawing on qualitative interviews with adult social care workers in France and Italy, and on desk-review in the UK, it shows the strategies corporations use to save on labour costs and increase profits for shareholders. These companies’ reliance upon a largely female racialised workforce that can be hired for low wages, appears to be one of the main tactics used to reduce labour costs. The paper intervenes on debates on care and social reproduction feminism to show that we need to be careful to the new forms in which care is marketized and commodified and what the implications are for gender orders and class exploitation.

Paper 2 Splintering social infrastructures: Financial pressures on the social purpose of non-profit care homes. Dr Amy Horton (UCL)

Internationally, interest is rising in different forms of ownership of care homes, and how these may affect the quality of services and of employment. This paper is based on findings from a study of care homes for older people in the UK during Covid-19. Some charitable providers faced a dilemma between either pursuing a social purpose (accepting new residents without significant assets) or offering what they saw as good jobs to staff, funded by relatively high private fees. I argue that the political economy of care conditions social infrastructures across different ownership models. 

Paper 3 A Covid generated childcare crisis in England. Ivana La Valle (UEL)

A Nuffield Foundation study on the impacts of the pandemic on early childhood education and care (ECEC) shows a system in crisis where children’s access to ECEC can still be influenced by their parents’ socio-economic circumstances, rather than their development needs and their right to early education, and where lack of access to ECEC services is a barrier to work, particularly for less affluent mothers. As well as exploring these challenges the presentation will outline lessons from the pandemic to build a better and more resilient ECEC system.

Paper 4 A sustainability crisis for English for-profit childcare. Prof Eva Lloyd (UEL)

In 2022 a UCL based research team published a Nuffield Foundation funded study which traced developments in the English childcare market over the last twenty years. National and international for-profit-childcare companies, with complex financial structures, increasingly came to dominate this market. Relying heavily on private equity investors,  and fuelling expansion through mergers and acquisitions, while carrying major debts, their sustainability is at risk. The pandemic exacerbated this risk, which is less for not-for-profits.