Paper short abstract:

This paper will debate how care can be a factor of sustainability. Based in field work done in Portugal we will analyze how informal practices sometimes support national economies, how people engage simultaneously in formal and informal systems of care and how these strategies are so effective in producing an effective way to overcome crisis situations.

Paper long abstract:

Portugal is undergoing a socio economic crisis (with increasing rates of unemployment, low family income, a significant immigrant population, and a growing aged population) that increases pressures on a range of social services. Faced with the failing capability of state care systems to continue to provide this support, as well as funding cuts imposed by the international economic crisis, people (re)turn to informal ways to address the problem.

This 'state of emergency' also stimulates creativity and innovation, not only at the economic but also in social and moral realms which are easily overlooked by economic studies of crisis situations. Bearing in mind the danger of presenting an overly harmonious view of social care systems this paper debate how informal practices sometimes support national economies, how people engage simultaneously in formal and informal systems of care and how these strategies are so effective in producing an effective way to face crisis situations. Care thus becomes a factor of economic sustainability (helping to overcome precarious situations); a factor of social sustainability (providing to people in need); and also of emotional sustainability (well being).

Paper short abstract:

The complex interplay between perceived rights and obligations and the actual tactics and bureaucracies of care that impact upon the lives of Cape Verdean students in Porto, sets the scene for two case studies of chance encounters that transform a stranger and a colleague into next of kin.

Paper long abstract:

Cape Verdean students in northern Portugal occupy the centre of a transnational web of family, social and institutional ties that elucidate the complex interplay between perceived rights and obligations and actual practices of care. The (temporary) withdrawal of emotional and economic parental support to punish unplanned pregnancies (albeit at a distance), thwarts the moral expectations of daughters and contrasts with the local, tactical care practices of Cape Verdean peers that fill in some of the gaps left, not only by family, but also by the host society and state. When grant payments from the vocational colleges are delayed, when social security cannot provide a state funded nanny and when landlords throw out pregnant students, sharing accommodation, babysitting for a peer's baby, and lending money, constitute precarious contributions towards the young mothers' safety nets. Mothers also share tactical information on how to make effective claims on the state to qualify for financial assistance. Although the state automatically sets up paternal enquiries, it does not automatically assist mothers to secure support from the compulsorily registered biological fathers.

Consanguinity, nationality and peer group are not the only criteria for reaching out to the other. The paper examines two accounts of how a chance encounter on the street with a woman from Guinea Bissau and how a conversation in a café with a Portuguese work colleague, resulted in the development of long term relations of care, in which the women assumed kinship roles by becoming godparents to the Cape Verdean babies.

Paper short abstract:

The paper considers volunteering as part of the development of civil society and its increasing importance within transformations of welfare states. It analyses the ideological construction of volunteering as a form of care and its gendered implications.

Paper long abstract:

The promotion of civil society is a feature of contemporary neoliberal welfare restructuring. In many parts of the world, a diverse range of NGOs are increasingly important as providers of welfare, as governments promote volunteering as the answer to various social ills. In Central and Eastern Europe, civil society has been promoted as a key "development project" and a way of replacing or refocusing state support. This paper explores volunteering as a distinctive aspect of civil society development. It examines the integration of volunteering programs into publicly funded health care in the Czech Republic. This is based on an ethnographic study of hospital volunteering carried out in 2008. Hospital volunteering is performed almost exclusively by women, who provide non-expert care such as company and social activities to hospitalized patients. Of particular interest in this paper is the process whereby volunteers are constituted as particular kinds of carers. Volunteered care is distinct from both health care and kinship care. Unlike other, feminised forms of (health) care work, it is neither paid for, nor professionalised. Equally, models of kinship and motherhood only partially provide the moral framework for volunteering, and the care volunteers provide is neither obligated nor reciprocated. Rather volunteered care most closely approximates the ideology of the free gift. The paper draws out some theoretical implications for analysing gender and care in the context of welfare transformation.

Paper short abstract:

I discuss how crises complicates care to the degree that people who are unable to turn towards the state for help, turn away also from each other. Poverty in rural Estonia provides the backdrop against which to discuss the institutional and communal changes and the ability to care for and care about.

Paper long abstract:

The times of crises and stringent measures on the national level in Estonia have been experienced by the rural population for the last two decades. This long-term situation has implications on the daily ability of people to care for themselves and their immediate and wider social circles. As the state is rolled back, communal self-help has been touted as the key to replacing state welfare systems. I will look at the South East Estonian fragmented ex-communal-farm villages where poverty and stratification, triggered by post-Soviet changes and matured in neoliberal conditions, have driven people to avoid caring and being cared for by each other. By contrasting this with the community development initiatives and activities to care for community, I will demonstrate how inclusions and exclusions generated by such focuses on the community affect the vulnerable individuals who are assumed to benefit from those endeavours.

I will approach those processes from the framework of Foucaultian theory of governmentality and its extensions by Nikolas Rose, to discuss how the “new technologies of power” help those in positions of responsibility and power to establish institutionally the requirement of self-care and its extensions, such as the care for one’s social environment, community and ultimately, the state itself. Not caring and/or avoiding care appear in such circumstances to generate new hierarchies of deserving and undeserving poor and deserving and undeserving communities.

Paper short abstract:

Cette communication invite à réfléchir sur la politique du soin des personnes âgées en Espagne en proposant un modèle de répartition des responsabilités parmi tous les agents du bien-être et parmi les différentes politiques publiques.

Paper long abstract:

Cette communication se fonde sur les données ethnographiques d'une enquête du terrain réalisée en Espagne et présente des résultats au sujet des politiques publiques pour le soin des personnes âgées. On réalise une réflexion critique du "État Providence" qui encourage une relation asymétrique entre soignante (sujet actif) et soigné (sujet passif) en proposant un changement épistémologique des concepts de vieillesse, soin, dépendance, autonomie, etc. pour parvenir à un modèle de répartition des responsabilités parmi tous les agents du bien-être et parmi les différentes politiques publiques.

L'enquête réalisée fait preuve des problématiques du modèle d'assistance actuel qui crée parfois plus de dépendance et, surtout, donne forme à un discours sur le vieillissement qui donne une vision décadente de la vieillesse.

Il faut donc développer, d'un côté, le travail conjoint parmi les différentes politiques publiques (familial, du travail, social, pour la dépendance et pour le vieillissement actif, etc.). De l'autre côté, en considérant que le soin (care) est une expérience de reproduction sociale nécessaire pour le développement des individus et des sociétés, il faut encourager le travail conjoint parmi les différents agents du bien-être (individu, famille, voisinage et amitié, volontariat, marché, État), qui sont tous soignantes directs

et indirect.

Il s'agit donc d'aller vers un modèle des réseaux d'intervention (Vega Solís, 2009), de Social Care (Martín Palomo, 2008a, 2008b, 2009) ou de "société accompagnante" (Guerín, 2010).

Ainsi, symboliquement et matériellement le soin sorte de l'espace familier féminin et, en même temps, brise l'actuelle relation asymétrique entre soignante autonome et soigné dépendent.

Paper short abstract:

This paper elaborates on the rising necessity to replace informal practices of elderly care by state run structures in Cape Verde. While Cape Verdean families are obliged to search for alternative ways of filling the “care slot”, most families and the elderly in particular are reluctant to make use of this offer.

Paper long abstract:

On Fogo, one of the southern Cape Verdean islands, the fist 'home for the elderly' opened in 2007. This paper elaborates on the rising necessity to replace informal practices of elderly care by formal institutions. On the one hand, Cape Verdean families are obliged to search for alternative ways of filling the "care slot" (Leinaweaver) due to the increasing absence of female members of the middle generation, who work in the care sector of European countries in order to support their families left behind. On the other hand however, the employees of the elderly home report a strong reluctance of families and the elderly in particular to make use of this official offer. This attitude will be explained in two steps:

First, different from the children of absent mothers, who are expected to circulate between different households, an elderly person is understood to belong to the social and physical space of the family's house (kasa). In this sense, an elderly person deserves an adequate form of "acompanhamento", which can only be carried in physical proximity and which sheds light on the functioning of a transnational family. Second, the elderly exercise a strong pressure on their daughters to organize ad adequate form of 'home care', because they fear to be left ("ser abandonado") by their migrant kin. By claiming a particular form and aesthetic of bodily care these elderly struggle against the outcome of the current global crisis, which, in some cases, aggravated the vulnerability of migrants and hence, kept them from articulating elderly care at a distance properly.

Paper short abstract:

This presentation responds to the question of who care for the caregiver, and places the topic of family relationships in the global context where flexibility is currently the mode of organizing finances and labour markets, and consequently, intimate family life.

Paper long abstract:

This presentation analyses how Ecuadorian women living in Barcelona and their children and relatives in Ecuador organize caring relationships in order to respond to the constraints and opportunities of the global economy. How emotions become intricate with money when people adjust their lives to care for others are discussed here through ethnographic information provided by migrants and their relatives. Exploring care as a series of mutual attentiveness helps to better describe the multiple exchanges of men and women in different age who participate in webs of obligations that otherwise should be done by the migrant woman or covered by a public system of care. My argument is that women most than men still involve themselves in pooling resources for reproducing the family in the absence of a woman who migrates. However, this system of reciprocities, attentiveness and help always depends on the availability of unemployed, poorer family members or empleadas (domestic worker) who can offer care at the lowest price. As Beck and Beck-Gernsheim state: "It is not only corporations that need cheap labour, but also families do" (Conference LSE, February 2011). This analysis places the topic of family relationships in the global context where flexibility is currently the mode of organizing finances and labour markets, and consequently, intimate family life.

Paper short abstract:

Building upon a set of debates on governing the body and health under advanced liberalism, this paper, focusing on the Portuguese context, suggests ideas towards a new research agenda on immigration, care, responsibility, family planning and the public health sector.

Paper long abstract:

In the recent context of the European Union governmental activity - in particular in this time of crisis - immigration-related issues became of pivotal importance. Social care programs targeting deprived migrant populations equate reducing social problems with guiding their conduct towards more responsible, healthier habits and life projects. Building upon a set of debates on governing the body and health under advanced liberalism, this paper, focusing on the Portuguese context, suggests ideas towards a new research agenda on immigration, responsibility, family planning and the public health sector, paying particular attention to the construction of "the problem," "the solution," and "the ideal outcome". The insecurities, threats and overall concerns in a time of global crisis create a state of exception, which justifies the deployment of illiberal practices in order to secure collective well-being. In particular, I am interested in how the dominant discourses of the health and social care sectors influence (1) the ways in which "the right thing to do" is constructed and debated and the material effects of these decisions on immigrants lives; (2) the ongoing strategies, micro negotiations of power and truth between different actors; (3) the fading borders of the subject of medical knowledge, which becomes no longer to govern the body merely according to a medical logic, but rather to seek social well-being. This paper will also argue how these interventions are inherently racialized, constituting a kind of ethnopolitics conceiving immigrants as needy and deprived subjectivities - not only of economical resources but also of citizenship resources.

Paper short abstract:

The paper focuses on new developing dimension of child care sector in post-communist Czech Republic: private agencies mediating care workers to the middle-class families. The paper shows how the care is defined and constructed by these agencies as qualified, specialized and professionalized.

Paper long abstract:

Comparing to Western European countries, paid child care does not have a long tradition in the Czech Republic. Being a communist country, former Czechoslovakia relied on collectivistic care supported by the state. Turn to re-familiarization of the social politics and the changes in demographic situation brought about the new topic into to public agenda: how to deal with reconciliation of work and family life without state and/or kinship support. The agencies mediating child care not only fill the gap in the market by offering a child care. Above all, far from providing the simple supply that reacts to the demand on the market, the agencies create the demand for specific care. Drawing upon qualitative research conducted with owners of these agencies, the paper looks into the ways how the child care is constructed. The issues of qualified, specialized, and professionalized care will be discussed. The paper aims at showing that child care in the agencies is deconstructed as a natural female activity and is reconstructed as a gendered activity requiring particular skills that are submitted to professional screening. The paper contributes to the discussion of delegated child care and brings the perspective from the country where it is a new emerging phenomenon with different history and trajectories that are well described in Western European countries.

Paper short abstract:

This paper considers, from a theoretical and cross-cultural approach, how childless people have an active role in issues related to parenting, shared care and childrearing despite the often undervalued position of childless people among their family network, and not only as a strategy in periods of crisis but as a kinship practice throughout history.

Paper long abstract:

Every kinship system constitutes a sociocultural scenario where interpersonal relationships are established to provide responses and solutions to situations that may be experienced as complicated. Kinship values, norms and practices represent a support framework in difficult periods. Throughout history, and in different cultural contexts, the role of childless people in elder or child care and shared child rearing has been overshadowed within the relationships and duties among relatives. Also the experiences, concepts, and relations of people with no direct descendants are a field scarcely studied from Social Anthropology and social sciences in general, and has often been engulfed by the wide networks of family relationships or simply studied as an emergent phenomenon in western societies.

The aim of this paper is to explore the extension of kinship networks that allow and facilitate shared childrearing on the part of relatives with and without children. The idea is that the absence - voluntary or involuntary - of children does not imply lack of relations and responsibilities inside the sociocultural area of kinship, relatives and care. Here, the concept "childless children" is proposed as an expression for the link between childlessness and kinship, that is, the role of childless people in their kinship relationships and the values associated to procreation, childrearing and parenting. A cross-cultural perspective allows us to shape the social area of intersection among childlessness, kinship and care based on topic connections with procreation as a duty, infertility, social expectations and possibilities of childless people and couples, celibacy, and the ageing process in childless people.

Paper short abstract:

The paper questions the capacity of Italian welfare system, based in subsidiarity between the state and the kinship metwork, to deal with important demographic changes and crisis like new trends of family formation and new dynamics of internal migration.

Paper long abstract:

The paper presents the results of an in depth historical, ethnographic and statistical analysis of specific localities of Central Italy, with deeply-rooted tradition of poly-nuclear kinship organization and, after the nuclearization process, substituted with a strong residential proximity among relatives. At the moment, the Italian welfare-state model based on subsidiarity is potentially "under attack": I am referring to the effects of the second demographic transition on the reduced size of family groups, and on the genealogical inversion of the kin group. The first question the paper intends to tackle concerns the actual capacity of kinship (and of the local cultures of kinship linked to it), to secure in practical and representational forms the demand of care coming from the "vulnerables" (i.e. non sufficient elderly and children). The paper investigate the consequences on kinship networks brought about by big changes such as the growth of rates of divorce and non-married couples. Another demographic process at work in Italy over the two last decades is the renovation of fluxes of internal migration from the South to the Central and Northern regions. The hypothesis is that the families involved in this new migration - like the families that are experiencing new forms of family formation - come to terms with the weakness of the kinship-based model of welfare state. The question is if this trend is causing disrupting effects in social and moral terms, due to the sentiments of moral obligation linked to the care of the vulnerables in one's own kinship network.

Paper short abstract:

In Serbia, the ideology of family care remains resilient in spite of practical, economic and ideological challenges. Recent practices of state elder care, while having positive effects on social security, stabilize the existing, mutually exclusive discourses on the bad state and the good family

Paper long abstract:

The introduction of ambulant state elder care in central Serbia began in 2007/08. By that time, norms of family care for the elder generation were under challenge. On the one hand there was a strong believe in family relations as "good and "normal", yet it was increasingly agreed that the elder were needy and families less able to provide care.

This is the context within which the state introduced ambulant elder care by applying norms of home and the family. By creating new relations based on established norms that are valued by the population, the local state used ambiance as a means to enhance its welfare function.

In the enfolding network of care, elder people establish close and supportive relationships with the state employees and employ kin language - a process that I call "kinning the state". In the process, ideologies of the family and the state become appropriated, are employed and changed by the population. While the state provides better social security to a segment of its population in exchange for rather low financial contributions, the face of the state - widely associated with bad government - does not change.

The enfolding relations have to be incorporated into existing ties. This sometimes results in better cooperation within the "biological" family, sometimes in dekinning, as elder people who prefer to stay at home resist offers by their children to move to them in order to get family care.

While state care relations remain volatile, the future is invested with new possibilities.