Paper short abstract:

Care workers in Japan, already facing poor conditions, burnout, and high turnover, will be experiencing huge shortages in the coming years. This paper examines the lives of precarious workers, most vulnerable to fatigue and other kinds of invisible suffering, who are shaping Japan's eldercare.

Paper long abstract:

By 2025, the worker shortage in Japan's eldercare services will top 300K. Care services proliferate, but worker shortages and rationalized administrative technologies aimed at organising the flow of older bodies through these services result in a simultaneous withering of the moral and affective force of care as a guiding principle. Precarious employment of care workers generates a logic of everyday, small acts of neglect or abuse, foreclosing on a carer's capacity to pay attention to the other's suffering. At the same time, the carer's job demands a careful accounting of bodies and vital signs, an affective labor of tenderness. Using interviews and observations in formal care settings, I show how Japanese carers tread a fine line between violence and vulnerability, acting as both agents of an uncaring system and as heartfelt companions to older people. They are often highly conscious of, even haunted by the emotional demands on this work, using idioms like "solitary confinement," "kidnapping," and "hostage," which implicate their own moral failings in delivering care. They also stake out other kinds of moral claims based on feelings of intimacy with the cared for when many families appear unwilling or unable to care. I examine how the subjectivity of care workers in Japan can shed light on the consequences of poor carer support in a rapidly ageing world.