Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the central role of care in livelihoods in times of austerity. Constituting a basis to social reproduction, care processes strengths kinship relations crosscutting gender roles in family, community and labor.

Paper long abstract:

This paper explores how care is central in livelihoods in times of austerity. Constituting a basis to social reproduction, care processes strengths kinship relations crosscutting gender roles in family, community and labor.

Approaches to the Portuguese recent crisis (2011 - 2015) are usually centered on its economic and political character. Departing from a discussion on the different dimensions and forms of care, this paper will discuss how people use interpersonal relations of care and support to deal with the precariousness produced by austerity policies to tackle their livelihoods. From an ethnographic research on middle class families in Lisbon I will explore how men and women ensure social reproduction through interpersonal relations of care and support which produce a reinforcement of dependences and mutualities that make kinship ever more important in a state based society. Addressing austerity through multiple forms of care unveils shifts in gender roles in traditional family relations, challenging how we think about the intersections of care, gender and kinship.