Paper short abstract:

We reflect on the limits and potentialities of the aging at home model, highlighting the need to find alternative formulas that can promote the politicisation and social redistribution of care, displacing the central role of the family and women in the provision of care for the elderly.

Paper long abstract:

In Spain, aging at home constitutes a cultural aspiration, underpinned by the weakness of public policies. Families provide care at home following the dictates of gender and kinship, two systems of social ascription that constitute the base of the moral system that organizes the responsibility for caring, contributing to the depoliticization of care.

The shortage and fragmentation of the available resources clash with growing long-term care needs. Moreover, in a context characterised by cuts to public spending, the marketisation of care services has expanded. Consequently, attention to care in the domestic sphere takes place within a mosaic-like model that combines the family, public, private, and community resources available; but this model is hugely unfair and marked by inequalities of gender, class, and migration status, tragically exposed by the crisis brought on by the Covid-19 pandemic. The outbreak of the pandemic has further magnified the role of homes as spaces for care, disrupting the strategies deployed by families, and especially women, in care provision.

Drawing on ethnographic data collected in Catalonia (Spain), in this paper we want to reflect on the limits, contradictions but also the potentialities of the aging at home model. Our starting point is that the home can be a suitable space for aging and caring. However, it is important to find alternative formulas that can promote the politicisation and social redistribution of care, displacing the central role of the family and women in the daily management and provision of care for the elderly in the domestic sphere.