Textbooks, monographs and policy-focused books on our Health and Social Care list push forward the boundaries of teaching, theory, policy and practice. The list covers areas including global health, health inequalities and research into policy and practice.
Key series include Transforming Care which provides a crucial platform for scholars researching early childhood care, care for adults with disabilities and long-term care for frail older people, and the Sociology of Health Professions, offering high-quality, original work in the sociology of health professions with an innovative focus on their likely future direction. Our leading journal in the area is the International Journal of Care and Caring.
The COVID-19 pandemic has made many aspects of care work more visible. This article focuses on cleaning as a form of care work that has been systematically ignored and made invisible. We examine both the benefits and drawbacks of acknowledging cleaning as a specific form of care: while broadening the concept of care might risk diluting its analytical precision, incorporating cleaning into care work discussions brings attention to its significance. We argue that recognizing cleaning as care is vital because it uncovers its nurturing, life-sustaining and intimate qualities. Cleaning can, thus, be understood as a biopolitical dimension of contemporary societies.
This chapter explains the aims of the book and the focus on listening to the voices of paid care workers in four countries – Canada, Finland, South Africa and the UK. It describes the particular care workers we worked with in each country and briefly discusses the organisation of paid care work in each country. It outlines the qualitative methods of research that we used and our interest in finding out about care workers’ experiences and feelings during and after the COVID-19 pandemic. The chapter then discusses the four key concepts that run through the subsequent empirical chapters: intersectionality; caring in time-space; vulnerability; and agency. The chapter ends by outlining the focus of the chapters.
Care work is gendered. In addition to it being feminised, intersections of class, gender, race, nationality and documented status shape women’s experiences of care work. Care work is also, across a range of contexts, undertaken by migrant women who lack social support or protection and end up in low-paying, exploitative jobs. Transnational migrant workers find themselves in a particularly precarious position, having been hardest hit by COVID-19. This chapter illuminates the intersections between migrant labour and care work through the narratives of domestic workers. It reports on a photovoice project with migrant domestic workers in Cape Town, South Africa, looking at their experiences of performing care work during the COVID-19 pandemic. Findings suggest that migrant domestic workers’ everyday experiences are shaped by the intersections of race and class, exacerbating their vulnerability.
This chapter synthesises the insights from cross-national collaboration involving researchers from Canada, Finland, South Africa and the UK that explores the vulnerabilities of care workers through qualitative research. The chapter advances the conversation by critically examining how intersectionality, voice and powerlessness intersect to heighten the precarity of care workers, particularly those with migrant status. It also scrutinises the systemic disempowerment faced by care workers within larger health systems. The chapter offers actionable recommendations, including promoting unionisation and legal protections, enhancing the visibility and reputation of care workers and advocating for greater investment in their skills and development. By addressing these key areas, the chapter lays out a research-focused and strategic path forward to empower care workers and improve their working conditions across diverse global contexts.
This chapter delves into the retention of long-tenured care workers in Canada. While turnover is a critical challenge for organisations dependent on care workers, profoundly affecting both recipients of care and their families, this chapter shifts focus to the factors that encourage retention. Through in-depth interviews with 15 long-term personal support workers in Ontario, Canada, the chapter uncovers a diverse array of motivations that sustain these workers in their roles. Additionally, it reveals the complex pressures and barriers that may compel care workers to remain in their positions even when they might otherwise consider leaving. This exploration provides valuable insights into the dynamics of retention in the care sector, shedding light on both the incentives and constraints that shape workers’ decisions to stay.
This chapter considers the sociocultural, practical and financial impacts of England’s ‘care crisis’ during and since COVID-19. The challenges caused by the pandemic heightened existing systemic issues which have and continue to plague the sector, particularly the lack of financial recognition for or professionalisation of care work. Findings from in-depth interviews as well as photovoice and soundsourcing are used to highlight the lived experiences of a range of individuals ‘on the frontlines’ of this care crisis – domiciliary care workers, managers, policy stakeholders, care business owners and social care providers. The valuing of care work and care workers – societally, politically, professionally and financially – and the impact of these factors on retention, wellbeing and individual lives are discussed. Key recommendations from the workforce on how to better value and reinvigorate this essential sector are outlined.
This chapter discusses the concept of vulnerability in the context of care work in Finland. The focus is on migrant and LGBT care workers (LGBT is used when referring to this group of research participants to reflect the terms they used themselves), particularly practical nurses. The source material was produced in several parts. The foreign-background practical nurses took part in a photovoice project in 2023. The LGBT participants were reached via a survey and email interviews in 2021 and 2022. Vulnerability is understood as a systemic issue, not an individual peril. The analysis is based on a framework developed by Brown et al in 2017. Inspired by the framework, vulnerability is analysed through adversity, corporality, agency and entitlement. The chapter produces knowledge on what it is like to be a practical nurse in Finland. Due to the research design and timing, the LGBT participants emphasised the adversities and the participants with foreign background emphasised their own agency. Both minorities experience discrimination and fear of discrimination, which affects their experiences at work.
The need for paid care workers to provide professional, good quality care for those needing daily support continues to grow throughout the world.
This book explores the recent experiences of diverse paid care workers in four very different national contexts – Finland, Canada, South Africa and England – to learn from their experiences during COVID-19 and its aftermath. Drawing on care workers’ own perspectives, this book shows how recruitment and retention of paid care workers remains challenging due to the pandemic and demographic changes, their precarious labour market position, low pay and the difficulties of delivering care.
The analysis of the introduction of fiscal welfare in two non-liberal welfare states, France and Sweden, confirms many of the findings or intuitions found in the existing literature regarding the uses and effects of the tax benefit instrument, which validates the idea that there are specific properties attached to this instrument.
The introduction lays out the main themes addressed, the originality of the approach (using fiscal welfare as an analytical lens and tying together a discussion of the social division of welfare and the social division of labour that the use of fiscal welfare entails) and the main contributions of the book. It highlights that, besides developing an original framework based on an understudied policy instrument, the analysis covers both the politics of fiscal welfare and its consequences. In doing so, it engages with the literature on welfare reform and transformation, notably in the field of care provision. It also engages with the literature on labour market polarisation and dualisation. In highlighting the multiple forms of inequalities that are produced through the policies studied, careful attention is given to the gendered, class and ethnic dimensions of these inequalities.
