This chapter presents the landscape of welfare markets in Europe and provides tools for the analysis and explanation of their dynamics. It shows how the new sociology of markets helps to better understand the dynamics of welfare markets, which we define as markets that provide social goods and services through the competitive activities of non-state actors. Welfare markets can have different relations to the welfare state. Different types of policy instruments (financial, regulatory, or informational) shape the dynamics of welfare markets, and this chapter identifies the potential variation in outcomes these markets can produce on the productive, allocative, and discursive dimension of market orders. Subsequently, the chapter emphasizes the role of actors in welfare market dynamics and compares the similarities and differences in dynamics of private pensions and domestic/care services.

European resources related to reconciliation policies have been incrementally developed and transformed. Three main phases of this process can be distinguished in the progressive institutionalisation and evolution of this field of action at the EU level. At first, the reconciliation issue appeared on the European agenda as a spillover interpretation of'equal treatment" It then acquired greater autonomy, becoming an equal opportunity policy, leading to the development of various (legal, financial, cognitive and political) instruments around the objectives of improving work/family balance and the division of labour between women and men. Finally, this field has been converted into an economic employment policy field aimed at modernising welfare systems and guaranteeing budgetary sustainability through increases in fertility rates and, most importantly, female employment rates. However, this has come at the expense of the initial gender equality goals. The conclusion underlines the diverse and evolving meanings of the 'reconciliation' issue and its orientation. This diversity in meanings and orientations allows greater room for manoeuvre at the domestic level and even more diverse patterns of national usages of Europe, as is shown in the rest of this special issue.

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Cet article compare l'activité syndicale en faveur des droits des travailleuses 1 domestiques aux Pays-Bas, en Allemagne et en France. Même si le nombre de travailleuses domestiques syndiquées y est très faible, les syndicats ont développé des actions pour défendre les droits de ces travailleuses dans ces trois pays. Toutefois, ces actions n'ont été que partielles et n'ont pas pris en compte de manière exhaustive les besoins et les droits de toutes les travailleuses domestiques. La comparaison de l'activité syndicale montre que les actions en faveur des travailleuses domestiques ont été encouragées par le plaidoyer transnational dans les trois pays. De plus, alors que des institutions inclusives ont facilité les actions en France, au contraire, en Allemagne et aux Pays-Bas, les actions syndicales ont été limitées par les caractéristiques "informelles" persistantes du travail domestique et par l'hésitation des syndicats à s'engager de manière globale dans la question des droits des migrants.

Care realities are characterised by important differences between men and women. At the end of the 1990s, women were overrepresented among the oldest sections of the French population, as well as among their unpaid and paid helpers. Nevertheless, when the current national benefit scheme for elderly people needing long-term care (the APA (Allocation Personnalisée d'Autonomie)) was adopted in France, it was not explicitly framed with gender issues in mind. French subnational governments (the départements) were charged with implementing the new scheme, but also have the capacity to transform it. How has this policy been applied on the ground and with which gender-related effects? In order to answer this question, this article draws on 33 interviews and several observations conducted with street-level bureaucrats in charge of implementing the APA in a French département. Through streetlevel organisation analysis, frame analysis and discursive institutionalism, it analyses how subnational governments and street-level bureaucrats use their room for manoeuvre in policy implementation, and the frames they use to take decisions. Special attention is given to the implications of these frames from a gender perspective. This article explores three different dimensions of this issue: (1) the discursive frames attached to the APA at national and subnational organisational levels; (2) the way street-level bureaucrats perceive institutional constraints and resources, and interpret their work, and how the gender implications of these frames influence the decisions they make in practice; and (3) the consequences of administrative decisions for the public affected by them.

Across Europe, migrants are often employed as providers of care or domestic services, thus forming an alternative for public care provision or contributing to the supply of publicly financed care. This chapter discusses how the growing demand for migrant care workers is related to transformations of European care systems. While public policies stimulate the development of care and domestic services, these policies often contribute to precarious employment and poor working conditions. The chapter also shows how migrant care work is shaped by colonial legacies and stratified systems of entry routes and citizenship within Europe, with specific attention for east-west migration. Finally, the chapter highlights the importance of the politics of migrant care work in relation to social care and migration policy. In this context, political actors at the supra-, trans-and national level are of critical relevance, but they have so far received only little attention in contemporary research on the politics of migrant care work.

Les services à domicile -dans lesquels les femmes des classes populaires constituent la majorité de la main-d'œuvre- sont arrivés sur l'agenda européen dans les années 1990. Depuis lors, l'attention des institutions européennes s'est concentrée sur deux questions principales : la participation au marché du travail et les droits humains et des travailleuses. Quel a été le rôle des représentants des travailleuses 1 et des employeurs dans l'émergence et le façonnement au niveau européen de ce nouveau domaine d'intérêt ? Cet article montre que les fédérations patronales nationales et européennes ont coopéré avec la Commission européenne pour présenter le travail à domicile comme un moyen d'augmenter les taux d'emploi, mais que d'autres façons de penser ces services sont également apparues. Les activités de l’organisation internationale du travail (OIT) ont contribué à développer des convergences des cadrages différents du problème au niveau européen.

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