The article contributes to the current debate on welfare regimes, bringing together the widespread need for a fourth welfare regime besides Esping-Andersen's well-known typol ogy, and the results of its feminist critique. It is particularly in the case of Southern European countries that a gendered point of view seems crucial, to define the specificities of a different path in developing social protection. On the other hand, comparative analyses on gender and welfare state only seldom consider Mediterranean countries. In these countries the concept of subsidiarity formulated for continental-corporatist welfare regimes has to be modified: the family is still centre stage, but in the sense that only certain social risks are covered largely by the welfare state, those against which the family cannot protect itself. On the contrary, the state does not support families' normal functioning, as usually happens in etatist conservative countries. The only form of help on the part of the state has so far been to tolerate family strategies which bring together many ‘bread-crumbs’ of revenue. Since this relationship between the family and social policies has usually remained invisible, it is highly probable that today's rationalizing interventions on social provisions may have even worse effects on women's condition. Some recent transformations of Italian welfare state are analysed as an example of such a danger.
In the framework of the SOCCARE Project, focusing on families dealing with a double front of care for children and frail elderly people, similarities can be found in Italy, France and Portugal beyond their different welfare regimes. The comparison of family histories and caregiving strategies, by the methodology of case-matching, gives an interesting overview of the relationship between the debate on social care and that on the intergenerational contract. The paper aims to understand which are the available combinations of family, informal and institutional resources making a heavy burden of care "acceptable and still normal": this focuses both typical situations of each country and common features through the countries. The results show how changes in the representations of obligation and duty in the intergenerational pact produce different outcomes and demands in welfare systems. The analysis of shifting boundaries between the public and private spheres in care provides useful policy recommendations, aimed at improving choices and "sustainable" responsibilities of individuals, families and social networks. Sustainable policies seem to be more dependent on family and structural types and resources of networks than on different welfare and services support.
KeywordsSouthern Europe welfare regimes; Social care; Double front of care; Children and elder care; Case-matching; Changing mixes of formal and informal care
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