Constructions of Care in EU Economic, Social, and Gender Equality Policy: Care Providers and Care Recipients versus the Needs of the Economy?

Abstract

The European Union is facing a crisis of care due to demographic shifts, policies aimed at driving up women’s employment while cutting state care expenditures, and marketizing public care provisions. This article combines feminist political economy approaches to reproductive labor as an essential part of the economy with theories of care ethics to explore the European Union’s role in deepening this crisis. It concludes that the European Union fails to recognize the importance of care or address it holistically and is more preoccupied with the potential impact on public finances than finding a solution to the care crisis.

Long‐term care in EU policy 1999‐2022: women's responsibility, migrants' work?

“…Overall, the institutions that have the greatest power to address the exploitative dynamic inherent in reliance on migrant care labour – the European Commission and the EU Member States – appear to have little interest in systemically challenging it. This can be interpreted as a consequence of both the EU's economized approach to care (Zacharenko and Elomäki, 2022) and towards internal mobility (Engbersen et al, 2017). In addition, the EU's goal of increasing the numbers of women in the paid labour market means that the unpaid care labour that they had previously provided must be replaced – in part – by that of migrant workers.…”

“…EU policy often frames care as a cost and strain on public finances (Cavaghan and Elomäki, 2022) and introduces policy solutions that promote the individualization and marketization of care services (Zacharenko and Elomäki, 2022). One of the consequences of the increasing commodification and marketization of care is the relegation of reproductive labour to migrant women from poorer countries, a process termed the international division of reproductive labour (Parreñas, 2015), which increases the dependence on migrant labour.…”

“…EU policy consistently misrepresents labour in the reproductive sector ‘as a “social” activity, an irrelevance or a cost, rather than a macro‐economic input’ (Cavaghan and Elomäki, 2022, p. 13). It fails to address the ongoing care crisis due to a preoccupation with potential solutions having negative impacts on public finances (Zacharenko and Elomäki, 2022). As a result, provisions on care have taken the form of non‐binding recommendations and targets or benchmarking and coordination between member states (Caracciolo Di Torella and Masselot, 2020).…”