Cuidar en movimiento: un acercamiento a las prácticas de cuidado desde la mirada de movilidad

Abstract

Mobility is the individuals’ movement capability. There are many kinds of mobilities and ways to define and approach them. This research addresses the daily mobility of men and women who take care for children, older adults, ill and disabled people in a city that does not consider their needs and undervalue the activities linked to their care. The result is spaces and roads that are not designed to ease the access but permit the job-home movements according to the masculine employment pattern and make more complex the daily life of this population. Paradoxically, the care activities are done inside the living places and the whole city which leads to the question: up to what point the care activities belong to the domestic scope and the mobility belongs to the urban space, since bodies make innumerable movements to satisfy their needs in both spaces. The hypothesis considers that the care activities are practices which joint various kind of knowledge, demand the bodies interaction, take place in people’s daily life and specify itself in distinct places of the city. This research uses an ethnographic mobile approachment with interviews and accompaniments made from April 2018 to October 2020 to 36 people in Mexico City. The conclusion is that the care activities are a way to relate to each other and between oneself and the environment, and that to practice them, shows inequality urban elements that are experienced by our bodies (infrastructure quality, living places, transportation and so on). Finally, if we take this into account, there could be polities qualitatively enabled that enhance the life quality of our city.