Die Macht der Gefühle. Emotionsregimes und Solidaritätshorizonte in der Pflegekrise

Abstract

Im öffentlichen Diskurs zur Langzeitpflege ist nicht erst seit der Corona-Pandemie von zunehmendem Zeit-, Qualitäts- und Kostendruck die Rede. Für Beschäftigte wachsen die Herausforderungen, ohne dass von der Berufsgruppe – im Unterschied zu anderen Bereichen des Sozialsektors – stärkere Impulse zur Veränderung der Arbeitsbedingungen ausgehen. Der Beitrag argumentiert, dass dies auch mit der Rolle von Gefühlen zu erklären ist, die mit diversen Spannungen bzw. Dilemmata verbunden sind und die Handlungsoptionen der Gruppe beeinflussen. Auf Basis einer Fallstudie aus der ambulanten Pflege wird illustriert, wie institutionelle Vorgaben, Managementpraktiken und individuelle Bewältigungsoptionen in „Emotionsregimes“ führen, die darauf einwirken, wie sich Pflegekräfte mit anderen verbunden fühlen – also welche „Solidaritätshorizonte“ sich bei ihnen in Bezug auf Nutzer*innen, Kolleg*innen und die Gesamtgesellschaft ausbilden. Angesichts des Ineinandergreifens von Emotionsregimes und Solidaritätshorizonten scheint für die Berufsgruppe eine Statusverbesserung aus eigener Kraft eher unwahrscheinlich. Helfen kann nur ein breiterer und substanziellerer gesellschaftlicher Rückhalt.

The Fate of Social Modernity

“…A further organisational strategy consisted of involving staff in selling privately paid extra services to users once needs remained uncovered by social security funds. This was also evidenced by a follow-up study focusing on personal care services in a big German city (Albert et al 2022). This research equally demonstrated how both middle managers and frontline workers were emotionally juggling with the challenge of prioritising some needs over others in order to avoid major distortions in service relationships.…”

“…In recent times, such support provided by waged staff has become overall more widespread. The workforce involved in this endeavour is often low-skilled, with most carers having taken only short introductory courses (Albert et al 2022). Services are often orchestrated by a separate unit of providers otherwise engaged with the delivery of nursing care.…”

“…The screening process was operated by browsing the Google scholar database and complementing that with a snowballing procedure, using relevant keywords, going through abstracts, selecting suitable studies and assigning information therein to categories inferred from theoretical reflections. Importantly, these categories (see Subchapter 11.3) emanated from a dialectical process during which theoretical models were blended with empirical evidence from research projects conducted by the author of this book, mostly in collaboration with other colleagues or associates (Aiken and Bode 2009;Bode and Streicher 2014;Turba et al 2019;Bode and Turba 2020;Albert et al 2022;Betzelt and Bode 2022). This work has -over the years -been based on funding received from different sources (the EU framework VII programme; the research department of the French Ministry of Social Affairs; the German Research Council; the research fund of the Nordland region in Norway; the Hans Böckler Foundation in Germany).…”

“…At least, home care settings exhibit a 'complicated relationship between (inter)dependency, participatory parity and capabilities' (Knijn and Hiah 2020: 160). In this vein, home care work has frequently been found to be imbued with deep emotions (see d 'Astous et al 2019;Albert et al 2022). On many occasions (for instance, in end-of life care settings), the 'boundaries between the clinical and social aspects of client care' are 'hard to define' (Abrams et al 2019(Abrams et al : 1979.…”

“…Managers were aware of some activities remaining unpaid while trying to invoice users as self-funders. Respondents described their day-to-day practice in terms of a 'taylorised' labour process obeying an 'industrial logic' (Bode and Streicher 2014: 132) that personal care services, while being more malleable at the frontline, could eventually not escape this movement towards formalisation (Albert et al 2022).…”