Geographies of care work: The commodification of care, digital care futures and alternative caring visions

Abstract

This article explores the growing interest in care within geography. Focusing on care as waged work, we trace current transformations through commodification and digitalisation. We discuss how the private household is turning into a precarious and feminised workplace for a growing number of workers, and we show how this development is promoted by the rise of labour agencies that facilitate the transnational recruitment of care workers. The literature on global care chains illustrates how the recruitment of migrant workers fills care deficits in destination countries while opening up care gaps in sending countries. We review this literature from economic geography and beyond and reflect on the continuing feminisation and devaluation of care labour. Based on these critical insights, we examine how processes of digitalisation contribute to reshaping care work. We discuss the ambivalent effects of digital technologies on care and argue that there is an urgent need to intensify our engagement with the processes and effects of digital transformations. In our conclusions, we call for strengthening the budding debate on alternative visions of caring within geography and point to avenues for future engagement.

„Der Haushalt“? – eine ReKonstruktion am Beispiel approbierter Schulbücher für den GW-Unterricht

“…Geographies of Care) schaffen wir einen weiteren Bezugspunkt, der es uns ermöglicht auch räumliche Fragestellungen und Erkenntnisse in Bezug auf Care-Tätigkeiten im Privathaushalt mitzu-denken (vgl. Lutz 2018;Schwiter & Steiner 2020). Damit möchten wir nicht nur eine aktuell notwendige Perspektivenerweiterung vornehmen, wie die in der Einleitung dargestellte Problematik der Sorgedienstleistungsketten zeigt, sondern auch dem integrativen Gedanken des Unterrichtsfachs Geografie und wirtschaftliche Bildung folgen.…”

Spaces of Social Recomposition: Resisting Meaningful Work in Social Cooperatives in Italy

“…The simultaneous celebration and devaluation that Lara described experiencing should come as no surprise as it defines the ways that care and social reproduction labour have been characterised for generations (Fraser 2016;Schwiter and Steiner 2020). Feminist social reproduction theories have long discussed how essentialising care as a gratifying, free "labour of love" obfuscates its complex power relations and naturalises it as a women's work (Bezanson and Luxon 2006;Bhattacharya 2017).…”

Performances of care: Questioning relationship‐building and international student recruitment

“…The performances of care analysed in this paper are an indication of how ‘caring’ becomes part of the student recruitment process in the neoliberal university. Much has been written regarding how care is neoliberalised and commodified, often reflecting how care‐work is now viewed through the lens of market relations (Green & Lawson, 2011; McDowell, 2004; Schwiter & Steiner, 2020). Furthermore, the boundaries between neoliberal, capitalist pursuits and care, more widely, have long been blurred through the establishment of neoliberalised care regimes.…”