Racialised Workers and European Older-Age Care, 1st ed. 2019
From Care Labour to Care Ethics
Thinking Gender in Transnational Times Series

In the context of ageing populations, increasing participation of women in the labour market, growing marketisation of care provision, and, most importantly, global inequalities, racialised care workers have come to fulfil a key role within older-age care in western European societies. This book presents a gendered political economy of migrant and minority ethnic care workers? experiences in older-age care in London, Paris and Madrid. Its cross-national comparative approach allows for a differentiated analysis of the workings of migration, employment and care regimes in three capital cities, with similarly segmented care sectors, yet diverse policies and implications for care workers. Sahraoui provides a novel perspective that advances debates on the ethics of care by foregrounding the voices of racialised care workers and contributing to feminist moral philosophy. Racialised Workers and European Older-Age Care offers unique insights into the meanings of care labour and the challenges arising from processes of neoliberal marketisation, precarisation and institutional racism. The book sketches out an intersectional understanding of the exploitative relationships on which care and social reproduction currently rely and demonstrates why it matters to move care from the margins of society to its centre.

This innovative and compelling analysis will appeal to students and scholars of Anthropology, Sociology, Political Science and Social Policy, as well as those working in the interdisciplinary sub-fields of Gender, Migration, Labour, and Racism Studies.

1. Introduction: from the empirical study of care to feminist care ethics.- 2. Theoretical framings: Feminist standpoints, gendered political economy and new approaches to care ethics.- 3. Setting the scene: A gendered and transnational political economy of older-age care.- 4. Entering the older-age care sector.- 5. Precarious care jobs in neoliberal times.- 6. Lived precariousness through body and mind.- 7. Racism, the industry’s blind spot.- 8. Negotiating the future, within and out of care.- 9. Social reproduction and care ethics.

Nina Sahraoui is Research Associate at the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies, European University Institute, Italy.

Provides a gendered political economy analysis of migrant and minority ethnic care workers’ experiences in older-age care in three European capital cities

Draws on philosophical and feminist writings on an ethics of care

Offers new insights into the field of paid care work