Reflecting on regendering care at different scales (original) (raw)
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The bulk of care provided to elderly people living in the community and needing assistance is provided informally by family and friends. This paper investigates themes from an interpretation of interviews with informal caregivers about their experiences of caring for a frail, ill, or disabled elderly person at home. These themes include mobility, routine, and interrelationships of scale. The caregivers' narratives illustrate the interconnected nature of physical, material and social, emotional aspects of care, and the profound spatial and social impact of providing informal care to a family member on their everyday lives. These are often at odds with political and social constructions of what it means to care at home. Concepts of space, place, and time are shown to be a helpful framework through which to understand issues and experiences of caring. The social and the physical aspects of the many interconnected scales and places which caregivers negotiate on an everyday basis both shape and are shaped by caregiving.
Social science & medicine (1982), 2002
Changes in health care service delivery have resulted in the transfer of care from formal spaces such as hospitals and institutions towards informal settings such as home. Due to the degree of this transfer, it is increasingly important for geographers to explore the experience and meaning of these changing geographies of care in order to reveal and understand the impact and effect on particular individuals and places. Recognizing that the home environment not only designates a dwelling but also represents a multitude of meanings (such as personal identity, security and privacy) that likely vary according to class, ethnicity and family size (among other socio-demographic variables), it presents a complex site for study. This paper suggests research directions to further understand the role of caregiving in contributing to the experience and meaning of the home environment by informal caregivers, the majority of which are women. Using a political economy approach, this paper first re...
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This paper focuses on the ways in which demographic, social and environmental factors, combined with differential emphases on priorities and patterns of spending between local authority jurisdictions, are contributing to a changing spatial geography of caring. This is examined firstly by highlighting how macro factors contribute to a restructured landscape of care, and secondly by examining the personal geographies of carers located within the Scottish environment. Finally, the paper suggests that as care moves from institutional space to the homespace, i t may be creating a blurring of the boundaries between what has traditionally been public/institutional space, and the homespace. '
Unpacking ‘family troubles’, care and relationality across time and space
Children's Geographies, 2019
Despite significant work on family geographies in recent years, geographers have paid less attention to changes and challenges that may be considered 'family troubles' in diverse contexts. Through this editorial and the special section, we unpack time-space dynamics of 'family troubles' in diverse contexts, with a particular focus on care and relationality. Our discussion foregrounds ambiguities and tensions surrounding geographical proximity and propinguity, material-emotional responses, and diverse meanings of 'family', 'home' and belonging in the context of troubling changes in family lives, intergenerational relations and practices of care. We seek to establish an agenda for future geographical work and interdisciplinary dialogue on 'family troubles', vulnerabilities and social suffering in contexts of (troubling) changes and diversity. Such analyses are crucial in our efforts to envision a more relational understanding of our 'being-in-the-world', underpinned by care ethics and support for differentially positioned family members throughout the lifecourse and across generations.
Journal of Intergenerational Relationships, 2020
Introduction: transnational family care 'on hold'? This special issue explores how members of transnational families manage their intergenerational care obligations in the context of increasing restrictions to cross-border mobility. We ask: How do limits on mobility impact on transnational intergenerational family care relations? It is now well established in the transnational family literature that despite geographic separation, members of transnational families maintain a feeling of collective welfare and unity, of "familyhood" (Bryceson & Vuorela, 2002). This connectedness is built up and sustained through the intergenerational exchange of a range of care and support practices, including those between adult migrants and their aging parents (e.g., Baldassar et al., 2007) and those between parents and their dependent children (e.g., Madianou & Miller, 2012). When considered across the life course, it becomes clear that these intergenerational exchanges are reciprocal (Finch & Mason, 1993), but also uneven circulations of care between family members (Baldassar & Merla, 2014). It is rare that kin will objectively measure their specific contributions or gains from the care that is given, received and circulated (Olwig, 2007). Rather, family members develop a 'feeling' for when their contributions are undervalued or might exceed what is likely to be returned (Wilding, 2018). These feelings are informed by gendered and generational role expectations, such as those of the 'loyal and dutiful daughter' or the 'selfless, doting grandmother' (e.g., Zhou, 2012), as well as by the density of the kin network, and the role of extended family members (e.g., Baldassar & Brandhorst, 2020; Brandhorst, 2015). They in turn inform the extent to which individual family members feel compelled to contribute to the rituals, demands and maintenance of familyhood (Olwig, 2002). Because transnational care takes place, by definition, across distance, research has focused on the important role of information and communication technologies (ICTs), which allow people to experience new forms of co
Geographies of care work: The commodification of care, digital care futures and alternative caring visions. Published in: Geography Compass, 2020
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.