中国家庭护理工作的现状及其对非正规经济的启示

Rural China ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 42-60 ◽  

China’s expanding workforce of rural–urban migrants is increasingly involved in care work while simultaneously facing issues of care within its own ranks for its family members. The work examined here concerns care—for the elderly and ill, for children, and in everyday domestic labor. This form of work is widely performed predominantly by migrant women in (usually) urban households in circumstances lacking labor protections. They are performing work that creates value and that constitutes a key service sector of the informal economy. Much the same population provides similar care work for family members of their own (usually) in the countryside, work that also creates value but is normally unremunerated. Rural migrant and potential migrant women may be in complex social positions where their work is needed in both circumstances, and are in both circumstances providing value for their families—through income earned and through work of direct use value. The work in both instances is socially structured through being in or outside the informal economy and in or outside ties of kinship. This article argues for an expanded and adequately gendered concept of the informal economy based on value and Maussian concepts of human economy. 中国日益增加着由乡村进入城市的大量投入到保姆工作中的劳动力,与其同时也面临着她们对其自身家庭成员的照料问题。本文关切的是家庭护理问题,这里指的是对老人,病患,孩子的照料,以及日常家务劳动。这种工作主要是由农村妇女来到通常是城市的家庭中,在缺少正规劳动保护的环境中工作。她们劳动创造的价值构成了非正规经济服务职能中的一个核心部分。这群打工族大多来自农村,并在其自身家庭中承担着同样的照料工作。然而这种同样创造着价值的工作一般并没有得到补偿。来自乡村的打工族及潜在的妇女民工可能处于一种复杂的社会地位中,她们的工作在这两种社会环境中都迫切需要,并都为她们的家庭或通过所挣工资,或通过直接使用其劳动创造着价值。这两种工作情况——在非正规经济之中或其外,以及在亲属关系之中或其外,都是社会构成的。本文提出一种基于价值观与人类学马塞尔莫斯学派的人性经济概念, 并进一步将其扩展并充分性别化的非正规经济。 (This article is in English.)

2019 ◽  
Vol 40 (1) ◽  
pp. 77-93 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gabriela Nicolescu

This article explores the success of the “migrant in the family” model of care for the elderly in southeast Italy and the mechanisms that bond the caregivers and their patients in a mutual dependency. I describe this model as a meeting place between endurance and vulnerability, and between the fragility of the elderly and the fragility of most of the women who work as migrant care workers. I argue that migrant live-in care work for the elderly is a combination of attentive practice and detachment in completion to the current description of care work as ritual and as tinkering and adaptation. In a broader perspective, the article shows that the economic needs in poorer regions of the world manifest in the commitment and determination to keep the elderly alive in Italy. This article reports findings from long-term ethnographic research among 34 migrant domestic care workers and 24 Italian employers in a medium-sized town in Italy. The article illustrates the findings by means of three case studies and engages with the existing literature on person-centered care in patients with dementia, biopolitics, and the global political economy of migration for work in the field of care. Migrant work for the elderly is crucial for a general understanding of social reproduction in Italy and in many other global contexts.


Social Change ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 50 (1) ◽  
pp. 121-140
Author(s):  
Christa Wichterich

This paper suggests the concept of care extractivism to explore strategies and mechanisms which pursue the persistent low social and monetary acknowledgement of healthcare work in Germany and India. Recently, caretakers and nurses in both countries went on strike, pointing to a crisis situation in social reproduction and various forms of care extraction. In Germany, care for the elderly and nursing in hospitals are marked by strategies of familialisation and voluntarisation, of standardisation and digital surveillance and by transnationalisation through the import of migrant workers. In India’s rural health provision, voluntarism subsidises welfarism; in private and public hospitals, hierarchisation and contractualisation of employment deepen care extraction. Stereotypes of nursing as natural female, caste norms and various stigmata reinforce the low valuation of care work. In both countries, neoliberal policies merge with patriarchal structures of social reproduction, intensify care extraction and create a cheap care work force which however is no longer docile.


2013 ◽  
Vol 2013 ◽  
pp. 1-9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sirpa Salin ◽  
Marja Kaunonen ◽  
Päivi Åstedt-Kurki

The purpose of this study was to describe nurses' experiences of their collaboration and relationships with family members in institutional respite care for the elderly. The family has a particularly important role in respite care, which is an extension of care provided at home. However no published studies were found on this subject. The data were collected through qualitative interviews (N=22). Content analysis of the nurses’ descriptions of their collaboration with family members yielded four main categories as follows: (1) conscious ignoring, (2) attempting to understand the family’s situation, (3) hinting at private family matters, and (4) being a friend. The results lend support to earlier findings which emphasize the complexity of relationships between nurses and family carers. A novel finding here is that these relationships may also develop into friendships. Greater emphasis must be placed on primary nursing so that the nurse and informal carer can build up a genuine relationship of trust. If periods of respite care are to help older people and their families to manage independently, it is imperative that nurses have the opportunity to visit their patients at home.


2020 ◽  
Vol 2020 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Brigitte Aulenbacher ◽  
Michael Leiblfinger ◽  
Veronika Prieler

Over the last decades, the marketization of live-in care for the elderly in Austria has been accompanied by new forms of regulation and the contestation surrounding this type of care provision. The article analyzes this process as a Polanyian double movement – the movement of a market-driven provision of care and organization of care work, and countermovements seeking protection from its effects – and asks to what extent the provision of decent care and decent work are affected. Drawing on policy and media analyses as well as interviews with representatives of brokering agencies and other stakeholders in the field, we show how live-in care is embedded in the Austrian care regime, how its marketization entails contradictions between decent care and poor working conditions and how care disputes and attempts to regulate the model have emerged.


Author(s):  
Abir Mohamad Ismail

AbstractRecent studies conclude that ethnic minority families in Denmark tend to be dismissive of senior housing and municipal homecare services for elderly family members. A large proportion of Muslim minority families in Denmark attach great importance to caring for the elderly as a tradition and prefer to take care of their own elderly family members at home. Nevertheless, the fact that morality, incentives, and obligations in relation to care for the elderly may be legitimized and/or contested with reference to cultural traditions and Islam has not received much attention in current research. In this article, drawing on material from ongoing ethnographic fieldwork among Arab Muslim families in Denmark, I discuss how cultural and religious backgrounds may determine and influence perceptions and behavior regarding care for the elderly. By observing and engaging in the everyday life of an Arab Muslim family, I explore how caring for elderly people with health problems at home raises specific questions about obligations and triggers negotiations across genders and generations. I argue that besides kinship and ethnicity, it is equally important to consider religiosity in an attempt to learn more about how Arab Muslims care for their elderly family members.


2019 ◽  
pp. 5-34
Author(s):  
Anna L. Lukyanova ◽  
Rostislav I. Kapeliushnikov

The paper analyzes changes in job opportunities of older workers in Russia in the period 2005—2017. The study uses the data from the Russian Labor Force Survey conducted by Rosstat. Changes in the occupational and industrial composition of elderly workers follow the trends pursued by other age groups: employment shifts from low- to high-skilled occupations, from physical to intellectual labor, and from material production to the service sector. We find a stronger polarization among older workers as their occupational structure is biased in favor of, on the one hand, the most and, on the other hand, the least qualified types of jobs. Employment of the elderly has fallen sharply in agriculture and manufacturing with a significant increase in trade, education, and health. Although the employment structure of older workers is generally more “traditionalist”, recent decades have witnessed its transformation in “progressive” directions, similarly to other age groups. These findings suggest that the legislated increase in the state retirement age is not likely to give rise to sizeable unemployment among the elderly. Most of them will be able to work in the occupations and industries previously dominated by young and prime-age workers.


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