Autonomous Elderly People, Nursing Cases and Self-Employed Workers in Need of Supervision: Subject Constructions in the Context of 24-Hour Care in Austria

Abstract

The article examines the dispositif of 24-hour care in the context of socio-political activation. Based on a discourse analysis of websites of Austrian placement agencies, I show how care receivers and care workers are constructed as autonomous clients, passive nursing cases and self-employed workers in need of supervision and support. I demonstrate how the ambivalent subject constructions are related to competing dispositifs and how this reproduces social power relations.