Care, pay, love: commodification and the spaces of live-in care

Whose ethics of care? The geographies of live‐in elder care in China

“…On the affectual changes for elder care receivers, scholars argue the blurring boundaries between the public and private, domestic and market, control and cooperation, autonomy and dependency within the paradoxical space of home have interrupted its intimacy and changed the experiential aspects of receiving elder care (Angus et al, 2005; Brown, 2003; Dyck et al, 2005; England, 2010; Martin‐Matthews, 2007; Milligan, 2000). On the experience of paid caregiving, studies focus on the labour conditions of home care workers situated in the space of other people's home, engaging care, gender, race, and politics (Mears, 2009; Meintel et al, 2006; Pelzelmayer, 2018; Pratt & Johnston, 2014; Yeoh & Huang, 2009). Further, the gendered nature of labour condition is associated with the body in ageing as ‘dirty work’ (Twigg, 2000, p. 389), hidden, and with low occupational esteem (Twigg, 2004).…”

Der Preis der Autonomie: Wie sorgende Angehörige Live-in-Arbeitsverhältnisse ausgestalten

“…Etwas "mit dem Herzen" zu machen, verweist auf ein Anforderungsprofil, das (osteuropäischen) Frauen gemeinhin als quasi-natürliche, weil weibliche, Eigenschaft attestiert wird (der Hinweis auf den Einkauf echter Emotionsarbeit und die stereotype Annahme von Warmherzigkeit in diesem Arbeitsfeld findet sich u.a. bei Apitzsch und Schmidbauer 2010;Bauer und Österle 2013;Ehrenreich und Hochschild 2002;Gendera 2011;Kałwa 2007;Karakayalı 2010a;Kniejska 2016;Krawietz 2014;Lutz 2007;Näre 2008;Pelzelmayer 2018). Dass ein gewisses Maß an Empathie wenn nicht nur von Vorteil, so doch mindestens von Nöten für eine gelingende (Zusammen-)Arbeit mit Menschen ist, liegt auf der Hand.…”

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

“…This process of commodification has been at the centre of economic geographers' debates about care in recent years. In order to capture the phenomenon, authors have worked with an array of concepts and definitions, such as commodification, marketisation, privatisation and commercialisation (Pelzelmayer, 2018, p. 857).…”

“…Within geography, a number of studies have investigated how these global care relations are shaped by power relations that capitalise on class, ethnicity, and gender. They show, for instance, how the employment of female Filipino migrants in Canadian households (England & Dyck, 2012; Lee & Pratt, 2012) or Eastern European women in households in Germany (Palenga‐Möllenbeck, 2013; Strüver, 2011), Austria (Aulenbacher, Leiblfinger, & Prieler, 2020) and Switzerland (Chau, 2020; Pelzelmayer, 2018; Schwiter, Berndt, & Truong, 2018) is based on transnational inequalities and legitimised by gendered and ethnicised assumptions about their specific abilities to care. With a focus on Singapore, Huang, Yeoh, and Toyota (2012) point to the links between migrant women in domestic work and the transnational recruitment of healthcare workers in institutional settings.…”

“…While critical and feminist research is generally in agreement with this argumentation, authors have also problematised an inadvertent framing of all care activities outside the market as less problematic or as pure (Cox, 2013, p. 495). Pelzelmayer (2018), for instance, cautions against reinscribing non‐waged domestic work as the natural and ideal form of care. She challenges the assumption that paying for care in the private sphere necessarily corrupts the process of caregiving and has negative effects on the quality of care.…”