Taking as a common basis the European Parliament resolution of 28 April 2016 on Women domestic workers and carers in the EU (2015/2094(INI), we expect comparative papers describing how the economic crisis has changed, in the last few years, the access to labour and naturalization rights of migrant care and domestic workers in different countries, their working conditions, the quality requirements or the professionalization of their practices, the non-transparent mix of care and domestic work now deemed acceptable in different cultural and institutional contexts. Institutional context may include the mix of legal, semi-legal and irregular employment, the stratified and differentiated access to social protection rights as well as the influence of different practices of paying for care schemes on the part of the public hand. The main aim of the panel is to understand recent changes in social practices by focusing the deep interconnectedness of care regimes with labour market changes and migration regimes regulations at a European or global level and possibly by identifying elements of convergence in care practices and emotions.
For instance, we aim at understanding how much domestic work or how much emotional involvement are tacitly implied in care-work contracts in the ideas of the different actors involved and in the practices by which they make sense of their world. This would also show how their unspoken implications do in fact combine or sometimes explode as conflicts in circumstances of discrimination and violence. This may imply the different configurations of cultural and practical elements which are connected in everyday life in justifying the niche for care-work migrants in different countries and their social and moral image in public opinion.
Stream conveners
Brunella Casalini, DSPS Università di Firenze, brunella.casalini@unifi.it
Rossana Trifiletti, DSPS Università di Firenze, rossana.trifiletti@unifi.it