Care, markets and migration in a globalising world: Introduction to the Special Issue

Abstract

Over the past two decades three phenomena have grown in social, political and economic significance for welfare states in Europe and beyond: the development of care provision for young children and older and disabled adults; the promotion of markets and the widespread use of market mechanisms to deliver welfare services; and the migration of workers, an increasing number of whom are women, from poorer to richer regions of the world. In this Special Issue we look at these developments and the very specific ways in which these three phenomena have become increasingly intertwined, that is to say, how marketisation and migrant care labour have become central and interrelated features of care policy and provision. In situating this analysis within globalising processes, we extend the scope of our particular crossnational comparisons within Europe – here referring to England, Sweden, Finland, Spain and Italy – to include Australia, the US, Canada, Japan and Korea. (We do not cover Eastern Europe except in so far as, for a number of European countries, this has become a significant region of origin for migrant care workers.) This scope allows the articles to interrogate, in their different cross-national comparisons, the issue of how far, irrespective of regime or region, are there convergences in the development of care policies, in their marketisation and in their use of migrant labour, and how might we analyse and explain these? As such, this collection represents one of the first detailed and sustained cross-national analyses of care markets and migration in developed welfare states in Europe and beyond.1 Before outlining these developments and what the articles tell us about them, we briefly explain the genesis of this special issue. A core group was established in 2007 through funding from a British Academy/Academy of the Social Sciences of Australia Collaborative International Study Scheme which led to a conference in 2008 at the University of New South Wales, organised with the support of the Australian Research Alliance for Children and Youth and the Social Policy Research Centre, University of New South Wales. In October 2009 a further conference on the ‘Political and Social Economy of 449777 ESP22410.1177/0958928712449777Williams and BrennanJournal of European Social Policy 2012