Childcare Provision in Neoliberal Times

Abstract

In the absence of public provision, many governments rely on the market to meet childcare demand. But who are the actors shaping this market? What work do they do to marketize care? And what does it mean for how childcare is provided? Based on an innovative theoretical framework and an in-depth study of the New Zealand childcare market, the book examines the problematic growth of private, for-profit childcare. The book begins with an outline of the working definition of state-led marketization, as one way to apprehend how states are involved in the active construction of markets to solve social problems. It focuses on the growth of private, for-profit childcare centres, and it seeks to investigate the role of the state in actively producing the conditions for neoliberal childcare markets to operate. Delving into this process, the book examines the ways in which the childcare market is being shaped by the economic and financial strategies of a range of actors, in direct response to the conditions of state-led marketization. The book reflects on childcare as a market of collective concern in the context of the current post-neoliberal moment. It seeks to address some of the perplexing tensions inherent in neoliberal childcare markets: that they are tasked with achieving considerable social and economic outcomes, yet are organized through highly inequitable market-based systems; they receive considerable public funding, yet are privately delivered. The book discusses the benefits of taking childcare markets as an object of study through the lens of Social Studies of Marketization. It investigates how neoliberal childcare markets are assembled and held together over time, in the face of considerable criticisms and problems. The book points to some of the challenges in establishing new accountability structures for childcare markets, as they become increasingly interwoven with the economic logics and practices of other kinds of market actors, far removed from the care of children. Opening the ‘black box’ of childcare markets to closer scrutiny, the book brings to light complex political, social and economic work of making childcare markets.