Coming to Terms with Markets in Care? Comprehensive Social Policy and Informalization of Care Provision in the English and Greek National Healthcare Systems

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Abstract Across welfare regimes, markets are taking the lead from states in providing public-funded health care. Concurrently, informalization of labor market activity in healthcare provision grows. Through an institutional ethnography of temporary agency and bank labor experiences in the English and Greek National Health Services, this paper unpacks how informalization emerges in political and policy environments that not only favor but also resist market arrangements. In doing so, the paper moves the debate from the dilemma of whether to incorporate market actors in healthcare provision to the comprehensive social policy question of how markets could work in healthcare provision.