Rehabilitative bodywork: cleaning up the dirty work of homecare

Abstract

Care work for elderly people has been characterised as dirty work, owing to its proximity to the (dys)functions and discharges of aged bodies and the notions of disease, decay and death associated with the idea of old age. However, a wave of reform programmes in Danish municipalities promoting rehabilitative care practices aiming to empower, train and activate elderly citizens provides opportunities for homecare workers to renegotiate their status and reconstruct their work and occupational identities with a cleaner and more optimistic image. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in two Danish homecare units, this article analyses how rehabilitative care practices, drawing on a narrative of the third age, provide an optimistic and anti-ageist framing of homecare work that informs the development of new occupational identities for care workers as coaches rather than carers in relation to citizens. Furthermore, rehabilitation efforts change the bodywork of care, rendering it more distanced and physically passive, and rehabilitation efforts also involve extensive motivational work aiming to help citizens to see themselves as capable, resourceful and self-reliant. However, while rehabilitation efforts become a new resource in care workers' taint management; they also entail potentially negative consequences in terms of responsibilising and disciplinary approaches to elderly citizens.