Who Cares? Rebuilding care in the post-pandemic world

This project is a 3 year-long international project, coordinated by 6 countries: Brazil (lead PI for the call), Canada, Colombia, France, UK and US.

It was awarded the highly competitive T-AP (TransAtlantic Platform) Recovery, Renewal and Resilience Call Award.

Each country has their own national funding and a national Principal Investigator and team, in the case of the UK, the team is made of LA and SB, who are funded by the ESRC / UKRI.

Goals

• Contribute to the understanding of care work in our rapidly aging societies within a context of a growing deficit of inclusive social policy.
• Investigate how care needs present themselves in different family structures and how those needs are met through different forms of care work (paid and unpaid, at home or in institutions, family, or community).
• Uncover and understand the matrix of care provision that is fragmented and uncoordinated, and identify the subsequent overlapping, inconsistent and at times competing policies and regulations that shape care work and its provision at different levels of governance.
• Investigate how the COVID-19 pandemic impacted the practices of care providers and care recipients.

Six estrategic countries

A comprehensive understanding of care economy dynamics entails learning from innovative initiatives in different countries. Brazil, Colombia, Canada, France, the United Kingdom, and the United States provide variations in societal characteristics that can be crucial to understanding the different configurations of care.

These include:

• national governance;
• care employment, working conditions, labor market informality;
• welfare regimes;
• the institutionalisation of healthcare systems and their jurisdiction over health and home and healthcare policies;
• COVID-19 pandemic policies.
  
  

Research focus areas

Cross-national comparisons will explore different dimensions of care in our four strategic focus areas:

1. Assess the impact of the pandemic on the needs and modalities of care provision by surveying methodologies that harmonize data in a transnational perspective.
2. Review labor conditions and rights using a cross-country survey of/with paid care workers.
3. Situate care as a strategic dimension and pillar for public policies on rebuilding social infrastructure by comparing national and urban experiences.
4. Identify collective care strategies by conducting local ethnographies focused on the different forms of community solidarity and emerging associations, aiming to identify the largely invisible social practices of actors who contribute to the daily provision of care.
   
   

Lead Principal Investigator (PI)

Prof. Nadya Araujo Guimarães, Brazilian Center for Analysis and Planning and University of São Paulo, Brazil

 

UK Team

• UK PI: Dr Louisa Acciari, University College London (UCL), UK
• Co-Investigator: Dr Sabah Boufkhed, HCRI, University of Manchester, UK