Well-being and care

The studies locate the Spanish welfare model in the Mediterranean model, recognized for its universalism (pensions, health and education) but also for its high component of welfare, for a weak network of social services and for a high degree of familism (especially in the field of social services). The importance of the role of the family, as a provider of well-being, especially by women – and the scarce assumption of domestic responsibilities by men, is complemented by the informal work of migrant women, hired as domestic and housekeepers. care in situations of inequality, exploitation or discrimination (Guillén and León, 2011; Krüger and Jiménez 2013; León et al., 2015; Nogueira and Zalakain, 2015; Parella 2003). In this context, the term care crisis has been incorporated into the academic literature (Benería, 2008; Carrasquer, 2013; Pérez Orozco, 2006 and 2011; Vega, 2009), where, from the gender perspective, care is They have been placed at the center of debates and analyzes on welfare states, and on how the relationship between the state, the market, the third sector, the family and the community is understood and how it should be satisfied.

Focusing on the processes of (re)organization of care and care work, from the economic crisis and the generalization of austerity programs, the evidence shows that there has been a recomposition of the relationship between institutions welfare – state, market, third sector, family and community – to respond to the needs of social reproduction and, therefore, the needs of care. Said recomposition has been characterized by three tendencies that act in an interrelated way: commodification or quasi-commercialization and its subordination to economic reproduction; the transnationalization of care work; and the transformation of the welfare state and new forms of government (Anderson and Shutes, 2014; Comas, 2015; Herrera, 2012; Himmelweit, 2014; Klenk and Pavolini, 2015; Kofman and Raghuram, 2015; Mahon and Robinson, 2011; Perez Orozco, 2014). In addition, these trends of (re)organization of care have led, in recent years, to a double Polanyian movement: the prominence of initiatives from civil society, which question the new context of relationships between institutions, which emerge as alternatives to care system outside of third sector entities.

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