In recent decades, a broad line of research has been developed on the social (re)organization of care in a context of profound sociodemographic transformations, global capitalism and the welfare state. Among these, the following stand out: (1) demographic transformations; (2) the impact of the economic and financial crisis on the supply of public services and people’s living conditions; (3) the change of the model; (4) the increase in female participation in the labor market without abandoning their dedication to care work; and (5) changes in gender roles and identities. These transformations have led to a growing demand for social care needs that, in continuous evolution, raise the need to be attended to in a different way (Almeda, 2015; Carrasco, 2013; Carrasco et al. 2011; Carrasquer, 2013; Ezquerra, 2012; Flaquer, 2004; González and Guillén, 2018; Guillén et al., 2016; León and Pavolini, 2014; Martínez Bujan and Martínez Virto, 2015; Moreno et al., 2013; ILO, 2018; Pérez Orozco, 2014; Torns and Recio , 2012; Yeates, 2012). Transformations that operate in a framework where the sexual division of labor persists with hardly any changes and women are the main caregivers in welfare societies (Almeda, 2015; Carrasco and Domínguez, 2011; Durán, 2012; Gálvez, Rodríguez and Domínguez, 2011).
Fischer and Tronto (1990) define care as the generic activity that includes everything we do to maintain, perpetuate and repair our ‘world’, so that we can live in it as well as possible. This world includes our bodies, ourselves and our environment, all the elements – in their public, economic, social and normative dimensions – that are articulated in a complex network of life support. This definition emphasizes that the objective of care is to sustain life in a network of interdependent relationships, since all people need care, even if it is of a different type and with different intensity, throughout our lives; and we have all taken care of or will take care of some stage of our life cycle.
In Spain, since the Dependency Law, approved in 2006 and applied in the midst of the economic crisis, there has been a considerable increase and diversification of social services aimed at the needs of the dependent population -more limited in care services for childhood-, largely carried out from the private sector (Martínez, 2017). There are various studies that show that neither the public powers nor the private organizations have given a sufficiently satisfactory response to the demand for care; persisting a subsidiary and welfare vision in the organization of care and, being the people of the home, especially women, who have assumed the work or have outsourced it by hiring immigrant caregivers. Therefore, with a strategy of commodification and individualistic outsourcing thought from and for the family (Comas, 2015; García et al., 2014; Perez Orozco, 2006). This shows, in the Spanish case -but not exclusively, as indicated by international studies- what Nogueira and Zalakain (2015) call Ethnostratification, inequality and discrimination: the persistence and emergence of inequalities according to gender, origin, ethnic group and social class in dedication to care work (Agrela et al., 2010; Aulenbacher et al., 2018; Comas, 2015; Fraser, 2016; Goñalons-Pons, 2015; Kofman and Raghuram, 2015; Lutz, 2017; Martínez Bujan, 2014; Moreno et al., 2013; Oso and Parella, 2012).