*** Please note we are offering a reduced fee for those living in Central and Eastern Europe and from other countries according to the International Sociological Association’s country categories B and C. Please circulate the attached CfP to any potentially interested listservs and research networks. Thank you!***

Dear colleagues,

We invite abstract submissions for our International Research Conference “Decent Care Work? Transnational Home Care Arrangements”. The conference will be held at the Goethe University Frankfurt on May 27-29, 2020.

Conference Information:

The ageing of industrialized societies in combination with the absence of an adequate (welfare) state response is engendering an alarming deficit in care work. This has paved the way for the commodification of care, formerly a typical case of feminized, reproductive work, carried out informally and unpaid within the family. This conference examines if and how a sea change concerning the commodification and formalization of elderly care work is gradually affecting the public understanding of “decent” work and “decent” care. Thereby, it draws on the findings of a collaborative research project of transnationally operating care agencies, which recruit migrant live-in carers from Central and Eastern Europe for work in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. The conference seeks to bring this study into dialogue with the findings of current international research. It offers new insights by bringing together researchers in the fields of migration, labor, gender, care markets as well as care workers’ organizations. By highlighting deficiencies in the economic, political and social regulation of elderly care work, it aims to shed light on the fundamental contradictions between decent care and decent work.

Information on Abstract Submission:

Abstracts may be submitted until December 31, 2019 through the ConfTool application at the following address: https://www.conftool.com/decent-care-work2020/. Participants will be notified of the Program Committee’s decision by early February 2020.

We welcome proposals from researchers at all stages of their career.

For more details please contact us via email: decentcarework@soz.uni-frankfurt.de.

Please disseminate the CfP to your networks, mailing lists, websites and interested people and feel free to submit an abstract!   

Many thanks,

Iga Obrocka