We care for those who care

ended

Care workers are mainly women and migrants, which makes the care sector an interesting field to verify the dynamics of segregation and exclusion that affect the labour market. At the same time, it is a challenging testing ground, which allows to design and verify new measures to contrast discrimination and promote social inclusion. EU institutions have included the care work sector among those sectors “key to the future of European society and economy”. The Covid-19 pandemic has made even more clear the centrality of care work in modern societies but it also made more visible many critical issues affecting the working conditions of care workers, such as: the lack of adequate economic resources, the workforce shortage, the pressure put on care workers, the risks for their well-being, the underfinancing of social care as a consequence of the reorganisation and partial retrenchment of the welfare state, the weaker bargaining power in the sector than in male-dominated sectors, the undervaluation of female-dominated jobs, the prevalence of undeclared work in domestic care work, patterns of discrimination in the sector on grounds of gender and nationality and the intersectionality between the two. This project proposal aims to investigate in a comparative and multidisciplinary perspective the working conditions of care workers and their perception of their working environment and dynamics and to develop suitable tools to improve job quality and contrast discrimination, such as: elaborating policy strategies to tackle the undervaluation of care work, with particular attention to the key role that trade unions, employers’ associations as well as equality and monitoring bodies can play; designing training programmes to empower trade unions and family associations and employers reps to improve job quality in the sector; setting up of a permanent observatory on care work, which will implement a platform accessible to care workers, in order to improve their rights’ awareness.