COST Action 18119 Who Cares in Europe?
Old challenges, recent changes: elder care as a political struggle in Europe
November 5th, 2021
10.00 – 17.15, Central European Time
This international workshop is organized within the framework of COST Action 18119 Who Cares In Europe?, whose aim is to explore the relationships among families, states and voluntary associations in the creation of social welfare in Europe. It consists of one-day on-line meeting, hosted by the Centre for the Study of Equal Opportunity Policies (CPES & FSPUB) of the University of Bucharest, in collaboration with the Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory (IFDT) of the University of Belgrade.
This workshop brings together scholars coming from a whole variety of disciplines (history, political science, anthropology, social work, philosophy, sociology, etc.) who are interested in reflecting upon and analyzing the extent to which elder care has become (or not) a political concern in different European regions or national settings. The overall objective of this meeting is to discuss the main research questions and angles of inquiry allowing contributors to define a common basis for a coherent joint academic publication.
10.00 – 12.00: Round-table (presentations of contributions)
12.00 – 13.00: Lunch break
13.00 – 15.00: Q&A session
15.00 – 15.15: Coffee break
15.15 – 17.15: Final discussions (practical concerns for a joint publication)
Participants:
Ursula Trummer (Center for Health and Migration, Vienna) AUSTRIA, Austria, Romania and the Economy of Home Care
Erna Lučić & Tanja Pavlović & Nihada Delibegović Džanić & Nusreta Salić (Tuzla University) BOSNIA and HERZEGOVINA, Elderly Care in Bosnia and Herzegovina
Jelena Matančević & Danijel Baturina (University of Zagreb) CROATIA, Elderly care in post-socialist setting: policy struggles in between state’s dominance and private initiative
Hanne Marlene Dahl (Roskilde University) DENMARK, Old age care as a particular kind of gendered problem
Christophe Capuano (Grenoble-Alpes University) FRANCE, Waiting for a revolution in care and old age. The missed opportunities of a French policy on care for the elderly
Irena Zemaitaityte & Jolanta Pivoriene & Raminta Bardauskiene & Agata Katkoniene (Mykolas Romeris University) LITHUANIA, Older Adults Digital Inclusion: New Challenges for Lithuanian Social Policy
Magdalena Rosochacka-Gmitrzak (University of Warsaw) POLAND, Attractive enough to get proper political attention? Men on the older adults caregiving board
Ana Paula Gil (Interdisciplinary Centre of Social Sciences (CICS.NOVA), NOVA FCSH, Lisbon) PORTUGAL, Uncertainties around the caregiver status in Portugal: an issue for social policy
Simona Bodogai (University of Oradea) & Diana Mărgărit (University Alexandru Ioan Cuza, Iași) & Anca Dohotariu (University of Bucharest) ROMANIA, Elder Care as a Political Concern in Post-socialist Romania
Ljiljana Pantović & Bojana Radovanović & Adriana Zaharijević (Institute of Philosophy and Social Theory, University of Belgrade), SERBIA, Elderly Care in Serbia: When Closeness Becomes an Impediment for Care
Ľubica Voľanská (Institute of Ethnology and Social Anthropology, SAS, Bratislava) SLOVAKIA, The story of a senior centre: (un)successful community activism
Majda Hrženjak (Peace Institute, Ljubljana) & Jana Mali (Faculty of Social Work, University of Ljubljana) SLOVENIA, Political struggles in regulating eldercare in Slovenia: deinstitutionalization, gender blindness and personalization of services
Antía Pérez-Caramés (University of A Coruña) SPAIN, Recent developments in long-term care policies in Spain. Challenges and competing discourses amidst the global pandemic
Pat Thane (Birkbeck College, University of London) UNITED KINGDOM, Elder Care in Britain since 1945
Shir Shimoni (King’s College, London) UNITED KINGDOM, Covid-19 and older people: A return to risk subjectivity?
One of the topics discussed (by WG1 members) during the online workshop organized by EUI Florence in December 2020 is the issue of elder care across European societies. Its importance is related to a whole variety of aspects of which three, at least, are worth mentioning. First, in spite of the generous body of research on specific arrangements of care that has been developed over the past decades, paid elder care as a political struggle has been tackled to a lesser extent, although it is a societal and political problem related to different forms of management and regulation. Second, the current global pandemic has brought to the fore the need to reflect, more than ever, upon the current political and societal stakes underpinning the elder care as both silenced work and universal human activity. Third, in-depth analyses on state financed/paid elder care – namely the ways in which it is governed, and how it enters (or not) political agendas across Europe – invite us to reflect even more upon the issue of care itself, which is at the heart of the Cost Action CA18119 Who Cares in Europe?
Following the online Florence workshop, Anca Dohotariu, together with Adriana Zaharijević, elaborated a Call for papers entitled Old challenges, recent changes: elder care as a political struggle in Europe (see attached) that has been sent to all participants within CA18119, and beyond. The aim of the call was to reunite researchers with similar theoretical and epistemological interests. The interest for the initiative was high: abstracts were collected from Spain, UK, Denmark, Lithuania, Serbia, Poland, Slovenia, Slovakia, Romania, France, Croatia, Austria, Portugal and Bosnia and Herzegovina. The organizers have then started to reflect upon the possibility of enlarging their initiative though a possible interdisciplinary collective volume – that could cover diachronic/ historical appraisals on elder care in different regions of Europe, as well as other contributions more focused on the multilevel governance of elder care, or on the gendered forms of regulation. The online workshop which took place on November 4th, was the first and important step towards a future publication.