Europe is experiencing a revival of paid domestic and care work in private homes in the areas of child care, elderly care and household maintenance. Theory and research point to the combination of socio-economic, demographic and welfare causes as characteristics of post industrial societies, which give rise to the care deficit. These characteristics are: changes in demographic structure of population; changes in family structures and dynamics, individualization and instability of life and family courses; feminization of labour force and masculinization of women’s employment patterns; intensification, flexibilization and precarization of working conditions in paid employment; global and local economic inequalities that foster female migration and employment in insecure work, and persisting gender inequality in sharing domestic and care work. Policy responses to these developments are slow: they are either absent (lack of increase in provision of public care services; deregulation, privatization and refamilization of care; lack of integration policies) or inadequate (cash for care allowances, insufficient work/life balance arrangements, introduction of quotas on migrant care workers), which forces (mainly) women to seek for individual solutions in the grey economy of insecure care services. The purpose of the conference is to provide an international and cross-disciplinary space to explore the following issues:

• Theoretization of care, social organization of care and (global) political economy of care
• Care from perspectives of social justice, social equality and social inclusion
• Social inequalities, poverty and “local” care chains
• Migration and global care chains
• Intersections of class, race/ethnicity and gender in formal and informal care sector    
• Work ethic and care ethic
• Citizenship and care
• Demographic decline and care deficit
• Changing family patterns and care deficit

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Slovenian Research Agency
East East: Partnership Beyond Borders Program