Care and Care Workers

This book presents an original contribution to the study of care and care work by addressing pressing issues in the field from a Latin American and intersectional perspective. The expansion of professional care and its impacts on public policies related to care are global phenomena, but so far the international literature on the subject has focused mainly on the Global North. This volume aims to enrich this literature by presenting results of research projects conducted in five Latin American countries – Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia and Uruguay –, and comparing them with researches conducted in other countries, such as France, Japan and the USA.

Latin America is a social space where professional care has expanded dramatically over the past twenty years. However, unlike Japan, USA and European countries, such expansion took place in a context of heterogeneous and poorly structured markets, in societies which stand out for its reliance on domestic workers to provide care work in the household as paid workers, in both formal and informal arrangements.

CareandCareWorkers: A Latin American Perspective will be a useful tool for sociologists, anthropologists, social workers, gerontologists and other social scientists dedicated to the study of the growing demand for care services worldwide, as well as to decision makers dealing with public policies related to care services.

“Society cannot function without the unpaid (and poorly and informally paid) work of caregivers.  Having the data – and this book presents this data – allows public policy to be based on the realities rather than on the prejudices, habits, or structural injustices of a previous time about gender roles, class, ethnicity, race, migrant status. (…) This volume not only presents the data, then, but also shows how some countries have begun to innovate to provide solutions to the problem that some people are overburdened by care while others do little of it. (…) Scholars and activists in Latin American countries lead the way in showing both how resistance remains and how to innovate.  So the rest of the world has much to learn from this volume.” – Excerpt from the Foreword by Professor Joan C. Tronto

Nadya Araujo Guimarães is Senior Professor at the Sociology Department, University of São Paulo, Senior Researcher associated to CEBRAP (Brazilian Center for Analysis and Planning), and member of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences. She is a Board Member of the International and Interdisciplinary Network on "Marché du Travail et Genre" ("Labor Market and Gender"), CNRS/France; and a member of the International Panel on Social Progress (IPSP, USA/Princeton). She was an Associate Visiting Professor at Princeton University, Program in Latin American Studies (US, 2008), a Distinguished Visiting Professor at the Lemann Institute for Brazilian Studies, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign (US, 2018), and a ProfesseureInvitée at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (Paris, 2019). Nadya Guimarães receivedher Ph.D. at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (1983) and did post-doctoral studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Special Program on Urban and Regional Studies for Developing Areas (1993-1994). She has been researching on the Brazilian labor market focusing on: economic change and workers trajectories; gender/race inequalities; comparative studies on unemployment, employment flexibility and labor market intermediaries; care and care workers. In 2010, she received the Jabuti Prize - Brazil's premier book award - for Trabalhoflexível, empregosprecários? Uma comparaçãoBrasil, França, Japão ("Flexible work, precarious jobs? Brazil, France, Japan in comparative perspective"), co-edited with Helena Hirata and Kurumi Sugita. Recent publications outside Brazil: Genre, race, classe. Travailleren France et au Brésil. Paris: L'Harmattan, 2016 (co-org. with M. Maruani and B. Sorj). “Temporary agency work in Brazil”, chapter (co-authored with P. Vieira) on the reader organized by H. Fu, on Globalization and Temporary Agency Work: Anthropological Perspectives on Labour Flexibilityand Inequality (London: Gower, 2015). Êtrechômeur à Paris, São Paulo et Tokyo. Une méthode de comparaisoninternationale. Paris: Presses de Sciences Po, 2013 (co-authored with D. Demazière, H. Hirata and K. Sugita).

Helena Hirata, sociologist, is research director emerita at the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS), having acted for more than ten years (1992-2005) as head of the CNRS research unit on Gender, Labor and Mobility at the Center for Sociological and Political Research in Paris (CRESPPA-GTM). Dr. Hirata is also international visiting professor at the Sociology Department, University of São Paulo, Brazil, board member of the international network MAGE (Gender and labour market) and member of the editorial board of Cahiers du Genre. She received her Ph.D. at the Université de Paris 8-Vincennes (1979) and her Habilitation à Diriger des Recherches (HDR) at the Université de Versailles-Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines (1997). She was member of the scientific committee of the mission “The place of women at CNRS” (2009-2010) and conducted research projects to French and Brazilian labor unions, ILO, French and Brazilian enterprises about equality issues and women at work. She has been carrying on research on work and sexual division of work; unemployment, actors and institutions; gender and globalization; epistemology of work and gender; theories and practices of care in a comparative perspective. Main publications: Dictionnaire critique du féminisme (ed.) with F. Laborie, H. Le Doaré and D. Senotier, Paris, PUF, 2000; 2nd ed. Paris, PUF, 2004 (translated into Japanese,2002; Spanish 2002; Turkish, 2008; Portuguese, 2009; Bulgarian, 2010; Persian, 2014); Travail et Genre: Regard Croisés France, Europe, Amériquelatine. (dir) with M.R. Lombardi and M. Maruani, Paris, La Découverte, 2008 (translated into Portuguese, RJ, ed. FGV, 2008); Le sexe de la mondialisation. (ed.) with B. Labari, J. Falquet, N. Le Feuvre, D. Kergoat, F. Sow, M. Spensky, Paris, Presses de SciencesPo, 2010; Gênero e trabalho no Brasil e na França: Perspectivas interseccionais. (ed.) with A. R. de P. Abreu and M.R. Lombardi, Sao Paulo, Boitempo, 2016; Le travail entre public, privé et intime. Comparaisons et enjeuxinternationaux du care, with Damamme, A., Molinier, P. (orgs.) Paris, L’Harmattan, Series “LogiquesSociales”, 2017.