A Caring Europe? Care, Migration and Gender

Deadline for submission of abstracts: 27 March 2009

In this workshop we aim to take stock of the current state of knowledge and to advance the emergence of an interdisciplinary approach in this dynamic area by bringing together established and junior researchers working on different aspects of care. A European perspective will synergise theoretical and empirical knowledge on care, as it is differentially constituted and conceptualized in different national contexts of welfare policies, migration experiences, and class, racialised and gender relations.

This ESF Exploratory workshop is planned as a first step towards exploring possibilities for future collaborations and an open and dynamic discussion focusing on the following 5 themes is envisaged:  1. Carers as paid and unpaid workers, 2 Carers as care-receivers, 3 Carers as ethical subjects, 4 Carers as citizens, 5 Carers as subjects in and of policy.

Confirmed speakers include: Helma Lutz, Eleonore Kofman, Fiona Williams, Ulla Bjornberg, Angeles Escriva,

We would like to invite selected researchers working on this theme to participate in the workshop. In particular, we are looking for papers that address some of the following questions:

• How can care as a scarce good be justly distributed?
• What economic, legal, social and cultural conditions need to be in place to enable (migrant and non-migrant) care givers to attend to their own care requirements?
• How can social policy enable care workers to receive care in turn?
• How can an ethics of care approach inform workplace practices to improve retention and staff development?
• What are the affective qualities around care-giving and care-receiving that carers experience and how do they translate into shaping migrant and non-migrants' subjectivities?
• How do migrants' caring practices constitute their intersecting identities of gender, ethnicity and class and vice versa?
• Can an ethics of care provide a revalidation of migrants' subjectivities, particularly where they are affected by de-skilling and ethnicised and gendered hierarchies?
• How do (migrant and non-migrant) women and men integrate caring practices and an ethics of care into their personal and public self presentations?
• How can we think through caring on different levels of skills, in the sites of home and workplace and in differentially gendered ways?

We are able to fund travel and accommodation for a small number of participants from continental Europe.  We especially encourage young and early career researchers to apply. Participants are expected to attend the whole workshop.

Important dates:
Deadline for submission of abstracts: 27 March 2009
Acceptance of papers announced 6 April 2009
Workshop date: UK,12-13 November 2009

Written papers to be submitted for circulation to participants 2 October 2009

To apply, please send an abstract of up to 300 words, your institutional affiliation and address and indicate whether you are an early career researcher to u.erel@open.ac.uk